Mirror's Edge and Dear Esther artist joins Valve to "be around people"
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Rob Briscoe is one of two freelancers who’ve found a polite sort of fame after their work on Mirror’s Edge. While Rhianna Pratchett went on to scribe Tomb Raider (and in smaller font, Thief), Briscoe went on to splash Dear Esther with a liberal varnish of art and design.
The success of Dear Esther has allowed him to continue on in indiedom indefinitely - but an “increasing feeling of isolation” while working on a Unity port for the game has led him to seek a job in which he can be “in the presence of people”. Genius people, at Valve.
Dark Souls 2 PC delay will mean higher resolutions, better framerates and key mapping
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The early days of a Something Souls game are completely unique. There are no wikis to consult, nor spoilers to overhear. Players stumble through graveyards of one palette or another for the first time, sacrificing themselves to learn the monster movesets others will come to memorise.
It’s a bit of a shame PC gamers have been robbed of that period for Dark Souls 2, which launched on the consoles this week. We’ll have to wait till - my goodness, is that right - April 25 to enter the land of the soon-to-be-dead.
But better late, as in the late Dent Arthur Dent, than never. Producer Tak Miyazoe says the delay has ensured Dark Souls 2 will be better on PC than its “half-assed” predecessor.
EA and Respawn name Titanfall's worst issues on PC, start fixing them
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Acknowledging the problem is the first step to something. Free chocolate? I forget. In any case, EA are on the right track. They’ve set up a help page for Titanfall, which they’ve filled with known issues, temporary workarounds, and assurances that Respawn are fixing what’s broken. Here’s some of the stuff that might be affecting you.
Funcom talk police investigation: "We were back in full production the day after they came"
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Funcom started off the year in lights for all the wrong reasons. They’d been raided by Økokrim, Norway’s financial crime unit, the headlines wailed, who were investigating one charge of market manipulation and another of wrongfully-filed insider information from around the time of The Secret World’s release.
After a short, dreadful silence, Funcom told the press that all was well; that they were cooperating and remained “committed” to The Secret World. And now a more recent account suggests that despite the ongoing investigations, it “all blew over very fast”. Funcom’s coders are coding again.
Monaco man Andy Schatz is building a classic RTS simple enough for a gamepad: Armada
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Bird’s eye view: all the holistic insight of the winged kings, without the constant fear of predator attack from absolutely any angle. Monaco creator Andy Schatz has stuck with his favoured perspective for his next project - a streamlined C&C style RTS named Armada.
“With Monaco, we took an old school genre (Stealth), we simplified the controls, and then we built an incredibly complex game that could be played at high and low skill levels alike,” said Schatz. “I want to do the same with the real-time strategy genre."
Gong Home: Steam are selling BAFTA nominees at cut price
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The gaming BAFTAs happened last night - and until the Oscars get a little more lax with their licensing, it’s pretty much the best gongfest we have. Our Fraser was disappointed by the scarcity of surprises - but I consider any evening that celebrates PC indie things like Gone Home and Papers, Please a good one.
You’ll find both of those games on sale on Steam today, uncoincidentally, alongside their fellow nominees - apart from GTA Online, which isn’t on PC and definitely wouldn’t be its best multiplayer game if it was.
Elite: Dangerous — Alpha 3 adds a station, systems and hyperspace jumps, is also brilliant
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I've been playing Alpha 2, the next to latest version, of Elite: Dangerous, zooping around in my spaceboat, swishing between asteroids and kablooshing enemy ships in its series of single player combat missions. Elite, it turns out, is really, seriously good. It controls remarkably similarly to the original game, with dogfights consisting of a rolling and pitching your craft, twisting and arcing through space in your attempts to keep your target in view. But at the same time it introduces some of the kinetic spirit of Frontier, Elite's sequel, with less rigid physics and a touch more Newtonian space-skidding giving combat real momentum and punch. Braben's development team have worked some real nostalgia black magic here, merging our fuzzy memory of how Elite used to be with a modern, uncompromised space combat sim.
Alpha 2 is tremendous, yes, but the soon to be released Alpha 3 is another beast entirely. Alpha 3 dumps on Alpha 2 from orbit. Alpha Poo, you'll be calling it before long.
I've been playing the latest version of Elite: Dangerous, and here's what's up with it.
Grudge match: Rome II DLC pits Carthage against Rome in the Second Punic War
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The Second Punic War is ripe for dramatisation, so it’s odd that Hollywood hasn’t picked it apart. Maybe it’s because the “bad guys” win in the end. Rome initiates yet another war against its old adversaries, Carthage, kicking off a conflict that engulfs the Mediterranean. So the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, crosses the Alps with ferocious elephants and angry Gauls, beating up Romans up and down Italy.
Of course, it didn’t end well for Carthage. The Romans took back their fallen cities, chucked the North African powerhouse out of Iberia and eventually turned once mighty Carthage into yet another client state. In Total War: Rome II’s new DLC, Hannibal at the Gates, you’ll have a chance to change the fortunes of Carthage. Or you can put yourself in Scipio’s shoes, trying to make the war play out just as it did historically.
Heroes of the Storm progression and customisation detailed along with a technical alpha walkthrough
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Heroes of the Storm’s hero rotation element was leaked a while back, but now Blizzard has clarified exactly how the rotation will function in a recent blog post. As well as breaking down hero rotations, Blizzard dropped some information on hero customisation, mounts and how players will earn experience.
This week's Humble Sale is a corker from SEGA
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This week’s Humble Sale is a bit of a corker. It’s from SEGA, and includes a good mix of old and new(er) titles.
Pay anything and you’ll net yourself Alpha Protocol, Rome: Total War, Company of Heroes and Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit. Rome and Company of Heroes are phenomenal games and should be in the library of any strategy fans, while Alpha Protocol and Hell Yeah! are a bit more uneven, but still entertaining.
Campo Santo announces its first game: Firewatch
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Campo Santo, the developer supergroup made up from folk with CVs that include The Walking Dead Season One, Mark of the Ninja and BioShock 2, has finally revealed its first game: Firewatch.
A first-person mystery, Firewatch will put you in the shoes of Henry, a chap who has ditched his old life to become a fire spotter in the Wyoming wilderness, with only a radio the his supervisor on the other end, Delilah, to keep him company.
But the peaceful job of just keeping an eye out for smoke starts to become more complicated, as he leaves his lookout tower to explore a mystery that could either build or break the only relationship he has left.
Alien Isolation's xenomorph: “This is an enemy that you need to avoid at all costs”
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The years haven’t been kind to Xenomorphs. The Aliens vs Predator films made them utterly disposable, Prometheus made them the product of goo and Colonial Marines made them mentally subnormal and suicidal.
So Creative Assembly have a lot of work to do in Alien: Isolation, making the single xenomorph as terrifying as we remember it to be from the original film. The latest developer diary explains the design approach Creative Assembly have taken in regards to the iconic monster.
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