The Reticule

The Autumn/Winter Games Crush

November 21, 2011 Chris Evans

My word, what a time it is to be a gamer, we are being spoilt for choice in new games right now. The major titles normally get released around this time of the year, everyone is used to that by now, but this year it is something else as the number of major titles being released seems to keep growing and growing. There really is a mad crush of games all being released together right now, and judging by some of the sales figures we are seeing, people are happy enough to buy the games they want despite the current economic climate.

Magicka – The Verdict

November 21, 2011 Nick Wheeler

This weekend, Paradox Interactive announced a free-to-play weekend on Steam for their insane action adventure classic Magicka. After placing a ridiculous oversized hat on my head and reaching for my copy of the Necronomicon, I’m finally prepared to tackle the crazed fantasy world of wizards and goblins, giving those who skipped it the first time round a chance to see what they’ve missed.

Free Games For The Short Of Cash

November 18, 2011 Lewis Foster

You’re probably aware that something called ‘Christmas’ is next month. Christmas is a wonderful thing where you have to spend all your money on other people, because you’re a nice, generous soul. Unfortunately, that means you probably won’t have much money to spend on feeding your gaming hobby. Sure, the Steam Christmas sales are probably coming up, but wouldn’t you like to get some quality games for nothing, for a change?

WRC 2 – The Verdict

November 18, 2011 Chris Evans

The traditional form of rally driving in the World Rally Championship has lost of a lot of its’ mainstream appeal since the days of Colin McRae and Richard Burns, especially here in Britain. This demise in popularity can be observed with the changing dynamics of rally games, the original Colin McRae Rally was a true to form rally game with a focus on traditional point-to-point stages, the series continued in this vein until DiRT first appeared. Since then, classic rally…

Gemini Rue – The Verdict

November 16, 2011 Chris Evans

If there was one genre that truly defined my childhood, it was that of the point and click adventure. Raised on a diet of Sierra and Lucasarts, I’ve always had an overwhelming desire to audibly describe anything I’m looking at, and I remain forever confident that there are no problems in life that can’t be solved by combining two objects from my pocket.

Skyrim Dominates Steam (and Football Manager 2009 beats Red Orchestra 2)

November 14, 2011 Chris Evans

As we all could have guessed, Modern Warfare 3 is leading the all formats chart this week, but it isn’t having its’ own way on Steam. The current figures from Steam stats show 94,076 people currently playing Bethesda’s epic with 39,289 people playing Modern Warfare 3 when adding up multiplayer and singleplayer versions. Hit the jump for some more stats.

Highest grossing week of UK game sales ever.

November 14, 2011 Chris Evans

The latest UK games charts are now in at Chart-Track with Modern Warfare 3 predictably leading the way at Number 1 while Skyrim sits in a happy second place. But perhaps more important for the business is that this was the biggest week ever for game sales in the UK according to Chart Track. It was a week when game sales took more money than the opening weekend takings for the last four Harry Potter films. That is big and shows that despite the economic difficulties, the games industry can still bring in the money.

Show Me The Sales – Indie Game Sale Now On

November 14, 2011 Chris Evans

Indie games portal Show Me The Games is currently running a huge two week sale with a whole heap of great indie games available for half price. The brain behind Show Me The Games, Positech’s Cliff Harris describes the event with such words as these:

“Today marks the first day of the first two-week ‘Show Me The Sales’ promotion!

Hosted by the online indie game database at www.showmethegames.com, ‘Show Me The Sales’ is a collection of indie game developers who are each offering substantial discounts on their games over the next two weeks. Unlike any other games bundle or sale, SMTS is a collection of sales hosted directly by the developers, acting just as a directory of discounts, so you still buy the game direct from the individual developer, and the developer gets to keep all of the money.

Just to emphasise that, ShowMeTheGames takes NOTHING from any of the sales, or the developers.”

If you want to get titles such as VVVVVV!, AI War: Fleet Command and Gratuitous Space Battles! at great prices, just head here.

Sonic Generations – The Verdict

November 14, 2011 Michael Pelletier

For a video-game character so obsessed with travelling blindly forwards, Sonic the Hedgehog sure spends a lot of time looking over his shoulder. Between the upcoming re-release of Sonic CD, the ongoing Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and the sidescrolling elements of modern titles like Sonic Colours, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Sonic Generations is slightly redundant. Nevertheless, it’s here and pulling no punches about being a celebration of twenty years of Sonic history: even the minimalistic story begins with…

Update on Steam Security Breach

November 11, 2011 Chris Evans

We have a little update on the Steam security breach. I have come accross the above image, from Steam UnPowered which indicates that Valve’s Gabe Newell has confirmed that any credit card details stored by Valve using AES256 which seems to be a very secure system. We can’t guarantee the validity of the above email exchange, but we are following up with Valve for more details.