We are less than a week away from the Eurogamer Expo at Earl’s Court in London, and I will be making the trip down there with the aim of getting some time with the PS4 and Xbox One…though I will probably give up on the queues and just play some indie games. It should be fun at least! Let’s take a look at what has gone down in the past week in Our Week in Games.
Artistic endless runner Race to the Sun has been available on the site of developers Flipp Fly for a month now and despite receiving positive press from Kotaku and Edge, the team are finding sales proving to be sluggish. They have gone into the details on their blog.
I know what this country needs, it needs me as Prime Minister. Well, if my time with Democracy 3 is anything to go by that is certainly true.
I’ve recently been scampering around the hunting grounds in the upcoming PC game; Sir, You are Being Hunted. The game is currently in early-alpha and I’ve had chance to sink a few hours into it to give you lucky people my initial impressions.
Everything about this game is quintessentially English. From the predominantly fen-like rural setting, to the fact that a flask of tea will almost fully heal you. It instantly feels comfortable, like a pair of old slippers. In front of a fire. With a border collie.
It is time for more of Our Week in Games as the football transfer window approaches last orders, the kids get ready to go back to school and the end of year big hitting games get ever closer to launch. That’s right, we are now in September, a month where we will see Rome II and Grand Theft Auto V launch. You can see the latest GTA trailer after the break before we get down to business.
When I delivered my Verdict on Gun Monkeys, one of the things I brought up was the general quietness on the servers with it being difficult to find people to play against. To help combat this, creator Dan Marshall has released an update which gives away keys to those sitting on an empty server to share with their friends. I grabbed hold of Dan and asked him some questions about this new approach, and Gun Monkeys in general.
Minecraft was fun for a few hours. Eventually though, after the final blocks are placed in my wood and stone villa overlooking the sea, the sad truth of my endeavor starts to sink in – it’s all utterly pointless. At least with Lego you can at least pretend the things you build have function, but in the almost-endless forests of Notch’s masterpiece, it’s a case of build and move on.
Starmade is a little different. It lets you build fully functioning star-ships, stations and planetary complexes, fight pirates and other players, all in an infinite void. And it makes you use the word “blocks” uncomfortably often.
I am making the connection between Starmade and Minecraft early because… well, look at it. It looks like an overly ambitious mod for the latter, and often even feels like it. But where Minecraft sets you free in an essentially unchanging landscape with the tools to settle in and build pretty things, Starmade plops you in an endlessly moving universe with the bare essentials required to build a ship, then throws pirates at you.
Have you ever had a game tutorial where a mysterious, yet lovely English voice talks you through the basics of a game where monkeys are sent to a battle to the bitter end? If you haven’t, well you need to get your priorities straight and get playing Gun Monkeys, a gruesomely-awesome game of monkey violence.
I always find it a shame when a game you were looking forward to just doesn’t live up to the potential you saw in it. I’m talking about Beatbuddy, the game I played at Rezzed and fell in love with. But that was only one level that was playable at the show and sadly the final game just doesn’t match up with the brilliant snap-shot of it I played. By no means is it a bad game, it just goes from being an almighty and truly amazing experience…to being simply an amazing game with a few aspects that got to me.
I’ve only ever done a handful of face-to-face interviews in my adventures here on The Reticule and most of them have gone ok, but certainly not great. At the Rezzed show in June I was taking a peak at the Democracy 3 and RedShirt stand and happened to see a face I recognised from Twitter and his blog, it was Cliff Harris, the man behind Positech Interactive.