I dare someone to make a game not out of cubes. Not taking me up on that dare is Infernum, who have just announced their online buildy-shooter Brick-Force is taking sign-ups for its closed beta. Just what in Horace’s shiny toenails is Brick-Force? A trailer below will reveal.

It’s going to be free, it’s going to be in browsers and on phones, and it’s going to be out in the Spring. But you can sign up for the beta now, and watch it moving around below.

Some retro platforming insanity that’s available for Pc and iPhone, as reviewed by and excitable geordie.

A few people have nudged and winked us in the direction of Rockin’ Android’s (and there’s a name they must sort of regret, given they specialise in PC and PSN titles) Westernified J-indie bullet hell series Gundemonium Collection, which recently released on Steam. I quietly sneered my way through the big -eyed, Renaissance-frock loading screens and menus, and was rewarded by something delightfully ridiculous on the other side of it. Its base look might clearly declare which nation it orginates from, but it wastes no time in becoming absolutely batshit crazy, both in terms of the enemies it throws at you and in the powers it’s granting your floating gunwoman.

You’re up against a wall of death, but fortunately you can provide similar. Some by choice like the spinning cartwheel of doom which takes the place of the standard shmup bomb, and some automagically, like the giant laser cannon that pops up behind you when you suffer a wound and launches fury upon the other side of the screen. With the right character and the right weapon, a bloody great dragon flies on and biffs all and sundry.

Here’s a trailer showing off the stuff they’ve added for the Steam version:

Accurately-Named: Gundemonium
By Alec Meer on October 3rd, 2011 at 3:10 pm.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/10/03/accurately-named-gundemonium/

Battlefield 3 has finally figured out that the key to making a successful television ad is not to pick a theme song whose essential lyrics must be bleeped, and just put it all in the hands of filmmaker Freddie Wong.

Using Back to Karkand’s forklift and “online battle tactics that many of you should know and love,” Wong, with Sam and Niko from Corridor Digital, with this 60-second spot in just 10 days. It will begin airing soon. Freddie’s excited, and he’s also excited that he got to use real explosions and a tank. And we’re excited for him.

The VGAs coughed up a new trailer for Hitman: Absolution, which is crammed with sneaking, stealthery and silence. Except for all the parts with windows exploding in slow motion and The Bald One murdering almost every single person in his path, which just happens to take him through a hospital ward. Those parts are quite noisy. There’s also a crying nun. She is crying because of the constant gunfire and images of men being shot through the abdomen at point blank range. Do you want to see such things? They are below.

The Original Assassin, eh? I’m guessing it’s not John Wilkes Booth they’re trying to knock off his perch with that particular phrase.

It’s a strange oversight that the music sounds, to my ears, like blood-pumping stuff rather than the sort of morose finger-picking that a blood-soaked kill-video demands. How else would I know that the man-shooting is terribly sad and worthy? Somebody should remedy that. Just remember to mute the Hitman side of things. And then share any infinitely better examples that you concoct.

I’ve played quite a bit of the latest entry in Croteam’s twitchtastic first-person shooter series, but I never encountered the super-speedy giant unkillable pink spider creature in the first level. Know why? Because my copy isn’t pirated.

In order to curb rampant pc game piracy, developer Croteam purposefully included a bug (hee) in Serious Sam 3: BFE that trips when the game has been cracked. The bug (I said it again!) spawn a pleasantly-pink, positively unkillable scorpion creature that will hound the player until he or she is dead, dead, dead. To give the pirate a fighting chance, the spawn point is right next to the game’s first projectile weapon. It won’t have any effect, of course, but you’ll briefly feel better.

While not a particularly effective means of combating piracy, the giant immortal pink scorpion is a fun way to catch those masquerading as legitimate customers in places like GameFaqs.

Thanks for the entertainment, Croteam!

Ah, so maybe we do have CS:GO beta keys after all… We’d probably better get on with playing that. (Also Tribes: Ascend, which we haven’t quite caught up with yet either.) Anyway! I am sure a few of you are already saving up for Desert Eagles, while the rest of the internet will have to make do with a few measly minutes of game footage here and there, such as that found below this post. I’ve also dropped in a comparison video which compares the Source version of CS with CS:GO. It certainly looks pretty, and I am sure Hidden Path/Valve are making a decent job of the manshoots, too. OR ARE THEY?

Xotic, the first-person shooter from indie developer WXP Games, is decidedly weird in every way, from its story and weapons to its surreal visuals.

Sheer strangeness only gets you so far, though, as the odd elements of this $10 indie game come at the cost of approachability. Xotic’s psychedelic aspects may lure you in but they can also push you away; the game’s efforts to be unique often come at the cost of playability. This is one of those games you admire for its boldness but don’t totally enjoy playing.

At first, Xotic is pleasantly surreal. The story is about as easy to follow as a French art flick from the ’60s. Some ancient entity known as The Orb has gone nuts after an eternity of living as a non-corporeal energy being. So it does what all non-corporeal energy beings do when frustrated and goes on a galaxy-wide rampage, possessing creatures and destroying planets with attractive, red-glowing toxins called scabs. That’s where you enter. You play some sort of stick-figure alien warrior genetically designed to fight The Orb, who comes complete with a “weaponized symbiotic creature” called the macroterra. This creature can be custom fitted with nifty, creepy devices, such as energy weapons, a virus gun, and homing insects.

You can even rig up “hard holograms” that function as jumping platforms, which can help you reach high places. Experience points are gained for successfully clearing most levels in the single-player-only campaign (there are no multiplayer modes of play). These points can then be rolled into new weapons, extra damage effects, and buffed core stats that govern health, ammo, and armor. Everything you do goes into an arcade score that is tabulated for bragging rights in online leaderboards at the end of each successfully completed level.

The distinctive look, alien level design, and hallucinogenic story and setting are the biggest pluses in Xotic. Gameplay is intriguing in fits and starts early on, but the gee-whiz factor wears off when the cluttered levels start getting in the way of running around shooting bad guys. What could have been an intense and unique surreal experience winds up feeling awfully average.

Wow, that is a busy-looking little videogame all of a sudden. Terraria receives its version 1.1 update on December 1st, and it’s one whose contents the devs have been careful not to spill all of until very recently. There will be 222 new items, 39 monsters, female characters, new ores and resultant armours, all sorts of new combinations, wiring and resultant mechanisms, a new lighting system and, naturally, a boss called Wall of Flesh.

The devs reckons this update will completely change the game; I can’t speak for that, but I can say v.1.1 looks off the hook bonkers, as you’ll see below. The new lighting really pumps up the colour, too.

Battlefield 3 is already a terrific game, but the Back To Karkand expansion adds more explosive content. Here is the new “Strike At Karkand” trailer, showing us our first extended look at gameplay footage.

The first trailer displayed a general overview of the expansion, including the locales in which we would be fighting.

Back to Karkand features new weapons, vehicles, and classic maps from Battlefield 2. It will be released this December, free for those who bought a copy of the Limited Edition of Battlefield 3, or available on the same date at $14.99/1200 Microsoft Points.