With Counter-Strike: Global Offensive coming out later this year, we decided to take a detailed look at one of the most popular online shooters ever made. Lock and Load. When we published the Half-Life episode at the start of season two I was genuinely shocked by how many comments there were from people who had never played either game in the series.
Hello, you. The unseasonably warm afternoons seem to be making the hivemind sleepy. Personally I’ve been in a trance for the best part of an hour, just staring off into the blue skies overhead. Mmm. Is that jazz playing from an open window? But then everything suddenly came back into focus and I realised there were videos to be blogged. And we all like to see imaginary men getting shot – Hell, some of us depend on it for our sanity.
I’m all about hybrids. When I’m not in Castle Shotgun’s basement laboratories, attempting to breed rabbits with dragons, I love to investigate games that plunder from multiple genres. But by crikey, I’m daunted by the prospect of a third-person shooter crossed with a real-time strategy. That’s the nature of Gettysburg: Armored Warfare, the latest from Paradox that’s just gone on sale. Fortunately braver men than I, like Jim “Brave” Rossignol, have taken a detailed look at it in the past. And now you can buy it.
I’m not entirely convinced I’d like to deliberately steer my vehicle anywhere called Death Road. Perhaps I’m being old-fashioned and twee, but there’s just something about the name I find offputting. I can’t put my finger on it, it’s just a feeling. That is the rather direct name given to what I’m going to generously call a “WipEout-inspired racer”, coming to PC tomorrow. You can see a trailer of it below, and then say, “No, that’s not WipEout, that’s…”
Similar to the Vice City Rage project (and the San Andreas Rage project), here’s an undertaking bringing the world design of Grand Theft Auto III’s Liberty City to the more robust engine of Grand Theft Auto IV.
It looks like the boys from bioware are drip-feeding their slavering fans with dev diaries and info about their ‘Heavy Hitters’.
If you’re into DOTA and want more of the same, this XBLA title could be just what you’re looking for. It’s described (even by the devs) as DOTA in 2D and it’s slated for an early 2012 release date. Here’s totalbiscuit with his preview:
The new Max Payne game has graphics in it. A lot. Our research suggest that it’s around 70% graphics, 20% noises, and 10% miscellaneous. For more information on Max Payne’s graphics, visual effects, and cinematics, I should direct you to the new trailer, below.
I occasionally pop into WoW after years of not caring. It’s a world I’m happy to explore, but don’t really care for the mechanics. What’s clear when I return is that I enjoy the new content a lot more than the existing stuff. You can clearly see the level designers coming to terms with the notion of ‘fun’ in their world. The glimpses of Pandaria below really only show the world they’re building, but it does look pretty enough for me to dust off my WoW mage for a short holiday.
We do like a bit of balloon war, and few games do that as proficiently as the awesome Air Buccaneers HD. The game’s alpha version is now available on a but-and-try basis, and the work in progress has been documented in a recently video, which you can see below. It certainly looks fine. Mysteriously, devs Ludocraft promise something special for next week, but won’t say what it is. Hmm.