Wot I Think: Hatred

Obviously Hatred [official site] has engineered itself, with the support of a jejune voluntary army, a degree of infamy. A drearily tasteless and cheap (in all senses of the word) promotional campaign dared a mostly uninterested world to care that it was to feature a lone gunman slaughtering hundreds of innocent civilians. They got a bit of attention from the credulous, but not much, and now the finished isometric shooter appears with little noise. Despite all that, I’m not here to review the clumsily engineered politics behind its development, but the game itself. Here’s wot I think:

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Start Again: Windows 10 Coming On July 29th

Windows 10 [official site] looks like one of the good versions of Windows, one you’ll upgrade then stick with for years as Microsoft add guff to later versions that you couldn’t possibly want – joining the likes of Windows 98 SE, 2000, XP, and 7. It seems to mostly do good things, promising faster boot times and the return of the Start menu, and at worst things I’m different to, like Siri-esque voice-controlled computer friend Cortana and some Xbox One guff. And it’ll be free to upgrade to from Windows 7 or 8.1.

This morning Microsoft announced Windows 10’s release date: July 29th.

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The RPS Scrollbars: The Declining Magic Of MMOs

There’s a basic rule of the universe – everything is better when it’s a dream. A new car. A new toy. A revolutionary new way of playing games. As a dream, they’re magical. They’re promise. They’re an opportunity yet to be bled dry or squandered. When we get them… they’re a thing. It’s hard to see the impossible in something right in front of you, which is why we shrug off such marvels as access to the whole of human knowledge and electronic telepathy on a yearly basis, because suddenly this year’s modern miracle has a shitty screen and won’t connect to a magic watch.

So it is with MMOs. Why did we never see a World of Warcraft killer?

Simple. Because in a very real sense, a World of Warcraft killer was impossible.

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Ruah: Breezy Walking Simulator Released Free

Ruah‘s [official site] idea of drifting around a low-poly landscape as a breeze, gathering deer and making flowers come alive, sounded fab last July. It’s finally out, though not quite what I’d expected or even what the developers wanted, they concede. But it’s a free, short, and pretty blowing simulator with an enjoyable few minutes of wandering and gawping, and you might like it.

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UnShocked: Evolve Will Be A “Permanent” Franchise

Rumblings in the towers of Take-Two have gotten me wondering about the status of the BioShock franchise. GameSpot are reporting the publisher’s CEO and potential movie villain Strauss Zelnick calling the series “really important” to Take-Two at a recent conference. According to Zelnick, it’s so far sold a whopping 25 million units, 11 million of which were BioShock Infinite.

Zelnick has previously referred to this as one of Take-Two’s “permanent” franchises, alongside Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Civilization and Borderlands. But things have so far been quiet. No future full-releases have been publicly confirmed for the series – Zelnick notes he has no announcements to make of BioShock’s whereabouts. Likewise, Irrational Games are but a memory. Ken Levine is working on something about blocks or something.

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Construction Complete: Rebuild 3 Out Of Early Access

If you want to spoil other games that straddle the imagined psychogeography of the casual/hardcore divide forever, the Rebuild series [official site] is a good place to look. On the surface, these strategic games of zombie uprising aftermath survival and urban reclamation are simple, colourful resource-gathering exercises, but they’re cleverly balanced and squeeze plenty of flavour out of the setting. Since the earliest Flash incarnation of the concept, Sarah Northway’s games have appealed to me – ideal to dip into during the eternal coffee break of the soul.

The third title adds factions, a splendid revamped UI and much more. I’ve played the early versions of the Early Access release but now, with the campaign complete, the game is ready to launch.

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Chaos Reborn Adds Multiplayer Throwback Mode

Remember Chaos Reborn [official site]? That turn-based wizard-on-wizard combat game from X-Com co-creator Julian Gollop? Successfully Kickstarter-funded last year, it’s just now got itself a major hit of multiplayer in the form of a new “Classic Chaos” mode.

Which by any other name is essentially Chaos Reborn for fans of minimalism. Here’s how it works: Each player controls a wizard outfitted with a standard staff and gear, along with a random grab-bag of spells. In anticipation of the mode’s release, the team has introduced a separate league competition specific to Classic Chaos players.

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