Get your speedrunning shoes on and prepare your glitches: Awesome Games Done Quick has arrived for its yearly speedrunning extravaganza. As with previous years, the charity event is raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It's been live since yesterday evening and runs until this Sunday, and there are already some fab runs in the likes of Mirror's Edge and Dragon Age: Origins to catch up on.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>The power fantasy of exploring new worlds or meeting strange alien races (and then shooting at both of those things) is the kind of thing that big-budget games tend to focus on. As far as humour is concerned, they’re at best ‘plus comedy’ experiences that deliver on their key points but also have some funny quips along the way. You’re never asked to participate in the humour, and if the jokes don’t land then there’s little you as the player can do about it. So why not equip the player with the systems to write their own jokes and tell their own stories? And how do you foster humour creation in games that don’t already have a pun-based name for every item? I spoke to the developers of four such games to find out how they utilise this approach in order to enable players to create their own fun.
One thing that became evident through the interviews was that each and every system available to the player has to be airtight if they are to get the most out of the experience. A poorly-implemented system can cause you to lose investment in the same way that a poorly delivered punchline might. Each developer wanted to encourage experimentation through their game’s systems in their own way. But which comes first; the design of the systems or the desire to create humour?
]]>As if swinging from hostile helicopters on a grappling hook, gliding around on a wingsuit, and causing so very many explosions weren't dangerous enough for Rico Rodriguez, in Just Cause 4 he'll also be fighting through tornadoes, sandstorms, and blizzards. Publishers Square Enix today formally announced Avalanche Studios' next explosive sandbox, surprising no one after recent leaks, and it looks nifty. The storms in Avalanche's Mad Max were astonishing, and I'm certainly up for launching myself into a tornado. Watch the announcement trailer below.
]]>An apparent whoopsie on Steam has revealed the existence of Just Cause 4, in an advert, without anyone having announced any such game. So that'll probably be something Square Enix plan to announce during their E3 press event on Monday. The ad is a simple picture which doesn't reveal much but all I need to know is: our fella still has a wrist-mounted grappling hook; he's still outside somewhere pretty; he still has guns; he still has a grenade launcher on a gun. Aye that'll be Just Cause alright, more open-world sandbox shoot-o-grapple-a-destruction.
]]>A third Short Circuit film was never made, but I think we all know what course it would have taken: feeling betrayed by the discovery that his best friend had inexplicably pretended to be Indian to him for years, self-aware military robot Johnny 5 decreed humanity to be a cruel and deceitful species, and raised an army of fellow machines designed to eradicate them. That's my headcanon explanation for why Avalanche Studios' new open world game Generation Zero features bandanna and mohawk-wearing humans versus hordes of cute-but-murderous robots, anyway.
Yup, fresh off the back of their sale to a Scandinavian movie company, the Just Cause, Rage 2 & Mad Max devs have announced their new thing, and it's all about "playing war in the serene forests of 1980's Sweden." Sure, sure, we're drowning in faux-80s stuff right now, but watch this and tell me it doesn't look like a good time.
]]>There we were, being all surprised that Just Cause/Mad Max outfit Avalanche Studios had been handed the reins to Id sequel Rage 2, and now here we are, being all surprised that Avalanche are now owned by a 111-year-old Danish movie studio. Nordisk Film, the world's oldest still-active film production firm, have doled out some $103 million to take control of Avalanche's three offices, but the claim is that the Swedish games studio will retain creative independence. In fact, the plan is to work on more self-published titles, though they don't plan on giving up work for hire just yet.
]]>We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol' Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well - as do a host of other games from 2017's great and good.
Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you're so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I'd have gone for in each category.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>What is the weekend for if not banter, antics, and japery? Go on, round up the lads and hop in the bantmobile to speed smash boat bash plane dash around Just Cause 3 now that its multiplayer mod [official site] has left beta and exploded onto Steam. The unofficial (but sanctioned) mod lets hundreds of players lark about in the explode-o-sandbox world in battles, races, and just plain tomfoolery. Here, check out the antics in this launch trailer:
]]>Viva La Revolution! The Just Cause 3 Multiplayer [official site] mod is ready to come out of its six-month-long beta, and version 1.0 will blast onto Steam next week (20th July). Essentially, it allows 100 players at a time to muck about in Medici, racing cars, dog-fighting jets, pulling off stunts, blowing up buildings and crashing boats. It's going to be absolute carnage, isn't it?
This is not a fully online version of Just Cause 3 or anything like that – there's no NPCs or story. It's basically a sandbox, and a tool with which the community can create custom game modes that others can then play through.
]]>The Steam summer sale is in full blaze. For a while it even blazed so hot that the servers went on fire and all the price stickers peeled off the games. Either that or the store just got swamped with cheapskates looking for the best bargains. Cheapskates like you! Well, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up some recommendations - both general tips and some newly added staff choices.
Here are the things you should consider owning in your endless consumeristic lust for a happiness which always seems beyond reach. You're welcome.
]]>The big silly sandbox of Just Cause 3 is a fine place to dick about, driving and gliding and exploding all over for giggles, but it was sorely lacking the option to muck about with your mates. That's now resolved with the beta release of Nanos Just Cause 3 Multiplayer [official site]. The unofficial mods adding multiplayer with potentially hundreds of players per server, chasing and racing and exploding together. Just Cause 3 is chaotic with only one play so with hundreds, oh my!
]]>It's the most wonderful time of the year. It's THE mosssssssst wonderful tiiiiiiiiiiiime ahaahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah I wish I had a machinegun ho ho ho ahahaha, get stuffed 2016.
]]>Aside from starting a new tradition of unusually-named Steam Awards, Valve have also pulled out their worn and adored bargain bucket and have begun to fill it with games you’ll enthusiastically buy and probably never play. Yes, it's their Autumn Sale. In the streets, the apocalyptic jockeying for TVs and blenders has started. The moon has turned blood red. And I looked and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Black Friday, and sales followed with him.
]]>Change! Actual change! Other than, y'know, the three games that are here every single week, every single week I have to include them, every single week, they're there, undying, changing, every single week, every single week.
Yeah! It's the top ten best-selling games on Steam last week.
]]>What?! Didn't Alice report just a few days ago that the Just Cause 3 Multiplayer mod was coming along nicely? Yes, but that was a different Just Cause 3 multiplayer mod. The one that's been cancelled is the one that was being made by the developers of the popular, trendsetting JC2MP. Although it might not all be bad news: its primary developer has gone to work for Just Cause creators Avalanche.
]]>The multiplayer mod for Just Cause 2 is a ridiculous and special thing, partially for the accomplishment of fans adding multiplayer to a game not made for it and partially for the sight of hundreds of players flying, driving, parachuting, and exploding all over Panau. Mod team Nanos are working on a multiplayer mod for Just Cause 3 and, judging by a new wee video, it's coming along quite nicely. Observe, a few folks parachuting and wingsuiting around together:
]]>Never one for the conservative approach, Just Cause 3 [official site] is getting another batch of ostentatious DLC that'll see protagonist Rico Rodriguez pilot powerful mechs and get to grips with an antigravity gun.
Mech Land Assault follows the Sky Fortress DLC expansion and marks the game's second offering of additional content. Publisher Square Enix have now announced it'll launch on June 3 (this Friday) for Season Pass holders, and June 10 for everyone else. Its big features include:
]]>I don't know what a 'meme' is anymore. First they used them for science, then memes escaped a lab as a virus in a monkey, then Internet turned the viruses into jokes, and then the virus infected every other form of joke. (I think, at this point, we're either safe or have ourselves become memes?)
All I know for certain is that delightful recreations of video game box art using cheery stock art have recently filled my corner of the Internet, and I think you might like them.
]]>Just Cause 3 [official site] will be ready to blast off with a cracking-looking rocketpack in the Sky Fortress DLC on March 8th, Square Enix announced today, though only folks who pay for all the DLC up-front in the Season Pass will get to play then. Folks who'd buy it separately will need to wait until the 15th.
On the bright side, a free update is coming for all and sundry tomorrow, bringing performance improvements, faster load times, and more fine things.
]]>You know those bits in the Iron Man movies where Timmy Stark rockets up into the sky then does fancy barrel rolls dodging missiles while blasting his shoulderguns? Great, aren't they? Our lad Rico Rodriguez is getting into that game too, as publishers Square Enix have announced that the first big Just Cause 3 [official site] DLC pack is adding what is, pretty much, an Iron Man suit. (Without all the armour - Rico likes his chest hair rippling in the wind, you know.) Observe these antics:
]]>My eyebrow's raised so high that it's knocking plaster off the ceiling, but it's worth sharing this oddity as a talking point if nothing else. It seems Just Cause 3 [official site]'s DRM is still presenting stiff competition to crackers over a month on from release, prompting one pirate collective to predict that we are in the game piracy end times. "According to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years time I’m afraid there will be no free games to play in the world."
Obviously that's garbage, both because people willingly make tons of free games and because many paid games choose not to include DRM at all, but maybe DRM really has become a new force to be reckoned with.
]]>Open-world explore 'n' explode 'em up Just Cause 3 [official site] has been out for a month now (it's pretty great!) and the most exciting news around is surely that a multiplayer mod is coming from the JC2MP folks. All the game's actual creators, Avalanche Studios, have to talk about is future patches and DLC plans. Pssh. Sure, yeah, I bet your performance boosts are great and all, but I'm far more interested in my PC grinding to a halt trying to render the antics of five dozen parachuting murdermaniacs. Ah! Pssh. Fine. Go on then, Avalanche, speak up.
]]>When I received definitive confirmation that Just Cause 3 [official site] wouldn't have any multiplayer support out of the box, I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. If memory serves, I was talking to one of the game's producers at the time so it's entirely possible that I left the room wincing, with a wounded expression on my face. Later in the day, when I'd recovered, Avalanche told me that their dedication to modding support would allow for all manner of enjoyable shenanigans and, sure enough, the team behind the Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod have released the first footage of Just Cause 3 Multiplayer. Delicious.
]]>Well, it'a a tradition now. As with Just Cause 2, and this year's Mad Max, it is imperative that we gather together images of Avalanche's central heroes not looking at the enormous explosions they've caused.
]]>What is the best action game of 2015? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games from throughout the year, and behind today's door is...
]]>I've no doubt that Avalanche and Square Enix are well aware of what happened to Warner with Batman: Arkham Knight, which is why they're taking a chummier approach to launch issues with Just Cause 3. The open world being-a-cool-guy sequel is beleaguered by visual glitches and wayward performance, and an AMD beta driver hasn't fixed the issue for everyone.
A wider fix will, Avalanche have announced, "need a little bit of time", but they're using data gleaned from the playerbase in order to "recreate some of these issues and build fixes."
]]>Just Cause 3 [official site] is pretty great, you might've heard our man John Walker say. He's been all over the parachuting, wingsuiting, exploding, exploring, and kissing a cow (we've all coughed politely and pretended our phones were ringing every time he mentioned the cow-kissing - boy has he ever mentioned the cow-kissing!), but some folks with AMD/ATI video cards are suffering graphical glitches. They're finding nasty big holes in the ground, jagged polygons littering the landscape.
Switching to new beta drivers might fix it, and publishers Square Enix say they're working with AMD on a driver update.
]]>Avalanche's Just Cause 3 is officially released Tuesday morning online and in something called "shops". "Officially", because it was apparently released early in a few naughty nations, prompting the developers to make a list of planned Day 0 fixes. Of course, that means the code we've been reviewing from for the last week also lacks that patch, making it tricky to know how many of the issues I encountered - in an otherwise stupendous game - will affect you. Bearing this in mind, here's wot I think.
]]>'Nerdcore' is that thing where people make rap songs but they're bad at rapping and their songs are bad but the lyrics are about video games and movies from when you were young so it must be cool, yeah? If Kieron were still around, he might drop some musical science from a great height here, by which I mean make such a brazen declaration and take disagreement as proof that he's right. Instead, it falls to me to post the launch trailer for Just Cause 3 [official site], which features some bad rapping about a video game (out tomorrow!) and its explosions.
]]>I don't normally like to watch introductions to games pre-release, but Just Cause 3 [official site] seems a fair game to make an exception for. I'm not expecting to play the wingsuiting, parachuting, grapple hooking action game for its plot. And so here: the first hour of the game is embedded below.
]]>Oh aye, you enjoy your pottering around a nuclear wasteland, if that's what you want. You know what's cool? The fiery immediate consequences of giant explosions. You know what's not cool? The grim long-term consequences of giant explosions. So you enjoy your fortnight in Fallout 4, just be ready to cause a billion cool-as-heck explosions yourself on December 1st when Just Cause 3 [official site] launches. A new trailer exists purely to show big explosions in 2160p resolution (or 4K, if you favour that misleading term). "Hey, we have explosions," it's here to remind you. "Look at them in high-resolution video. Aren't explosions nice?"
]]>Game series like Just Cause are a bit like Hollywood action movies. In order to be completely absorbed by their flash and pizzazz and glitz and glamour, we suspend our trust in common sense just a little, just enough, to allow ourselves to take it all in. Getting a sneak peak behind the illusory velvet rope can take away some of this majesty, but also offers the chance to see how a game comes together. The latest Just Cause 3 [official site] developer diary focuses on story and does just that. Grab the popcorn and let's take a look.
]]>Here's how it went: I tied three cars to the helicopter, took off and smashed them into a building like a trio of wrecking balls before firing infinite missiles at every car I saw in a long trail the whole way to the top of the island's highest mountain, whereupon I leapt out and saw my chopper plummet to the ground just as I opened my wingsuit and glided the whole 8km back to the seaside where I opened my parachute, landed on a rusty old fishing boat, threw the captain overboard and piloted it calmly back to shore only to beach the old rust bucket and begin shooting all the billboards in port with a machine gun the size of my whole body. I did not complete any mission objectives in Just Cause 3 [official site] by doing any of this, but I did set the record for longest wingsuit flight, and also: who the hell cares?
]]>I've hardly moved from behind my desk this week, but I just cannot get enough of flying. To my delight this afternoon ushers in more of the same courtesy of Just Cause 3 [official site] as it propels us head-first into its latest trailer, dubbed 'On A Mission', in all its wingsuit-wearing, parachute-popping, South-American dictator-detracting glory. There's tanks, flash cars, ridiculous physics, and about a gazillion 'splosions. Business as usual, then.
Duck inside to see Rico in standard death-defying action.
]]>You know how Just Cause 3 [official site] has all those huge explosions which destroy vehicles and buildings and everything? Well, you may be surprised to learn that developers Avalanche Studios have actually not created a teeny little diorama of model village houses and firecrackers inside your seeing box. Instead, they use a modern gadget known as a 'computer' to... ah... I think they record the destruction in a model village and broadcast it via satellite link?
Clearly, I am not the one to explain how they do it. For that, you'll want to watch a new trailer which dedicates four and a half minutes to the topic of smashing stuff real good:
]]>This Just Cause 3 [official site] video from IGN is titled "Just Cause 3's Challenge Mode Looks Insanely Fun." Insanely fun. You might like to watch the video because it has pretty explosions and scenery, but scroll down below the video and I'll explain why the challenge modes aren't insanely fun at all.
]]>The makers of Just Cause 3 [official site] are letting out a steady trickle of info, which means no longer will you need to search month-old E3 footage for sweet hype to suckle.
The first of five dev diary videos has just released, which gives you a closer look at protagonist Rico Rodriguez. That means who he is, what his skills and abilities are, and how he fits in to the franchise.
]]>"Stop hitting yourself!" I can imagine Just Cause 3's [official site] demolition man Rico giggling as he uses his destruc-o-physics tether lines to force a giant statue to demolish itself with a mighty open-handed slap to the face. "Why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself!"
A new narrated gameplay video shows off the build developers Avalanche Studios took to E3 this year - the one our Adam got to play, the jammy git. It's filled with explosive antics and shenanigans, and has made me laugh like a drain. Come see:
]]>Just Cause 3 [official site] is a spectator's dream. I'd been playing for at least two and a half hours when I decided to take a walk around the room to see what all of the other journalists were up to. Some were testing the physics by attaching cars to boats, planes to people and spluttering scooters to everything. Some had learned to navigate the game's new yet familiar setting - the fictional Mediterranean island of Medici - like ground-skimming superheroes, swift creatures of the air who used a combination of grapple lines, wingsuit and parachute to stay airborne. Some were exploding everything.
On one screen the Looney Tunes violence elsewhere had been transformed into something grim.
]]>As cool ways to get around go, grappling hooks are up there with skateboards and motorbikes. Unlike boards and bikes, however, the super-rad accidents grappling hooks cause won't have you lose significant patches of your skin. Not your own, anyway.
You can now grapple around San Andreas to your hearts' content in Just Cause 2 style, swinging to buildings and tying vehicles together, thanks to a mod for Grand Theft Auto V [official site].
]]>Watching the “gameplay reveal” trailer for Just Cause 3 is like watching the ambitions of every guns, vehicles and explosions game made real. It's the ludicrously overblown action blockbuster that Uncharted's scripted events and cutscenes invoke. It's Far Cry with the stabilisers taken off. GTA V with many of the best mods you can imagine included as standard. It has sunk its grapple hook into my heart.
]]>It's... a funny old day. Big stuff, big response, not entirely sure how to feel about it all, no clue what happens next. Personally, I'm going to try and take my mind off it. This first glimpse at the don't worry about a thing mayhem of Just Cause 3 [official site] is probably an OK way to do that, for a few seconds at least.
]]>Dear Avalanche Studios,
Hi, I hope you're all well. I wanted to get in touch to make a few requests about Just Cause 3.
Obviously you're deep into development now, but with no fixed release date, I'm also sure there are many months left to go. So I hope I'm not too late with my requests. After I begged and begged and begged and begged that you not let the game get in the way of the fun during the run-up to Just Cause 2, you let the game get in the way of the fun in Just Cause 2, so it seems imperative that I get in touch now.
]]>We don't often post about screenshot releases, because there's always a trailer that shows more, with less of likelihood of each frame having been doctored in Photoshop before release. Just Cause is the kind of series though where half the fun comes from how pretty it looks and the other half comes from tethering guards to rockets and standing astride vehicles as they launch over cliffs. These Just Cause 3 screenshots show a bit of both - and are obviously carefully posed - but I like to look at them.
Maybe you will also enjoy looking at them? You can click to make each one bigger.
]]>Will Just Cause 3 have multiplayer? Just Cause 2's wonky-but-ace Multiplayer Mod showed that - surprise surprise - running and driving and flying and grappling-hooking and exploding all around an open world with your chums can be pretty fun. An actual, proper, made-with-access-to-the-source-code multiplayer mode could be something special. But Just Cause 3 won't have one, Avalanche Studios have said. Probably. At this point of the game's marketing campaign, it's hard to tell how much of this is a firm declaration, how much is uncertainty, and how much is The Official Marketing Line. Don't get your hopes up, in short. But maybe don't be surprised. Oh, I don't know!
]]>When Just Cause 3 was announced yesterday, Square Enix said that it was a "full price title", causing speculation that earlier fears about the game containing microtransactions were unfounded. Now developers Avalanche have confirmed it in a post on their own site: "It does not feature in-game micro transactions."
Yep. Confirmation that the speculation about the earlier speculation being false is true.
]]>Just Cause 2 is a game about gravity and grappling hooks. It's what happens when Grand Theft Auto and Far Cry hook up, and make Saints Row the godfather to their bastard child. The child is baptised in a font of flame that is kicked out of a helicopter and parachutes onto the burning wing of a plane that is tethered to a lorry that is driving off a cliff while somebody stands on its roof adopting a surfer pose while shooting rockets at the moon.
A sequel has just been announced. I sincerely hope I can fire my grappling hook into the moon and swing it at my enemies like a big ol' wrecking ball. Details below.
]]>VG247 has word that Avalanche are (reportedly) working on Just Cause 3. Which is both pleasing and disappointing at the same time. Pleasing because, hey, the last Standing Not Looking At Explosions Simulator was pretty ace, and disappointing because I had sort of hoped that the awesome Avalanche team might try and do something else open-worldy, rather than revisiting the island-busting stunt-murderer.
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