Come on in, readers. The water's free. Giant Squid's chill dive 'em up Abzû is once again opening its waters for free on the Epic Games Store. Someone must've thought it pairs well with the horrors of war, mind, because it's joined this week by Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. Both will be free to download and keep for the next week, at which point they'll be replaced by pigs and monarchs.
]]>Tripwire's gritty, realistic manshoot Rising Storm 2: Vietnam has officially adopted the far less gritty and realistic mod Green Army Men. Launching along with the start of a free week trial tomorrow, a single-map Christmas version of this mode was previously featured. This new version of Green Army Men will include four toy-scale maps (including the holiday one) and reduced realism. All the maps will be free, but players are limited to the Rifleman class unless they buy the Green Army Men DLC, which puts money in the pockets of its creators. Below, a summery trailer.
]]>Wee plastic soldiers will wage war across a messy house this Christmas - and in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. The 'realistic' multiplayer first-person shooter today launches its festive event with a pleasingly self-descriptive name, Toy Soldier Green Army Men Christmas Special. There are green toy army men, and it's Christmas, and it's special. The smooth soldiers will scamper along Hot Wheels tracks, have firefights in a model village, hide behind presents under the Christmas tree, and probably have more than a few accidents with the toy train chugging around. Charming. Have a peek in the trailer below.
]]>"You may have won the battle," cries an unusually eloquent trash-talker on the other team, "but you haven't won the war!" In Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, his anachronistic cussing-out may now actually be correct.
A free update to the first-person shooter today added the new 'Multiplayer Campaign' mode, where 64 players fight across multiple maps and 11 years of the Vietnam War, with new factions and equipment coming in and out as history repeats. All these battles fuel a campaign map of the war, where victory is achieved by getting enough points or controlling every region. Get in and channel Charles de Gaulle now before losers go back to just calling you a dingus, or however it is the youth cuss today.
]]>It seems only fitting that the announcement of a new playable faction in Antimatter/Tripwire's historical team-shooter Rising Storm 2: Vietnam is accompanied by a sobering statistic; Over a million Vietnamese served in the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) over the course of the war, and over a quarter of them died. On May 29th, you'll get the chance to wade into battle as them, armed with a collection of hand-me-down US-made weaponry across five new maps.
]]>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.
]]>Crikey! Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, the unforgiving multiplayer shooter from the Red Orchestra devs, has gone down under for its first major update - and come back with an Australian fighting force that's equipped with new weapons and vehicles. The fighting still takes place in Vietnam - it's in the name, innit - but the Bushranger update also brings 3 new maps for the new soldiers to shoot their way around, as well positional voice chat and more.
(There won't be any more lazy verbal Aussie appropriation in this post, promise.)
]]>As soon as I peek out over the wall, bullets zip past my head and ricochet off the bricks around me. I duck back down, my screen blurring. I'm pinned down. That is, until the artillery comes down on the enemy trench, its screeches echoed by the cries of the Americans caught in the blasts. I pop my head back up to have a look at the light show and my screen turns black. A second later the kill feed updates. I was shot in the head, apparently.
This ends up happening a lot in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam [official site]. The original Rising Storm, a spinoff from Tripwire’s Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad, was an unforgiving shooter and this is no different. Being a beginner in this game is a struggle. You’ll die in one shot, often from an unseen enemy. You’ll kill teammates by accident and get shouted at in chat. But if you’re willing to get over the initial bumps and you’re happy to play it the way it’s supposed to be played, then the payoff is more than worth it.
]]>Have you heard about Steam? It's a sort of shop, but not a shop with a door and a roof and some shelves. It's a "virtual shop", a place where you can buy games that, incredibly, has no walls whatsoever! It's entirely rendered digitally, using computers.
We've taken a look, and totted up the games people are buying the most often.
]]>Hello. I've had this brilliant new idea! Each week I shall tell you which are the top 10 selling games on the PC gaming outlet Steam. No, no, this is nothing like Alec's idea that he had - he did it on a Tuesday. This is entirely different.
]]>Rising Storm 2: Vietnam [official site] is now out, taking the serious shooting of the Red Orchestra spin-off into a new era and a new (old) war. From the jungle to city streets, players can recreate the dreadful invasion. Along with 64-player asymmetric action in the traditional Red Orchestra territory control mode, Rising Storm brings big battles with choppers and tunnels in 'Supremacy' mode and a smaller 16-player 'Skirmish' mode. Observe the war through moving pictures in the launch trailer:
]]>I played a lot of Rising Storm, the standalone multiplayer expansion to Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad and officially the 27th best FPS of all time. It got its gritty claws into me. So I'm pretty pumped for the sequel, Rising Storm 2: Vietnam [official site], which has now got a launch date of 30 May.
Yep, that's just 10 days away. Oohrah! If you fancy getting your hands on it even earlier you're in luck, because a free public beta is now live and will run until Monday evening.
]]>I'll come clean: I'd forgotten about Rising Storm 2: Vietnam [official site]. The sequel to WW2 FPS Red Orchestra's Pacific front spin-off was announced by Tripwire Interactive during E3 2015 and, well, I never remember much of E3 week. The data overload flows through me and burns out the paths. Then, months later I'm reminded e.g. oh hey, the Rising Storm gang Antimatter Games are making another realistic-ish FPS, this time jumping to the Vietnam War! Yeah! This renewed awareness comes from a new trailer.
]]>We're still combing through the assorted reveals from last night's PC Gaming Show By PC Gamers For PC Gamers Master Race Master Race No Normals Allowed Alright, but one immediate attention-grabber is the follow up to brutalist WW2 multiplayer shooter Rising Storm (née Red Orchestra). It's left me all nostalgic - not because the trailer for Rising Storm 2: Vietnam [official site] has a Creedence soundtrack and a style lifted from the only bits dudebros remember from Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon et al, but because this used to be how it went before Modern Warfare was a twinkle in an executive's eye. There'd be a popular World War 2 shooter, and then once its devs got the itch for something a bit less fusty, they'd excitedly go do Vietnam next.
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