Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I feel it’s about time I posted another Kane & Lynch 2 trailer. So that’s just what I’ll do. It’s for the co-op Arcade Mode, in which you’re challenged with blowing stuff up and stealing money! Hooray! It’s co-op in the fragile sense. Betray your team and you’ll be assassinated. But don’t perform well enough and your team could turn on you, recognising you as disposable. You can see more of the strange CCTV perspective shots that appear to be in-game, which is a nice idea.

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Over on Bit-Tech, chilli-loving young Joe Martin is embarking on an epic quest to document the far corners of the British games industry. He’s thrown up quite the gem for today’s instalment: a hefty look at Eidos’ unrealised MMO adaptation of the Fabled Lands choose-your-own-adventure books. (There’s a PC port of them here). A fascinating tale, both in terms of where the game itself was going, and as a reveal of the painful flipside to that early-2000s era of hyper-creative development. For every Giants: Citizen Kabuto or Sacrifice, there’s probably a dozen crash’n'burn cases like this.

Fancy a quick quote? “The Fabled Lands MMO might have had an incredibly advanced AI that acted as a digital gamesmaster. Hypothetically, this ‘AI God’ would have tailored the experience for each player, beefing up quests to meet skill levels – a technology that was likely beyond reach at that time.” Now, go read the rest.

Road/River/Desert/Mountain Trip! After spending seventeen hours with Just Cause 2 completing the single player and doing everything and anything stupid enough to enter my skull, I’d discovered about a third of all the settlements in the game, and had only found one or two interesting locations that aren’t on the map. Obviously, this had to be rectified. The best way to do this is a tour of the Island State, allowing my curiosity free reign to take my anywhere that looked even remotely interesting. It took Jim eight hours to drive around the world of Fuel, a world more than ten times the size of Just Cause 2, so I didn’t think this would take me less than an hour. But how long? And what was out there?

I had a few rules first, of course. I couldn’t use any airborne vehicles, as that would completely defeat the point. Similarly, I wouldn’t be using any Agency drops, meaning that if I got stranded in the middle of a desert (or on top of a mountain) without a vehicle, I’d only be able to use my grapple and good old jogging power. Basically, once I was dropped at my starting location, that was it for outside help.

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Looks like somebody left the keys in the ignition! And just as well, because even while none of the RPS crew are around you guys still need to know about the new Deus Ex 3: Human Revolution trailer that’s being shown at GDC. The 2 minute cinematic can be found after the jump, but be warned: There’s still no footage of the game proper just yet.

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There’s a lot of games to look forward to this year. Jim’s been writing about some of them today, in fact. (Parts one and two.) Amongst them is Just Cause 2, which has to be up there with Mafia 2 and The Old Republic in peak levels on my crazed antic-o-meter. Every video of the game makes it look like the most awesome fun toy (with that constant caveat: just so long as they don’t let the game get in the way). Their latest video(s) is a cute idea to show off how many different approaches you can take to a mission, with a choose-your-own YouTube adventure. The first part of it is below.

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Update: This all seems to be a matter of crossed wires. So far DX3 has only been announced for PC, but there’s no confirmation of exclusivity.

Rumours are circulating that Eidos’s Deus Ex 3 is to be a PC exclusive. This originates from a story on Bit-Tech today in which they (no longer – Ed) comment,

“It has been confirmed that the game is a cyberpunk prequel to the first game though and that it won’t be getting a console release due to the complexity of the game.”

However, they don’t state where this was confirmed, and the peeps on the Eidos forums seem equally surprised. “Only the PC version has been announced so far,” notes ‘René’, one Eidos Montreal’s community types, continuing, “The magazine coverage we had last year were all PC… I dunno where that website is getting its info from!” (Thanks to Phill for the nudge.)

Yes, you read with your eyes – those same eyes that are squeezing out a single tear for the lack of a new Hitman game – that Eidos and Io Interactive have confirmed Kane & Lynch 2 for release in 2010. The press release offers an entertaining snippet of hyperbole to go with this news: “Introducing a new visual experience, Kane & Lynch 2™: Dog Days is inspired by documentary filmmakers and the user-generated era. Every aspect of the game has been designed to deliver a fresh perspective to the words ‘intensity’ and ‘realism’ in video games.”

Wow!™ We can hardly wait.

Two new developer diary videos for sandbox vehicular action game (comedy?) Just Cause 2 have landed, and they only serve to hammer home just how absurdly entertaining this game looks. The videos feature skydiving, grappling, and man-shooting, but also explain a bit about what all this ludicrousness is intended to achieve, which is to overthrow the dictators of the fictional island of Panau. Good thing dictators need overthrowing, I say. Go watch it look even more awesome, below.
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It was something of a surprise to see Io Interactive announce that their next game wasn’t going to be another Hitman title, or any other kind of manshoot, but instead a new direction based on cute cartoon ninjas. That game, Mini Ninjas, is came out this week, to a mixed reception. Needless to say, I’m going to tell you Wot I Think…
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Videogames were always meant to be ludicrous, and Just Cause 2 captures the spirit of the insane quite perfectly with its absurd hyperbolic action sequences. As if being able to base-jump over a kilometer wasn’t enough, the game’s fundamental mechanisms – a grapple and a parachute – can be used together to create a consistent and instant option for getting vertical. Check it out below.
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