I’m not sure how we managed to miss this. I’m also not entirely sure that we mightn’t have been better off continuing to miss this. Gangs of Glasgow is what happens if medieval warfare sim Mount & Blade was transposed to modern Glasgow, Scotland – or at least an exaggerated version of it where the extreme football hooliganism, rioting and assorted other urban violence is worse than it already is/was. On the one hand, bringing so much – from police cars to football stadiums – into a game about dudes with swords on horses is an amazing technical achievement. On the other… well, I don’t know about you, but I’m making a face that tries to convey something I couldn’t begin to describe accurately.

It could be taken as a sort of multiplayer, team-based Postal. It could also be taken as making light of a city with a dark history of football-related violence. It could also be taken as knowingly ridiculous. Or all of the three. Here’s the official disclaimer:

“The mods are mostly comedic in nature, but deal with serious real-life social issues such as knife-crime, drug abuse, and sectarianism, usually in a ridiculous and/or offensive way.” So, hopefully you know what you’re letting yourself in for.

Sometimes, a game comes along that’s the absolute last bloody thing you need right now. There are many things I need right now: time, a haircut, lunch, the extension of about 48 deadlines, someone to do my shopping for me, a cat that can empty its own litter tray, a keyboard that doesn’t give me an RSI, a teleporter, and even more time.

There is but one thing I don’t need right now: a horribly compulsive action-RPG MMO that tickles just about every lizard-part of my brain. I want I want I want I want. I want to level up, I want a better bow, I want to get to the bigger monsters, I want to show that cocking Mad God Oryx just who’s boss. (The boss is me. Or at least it will be. One day. Soon. Yes, Oryx. Soon.)

Play Realm Of The Mad God here.

Warhammer 40,000 has had its share of good video games, and bad video games. THQ’s Warhammer 40K: Kill Team arrives onto Xbox Live Arcade in an attempt to add itself to the “good pile”. Does it succeed? Take a look and decide for yourself.

Wrecked: Revenge Revisited looks to bring simple controls and frantic action to racing fans later this year.

When it comes to vehicular-combat racers, often the best kinds are those that you can play against your friends in the same room. Wrecked: Revenge Revisited gives you the opportunity to race and battle against your friends in a number of different environments. Instead of this being a standard kart racer where power-ups help you race to victory, you need to use the environment and the various weapon upgrades to take out your opposition and score points.

So instead of requiring you to race as fast as possible, each scenario plays out in “heats.” When you’re playing against another racer, the character who gets eliminated first loses a point, while the survivor earns a point, and the one who reaches the required number of points first wins. As more competitors are involved, the point deductions and rewards will vary. When we played with three racers, the first to go lost a point, while the second didn’t lose any points, and the winner of that particular heat earned the point.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Cursed Crusade is set at the end of the 12th century and is centered on a pair of cursed warriors fighting to save their souls.

This game brings together the beauty and wonder of medieval Europe and a thrilling adventure of dark fantasy. You will embark on a contentious quest for retribution through five chapters and 40 missions. One of the features in the game is a templar curse, which increases your strength and your ability to perceive hidden things, but at the expense of your humanity.

Play with a friend with the Brotherhood of Steel: split-screen or online. Your friend will assume control of the thief, Esteban. The Cursed Crusade offers intense, visceral third-person action. The weapon-based combat engine features more than 90 combos that you can perform with 130-plus available weapons.

When the apocalypse comes, there will be worse things than radioactive clouds or gnashing zombies.

In Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon, the banner of doom is being carried by thousands of gigantic bugs that no can of repellent can hope to deal with. But if total annihilation is inevitable, you might as well enjoy your final hours. Over-the-top destruction is the focal point of this lighthearted shooter, and there’s an undeniable thrill in blasting overgrown ants with your grenades, plowing through abominable spiders while in a tank, or just toppling buildings on a whim. There’s little need for strategy when you can just blast everything that moves, so it’s a matter of readying your aim and unleashing holy hell.

Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon has lots of explosions and destruction, but not quite enough variety to keep things moving.

Score: 7.0 / good

If you’re jonesing for one of the most explosion-filled trailers we’ve seen since we woke up this morning, you should peep the Renegade Ops gameplay demo posted below. Man, we never knew vehicles this tiny were physically capable of causing such vast amounts of destruction. Renegade Ops lets you unleash mayhem and destruction in a mobile commando unit.

German computer-games investigators Gamestar got a chance to talk to EA’s Patrick Söderlund, and you can see that interview embedded below. It covers a number of issues, but most tellingly reveals that DICE have no current plans to produce modding tools for the game. Söderlund claims that that modding would be “very difficult” due to the complexity of the levels and features like destruction.

Ah, yes. The modding community: famously confounded by complexity and difficulty, only able to get their heads around the simplest of game technologies… But seriously, not producing modding tools is surely going to be a commercial decision, and I almost wish that were the reason given.

Crimson Alliance is an all-new action role-playing game with a heavy emphasis on combat over character interaction.

If you’ve recently uninstalled all 16GB of GTA IV then I have some bad news for you. You’re going to want to spend the next 24hrs reinstalling that badboy.

Thanks to the dilligent efforts of some tech savvy GTA fans, the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV has been modded and tinkered with until it’s so beautiful it can make a grown man weep. It’s something to do with shaders, aliasing, depth-of-field and other things that sounds great but I don’t fully understand. Thankfully understanding how it works isn’t important. Just watch the video below then wait patiently for it’s release so you can download it and marvel at it’s supernatural splendour!