In short, the game is very much a Total War style of game, with lots of storytelling and decision-making elements thrown in for good measure. I must admit, I’m not the most ardent fan of the Total War series, but I can see their appeal and much of the design ethos is present here in the King Arthur II prologue.

As for the “role-playing” side of things, the game kicks off with a narrative device, much like an old school “choose your own adventure” experience, complete with potentially weighty decisions to make from the outset. Although the dialogue is dripping with over-acting, it works somewhat, and reinforces the idea that this is more than just a slow-paced wargame.

The rest of the setting, historical fiction mixed with fantasy elements, really works for me and gives a strong foundation for what would otherwise be a run-of-the-mill high fantasy setting with dragons, trolls and other fantasy tropes. I particularly like the game’s take on the Roman occupation of Britain being the source for the Arthurian legend. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I get a small sense of a Game of Thrones vibe, with Hadrian’s wall being envisaged as an enormous magical wall hundreds of feet high, and the Picts beyond the wall possessing of something a good deal more sinister perhaps than their real world counterparts.

Although the battles are the characteristically plodding, sluggish tactical affairs, I am intrigued by the mash up of role-playing elements which frame the battles. There are senatorial debates, shifting allegiances, provinces in decline and new powers rising. Indeed, there seems to be a lot happening in the epic world of King Arthur II: The Role-playing Wargame.

King Arthur II is out now on PC.

Screenshots

Here’s the Xbox survey. Complete it by 5th Feb to be entered into the draw.

And here’s a nice picture of the dashboard so this post don’t look so sad and lonely.

Spirit Tales: a “light- hearted anime fantasy MMORPG  developed by X-Legend” has published information about sign-ups for their closed beta. The press release promises a pet capture system and over 40 million customisation options. Having had a quick look I’m not sure how much this “epically cute” MMO will appeal to Western gamers but I’ve signed up on the off chance I get to play a pipe smoking fox person.

Crucible 1.1 dropped for EVE Online players last Tuesday, this expansion update sees a lot of smaller tweaks being introduced which as a whole look to be improving the UI experience. Most importantly, in my very humble opinion, a Loot All option has finally been added .. that damsel will be a lot less distressed now. The full list of features can be found here and are well worth a look see.

Autumn 2012 will see Warner Brothers Interactive and Turbine launch the new expansion to Lord of the Rings Online, Riders of Rohan. The level cap is being increased to 85 and  mounted combat will be introduced. Hobbits on War Steeds, interesting.  Kate Paiz, Executive Producer for LotRO explains that it’s “ One of our largest expansions ever, Rohan is expected to be twice the size of the recent Rise of Isengard expansion and includes the most new game systems and technology we’ve introduced since 2008′s Mines of Moria.”

Funcom have just released a new location video for their upcoming MMO: The Secret World. It’s very creepy and rather exciting, the title is promising to bring us the opportunity to play an MMO without class or level restrictions. I feel we’re well overdue a bit of genuine innovation in online gaming so it’ll be interesting to see how this game pans out.

Riotzone has entered its Open Beta, this free-to-play strategy game from Mail.Ru Games is browser based and offers PvE and PvP gameplay. You enter the foray as a mercenary commander battling against an almost certainly evil Dictator, choosing between two sides: power to the many or power to the few. If guns, mercenaries and women in bikini tops are your thing this might be worth a look in between doing actual work.

Finally and with a little *squee* of excitement comes the news that WAKFU from Ankama has had a release date of February 29th announced. This odd and addictive game features turn-based combat and interesting concepts including the need to manage the eco-system. I played its predecessor DOFUS far too much so I’m hoping this release will follow Ankama’s trend of offering the MMO market something just a little bit different.

In it he explains why they’ve decided not to go with the traditional 99¢ sales model and instead are pursuing the free-to-play route.

“There’s a specific revenue graph that you see for a typical packaged or downloadable game. You get a big spike of money that slowly trickles down to almost nothing. These are hit games in a hit driven industry with hit shaped revenues.

This has some fun psychological implications. When the money is good, it seems like it will never end. As a result, teams tend to overextend themselves. They hire on additional people, and they take on more ambitious and exciting projects…

…At some point, the money starts fading. The next game or port suddenly needs to be a success. You make decisions that start matching what the market is doing. You start listening to experts. You start looking back on your past success and trying to emulate them. All this makes it more difficult to comprehend and react to new opportunities. You’ve gone from a fresh new success to a fragile bloated company…

I’ve come to the conclusion that long term, the hit-driven model found in disposable, packaged games is an anti-developer business model.”

He goes into much more depth on why this is the case in the full post.

Instead of churning out hits that do well and fade away, Cook’s dream is to build games as long-term services and relationships with his customers. He wants steady streams of revenue that grow and to retain his independence.

Sounds like every entrepreneur’s dream and I wish him well. I just hope he finds a model a bit more compelling than the currently-popular one of making the game slow and filled with periods of not-playing unless you pay for a speed bump. I’ve seen it with Tiny Tower, I’ve seen it with 8 Realms and now we’ve seen it in Order Up!! To Go. That’s not what I call fun.

TripleTown’s model seems a little less punishing in that you do start out with several thousand bushes (the smallest building block for your town) and you can earn the in-game currency by playing games. However, I used about a hundred bushes in my first couple of games and earned enough coins to buy one, so I suspect that earning currency isn’t a sustainable long-term model for the gamers. Or perhaps I’m just not that good at it yet.

Have you seen any games that do the free-to-play model well?

[via @SpiltMilkStudio]

TripleTown is free for iOS 4.1+ and Android 2.2+

The Gamers’ Edition of the Guinness Book of World Records launched in 2008 and is now on its fifth edition. Have you bought one? I did. I picked up the 2008 edition for a fiver, flipped through it twice and haven’t thought about it since.

See, the thing about the normal Guinness Book of World Records for me was that it’s filled with all sorts of freaky and incredible things, from the world’s tallest man to the world’s largest bagel. It was a slice of weird and wonderful and batshit insane. Feats of skill that I could actually admire people for doing, like the World’s Fastest Guitar Playing (620 bpm). Why anyone would want to do that I don’t know but it’s impressive all the same. The point is that you can pick up the book, flip the pages and a world of diverse talents and horrifying achievements is opened up. There’s a guy who’s collected over 1900 film projectors. Madness!

And then we have the Gamer’s Edition where we have First Woman to win a Pro-Street Fighter Event (congrats on being good AND having a vagina), Fastest Lap on Mario Kart, Most Prolific Dancing Game High Scorer and Most Consecutive Wins on Street Fighter. Now I’m certainly not saying that these feats of skill are any less worthy than fastest guitar playing or spinning half a kilo of pizza dough. I just have trouble giving a shit.

That being said, my friends who run StickTwiddlers ran a fundraiser last year in which they broke four World Records and raised over £500 for GamesAid, so it’s not like these things are entirely frivolous.

Do you honestly care enough about who spent the Longest Time Playing an FPS Game to buy a copy of the book?

With the purchase of the add-on, players who attain level 100 will have a choice to “Re-up” for another tour of duty to showcase their valour and dedication as elite “Gears of War” fans. Their experience and rank will be reset, but all other progression (including TrueSkill rating) will remain intact. Players can “Re-up” up to three times, earning new wings colours each time: Red, Green, and Gold. The rank number will also be coloured Red, Green, or Blue. Each “Re-up” level also awards the player an exclusive, custom weapon skin that cannot be obtained by any other means.

“Re-up”, indeed. The Fenix Rising pack will cost you 800 MSP.

Max Payne 3 Release Date: Announced by Rockstar as 18th May on consoles, 1st June on PC. As a result, the pre-order deadline for the Special Edition (statue, keychain, soundtrack and various virtual items) has been pushed back to 2nd April

BloodRayne Betrayal PSN Price Drops: In the PSN store, this game will be on sale for 30% off between 18th and 25th Jan in Europe. PlayStation Plus subscribers will get a larger price cut and can buy the game for 50% off.

Another World on Android: Who remembers Eric Chahi’s Another World? This fiendish platformer from 1991 was updated with HD graphics for iOS on its 20th anniversary and is now being ported to Android on some unspecified future date. iOS users can buy it for £2.99

Street Fighter X Tekken Screenshots: Capcom have released a crapload of new screenshots for the game. You can find our favourites in this Facebook album.

Account hacking everywhere. Or not: There seem to be quite a few stories recently of users reporting Xbox Live account hacks but Microsoft are denying that there is a security flaw in the Xbox.com interface. Even so, one of my web-savvy friends was hacked over the weekend, so check your accounts for weird transactions and mysterious family packs, as we reported last week.

Earlier this week a collection of usernames and passwords purportedly from GAME appeared on Pastebin. This was widely reported as a “hack” but has since been denied in a statement by GAME. I tried logging in with the published details myself and the accounts didn’t appear to exist. Don’t believe everything you read, kids.

SSX Pre-Orders: Sad to report that as we feared, the mighty Eddie Wachowski will only be available to those who pre-order the limited edition of SSX from GAME or Gamestation. Xbox360Achievements have more details on the UK SSX pre-order breakdown.

Vita in Glasgow: The PlayStation Vita Rooms will be coming to Glasgow from 24th to 29th January. Try out all the launch titles for yourself. More details will be posted on their Facebook page soon.

Gaming in Nottingham: The month GameCityNights events are resuming again, with the first event of the year scheduled for 26th January. Jerry Carpenter of GameToilet will run several of his favourite social games and host a competition for people to design their own. More on the GameCity website.

Dyer has documented the full process on her blog. It’s fascinating to see the development process from original concept art to final product. Go check it out – Turians on Kerry Dyer’s Portfolio

Asura’s Wrath: The demo for this game went out on Xbox Live and PSN yesterday. Looks phenomenal and seems to have a great revenge story but the gameplay itself seems to be all about combat QTEs. The demo is worth a look anyway, if only for the absolutely mental battle scenes.

TERA: Closed beta signups are now, uh… open for those interested in this upcoming action MMO. With fast-paced battles and the requirement to aim, combat is much more intense than your typical online RPG. Take a look at our TERA previews from last year. If you’re interested, you can sign up for the beta at the official TERA site.

Max Payne 3: New screenshots can be found on our Facebook page. Still a sausage-fest.

Win Headsets with Just Dance 3: Ubisoft are giving away 20 pairs of Bose headsets on Facebook. Enter the competition. Give away all your personal details for the sake of some schweet ‘phones. Warning: it does have sneaky Just Dance 3-specific questions like “What hair accessories are the dancers wearing in the track Dynamite”.

All Zombies Must Die – Get your own zombie into a game with this competition from DoubleSix. Draw a zombie and suggest skills, habits, behaviour and so on. The winning entry will be included in future DLC for this Dead Nation-like downloadable game. More info on the AZMD blog.

Lollipop Chainsaw – And a new trailer for that reveals one of the villains. What a shock, weird emo kid turns into high-school mass murderer.

Still, when I saw the final packshot today… hahahahahaaaaaa!

Now I have nothing wrong with a good bromance among team-mates under tough warfare conditions. But look at the injured right leg of the guy that’s being carried. And now look at the right shoulder of the guy that’s carrying him, protagonist Dan Marshall.

What’s happening? Is his leg going over Marshall’s arm? Under it? Where is Marshall’s shoulder? Oh my brain…

Sega announced today that Binary Domain has been delayed by week. It will now be out on 24th Feburary in Europe and it available for preorder now.