Can there really be someone who hasn’t played Deus Ex yet? Surely not. But just in case, or just in case your copy has exploded, you can pick it up today from Games For Windows Marketplace for 75p. For today only. SEVENTY FIVE PENCE. What on Earth is going on? If you dropped that much money out of your helicopter you’d not bother to land to pick it up! If you’re American you’re paying 99 of your “cents”. (Interesting fact: this doesn’t derive from the Latin for 100, but in fact directly from the word “centaur”. When the dollar was first created it was based on the value of one hundred centaurs, clearly hugely depreciating since.) Just bloody buy it, you idiots.

*Unless the paper you read is worth less than 75p, in which case, stop it.

Here’s a slice of indie oddness courtesy of the IndieGames blog. The Sense of Connectedness is, mechanically speaking, a breed of Pipemania taking place inside someone’s headmeat. Electrical impulses spew forth from the ego, and by flipping neurones you guide them around the brain, illuminating different areas bit by bit and working your way towards one of the game’s enigmatic endstates. It’s hard on the eyes, but also peculiarly hypnotic and gobbled up 20 of my precious minutes before I knew what had happened. Go play, if your curiosity has been poked and/or piqued.

We don’t often cover Facebook games on RPS. I’ve a feeling that’s going to start changing as they become more involved, more inspired, and less like another Farmville clone. And one example of a bit more imagination going into a game is The Ministry Of Silly Games, an official Monty Python-themed project that seems to combine about seven hundred and sixteen genres.

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The third window on our advent calendar is making strange buzzing and throbbing noises. What ever could such emanations mean? What kind of place will be whisked away to if we open this particular portal? Let us dare to find out…

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This is excellent. Courtesy of the IndieGames blog, Endeavor is an adventure-platformer that tasks you with recovering your tiny dwarf’s family inheritance from the comfort of your web browser, except your dwarf’s journey goes “a bit wrong” very quickly indeed. The platforming itself is dainty and robust, and the dialogue is adorable, but the real allure is provided by the game’s Metroidvania exploration. There’s a bit of nonlinearity in here, and the game’s finale is affected by your actions, so I’ll just give you one piece of advice- be kind, babies, be kind. Now go play. You’re looking at a good 45 minutes from start to finish, but (in the manner of most flash games these days) it’ll save your progress in your browser’s cache if you close the page.

First we had news of Telltale’s Back To The Future adventure game. Then, we had pictures. Today, we have… moving> pictures. What will come next? Nothing, I think. We’re at the top of the tech tree, gentlemen. It can’t get any better than this. Watch the eerily expressive eyes of Marty McFly after the break. The break… to the future! (more…)

Valve have announced the new Team Fotress 2 beta: “As you’ve probably seen by now, we like to change things in Team Fortress 2. A lot. And while we’re perfect most of the time, we occasionally get something wrong. One reason for this is we just don’t get enough data from internal play testing, and another is that we spend too much time watching Tom Bui serenades on Youtube.”

It seems that with the game being patched so regularly, a beta phase of the game is going to need to run, concurrent with the latest version. More info on the official blog, and forum pages here.

Can it really be almost a decade since the original Emergency game? If you think about it, a tactical management game based around manipulating the emergency services – putting out fires, taking people to hospital, rescuing the stricken – is the kind of thing that not only makes sense as a game, but would largely act as a positive image for games as a whole. Well, if> it was any good. You can judge whether this modernised making of Emergency 2012 is any good by checking out the demo.

Emergency 2012 is out now. Game footage below. (more…)

You there! Have you ever played Munchkin? It’s a multiplayer card game about dungeoneering, created by Fighting Fantasy co-creator the other> Steve Jackson. It’s enormously entertaining, primarily because it’s designed almost entirely around screwing people over. It’s shallow as all hell and has arguably been flogged into semi-embarrasing status by the endless slew of expansions and modifications, but it’s also a great night in. Or even out, if you live near a pub that isn’t full of large, angry skinheads who like to punch boardgame players in the face.

There isn’t a videgame version, and I’m not entirely convinced there should be (this is, after all, a game about getting really, really cross with the people you’re sat next to) – but there is now a ‘rigged demo‘ intended to explain the cartwheeling, sadistic rules of play. (more…)

Across the internet, a wave of worried grumbling. It’s one thing when terribly shlocky UK TV stations like ITV gun for games, but when the generally more sober BBC announces an upcoming episode of its documentary series Paranorama will investigate “hidden psychological devices in games that are designed to keep us coming back for more,” things get a little more troubling.

Of course, no-one knows what the show will actually> decide about games. (more…)