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An ex-Rockstar employee, Jeff Williams, chose this week to write about his experiences working at the company, blogging some interesting details about his time on the inside.

It's been a while since an online first-person shooter has consumed all of my attention. That's probably going to change. There are two reasons for this. One is called Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and the other is called Unreal Tournament 3.

I meant to post this before I jetted off to the US for a while. It's a report on my initial impressions of Medieval: Total War - Kingdoms, which may be of interest to humans.

Some dude's painstakingly coded replacement pixel shaders for the entirety of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Apparently it improves the buggy-but-brilliant FPS's both performance and appearance. So well, in fact, that it's to be a part of the next official patch. Clicky the below to embiggen and admire this fan-made handiwork.

PC game developers seem to have an increasing amount of faith in the 'free' MMO model, as we're seeing with the likes of Maple Story and Dungeon Runners. It's even being employed in the development of Saga by Wahoo Studios, which is an online persistent “massive” strategy, set in fantasy realms.

I'm preaching to the converted I'm sure, but whatever you do, do not buy, play or even pirate the Transformers game. It's no worse on PC than any other platform, but it is quite astonishingly dreadful. Part of the reason for this I lay not at the feet of the developers (Travellers Tales, best-known for the diminishingly excellent Lego Star Wars series, but in fact with a history of horrific licensed titles behind them) but at the nature of the game.

The chaps from Petroglyph have reached that vital testing stage of development with their new RTS, Universe At War: Earth Assault. You can sign up for the closed beta here, and I recommend you do so, because from what I saw earlier in the year this could be one of the most entertaining strategy games of 2007. Hopefully there will be an open beta to follow.

China View reports on Brazilian gang crime (for some reason) informing us that a top Brazilian MMO player was kidnapped for his Gunbound account:

Confused. Trying to play two MMOs at once really divides a man's loyalties, not to mention totally messes with his ability to memorise hotkeys. My muscle memory is going haywire, tapping controls that do nothing or inadvertantly cause the usage of some precious potion I'd been saving for an emergency.

The Far Cry 2 teaser site is up and running. You can click on the trees and birds fly off! Man, I'm sold. I haven't been this excited about a semi-interactive picture of an African vista since I don't know when.

Wise, wise words.

Lord, I loves me that Peggle. In fact, I love it even more than I did a couple of weeks ago when I scored it 9/10. I increasingly wish I'd given it 10, if only because our resident misery John Walker would have become so angry about it that we'd have had to kill him.

So, seeing a new game from Popcap, the casual games publisher/developer responsible for Peggle, crop up on Steam excited that growing part of me that's obsessed with brightly-coloured cartoon puzzle games that don't make pensioners cower in fear. Venice Deluxe is its name (if there's one thing to love about Popcap, it's that it suffixes its every game with Deluxe, just because it can), and shooting shapes is its game.

The Independent Gaming Source regularly blogs come interesting 'indie' material, but this Japanese Flash game based around aristocratic feminine face slapping is one of the finest referrals so far.

Spent last week reviewing UFO: Extraterrestrials for Eurogamer. Ended up being very mildly warm towards it, which was more than I was expecting. Because it's taking from such a well-conceived source - UFO: Enemy Unknown or X-COM: UFO Defence, depending on whether you're in Europe or the US*, it ends up often being highly entertaining because it's such a determined plagiarist. And God knows, everyone would like a decent successor to the Gollops' masterpiece.

I suppose that's one of the most interesting things about it. While true, it's not really fair to paint them as just plagarists. They're more akin to a covers band for a group who've long split. While other people have taken some stuff from X-COM - the UFO: Afterlight/Aftershock/Aftermath series - this is something that's deliberately much more faithful. Even then, it's not good enough. There's a determined mod community around the game who are increasingly altering closer and closer and closer to what they're actually looking for. In most mod communities, there's a clear division between the developers and people who like the game enough to want to mod it... but here, perversely, the fanbase for the game aren't actually the fanbase for the game. They're actually the fanbase of an entirely different game... exactly the same as the developers. They're like the Rabbis in Pi, searching for the name of God by re-arranging the alphabet of whatever.

Of course, it's interesting to wonder whether "A New X-Com" is even achievable. For both sides of the argument, see this debate between a load of journos and Devs over at Quarter to Three.

It seems that Valve are winning at electronic distribution, thanks to PC-pleasing publishers THQ signing up to stick their games on Steam. Having already dragged Eidos on board with Tomb Raiders and Hitmen aplenty, Valve will now be able to provide the lazy with some more of the PC's finest, like Company Of Heroes and, er, Titan Quest. Stalker and Supreme Commander will be arriving shortly too. (Blimey, Company Of Heroes is just $25, which is a bargain.)

The sheer unhindered joy that is Homestar Runner is on a short hiatus at the moment, since one of the Bros. Chaps has gone and had a baby, and apparently that's somehow more important than drawing a Flash cartoon on the internet.

One of the most interesting games to come out of E3 last week was Echochrome.

I've just noticed that my PC Gamer piece on Blacksite has gone up on their C&VG site. This kind of preview is bread and butter for us, but actually this was one of the more interesting game demo events I've been to recently, and not because it situated in the skin-draped depths of Soho.

Gamasutra have a mention of Blizzard's team structure, which gives away that there's an unannounced game:

Well, they can, but since it's got an European release, it's at least worth printing a screenshot to go "Aw! Bless!" at.

Ooh, it's beautiful. And out in... Fall 2008.

Also the music in the Fallout world is the same music I listen when staring out of the window, smoking my pipe and plotting domination. (Only the trad "War..." dialogue spoils it. Sorry! Please don't hurt me.)

I'm just glad I can finally talk about this without breaking an NDA or eight.

I've been playing the PC version of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 (a game nowhere near as fun as one with an ancroynm that sounds like a cartoon monster should be. The campaign for the word 'graw' to be re-adopted by something sillier starts here). In one of the mid-game missions, a Mexican chap who's helping my US commando squad rid his country of thinly-sketched renengades laments the horrific damage done to his hometown, at least some of which was the airstrike and mortar bombings I called in on the last level. "Theeeeeees ceeeeety, what have we done to her?" he cries, in textbook comedy Mexicanspeak.

I finally got around to playing the Dutch freeware game, De Blob. In it you take control of the titular blob, who is a crashlanded alien charged with absorbing the rainbow-coloured denizens of grey Dutch cities and transforming the city into large blocks of primary colour. It's a purely mouse-controlled game and feels similar the single-button 16-bit era games. In fact it almost feels weird to only use a single button in a game these days - I'm so used to keyboards and gem-encrusted twenty-thumb gamepads.

It also made me motion sick for the first time in my life. I'm 29 and motion sick at last. I assumed that years of videogame abuse had immunised me from such effects, but perhaps the mad camera twirling of De Blob has finally got to me. Does this mean I'm getting old? I need to lie down.

Despite nausea I can earnestly recommend De Blob. It's weird and cute, and really nothing like Katamari. You can download De Blob's English version right here. Please post reports of motion-related illness in the comments. Eugh.

Welcome to Rock, Paper, Shotgun. We'll be writing about games, you'll be reading about games. PC games, mostly, with a hint of retro.

Being a big ol' list of the big neat things on RPS you may want to read if you're a newcomer. Or a particularly inattentive oldie. ULTROMEGAFEATURES: Features so big we give them a silly name. The Go Team! Team Fortress 2, class by class. The RPS 2007 Game-O-Calendar: Looking back at the best games of 2007. Games For 2008: The year preview in full.

As you reach out to open the door, the Calendar throbs and quivers, its surface rippling in an uncanny, fleshy manner. A low growl comes from somewhere within and as the tip of your finger reaches the door, you feel something very much like a vein, pulsing beneath your touch. Recoiling in horror, you stumble and would fall to the ground if there were nothing to support you. But there is. Somebody is in the Calendar's chamber with you, though you entered alone. He folds you into his arms, his robe softer than fog. His beard bristles gently.

We rather puzzlingly haven't written anything else about that game yet. Sorry! But we will, one day. Probably.