Pics trickle out for the Secret World

The veil of secrecy surrounding Funcom’s newest MMO, The Secret World, is starting to let in a little light on a few details. If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret World sounds like a mix between Cthulhu, the X-Files, Fringe, and Shadowrun. The setting takes place in the ‘real’ world, such as New York, only the weird stories that you might have heard growing up are actually true.

And in the game, you’re a member of a secret society that quietly wages war against this unseen evil as well as compete against the other groups that you don’t agree with. To make things even more interesting, it boasts that its gameplay is without levels or classes. Beta testing is supposed to start soon, but in the meantime, here are four new pics to sink your fingers into.

Beast? Nightmare? Or another player?

The Berlin Wall dares you to crush it again

Whatever that thing is in the background, I'm hoping it's on your side.

So much for self service.

Rise of the Argonauts looks strange

A new video for Rise of the Argonauts is up and I’m not sure what some of the character artists were directed to do when they came up with some of these designs. It looks like a knockoff of God of War (I think that’s the curse that most any game that features anything remotely resembling its gameplay is going to suffer under for the next few years, just like how every FPS after Doom had to be compared to it and, eventually Quake). But it also kind of looks like it could be fun. Just,  wow, this guy needs a chest reduction. And that’s not right.

If someone makes a joke about me not being able to see my toes, I, well...okay fine. It's true. I can't.

Hah! Take that knave! I'll stab you viciously with my spear and...what?! You still get up after that? WTF?!

what’s your name, son?

Did you know that there’s a new Robocop movie in the planning stages? Yep, Darren Aronofsky is going to be the director and it’s going to be a reboot of the series. I’m kind of excited that Robocop is going to be coming back but kind of worried at the direction that they might take it. From some of the articles that I’ve read, it sounds like Aronofsky is going to shoot for a grittier take on the armored cybercop without much of the tongue-in-cheek humor which could work. Think ‘The Dark Knight’ but with Robocop, I guess.

But that’s not what this post is about. Instead, in searching for interesting remakes, I found out that someone had remade the Robocop games that Ocean had released years ago, making them into a side scrolling shooter featuring video clips spliced in between each stage to tell the story. They’re actually very good and they’re free for download from a site called Park Productions, the chaps responsible for these and a slew of other titles including Ghostbusters 2. If you’re feeling the itch to bring justice to the streets of Detroit, or want to fight the Terminator, here’s your chance.

You can't have a Robocop game without ED-209. Lots of ED-209s.

The hostage shooting stuff will want to make you put your fist through your monitor, but how can you pass up a chance to take out "Dick" Jones???

Be the Dread Pirate Roberts! Arrrrgh!

The Hollywood Reporter has a blurb about a game that will help commemorate the 20th Anniversary DVD release of “The Princess Bride” which I thought was a fun movie. A teaser will be released on disc and the game itself will be available for download. This could be interesting depending on what the gameplay is like. I mean, you could get jumping action in the Fire Swamp, clubbing goodness with the Rodents of Unusual Size, dialog puzzles with Vizzini, and dueling swords with the Six Fingered Man. And if you’re really good, you might even be able to convince Billy Crystal that you weren’t cheating at cards. You could even swap between different characters, switching to the late, great, Andre the Giant for when you need to stomp on some puny bad guys.

Then again, it could get pretty silly. Remember the button mashing that you had to do to help Snake survive when Revolver Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid tortured Snake? Someone might want to work that in for Wesley’s turn on the machine that sucks his life out, you know, just to try and give him a chance to survive. Or not.