The Tuesday Cap is a new regular column capping of and commenting on game news for the past week.

Gamescom was on this past week which has dominated the news with hands on write ups, plenty of videos and occasionally creepy cosplay slideshows. Also the creator of Minecraft is awesome and 3D is stupid.

So it’s a pretty obvious news wrap I’m afraid. I’ll try and sneak something interesting in, but no promises.

The Big News

The biggest big news over the last week has been Gamescom, which is officially the biggest gaming convention in the world. They almost had to shut the doors to the venue, the Koelnmesse in Cologne, because it had almost breached its 62,000 person capacity and had about 275000 through the doors all together over the course of the show. That’s a lot of game nerds.

Sadly, much like the craptacular dullness of E3 a few months prior (although that event was rescued from indifference by a new Nintendo console). Gamescon just didn’t have a lot of new stuff going on. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re in a gap year, on the eve of new and shiny next gen console announcements next year, but Gamescon seems to be filled with recycled exciting news, or at the very least tidbits for games we all ready know about. It might be game companies are relying on their own marketing for big flashy announcements rather than shows like this one. Either way, the hype train hasn’t been out of control and careening off the tracks in a non stop thrill ride like it was over the last few years. And as hollow as all the hype was, I kind of miss it.

Overall the big talking point at Gamescon (other than the naked women promoting Demon Souls, gotta love German cosplay) was the concept art for a game called Adrift. It looks pretty, but actual details of Adrift were pretty much absent. The game is rumoured to be set in 2084 in the city of Neo-Paris and memories can be bought and sold on a black market. No word on gameplay or plot, just a loose cyberpunk setup that sounds like a William Gibson novel. Not quite enough information to get excited about, but perhaps enough to be intrigued by. Here's the video of the presentation.

Less intriguing but more interesting was news that Armoured Core V has an operator role in multiplayer, a fifth player who has an eagle eye view of the map giving them a strategic advantage to issue commands and real time information. Sounds cool and it also sounds much like a similar role a player could take in the forgotten Chromehounds. Unfortunately despite being an excellent series Armoured Core V is also belonging to niche fan base and innovative multiplayer modes won’t do much to change that. Excellent, we don’t want Call of Duty types mucking it up anyway!

Modern Warfare 3 for the PC is getting dedicated game servers, really a no brainer for Activision if you want to continue their willy waving war with EA over Battlefield 3. Refusing dedicated servers would be as good as hoisting a white flag.

Guild Wars 2 proved MMORPG's aren't going away no matter how much people bag them out, and they can look pretty damn good. The playable demo at Gamescon attracted a lot of attention. Observe cool concept art at the top of this article and video below.

The only other item of note out of Gamescon was the announcement of Wildstar, another very cool looking scifi MMO RPG… and you’ve stopped reading. Oh well, if you were interested there’s an article about it just before this one.

Other than that Gamescon had a bunch of new videos for all the games you should be getting anyway. Ho hum.

Cool News

Further cementing his status as a patron saint of geekdom. Notch, the creator of Minecraft, has just returned from his honeymoon (congratulations if you’re reading) to face the legal challenge to his next game by Bethesda. Notch’s next game is called Scrolls, Bethesda are challenging this based on their long standing series The Elder Scrolls, also having the word scrolls in the title.

As much as I inappropriately fantasise about Bethesda and their games, I can’t describe this lawsuit as anything other than ‘firvolous’ and ‘douchey’. Notch doesn’t want to change the name of the game and, with a great deal of style, has challenged Bethesda to a Quake match winner takes all in his personal blog.

No word yet on whether Bethesda will entertain this challenge. But if they don’t they will be they be struck down in mine eyes, and I once said people who don’t like Oblivion should be put in forced labour camps. If no word is heard from Bethesda soon I may only by one copy of Skyrim. I’ve bought two copies of Minecraft all ready so that seems entirely fair.

Science News

Fox News recently ran a story on research that has pretty much proven, using Science! what we all ready knew about 3D, it has zero benefits to the user. The original goal of the research was to see whether the ‘heightened reality of 3D’ increased attentiveness to gauge the use of 3D in education.

Several groups of people went to see one of three films, Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans and How to Train Your Dragon in either 2D or 3D. After which they had to go home and immediately fill in a questionnaire. The questions covered the emotional impact of the films, the level of realism and most importantly whether they could recall elements of the film.

There was no difference between the 3D and 2D groups for any of the films. People who watched it in 3D where no more attentive or involved in the movie they watched than the 2D folks despite the apparent increased immersion of 3D.

There were some differences in the reactions of the two groups though. The 3D audience had on average enjoyed their movie viewing a lot less due to eyestrain, headaches and vision problems during and following the film. So, surprising no one, the research seems to indicate that 3D has no impact on viewer immersion and has a few negative impacts that 2D doesn’t.

This makes the application 3D in games look even less attractive. Especially given that the average daily time spent by a gamer shooting aliens and driving sports cars is easily twice the length of a movie. Looking back on Sony’s E3 press conference, which to my memory was just that Butler guy saying ‘three deeeeeeeee’, for an hour with clips of Move games and HD remakes in the background, it’s not looking too great. Nintendo and Microsoft have both shrugged and meh-ed at the idea of 3D but Sony had a pretty big love on for the technology going forward. I hope for their sake Sony downplay the 3D angle in the future.

Scary News

So what’s the most played game release this month? Deus Ex Human Revolution? Sadly no, Deus Ex sales figures will be lucky to scrape the figures of another game released this month. The Sims Social, a version of The Sims played exclusively on Facebook, debuted with 5 million regular users this week.

That’s right; a Facebook game will be the most popular new game in August. There are more tweens having virtual dates and picking wallpaper colours for their sim house right now than there are people playing the universally acclaimed Deus Ex. Scary no?

Bargain News

Just quickly Big W are selling the PS3 slim for $298. That’s the 160GB slim model. My one just died yesterday so I’m seriously thinking about grabbing one myself. It’s a good fifty smackers below the ‘official price drop’, and a handy early Christmas present purchase.

I've all ready seen the same price in the window of my local EB Games so this is definitely peak PS3 purchasing time.

Not sure if this news article deserves a giant W but... there's something haunting about it, almost, hypnotic...

See you next week. Unless I'm working for Big W.