THE SPY
The Spy will never
tweet a fleet.
he Spy has finally accepted that
the internet is here to stay.
Originally, The Spy assumed it
was a pointless novelty, in part –
The Spy has since learned – due
to a coordinated and malicious
rickrolling campaign. “All links
lead to Astley,” The Spy thought.
“This will never catch on.” And
yet it appears The Spy was wrong; such was the
people’s need for an on-demand source of Never Gonna
Give You Up. And also it turns out that other websites
did actually exist. The Spy isn’t clear on the details.After briefly catching up on the last decade of online
trends, The Spy took the obvious next step of figuring out
how to utilise this tool for The Spy’s own personal gain at
the expense of others. Unfortunately cybercrime is
trickier than American police procedurals make it seem.
The Spy tried all the tricks: creating a GUI interface using
Visual Basic; isolating the node and dumping them on the
other side of the router; even recruiting a sadsack office
drone to share The Spy’s keyboard during high-pressure
hack-offs. None of it worked.
The Spy is undeterred,
though, and has already
checked out a book about
piracy from the local library
in the hope of learning how
to download a copy of
Hackers – a film The Spy
can only assume is thecanonical text of the entire subculture. Clearly others have
seen it already, as proven by a recent attack on Capcom.HACK’S OFF TO YA
In November, Capcom was hit by a ransomware attack
that “affected access to certain systems, including email
and file servers”. Later, a reported 60GB of the over 1TB
of bank statements, tax documents, business information,
and contracts the hackers claimed to have downloaded
was leaked to 4chan. While it’s hard to confirm the
veracity of this information, IGN cited sources “close to
Capcom” who claimed that many were the genuine thing.
If true, the data reveals plenty about Capcom’s
upcoming plans, including a release date for Resident Evil
Village. While it was known that the next major game in
the series would be arriving next year, the leak narrows
the launch window to late April.
If zombies aren’t your thing, how about monsters?
According to the leak, Monster Hunter Rise and Monster
Hunter Stories 2 will also arrive on PC. The latter is the
sequel to the turn-based RPG in which you hatch and
befriend monsters, Pokémon-style. Aimed at a younger
audience than the main series, the first game launched to
somewhat disappointing sales back in 2017. If the leak is
accurate, the PC version of the sequel will launch
simultaneously with the Switch release in June 2021.
Monster Hunter Rise, meanwhile, is the next proper
game in the series, following the hugely successful
Monster Hunter World. It’s set to feature new monsters
and apparently it will release on PC in October 2021.
The leak also had details of a new game, codenamed
Shield. Supposedly a shooter featuring a campaign,
multiplayer, raids, and even base defence, it sounds like a
throw-everything-at-the-wall kind of project. Hilariously,
the translated document even includes a business plan
around utilising streamers, which notes that “contract fees
are extremely high and it’s
likely that the streamer will
stop playing as soon as the
contract expires”. The Spy
is heartened to learn that
we’re all still trying to figure
out the internet.
The Spy1
EVE Online was over seven years
old at the time of this cover feature,
but PC gaming has always been a space
where games could thrive long after they
were unleashed on the world. And thrive
EVE did, generating countless
fascinating stories about intrigue,
betrayal and full-scale space war. Even
now, 17 years after its release, it’s an
essential story generator.3
Minecraft was our 2010 Game of
the Year, which seems obvious in
hindsight, but it’s worth remembering
that it was still in Alpha at the time.
Despite that, after a year of discovery, of
creation, of communities sharing
amazing builds and mods and tools, it
was a phenomenon worth celebrating.
As with EVE, it remains relevant today.
Great games never die.2
The first
Black Ops
game was “let
down by bad
scripting, glitchy
multiplayer and
dull firefights,”
claimed our review.
Hopefully Cold War
fares better...ISSUE
222, January 2011
ON THE COVER
EVE Online
IN THE CINEMA
TRON: LegacyT
This month in... 2010
THE LEAK ALSO HAD DETAILS
OF A NEW GAME,
CODENAMED SHIELDNEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENTBUT WHO WATCHES THE SPY?The Spy