Tis’ the season to be bundled. This one is a bit different, though – to celebrate this most icy and expensive of seasons, lovely game-making-type chap Rob Fearon has put all his games up as a single combined free download with the option (if you feel so inclined) to donate a bit of money afterwards, if you feel you’ve got a karmic balance to work out. If you like your shooters arena’y, bright and loud, you should probably grab it now.

How would you like to end the year by playing every FPS from the early 90s up to modern day, all at once? Fighting Half-Life 2 Metrocops with the magical weapons of Heretic, or showing the grunts of Quake who’s the boss with some classic Strife weaponry? I’m fairly sure this amazing multi-mashup mod violates every copyright ever written, but I just don’t care. It lets me blow up the enemies from Duke Nukem 3D with the Quake 2 BFG. Trailer and more after the break.

It’s been a long time coming, but Oxeye Game Studio have finally released their bouncing blue robot baby into the wild. Cobalt is an interesting-looking platform shooter with singleplayer, co-op and competitive modes, published under the banner of developer-turned-indie-publisher Mojang. They’re using the same business model as Minecraft, and even have the same pricing structure; 10 euros gets you (currently windows-only) alpha access now and to all future updates, until the game hits beta and rises to 15 euros. It’s planned to be a full 20 once it goes gold. Launch trailer and some gameplay footage after the break.

Well, that’s what they’re hoping for, at least. In an interview with Edge Magazine (a favorite of mine, but hardly indie – they should talk to us more often!), Mojang managing director Carl Manneh let this slip, regarding Cobalt:

“We haven’t told anyone [about the release date] yet because we’re aiming for Friday, but we don’t know if we can make it,” he said. “But I think we can.”

So, not set in stone yet, but it looks like we’ll be getting our hands on the first public alpha release of Oxeye’s interesting physics-driven sci-fi platform shooter sooner rather than later. More thoughts and a gameplay trailer after the break:

The space 4X genre has been on fairly thin ice these past few years. While there’s been a steady stream of releases, very few have been really worthy of praise at launch – some (such as the original Sword of The Stars and Star Ruler) recieved enough post-release support to become fine games in their own right, but very weak launches hampered their sales badly. It’s a rough scene, with an unforgiving audience. StarDrive by Zer0Sum Games might just be just what people have been hoping for, though.

Killing Floor has come a long way since its days as a relatively awkward Unreal Tourament 2k4 mod. Rather than flare out and fade into obscurity like so many indie multiplayer shooters, it has risen again and again, becoming one of Valve’s own favorite holiday fixtures. It was even the focus of a great amount of attention during the Portal 2 ‘Potato Pack’ event. Tripwire Interactive are nothing if not giving, either. December is here, and with it a free weekend for the game, starting tomorrow. On top of that, a horde of Christmas-themed monsters to slay (sleigh?), a boatload of new weapons to play with and even a new level and all for the price of free.

This is a freeware game that I’ve been meaning to mention for a while. It’s not very polished or professional, nor does it have anywhere near universal appeal, but after stumbling upon it during a random trawl of GameJolt I found myself enjoying it the whole way through in a B-movie sorta way. RTD: Evil is a horror-themed platform shooter inspired very heavily by Abuse, with standard FPS controls letting you run, jump and shoot freely on a 2D plane. It’s also based on a particularly terribly drawn furry splatter-horror webcomic. If you haven’t run screaming for the hills, hit the break for the trailer, accompanied by some of the shockingly cool soundtrack.

Ludicrous Gibs! If you were a PC gamer through the early 90s, that phrase should put a big dumb grin on your face. It was the text message that popped up to accompany an enemy exploding violently into a cartoonish cloud of meat (often containing 3+ eyeballs per human, oddly) in Apogee Software’s Wolfenstein-esque Rise Of The Triad, and also the first common usage of the term to describe such splatteriffic delights. A couple of months ago, a pair of dedicated fans (El Zee and 5HFifty) released Return of The Triad, a standalone update/remake of the game, based on the ZDoom engine.

How do you take two very addictive retro/classic games and combine them into an amazing top down shooter homage? I’m not sure I can really answer that to be honest. However, I can tell you that one indie development company has done it!

As I sit down to write this, my hands still occasionally twitch as my pulse returns to normal level. I just completed Serious Sam 3: BFE (Before First Encounter, allegedly, although it varied depending on who you ask), and I would not be the slightest bit surprised if there were more enemies in the final level than in the entire Modern Warfare trilogy combined. This is a game that wears its heart on it’s sleeve – it’s relentlessly, proudly bright, loud and old-school, despite having a slightly more muted aesthetic than the earlier games. Just don’t mistake ‘loud’ for ‘dumb’. SS3 is a game that you shouldn’t ever underestimate.