You know how everyone has that one game that was an instrumental part of them growing up? Final Fantasy 9 is that game for me (though Pokemon and RollerCoaster Tycoon get honourable mentions). While technically it isn’t my favourite in the series anymore - FF14 gets that title - it’s the one that means the most to me when I look back to my younger years. It’s also turned 15 years old in America this
PopCap and Wooga abandon Google+
Google+ was designed to bring down Facebook.
Google+ was designed to bring down Facebook. Thanks to backing from the likes of Wooga and PopCap, it even launched with its own suite of games to challenge Facebook giants like Farmville. Things haven't quite turned out that way, though. Gamasutrareport that PopCap and Wooga are taking their games off the service less than a year after it launched. Ouch.
Gamasutra realised that something was up when they approached the two companies asking for Google+ success stories. A PopCap rep responded by saying "we're not really up for a conversation on that topic, I'm afraid." Ouch .
Wooga are set to pull their most successful games, Monster World, Diamond Dash, and Bubble Island from Google+ on July 1 according to a report on Social Games Observer, while Inside Social Gamessay that PopCap are withdrawing Bejewelled Blitz next week. PopCap told Gama that they're preparing to "redeploy our resources" to support other, presumably more successful versions of Bejeweled.
Bejeweled franchise director Giordano Contestabile told ISG that PopCap "chose to scale back the Google+ offerings because, like most game teams, we want to spend our resources improving games to have the biggest impact on the most customers. Shifting some of our resources from Google+ onto higher-impact efforts was a pretty straightforward decision." Which is a polite way of suggesting that nobody plays Bejeweled on Google+.
It's not over between PopCap and Google, though. "Google is a valuable gaming partner for PopCap and EA, and we'll continue to develop for Google platforms," said EA of the move. Google+ seems to be ailing, but Chrome's gaming capabilities are on the up. The Chrome app store will let you you try a bit of in-browser Bastionfor free. PopCap's Plants vs. Zombiesand Bejeweledare also available there.
Is anybody out there using Google+? Can you foresee a future in which it brings down Facebook?
Dynasty Warriors Next import preview hands-on with the full Japanese game
The PlayStation Vita doesn’t arrive in North America and Europe for another two months, but we’re way too excited and impatient to wait that long. Thanks to the earlier Japanese launch, we’ve already got a system in office and we’re already diving into our most anticipated PS Vita games. Visit GamesRadar all this week for updated hands-on impressions with the full imported versions, but note that these
Indie Intermission – ‘Probe Team’ Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts
As the working week draws to a close I move onto the number 1 game from the latest Ludum Dare .
. Today’s game is Probe Team by Andrew Shouldice and it’s a wonderful space arcade exploration game that forces you to use a team of probes to explore the environment and complete the objectives.
Probe Team has been created in a very simplistic monochrome style that along with the added grain and slight bulge to the screen makes the game feel although it is being played on a computer of the early 90’s. All these subtle visual effects come together and help create a truly great looking game brimmed full of nostalgia.
The gameplay relies on you guiding these probes through this maze, but be warned as you only have 10 seconds of fuel per probe and you must be quick. Although no one probe will make it all the way you must use many probes to work together to hopefully explore this sprawling labyrinth.
Average play time – 6 minutes
Probe Team is a lot of fun and has a truly fantastic style to it that helps create a unique and fun game. The use of the 10 second time constraint is great, and does create the main mechanic that holds the whole game together, yet it has been done in a fun and interesting way.
If you would like to play Probe Team you can play it online for free. If you would like to visit the Ludum Page you can do that here.
If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!
Magicka PvP mode out now, new arenas and robes available
If you read Arrowhead Game's Magicka dev diary right here on PCGamer.com yesterday, you'll know that the free PvP is out now.
right here on PCGamer.com yesterday, you'll know that the free PvP is out now. However, you might have have missed the Tarantino inspired trailer. It shows just one way in which wizards can fall out. The other is just to play Magicka's story mode, where friendly fire kills almost as many wizards as the hordes of enemies you're trying to obliterate.
The PvP mode comes with free two arenas, the Training Ground and the Havindir Arena. Each can host scraps with three different rule-sets. Classic deathmatch is a fiery free-for-all mode in which the last wizard standing wins. Brawl mode lets you form teams, but limits each player to a set number of lives. Krietor mode unlocks more powerful spells as the round progresses, and is named after the modder who invented it.
Three other maps can also be bought on Steam. The Frozen Lake(guess where that's set) combines unsure footing with a high probability of drowning to create a recipe for Magicka comedy, while The Watchtowermap stages a battle at the top of a huge tower. To quote the Steam blurb, "The absense of a railing on a mountaintop ruin provides new environmental hazzard." These maps cost £1.50 / $1.99 each.
The third map is called Final Frontier, and has an extremely familiar sci-fi setting. It comes with an extra wizard robe, a "deadly duel staff" and boasts "fantastic quality props" for "Increased nerd factor." For maximum nerd factor, play thisin the background while you fight. The Final Frontier is a little more substantial, thanks to the additional items, so that's priced at £1.99 / $2.99.
There's also a new Party Robespack that adds three new wizard outfits, designed to improve your wizards' survival rate in co-op. The tank robe turns your wizard into an armoured powerhouse, the rogue robe can cloak on the battlefield and the support robe buffs the spellcasting power of those around the wearer - surely not a good robe to wear to a PvP fight.
As with all Magicka DLC, it's possible to jump into the hosts paid-for maps even if you don't own them yourself. The DLC is also available to buy on Direct2Drive, Impulse, Green Man Gaming and more, you can get the full list here. If you want to get an edge in PvP, check out our pick of Magicka's best spells.
Google "Zerg Rush" and prepare to defend your browser
In a move that's sure to decimate the productivity of a million offices worldwide, Google have programmed a mini-game into their search engine.
In a move that's sure to decimate the productivity of a million offices worldwide, Google have programmed a mini-game into their search engine. Head over to Googleand type in the words "zerg rush" to find out what happens. I won't spoil it for you, but it involves a lot of clicking, and will award you a high score at the end that you can share with friends and colleagues on Google+. Let the procrastinating begin!
Turtle Rock Studios' Left 4 Dead is one of the best online co-op games in the past decade, and the studio
's upcoming four vs. one game, Evolve is shaping up to be another hit. One of the keys to Turtle Rock's success is its emphasis on rapid prototyping -- find the fun first and iterate and build from there.
Finding the fun fast: How rapid prototyping shaped Evolve
"The game is what is today because we've been playing it for the past three years," said Turtle Rock creative director and cofounder Phil Robb in an E3 interview.
"The basic idea is to get the game up and running as soon as possible in its crudest possible form," he said. "Not that we intend it to be crude, but you use what you've got. The nice thing about working in the CryEngine is that it's real easy to make prototype stuff look pretty."
For example, he said when prototyping the first Left 4 Dead , the studio just used terrorist and counter-terrorist skins from Counter-Strike , just playing around with the mechanics, design and enemy behavior.
He said Turtle Rock narrows down the core elements of the game. For Evolve , it was about designing for four vs. one, co-op vs. single, and having a monster that evolves and becomes more powerful over time.
That's the frame of the game that was in place when prototyping began. The result is a game that pits four hunters, each of a specific class and skillset, against a monster that becomes more powerful over time, across three evolutionary stages.
"The hunters are sort of even all the way across [Robb traces a horizontal line in the air], but the monster starts low [on the graph], then crosses that line," he explained. "Stage one he's lower, stage two he's even, stage three he's got a bit of a numbers advantage. Those are things we tried to get in asap."
Robb added, "The whole idea behind the rapid prototype is that we don't want to spend a lot of money on something and not know if it's fun.
"I've known tons of people, and I have even been on games where you couldn't play the game until the end. That seems like a huge , crazy risk to me. You'll see a lot of games that came out that clearly suffered from that. It's like, 'wow, they should've been playing this from the beginning.'
"So that's what we try to avoid at all costs -- we get it up and make sure that it's fun, and then start iterating and building aspects to it. You add the depth as you go."
Turtle Rock is open to Early Access for future titlesOne of the most notable trends in the video game business is the rising popularity of selling games as alphas and betas. Steam Early Access has been a key factor in this trend.
Asked if Turtle Rock would like to release an Early Access game at some point, Robb replied, "Dude, I would love to do that, and Chris [Ashton, cofounder and design director] feels the same way. Who knows, I won't say 'never,' but I can't say 'yes' for sure.
Robb said it would've been fun to break down that barrier between developer and player, letting their community take part in and inform the way the game is developed and designed.
"Even on [ Evolve ], as we were playing it all these years, the game changed a lot, and there'd be features that'd go in, features that'd come out. We always kind of lamented the fact that we couldn't take the community along on that ride.
"On Left 4 Dead it was the same thing," he added. "We had weird Infected in the game that we ended up yanking out -- we'd have fun with them for maybe a month or so, but ultimately they weren't right for the game. But even then, we think about those instances, remembering how they were messed up, but fun to play around with."
And that's what's appealing to Robb about Early Access -- enjoyment of the game transcends the game itself. Of course, changes to an Early Access game -- like removing, adding or tweaking features -- might annoy or upset players, but that'd be part of the deal when taking part in development of a game.
"For us [when playing the game internally], that always keeps it fresh always keeps it new. 'Hey we're trying this, let's check it out.'"
Payday 2 helps developer Starbreeze post record profits
It's only appropriate that Payday 2 , which is all about stealing as much money as possible, is by far Starebreeze's best earning game.
, which is all about stealing as much money as possible, is by far Starebreeze's best earning game. Today, a press releasefrom the developer revealed that it made $6.1 million between October and December 2013, $5.3 million of which came from Payday 2.
“To put the past six months in perspective, I would like to highlight that Starbreeze historically, from 1998 to June 2013, accumulated a total loss of SEK 94 million ($14.4 million),” CEO Bo Andersson Klint said. “Thanks to our new business model, reorganization and a focus on our own brands, we have—in only two quarters—generated a profit before tax of SEK 104 million (almost $16 million).”
This is due mostly to Payday, which became a Starbreeze property when the company acquired its original creators, Overkill, in 2012.
It's good but slightly shocking news when you consider some of the big games Starbreeze has produced since it was founded: The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, The Darkness, and Syndicate, to name the obvious examples.
Hopefully, more financial stability will allow Starbreeze to pursue more original, creative ideas, such as Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, which so far has made $245,572.
Starbreeze also announced it signed a new $6 million contract with publisher 505 Games to continue improving and creating add-ons for Payday 2 for the next 20 months.
Payday 2 helps developer Starbreeze post record profits
It's only appropriate that Payday 2 , which is all about stealing as much money as possible, is by far Starebreeze's best earning game.
, which is all about stealing as much money as possible, is by far Starebreeze's best earning game. Today, a press releasefrom the developer revealed that it made $6.1 million between October and December 2013, $5.3 million of which came from Payday 2.
“To put the past six months in perspective, I would like to highlight that Starbreeze historically, from 1998 to June 2013, accumulated a total loss of SEK 94 million ($14.4 million),” CEO Bo Andersson Klint said. “Thanks to our new business model, reorganization and a focus on our own brands, we have—in only two quarters—generated a profit before tax of SEK 104 million (almost $16 million).”
This is due mostly to Payday, which became a Starbreeze property when the company acquired its original creators, Overkill, in 2012.
It's good but slightly shocking news when you consider some of the big games Starbreeze has produced since it was founded: The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, The Darkness, and Syndicate, to name the obvious examples.
Hopefully, more financial stability will allow Starbreeze to pursue more original, creative ideas, such as Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, which so far has made $245,572.
Starbreeze also announced it signed a new $6 million contract with publisher 505 Games to continue improving and creating add-ons for Payday 2 for the next 20 months.
Play Magicka for free on Steam this weekend
'Tis a grand weekend for indie gaming on Steam.
'Tis a grand weekend for indie gaming on Steam. In addition to the Super Meat Boy Pack, bonkers co-op RPG Magicka is free until 9pm on Sunday, and, yes, developers Arrowhead Game Studios have fixed most of the bugs. There's also a wizard's sleeve worth of offers on Steam, including Magicka itselffor £1.99, a four-pack for you and three chums for £5.99, and the Magicka Collection- including all DLC - for £4.24. Magic!
Just go hereto download it.
Call of Duty: Ghosts preview — follow orders, soldier, or you might miss the graphics
The Call of Duty: Ghosts demo shown at E3 is all spectacle.
The Call of Duty: Ghosts demo shown at E3 is all spectacle. The three snippets of missions—two of which are embedded here, while the other was shown exclusively to press—are interactive narratives in which every player action is prescribed by environmental cues and a hushed voice saying "wait" and "now." Every step forward and every meaningful use of a weapon is done on command and only when commanded.
Activision is advertising a war movie we can interact with as long as we don't make meaningful decisions, as play-by-numbers as the opening scenes of Tomb Raider. Perhaps, like Tomb Raider, Ghosts will eventually let us loose, but so far it appears to trust Riley, the player's dog companion, to run without a leash more than it trusts the player. It is pretty, though, and the goal of these demos is to make sure we know it.
Activision is still calling Ghosts' engine a "brand-new next-gen engine," though it's not "brand-new" as in "entirely new" or "from scratch," but an upgrade new enoughthat the company is comfortable labeling it as such. It is certainly an upgrade—Ghosts' set-pieces are massive and intricate, and little details and imperfections permeate the environments. It can sit comfortably at the Crysis table.
In "No Man's Land," embedded above, we witness a massive, crumbling crater which I'd love to explore. Instead of exploring, however, the player never leaves a well-defined track. He uses a tablet connected to a wireless backpack strapped to Riley to guide him toward enemy patrols and clear the way with vicious leaping jugular attacks. Good doggie.
The sequence could be interesting, but there's no discovery or decisions to make. You're told exactly what to tell Riley to do, undermining the novelty of controlling a dog.
The "Into the Deep" demo below goes the same way. It's a gorgeous diving simulator, something I'd love to explore with an Oculus Rift, but we don't witness anything that could be called exploration. It has tense moments—the claustrophobic goggles and sonar pings yank at my nerves—but the the only thing the player is really in danger of is not following orders. I was surprised he didn't ask for permission to be crushed under sinking debris.
To Ghosts' credit, the very last moment hints at a scene in which a swarm of divers must be dealt with, hopefully on our own terms.
The exclusively-shown demo, "Federation Day," is the same deal: a stunning scene which would be welcome in any Mission Impossible film, but one with negligible player freedom. It begins on the roof of a skyscraper. The player and company swing past a backdrop of fireworks to the glass wall of another building, then repel down it, shooting unaware guards through the windows. Wait for him to go to the kitchen. Now. Pew Pew . OK, back to the other room. Wait. Now. Pew Pew .
There's a tense moment when the player, after entering the building and hacking into its power system, must hide uncomfortably close to a passing patrol. The last soldier in the group stops. He turns. He sees you. And then the tension plops to the floor along with the curious soldier, who's been silently executed by your squadmate. It then occurs to me that the soldier didn't see the player at all. He was looking into that hiding spot because it was the only possible place the player could hide.
What if the player hadn't followed instructions and slipped into darkness? Would there have been a shootout? Would the whole level happen differently from there on? I hope that's the case. It would be cynical to assume these demos represent Ghosts in its entirety, and these are the questions we'll be asking Infinity Ward going forward. But this is the game Activision is advertising. It treats the player like a scripted entity, a vessel for narration set along the same unchangeable path as the non-playing characters.
Ghosts' art direction, modeling, animation, sound design, and technical achievements rival the best accomplishments in those categories. With great writing, it might have an exciting campaign with surprising narrative twists, and we've now seen examples of the dramatic, catastrophic destruction of its sets—something that's fun just to look at. I'd like to know, however, if Ghosts ever becomes a game, with systems to be manipulated and rewards to be earned through creative play, or if it is entirely an exercise in following orders.
Dynasty Warriors Next PS Vita video walkthrough
Dynasty Warriors Next is the latest entry in this long-running series and makes its debut on the PS Vita. The Japanese version that we played looked great and the controls were easy to get the hang of. Every now and then you'll be called upon to touch the screen or swipe at it with your finger, but for the most part, it sticks to the traditional button-mashing routine. The game features characters that have appeared in Dynasty Warrior 7: Xtreme Legends and there are multiple modes to choose from. We've only dabbled in campaign mode, which lets you play through the acts from Romance of the Three Kingdoms complete with cutscenes. The English version of Dynasty Warriors Next will be released at launch on February 22. Be sure to check back on GamesRadar for our ongoing Vita coverage.
E3 2011: Magicka sold 600k copies, PvP DLC will be free for the game's owners
" Fredrik Wester: It's now sold close to 600,000, and we're still selling ten to fifteen thousand a week.
Graham's been speaking to Paradox CEO Fred Wester in Magicka's weird languageabout the game's success.
It's now sold close to 600,000, and we're still selling ten to fifteen thousand a week. We're probably going to pass a million by the end of this year because we're seeing no steep drop-off in the purchase rate."
That's a lot of accidental friend-murdering. Read on for Fred's thoughts on the game's crippling early bugs, details of the free PvP DLC, and why Paradox might release a standalone PvP-only Magicka in the future.
Magicka began with a miniscule development team of seven people. Fred explains Paradox's process for bringing developers on board:
" PC Gamer: Does the company have any overriding philosophy to the type of games you make? Or is it purely that you've stumbled across a market and you want to service that market?
Fredrik Wester: It's a mix. Obviously we're looking for certain types of games. We've been working with TaleWorlds now since 2006 on the Mount & Blade series and I chased Arma?an Yavuz for two years before he signed with us. I was thinking “This is so perfect because it's niche and hardcore and even though it's an RPG it's still the same style that we want to do”. The Magicka team came to us and said “Can you do this game?” We were blown away by the whole concept. If we can choose ourselves we pinpoint companies we want to work with and we take it from there. Cyanide for example: they've done Blood Bowl, and they're making Game of Thrones: Genesis. I've known Patrick, the CEO for many years. I contacted him in March saying “We have this idea and we want to do this game with you guys” and he was like “Great”."
Fred took to Magicka immediately, and described the game to Graham as "sort of Monty Python in gaming." Monty Python, if watchers had their televisions turn themselves off for the first three episodes, anyway - Magicka's bugs were game-breaking until a few weeks after release. Fred's aware of the game's issues, and diplomatically describes it as "somewhat buggy." How do Paradox mean to stop that happening again?
" PC Gamer: There's been problems with bugs in a few Paradox games. Is that because you don't have a big enough Q&A team, or is that a budget constraint?
Fredrik Wester: Our biggest challenge in the coming two or three years is quality assurance. We've been - I wouldn't say sloppy - but inexperienced on how to deliver a fully polished product. We're still learning. We've hired a new producer who comes from DICE and has a lot of experience on the Battlefield series. It's a totally different approach to the whole gaming scene.
I agree with you both Hearts of Iron 3 and Ship Simulator Extremes should have been released in more polished states."
Paradox aren't done with Magicka. After the release of the gloriously unhinged Magicka: Vietnampack, they're experimenting with payment models. Fred confirmed PvP DLC - which they've "put a lot of effort into" - will be free for owners of the original game. Rather than a flat fee, players can purchase cosmetic items for minimal cash. In a departure from the normal 'stupid hat #1, #2 and #3' cosmetic items, these will serve a visual purpose for dedicated teams. Fred explained players can dress their wizard as RPG archetypes like the tank and healer to denote their preferred battlefield role. "It doesn't do anything for your character, it's just a visual feature."
The PvP DLC will be out June 21st, but might be the precursor to something more substantial, as the developers have had so much fun with it:
" Fredrik Wester: It might've been that we put even more effort into the PvP parts of Magicka because it's so solid. I would like to do, in the future, a standalone PvP-only online game for Magicka. That's just a dream at the moment, but we'll see."
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive gets zombie chickens for Halloween
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is certainly at the more serious end of Valve's multiplayer services—being about guns and terrorism, rather than gravel or wizards.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is certainly at the more serious end of Valve's multiplayer services—being about guns and terrorism, rather than gravel or wizards. Nevertheless, they're getting in on the Halloween spirit with the temporary addition of masks, ghosts and zombie chickens.
"Each of our hardened operators have decided to have a little Halloween fun by wearing masks," explains the CS:GO blog. Masks are coming across from Payday 2 and Team Fortress 2.
In addition, there's a chance you'll see fallen teammates as ghostly figures haunting the map. And, of course, there's the chickens. "For too long the chickens of CS:GO have idly watched as their brethren were slaughtered by the droves," Valve write, "and on All Hollow’s Eve there is no more room in Chicken Hell." Basically, if you kill a chicken, it will resurrect—but green.
The changes come as part of a more general patch—filled with spooky notes like "fixed wallbang inconsistency through closed window in apartments near Bombsite B."
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Our Verdict
A gorgeous world, bursting with personality.
A gorgeous world, bursting with personality. Great storytelling makes up for the short length and unchallenging puzzles.
need to know
Expect to pay £12 / $15
Release Out now
Developer Starbreeze Studios
Publisher 505 Games
Multiplayer None
Link Brothers official site
The premise of Brothers – communicated entirely through theatrical gestures and conversations in an untranslated fantasy language – is as affecting and uncomplicated as the journey that follows. A dying father sends his two sons to the other end of the world to search for a cure for his mystery illness. You must guide the brothers through a beautiful but monstrous fantasy world full of dark creatures and contrived puzzles.
These straightforward challenges are elevated by a novel control scheme that puts you in charge of both brothers simultaneously. Each is mapped to a control stick on the (mandatory) gamepad. The left moves the gangly older brother, the right his sprightly sibling. The left and right shoulder-triggers serve as action buttons for the brothers, letting them pick up objects, flip switches or grab onto ledges.
It feels like playing a co-op game by yourself, in a pleasing way. Interactions vary from Chuckle Brothers 'to-me-to-you' log carrying to coordinated switch flipping built around the brothers' contrasting abilities. The little brother can slip through narrow bars, while the bigger brother can pull heavy levers or give the younger brother a leg-up.
Typically the older brother will help the younger onto a ledge, where he might let down a rope, lower a drawbridge or activate some other path-clearing deus ex machina. This is never challenging, and bar a ropeswinging section and a hang gliding session, there's little variation or escalation to its puzzles. The tasks are a timekeeping device designed to chasten progress and force you to admire the carefully built world.
And that's just fine, actually. The coiling pathway is long and, bar a few occasional alleyways, mostly linear, but segues gently from rural village idyll to troll mines and mountain passes at a relaxing pace. I wanted to poke around each location and soak up the Brothers Grimm ambience, and was well rewarded by a wealth of character-building skits. You'll get to know the brothers through their differing relationships with the environment, communicated purely through mime and vocal inflection. The responsible older brother will gently poke a sleeping drawbridge operator to try to get his attention; the mischievous younger sibling will throw water in his face.
By osmosis, you'll come to know the brothers' talents, attitudes and neuroses, and become increasingly invested in their well-being. Their emotional and mechanical interreliance plays out physically across the controller, which gives command of each sibling to your brain's competing hemispheres. The haphazard cooperation that follows is a convincing reflection of a fractious family unit.
At once accessible, charming and, at points, savagely dark, Brothers is a fantasy fable for adults that will linger in the mind long past its impressive final moments.
The Verdict
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
A gorgeous world, bursting with personality. Great storytelling makes up for the short length and unchallenging puzzles.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tom stopped being a productive human being when he realised that the beige box under his desk could play Alpha Centauri. After Deus Ex and Diablo 2 he realised he was cursed to play amazing PC games forever. He started writing about them for PC Gamer about six years ago, and is now UK web ed.
We recommend By Zergnet
Magicka Dev Diary: A multitude of modes
Last time we checked in with the Magicka devs , they were debunking the ancient technique of "water bombing" and the frustrations of losing character control.
, they were debunking the ancient technique of "water bombing" and the frustrations of losing character control. Come take a seat at the Arrowhead campfire and listen to tales of PvP glory and fights to the death.
Another week, another Dev Diary! This time, we're going to talk about the various PvP modes—the different ways you can blast your friends to oblivion. Game modes have been a hot topic of discussion, both on the forums and here in the office. Without further ado, let's get into this.
When pondering what game modes we should have in Magicka, we took a good, long look at other games and the solutions they adopted; we also listened closely to the solutions posed by the Magicka community. Certain things about PvP seem fairly obvious: for example, we always knew we would need a classic Deathmatch mode. You know, the standard kill-people-until-they-all-die game mode. Creating the mode was a relatively simple matter of establishing a time limit and a kill counter. Throughout development, we reserved the word “Deathmatch” for this normal everyday meaning: it's a very well known expression, and it means a very specific type of game mode which all players easily recognize.
But there's more than one way to blast your friends to giblets. Considering a slightly different flavor of PvP, but something still quite familiar, we turned to the Brawl game mode. Brawl is largely inspired by Super Smash Bros., which doesn't count how many kills you've scored, but instead gives each player a set number of lives. There was some question early on if this was really different enough from Deathmatch for it to be included, but after much heated discussion, we decided to implement it. Once we started playtesting, we found that it made for very different gameplay experience compared to Deathmatch, especially when playing four-player Free-For-All. It was definitely unique enough to warrant its own game mode, but familiar enough that players would immediately feel at home with it.
The final game mode we're offering is a tribute to our awesome community—and the individual who created the very first Magicka PvP tournament. We call it Krietor's Tourney mode. For those unfamiliar with his history, a forum member by the name of Krietor made a mod for Magicka shortly after it was released, implementing the rudimentary PvP functionality that was left in the game (which, for reasons of time, we had to cut before the main release). Instead of just publishing the mod and calling it finished, Keritor followed through and kept improving the mod for a very long time. He introduced an interesting tournament style which included a time limit, and set up timed rounds. Whenever someone scored a kill, the playing field was reset, with everyone healed up to full strength, and stripped of any spells or other effects. This introduced structure and fairness to an otherwise chaotic PvP environment. He also implemented a system whereby Magicks were unlocked based on how far the tournament had progressed. As you got further into a match, more powerful Magicks were unlocked. This made for very interesting tournaments—and we thought it a brilliant idea to implement these ideas in our official Magicka PvP release.
The official version of Krietor's Tourney mode will feature the same basic functionality as Krietor's original home-made version, polished and refined a bit so it fits perfectly into Magicka PvP. Each round has a certain time limit, and whenever only one person or one team remains (yep, every game mode supports team play), time stops, and everyone is replaced at their spawning positions to begin the next round, with all remaining spells and effects removed for a clean start. This means that no matter who won the last round, nobody will have an edge from one round to the next. Magicks will be unlocked after certain time intervals, and the order and time at which they unlock is unique to each PvP map. The goal of Krietor's Tourney mode is to make matches as fair as possible, while at the same time keeping things very interesting. (By contrast, randomization is basically fair, but when it comes to competitive multiplayer, randomization rarely generates interest.)
These three new game modes come with lots of new settings, and the lobby we have in the current version of Magicka has no way to represent the various options. So we've reworked the lobby to include PvP. When designing the new lobby, we tried to make it as flexible as possible, so we can easily add more features and options in the future.
It's our hope that these three game modes will satisfy the community's PvP cravings. We all really enjoy them ourselves, and feel that each game mode contributes its own little piece of fun. We hope that this introduction of PvP will bring an exciting new facet of Magicka to light!
Halloween has a survival horror fangame, and it's bloody, brilliant
As a big fan of eighties slashers and survival horrors, I have a weird feeling that indie horror game Halloween was made specifically for me, perhaps after some sort of psychic interference by developers Pig Farmer Games.
was made specifically for me, perhaps after some sort of psychic interference by developers Pig Farmer Games. As the name suggests, it's pretty much Halloween The Game, and if any of John Carpenter's lawyers are watching: look at that shiny distraction over there. As for the rest of us: you're going to want to play this, particularly if (like me) you're a video nasty or a Resident Evil fan.
You're a babysitter looking after an annoying brat on the spookiest day of the year: Ash WednesdayHalloween. After a bit of item-hunting and puzzling (tip: you can access your inventory with Escape), the lights go out and things get a little bit more stabby. Michael Myers himself makes an appearance, taking time off from Austin Powers to return to his halcyon serial-murdering days.
There are several control schemes, but I played in 'movie' mode, which essentially borrows Resident Evil's wonderfully awkward tank controls. I am moderately in awe of Pig Farmer Games' ability to recreate the eighties/VHS aesthetic, which you can witness in the trailer below.
(Many thanks to John Polson of IndieGamesfame.)
PlayStation Vita: What we're anticipating
It’s PlayStation Vita launch day in Japan. As we post this, our connection is picking up Vitas and memory cards for us. We’ve already got our shortlist of games secured and confirmed. And we’re coming in over the weekend to shoot some special videos for you. So, as we wait for our man to pass through customs with the goods, we’ve decided to poll the GamesRadar office for what they’re anticipating from
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons to get PC release at the end of the month
Starbreeze's puzzlish sibling-'em-up, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons , is currently getting itself into bother as part of Xbox Live's Summer of Arcade promotion thing.
, is currently getting itself into bother as part of Xbox Live's Summer of Arcade promotion thing. Normally, we'd scratch our heads and look on with mild jealousy, waiting the standard six or so months for the game to escape the the XBLA cage. Not this time, it would seem - the irrepressible Brothers are to get a Steam release on August 28.
The game has you simultaneously control the two characters, as they search through a village in search of a cure to their father's illness. You can see the unusual control scheme in action in the video below.
For more on the game, you can read Marsh's preview.
Thanks, Joystiq.
Being a dick in Rocket League
WHY I LOVE
“I probably take Rocket League a bit too seriously,” I said to a friend after an hour-long 4v4 session on Sunday night.
In Why I Love, PC Gamer writers pick an aspect of PC gaming that they love and write about why it's brilliant. Today, Sam feels an overwhelming drive to win in Rocket League.
“I probably take Rocket League a bit too seriously,” I said to a friend after an hour-long 4v4 session on Sunday night. “Lol. A bit,” he messaged me back. I’ll be honest, while I’ve dabbled with competitive games over the years, I’ve generally gravitated more towards single-player games. I would say that’s partly due to the fact I was an only child for much of my young life, but that would be a colossal lie: it’s because I believe that most people are terrible. And I’m one of them. Rocket League has infected me unlike any multiplayer game I’ve ever played, and I’m behaving like it’s the first time this has ever happened to me—because it pretty much is.
I asked my friend if I take Rocket League too seriously because I realised that during the entire time we played 4v4, I failed to join in on the ‘banter’ going on between the other players. They were all having a laugh and talking about other stuff, but I was totally silent. I was concentrating on landing shots and perfect clearances, and treating this like failure was the difference between that night being a good or a bad one. Because it was.
I’m behaving like one of those absolute wanks who discovers Call of Duty at 16 and talks complete rubbish down a headset. I’m not abusive, or anything, I’m just all the things that are annoying about people online, without deliberately meaning to do it. I boast about my cracking goals, commentate on my stronger plays in third-person with annoying nonsense like ‘Roberts with the pass!’ and I have a mini tantrum if we concede an easy goal—I can’t help but point out that I’ve made MVP four matches in a row, even as the other players sigh down their headsets.
I even forced my friend to stop playing doubles in ranked because I decided he wasn’t taking it seriously enough. “Dave, stop f*cking about right now, this is serious!” I forced him to quit out and put us in unranked. What’s all that about? That’s not how humans are meant to behave. But I like being a dick in Rocket League. At some point on the semi-pro ladder I accepted that was the way I’d play the game. Once I yelled ‘NOT MY NIGHT’ after conceding four goals, quitting a 3v3 ranked match with two minutes to go and just lying on my bed after and looking at the ceiling for five minutes. I left two players behind to fend for themselves This isn’t a normal reaction to a game for me. Or indeed, a normal reaction generally—you can’t behave like that in real life. In Rocket League I’ve decided it’s okay.
The only thing is, I’m not sure I’m making the game more fun for anyone else except me. Maybe even including me. But I can’t help it. You’ve no doubt met players like me—they’re all communicating by spamming the swear button in text chat, or hitting ‘NICE SHOT!’ nine times when you score an unlucky own goal. You can’t hear them in voice chat because you’ve already muted them. And they’re all 16 or younger. I’m 27.
Essentially this is just the rush of being into a competitive game you really like, but it’s made me realise why this doesn’t happen that often for me—I don’t let it happen, because I know what I’m like. I tend not to let games such as Hearthstone or Battlefield get their tendrils into me because I know this part of me exists and is waiting to come out—I can be a sour man if I lose, and it’s exactly why I limit the games I get emotionally invested in to single-player games where I can more easily control what’s going on. Our Dota 2 matchagainst Rock, Paper, Shotgun still annoys me months later. I can’t quit Rocket League right now, though, as it’s simply too good, so for the time being this will just have to be the new normal. I am a Rocket League dick.
Rocket League is the hit of the moment, and part of me is paranoid that as soon as summer ends in two weeks, there’ll be a big new thing that everyone goes off to play and we’ll remember Rocket League as a fad. For my console-playing friends (and some of the PCG staff), Destiny’s expansion The Taken King threatens to end the Rocket League phenomenon. It almost certainly can’t survive the arrival of XCOM 2, Star Wars Battlefront and Fallout 4, and its success can perhaps be partly attributed to a quiet summer for big releases. I want it to go on forever, though. It needs to. I can’t see any way I’ll ever stop.
Are you a dick in Rocket League? Let me know in the comments below and let’s talk it through.
Six Things You May Have Missed In The 2013 Tomb Raider Reboot
In the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, Crystal Dynamics hid a few references to Lara's Rise of the Tomb Raider future, as well as a few other Easter Eggs.
In the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, Crystal Dynamics hid a few references to Lara's Rise of the Tomb Raider future, as well as a few other Easter Eggs. We spoke with franchise creative director Noah Hughes about what players might have missed in the first game, and learn about a Cast Away reference that didn't make the final cut.
The Trinity organization
Trinity, the organization Lara is fighting against in Rise of the Tomb Raider, is referenced in the assorted Tomb Raider reboot comics and novels, but it is also subtly referenced in the 2013 video game. In the No One Left Behind level, a static-ridden radio signal is heard saying, “Rescue chopper N888RC responding to S.O.S., inbound from freighter Trinity."
You can also find references to Trinity in a few of the documents Lara can uncover in the game. While reading one document, Lara even comments to herself as if to tease a sequel, “That name again –Trinity. Some kind of organization. But who are they? And how do they know about this island?"
The Tomb Raider wiki points out all of the references to Trinity in a page you can find here. We asked Noah Hughes if building up Trinity as a big part of the sequel was a plan from the beginning and he said, “Yes, the plan was to begin to gesture at an organization or a faction that would operate in the same space as Lara.”
Who is FeeFee the crab?
The achievements and trophies in Tomb Raider were pretty straightforward – experience this part of the story, collect all of these, use these weapons, etc. However, there was one goofy achievement about a crab. The achievement/trophy is called Crab Cakesand the description reads, “FeeFee the crab killed.” To get it, all you have to do is kill a crab on Shipwreck Beach. We asked Noah Hughes, what or who is FeeFee the crab?
Blink and you will miss him .
The name comes from the Tomb Raider community, which names all of the assorted unnamed creatures that appear in the trailers and art promoting Tomb Raider. An octopus that appeared in a trailer for Tomb Raider Underworld was designated Underpuss. “FeeFee first appeared in our world teaser trailer on the beach,” Hughes says, “If you look close it goes past a map flapping in the wind, and there’s a little crab there on the rock.”
The player’s choice – not Lara’s
When Lara first gets her hands on a machine gun for the first time, there is a scene where she has to explode her way through a window. The explosion traps an enemy under some rubble and he asks Lara to kill him. “A lot of players characterize it as something Lara did, that she killed this guy, but she doesn’t really. You can leave him there,” Hughes says. If you don’t kill him, he will call to his friends ruining your ambush. This is something that wasn’t in the original plan for the area, but was added because it presented players with an interesting choice, rather than having them simply watch Lara make choices without their input.
Up next: The secret behind the man in the cave, the last GPS cache, and Tomb Hanks.
Click on the banner below to enter our hub for exclusive content covering Rise of the Tomb Raider.
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Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons - director Josef Fares talks up Starbreeze's gorgeous fable
Starbreeze used to be the AAA market's guns for hire - now they're making games for themselves.
Starbreeze used to be the AAA market's guns for hire - now they're making games for themselves. Curious, charming and mechanically novel games, in fact, like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. For a Starbreeze game, there's a notable lack of shivving involved, as you steer two brothers on a quest to retrieve medicine for their dying father. You control each brother simultaneously using the thumbsticks of a control pad, and each reacts to the world in a different way, with the game asking you to navigate its obstacles through a peculiar and innovative form of asymmetrical self-cooperation. But it's more than a puzzler; every interaction describes the touching co-dependence of the siblings and their individual personalities with surprising power and elegance.
It's a project conceived and helmed by Josef Fares: a Swedish-Lebanese film director of some repute. He's also a self-professed hardcore gamer and a hyper-charismatic cocksure loudmouth - I mean that in the nicest possible sense. On publisher interference: “It's gonna be on my terms or it's not going to happen.” Kinect and Move: “Bullshit.” David Cage's games: “Films are films and games are games. We need to find our own way of making story in games.” Max Payne: “After one hour you've played it already.” His own game: “If you don't feel what I'm talking about and the uniqueness of it, you can kick me in the face.” He's a man not short of opinions - but, hey, they're all the right ones.
First of all, how's this going to work with a mouse and keyboard?
It's not. I mean it will work on a keyboard but I think at the same time you need to have a controller. It's very important. We're going to put a big sign up saying that you need to use a controller, because it's so based on a controller experience. Peter Molyneux talks shit when he says the controller has had its time. I don't agree with him at all. I respect him and the games he's done but... I have opinions about everything.
So, no Kinect support then?
Oh that's shit. Kinect and Move are bullshit. For me it's bullshit. It's like shit. Shitty products. Although, it's true that if the latency wasn't there then it could be interesting.
Presumably making a game is a departure for you as a film-maker, but Brothers is also a departure for Starbreeze - most of their games involve people being stabbed or shot. How did you convince them?
Yeah, this is quite different to what they did before. I had two prototypes, I had a solid idea which they liked and I had a great team who strongly believed in the game. And I think they wanted to do something new and different, so it's not going to be a typical Starbreeze game I guess. And I'm a quite convincing guy obviously.
Oh, clearly! So what originally drew you to the project?
Well, first of all, I love games. From a creative perspective there's so many things to explore. And I love the old RPG era, the 16-bit era - that's probably one of the reasons it's top down - but I also wanted to do something unique that feels fresh and different. The idea of controlling two characters hasn't been done before quite like it is in this game. No-one's taken it this far. So this unique simultaneous mechanic feels new to play. But the most important part is that the player should feel an emotional connection: Big Brother on the left hand and Little Brother on the right hand. So that's the more important issue. I can't tell you what happens in the game but I'm quite sure when you play through this game you will feel something different that you've never experienced. I've never read any book about design or anything. We don't have a game designer. It's like: within the group we talk about things, then we do what we want and that's it. Nobody's interfering with us, not our publisher publisher, nothing, nobody. This is a totally passion project.
It's interesting that you as a film-maker mention the mechanics first, rather than the narrative. Were novel mechanics key?
Oh definitely, more than story. I think films are films and games are games. Most of the examples we have from filmmakers coming to film I think are mostly a PR trick. They're not really hardcore gamers. Many people out there thought that I'd make a Heavy Rain or Walking Dead but those games... To be honest with you, I put Heavy Rain on easy mode because I don't wanna... [Gesticulates as though waggling the Sixaxis during a laborious QTE.] With Walking Dead most of the time I'm hardly controlling it and just pushing a button. So I appreciate them, but I would definitely not choose them as the game of the year, because even if I enjoyed them, it's not the future.
For me I love the interactiveness of gaming. That was the main issue, trying to make Brothers as interactive as possible. But where we are inspired by film is in the way a character starts somewhere and grows into something else. That's in Brothers as well, but it's an interactive experience, it's subtle. You actually play the evolution of your character. An example is that the mother has drowned in an accident, and Little Brother sees that. So when you come to water Little Brother refuses to swim. So you connect it: he's afraid of water because he saw his mother drown, so you have to get him to hold onto Big Brother to swim. You see what I mean? We're trying to make a gameplay out of the narrative all the time. That interactivity, that's what's important to me, truly. People should stop comparing games with films. Films are films and games are games. We need to find out own way of making story in games.
Do you have a particular audience in mind for Brothers?
I'm trying to reach everyone! But I think hardcore gamers will appreciate this for its uniqueness and I think casual games will find it a comfortable experience - it's not so hard to play. It's not that long, I suppose, but the game is as long as it needs to be. I think many games are too long and people focus too much attention on the time it takes to complete a game. I don't care about time, I care about the experience. Most games re-use so much stuff it gets boring. I mean, Max Payne 3 - after one hour you've played it already. You just keep doing the same stuff. Hitman too.
I'd have paid more to play less of those games.
Yeah, that's not value for money, I think, sitting for ten hours and just playing the same thing. It's just waste of time.
I saw an interview with you you where you said that you thought that indie developers were the only people pushing the medium forward. Could you say a little bit about where you think the medium is going and which indie games you admire?
Well, I love Journey of course, and I really appreciate Papa & Yo - what it's trying to do even if it isn't executed perfectly. I always try to support and buy those games because in the future those are the games I think will revolutionise the industry. I'm not saying that we should stop doing Call of Duty or Far Cry or GTA or Max Payne or whatever. Those games are great too, and we need to have both. But I think that as hardcore gamers won't be able to play Call of Duty 50 in the future - we'll get tired of it, and we'll need something new and these [indie games] are the games that are going to change that. We have to understand that this is not an industry where we're creating boxes in a factory - we're creating art here. Sure it's a business, sure we have to respect the economy and put money behind it, but we have to understand that we are also working with art here. We have to meet in the middle and understand how much money we have and what kind of game we can do. A good company can do that.
So how come Starbreeze aren't being crippled by publisher interference? How do get those terms?
Well, they own their IP and to be honest I don't think I'd work with them otherwise. [Hands-off publishers] 505 Games are great because they can go, “No-one is interfering with this, this is a passion project.” I don't let anyone interfere. It's important to stop saying that this is how a game should be, or how it should be designed. That's bullshit. The industry is too early to decide what a good game is and what's not. We should be open and try new things all the time. In films you have some more distinct rules because we've tried a lot of stuff, but in games you don't. It's an open platform, there's so much creativity to explore.
If this becomes a success and a publisher asks me to make another game, I'll tell them: sure, but only if you don't put one thing in it. It's a discussion between me and my team and that's it. It's gonna be on my terms or it's not going to happen. But at the same time I have respect for money; I'm very good at delivering on time, and I've always done that in all the films I've made. They've made a lot of money and they've always been done on time, even under budget. So I understand the role of publishers, but they have to respect my role.
Are you a control freak?
A little bit yeah [laughs]. You need to be a little bit stupid and crazy to be in my job. I can piss people off sometimes, you know, but it's okay.
Now there's a Rocket League/Dying Light crossover
Well, I sure wish I'd saved my Frankenstein joke from this morning's Rocket League basketball post .
. Now I'll have to limit myself to expressing facts. Ugh . Because no tie-in is sacred, there is now a Rocket League/Dying Light crossover, apparently in acknowledgement of the fact that Dying Light: The Followinghas dirt buggies. I haven't played Dying Light, so I can't confirm if they're rocket-powered goal-scoring dirt buggies, but for my own sanity I'm going to go assume that they are.
If you feel the compulsion to take up the offer, enter the code 'LightMyRocket' hereto get the Dying Light buggy with the Rocket League paint job. As for Rocket League players, there is "Dying Light inspired stuff" on the way, and it doesn't get more specific than that. Maybe it will mean fewer Batmobilesrattling around though.
Take A 30-Minute Behind-The-Scenes Tour Of No Man's Sky
No Man's Sky is one of the most ambitious games ever made and we're excited to feature it as our cover story for the January issue .
. The small team out of Guildford, England is using procedural generation to create an entire galaxy worth of planets, asteroids, and space stations to explore. While visiting the studio, we sat down with the founder of Hello Games Sean Murray to learn about the tools, math, and science behind the game. We should stress that this video is captured from an older version of No Man's Sky and Murray is often using a debug camera and has access to tools that players will never see. Also, if you enjoy this long-form discussion with Sean Murray, feel free to watch his conversation with the CEO of Insomniac Games Ted Price from E3.
Watch the video below to see more from the game and learn about the technology that has allowed Hello Games to create an entire galaxy (or watch it on YouTube). To learn more about the gameplay itself, check out the latest issue of Game Informer.
Click on the banner below to enter our hub for No Man's Sky that will be updating throughout the month with exclusive features on the game.
Losing your ship in No Mans Sky is a ball ache but part of the game
Now it's all well and good flitting around the procedurally-generated universe of No Man's Sky , happily naming planets after unmentionable body parts and mining resources with your Swiss Army knife-esque multitool , but what happens of you manage to lose your intergalactic ride? In an interview in the latest issue of Edge, Hello Games MD Sean Murray reveals most players lose track of their ship within
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons' clever control scheme detailed in new video
I have to keep reminding myself that Starbreeze are behind this interesting Fable-esque fantasy adventure, because it couldn't be more unlike their previous work, lacking as it is in gravel-voiced action heroes, lens flare or cyberpunks.
I have to keep reminding myself that Starbreeze are behind this interesting Fable-esque fantasy adventure, because it couldn't be more unlike their previous work, lacking as it is in gravel-voiced action heroes, lens flare or cyberpunks. For Brothers: A Tale of Two Sonsthey've teamed up with Josef Fares, one of Sweden's biggest film directors (Sweden, feel free to correct me on that), who you can see in the following video holding a PS3 controller and explaining the game's novel control scheme. More details on that there control scheme below.
I'm not entirely sure how this is going to work on PC, but you control one brother with the left analogue stick, and the other with the right - a bit like Overlord and its minions, but seemingly far less annoying, if this video is any indication. Doubtless we'll be able to plug in a controller and play it that way too, but I do wonder how this multi-tasking is going to work with a keyboard/mouse combo.
Regardless, Brothers looks rather lovely, with a beautiful world to run around in and with expressive, detailed character animation. I particularly like how each of the brothers has their own unique way of interacting with things, the younger brother for instance cheekily slapping people on the bum to get their attention. That didn't work out so well for me when I tried it at the local post office, but then I've only a week of community service left. Brothers is due out this Spring on Steam (so pretty soon, in other words) - and here's a famous Swede putting it through its paces.
(Ta, Eurogamer)
The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine release date may have slipped out
Blood and Wine, the second and final Witcher 3: Wild Hunt DLC, will be out on “07 czerwca 2016,” if the Polish gaming site GRYOnline is to be believed.
is to be believed. And that, according to Google translate and WCCFTech, which captured a screen of the listing before it was deleted, means June 7.
That's far from official, of course, but it does fall within the “first half of 2016” window that CD Projekt has been bandying about since late last year. It's also very near the end of that period, and since the studio cited that target as recently as a couple of days ago on Twitter, it's not unreasonable to expect that this leaked date is probably at least close to the mark.
Blood and Wine is set in the previously unseen realm of Touissant, a nation within Nilfgaard that harbors a dark and bloody secret. CD Projekt says it will add another 20 hours of play to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but aside from that, and a pair of screens it released in December, it's remained entirely mum about what's coming.
I've emailed the studio to ask if this date is accurate. I don't expect anyone to confirm it one way or the other but on the off-chance it happens, I'll let you know.
70 Questions And Answers About No Man's Sky
No Man's Sky presents players with a practically infinite galaxy to explore.
No Man's Sky presents players with a practically infinite galaxy to explore. Needless to say, this raises a few questions. In an attempt to clear up exactly what this ambitious game is and isn't capable of presenting to players, Game Informer's Jeff Cork sat down with Hello Games founder Sean Murray to find the limits of No Man's Sky. If you're hungry for more, you can read our February cover story in the magazineto learn more about gameplay.
Watch the video below to hear a barrage of rapid-fire questions and answers and get a better idea of what is possible within No Man's Sky.
Click on the banner below to enter our hub of exclusive content for No Man's Sky that will be updating throughout the month.
Syndicate devs developing Storm, a co-op sci-fi FPS
Syndicate and Chronicles of Riddick developer Starbreeze Studios recently updated their website, posting details of an upcoming, and previously unanounced, sci-fi shooter, titled Storm.
Syndicate and Chronicles of Riddick developer Starbreeze Studios recently updated their website, posting details of an upcoming, and previously unanounced, sci-fi shooter, titled Storm. Details are extremely limited for now, with the game's pagesaying only, "Currently in development. Co-op Sci Fi FPS. It is our future." There's also a picture. It shows pipes, gantries and a complete lack of any other defining features.
Launch platforms, or even the vaguest of release dates, are still unknown. VG247are speculating that Storm may have ties to the previously announced free-to-play game, Cold Mercury. That title went MIA, with doubts cast over its release when the CEO of Starbreeze told Edgethat, "We're never going to do free-to-play, because then you have to cater to everyone out there – that's costly and it's hard."
Also listed on the site are Payday 2, being developed by the now Starbreeze owned Overkill Software, and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, a collaboration with director Josef Fares. That latter game is looking to be quite a departure for the shooter-obsessed studio.
In fact, I've just realised that back in March last year, Tom Senior promised to eat a mysteriously placed forkif the project - then codenamed P13 - wasn't a shooter. Let's hope he kept it around.
Thanks, Eurogamerand PlaySyndicate.
The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine release date may have slipped out
Blood and Wine, the second and final Witcher 3: Wild Hunt DLC, will be out on “07 czerwca 2016,” if the Polish gaming site GRYOnline is to be believed.
is to be believed. And that, according to Google translate and WCCFTech, which captured a screen of the listing before it was deleted, means June 7.
That's far from official, of course, but it does fall within the “first half of 2016” window that CD Projekt has been bandying about since late last year. It's also very near the end of that period, and since the studio cited that target as recently as a couple of days ago on Twitter, it's not unreasonable to expect that this leaked date is probably at least close to the mark.
Blood and Wine is set in the previously unseen realm of Touissant, a nation within Nilfgaard that harbors a dark and bloody secret. CD Projekt says it will add another 20 hours of play to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but aside from that, and a pair of screens it released in December, it's remained entirely mum about what's coming.
I've emailed the studio to ask if this date is accurate. I don't expect anyone to confirm it one way or the other but on the off-chance it happens, I'll let you know.
Tiny Brains gameplay demo
Four mice with psychokinetic powers, working in tandem to escape from a lab. Need we say more? OK, fine. Tiny Brains was one of our favorite indie surprises for E3 2013: a four-player cooperative puzzler made by a new team of industry veterans, Spearhead Games. Players must work together (or scream at each other) in the effort to effectively utilize their lab rat's special ability as they traverse
Best singleplayer of the year: XCOM: Enemy Within
Welcome to the PC Gamer Game of the Year Awards 2013.
Welcome to the PC Gamer Game of the Year Awards 2013. For an explanation of how the awards were decided, a round-up of all the awards and the list of judges, check here.
2013's expansion, Enemy Within, has only deepened Enemy Unknown's excellent campaign. XCOM's narrative arc remains unchanged, but between the necessary story missions there's great scope for expression in the management of your band of battle brothers and sisters. The bonds you form with your troops - and the shock when they meet a messy end - form the highs and lows of a player-authored narrative worthy of our game of the year award for Best Singleplayer.
EVAN I feel like I'm sitting across a table from someone clever as I play XCOM, and I think that speaks to how well Firaxis create a relationship between you and your campaign. Depending on a turn outcome, I'll see my unseen enemy commander as lucky, or dastardly, or cowardly. XCOM also – unlike plenty of modern games – implements meaningful difficulty (and Second Wave) settings that increase the ownership you feel.
CHRIS I gravitate to singleplayer games that make me feel like it matters that it's me playing. That's why XCOM has absorbed so much of my time – each of my campaigns is shaped by my ideas, creativity, skill and ineptitude. Mostly the latter. Whether I'm doing a run where all my soldiers are named after colleagues and wear PCG red or one where I take it seriously and let stories emerge from the soldiers the game generates for me, it's deeply involving in a way that scripted singleplayer experiences just aren't.
TYLER Playing XCOM reminds me of being a kid with toy soldiers, my plastic squad advancing from tissue box to Lego castle, chattering about “damned Nazis” and who should “take the shot” with bravado inspired by every war movie I'd seen. I gave them names and personalities, I made them kill, die, and mourn each other – “Noooooooo!”
The XCOM experience shares that playful melodrama, creativity, and choreographed tactics (though when I was a kid no one buried my dead soldiers and told me I couldn't play with them anymore). And Enemy Within is like pouring a tub of new bits into my toy set. The gene mods and MEC Troopers aren't just about gaining a tactical advantage, they're about telling new stories by snapping on extra bits to my action figures. The Exalt missions are tactically satisfying to play, but more important to me, they're new chances for heroes to emerge and sacrifices to be made. With Enemy Within, XCOM is my current favourite toy bin.
CORY I love how it ramps up the number of choices you need to make, especially early on. Do you devote your resources to building MEC suits or gene labs, at the cost of diminishing your satellite expansion? Can you really wait to create MEC Troopers, knowing you'll get better bonuses for captains instead of squaddies? Even in early missions, I have to decide if it's worth rushing the field to get to Meld containers. risking an alien ambush, instead of methodically progressing through a map. Strategy games are better when you have to make tough choices, and Enemy Within introduces so many of them.
TOM It's the miraculous thing about games, that we can derive human drama from cold mathematics. Why care when a squaddie – a mere computerised packet of values – gets melted by an alien in battle? The fantasy of XCOM is one factor, communicated by a timeless artstyle. Mostly, it's about investment: the resources you pour into the development of your soldiers, and the time you spend with them from battle to battle. In the genetic modifications and giant robot mech suits, Enemy Within gives you more ways to invest in your team, strengthening those bonds and squeezing more drama out of its perfectly paced campaign.
New Super Luigi U DLC dated, as is The Wonderful 101
New Super Luigi U, Nintendo's huge, game-sized DLC for New Super Mario Bros. U , will be released on June the 20th, Nintendo has confirmed via today's Nintendo Direct presentation. In addition to the standard download, the content will also be available as a standalone disc release a month later on July the 26th. In addition, Nintendo announced an August the 23rd release date for Platinum Games' The
Galactic Map Puts Scale Of No Man’s Sky In Perspective
One of my favorite parts about working at Game Informer is diving into cover stories for the magazine.
One of my favorite parts about working at Game Informer is diving into cover stories for the magazine. Most of the time, the games that appear on the front of our issues are big announcements from equally big studios or the next installments of popular franchises. Those stories are great – and I enjoy working on them – but I was particularly excited when I learned a few months ago that we were going to be putting No Man’s Sky on the cover. I knew the team at Hello Games a little, and I was desperate to learn more about their ambitious space-exploration…thing. What was it exactly? Well, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to go on the trip.
I’d gotten a demo of the game at E3, and I left with as many questions as I had before entering their hotel suite. We got the answers to many of them during our trip to Guildford, England last month, and you can read about it all in our most recent issue. One of the things that I didn’t get a sense of beforehand was just how massivethe game’s procedurally generated galaxy was. As Hello Games’ co-founder and managing director Sean Murray pointed out to us later, we, as humans, just aren’t good at contextualizing numbers past a certain point.
The scale of No Man’s Sky’s galaxy is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Murray says it’s filled with hundreds of millions of stars. That sounds like, well, a lot. And it is. Without any context, however, I didn’t quite get a sense of what that meant. That’s where the game’s galaxy map comes in. This might sound like an odd – and frankly, boring – thing to focus on, but after getting a tour of the map, it’s a fundamental part of understanding much of how the game works.
The game models an entire galaxy with hundreds of millions of stars, so it wouldn’t be possible (or make sense) to have a hand-drawn map like in an RPG. Murray gave us a tour of the galaxy using the map, which serves as a way to scout out the immediate cluster of stars ahead of you and your ship. Explorers can use it to plot their next course of action; ships can warp from star to star once their hyperdrives are upgraded. If someone’s been to a planet before you – which will be extremely unlikely for quite some time – you can see what its name is, what types of resources it’s home to, and other points of interest.
When you zoom out, that’s when the fun begins. Each star – and remember, there are hundreds of millions of them in No Man’s Sky’s unnamed galaxy – is orbited by anywhere from about five to a dozen or more planets. Each one of those planets, which has been generated using a complex algorithm, is the size of a planet that you might find in our own solar system; don’t expect Mario Galaxy-scaled spheroids.
The galaxy map is a real-time rendering of the game’s actual galaxy, which allows for something I geeked out on. As Murray zoomed seamlessly from a planet’s surface to the map (using debug tools), he pointed out a really cool detail. “If you were watching real close you’d see that some of these stars are some of the same stars that are visible [the planet’s] night sky,” he said. “That’s because this is a real thing when you are in space looking up or when it’s night time and you see stars overhead. Those are real places.”
Murray zoomed through the galaxy at a ridiculous speed, and tiny pinpoints of light – vast solar systems that we could all explore – whizzed past. He says that players will be able to see about 10,000 stars on the map at any given moment, and seeing them onscreen made even that comparatively modest figure seem impossibly large.
During our demo of the map, Murray acknowledged a potential problem with its scale that we didn’t anticipate. It turns out, they didn’t think about it at first, either. “There will actually be a thing that I never thought we would need, but then as soon as we put in the galactic map and started using it, it was like, ‘Oh we need this.’ We're going to have a minimap for the galactic map down in the bottom left. Because right now I can't tell my orientation. And I can get lost; I can just kind of go down here, and now it's quite difficult for me to find the planet that I was just on. There will obviously be a button to send you back to where you are and a marker for that.”
A map within a map? Considering the size of the galaxy, pilots are going to need all the help they can get.
Click on the banner below to enter our hub for No Man's Sky that will be updating throughout the month with exclusive features on the game.
The PC Gamer Games of the Year 2013 award nominees
PC Gamer editors are prohibited from celebrating Christmas.
PC Gamer editors are prohibited from celebrating Christmas. For the team, the end of the year is marked by an event known as “GOTY Sleepover,” a time where we somewhat-voluntarily sequester ourselves away from our families and loved ones in the interest of a greater good: selecting the best PC games of the year. We gather in a room with a very heavy door and very little ventilation and stay there until we've reached a unanimous decision on every award category. It's a lot like the Papal conclave, but with more Cheetos.
So far, this is what we've got. These are games nominated for awards in general, not just our single Game of the Year . Consider this a short-list of the games our team loved in 2013, one we'll whittle down into proper, named awards in the coming days.
Check in each day over the holiday break to see who's victorious. In the meantime, here's our 2012 winnersand some lively year-end video conversationsabout our best PC gaming experiences in 2013.
The Path To No Man's Sky's 'End Game'
When I talk about No Man’s Sky, either on the site or with friends, I typically get one of two reactions.
When I talk about No Man’s Sky, either on the site or with friends, I typically get one of two reactions. It’s either, “That sounds cool,” or “That sounds cool, but what’s the point?” I get it; a lot of people like to play games with a greater purpose in mind. They want to rescue a princess or kill the bad guy or save the universe – possibly even all three at once. Hello Games’ spacefaring adventure isn’t easily explained, and the fact that the studio doesn’t want to reveal all of its secrets doesn’t make it any easier. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a goal in the game, for people who want more than simply idling through space, scanning planets, and gathering minerals. There’s a central mystery at the center of the game’s galaxy, and we’re sharing all we currently know about it.
Hello Games’ co-founder Sean Murray doesn’t enjoy talking about things like goals and objectives when it comes to No Man’s Sky, but he gets it. People have been trained to play games with certain expectations. As he points out, however, you don’t often hear people talking about beating Minecraft when they’re discussing the game. Sure, you can acquire the materials required to go to that game’s ending area, The End, and slay the Ender Dragon, but that’s not why most people are addicted to the game. Similarly, Murray loves the idea of exploring space, dogfighting enemy ships, and discovering things that nobody has seen – and may never see again. And you can do that indefinitely in No Man’s Sky. If you absolutely need closure, though, it’s in the game. Here’s a broad look at the basic loop of No Man’s Sky, for people who are determined to see the end credits. In other words, here’s “The Point” of the game, for those of you who need it.
1. The Outer Ring
You begin the game on a planet, one of hundreds of millions that circle the outer edges of the galaxy. It’s assigned to you randomly, and the odds that you’ll be someplace that another player has set foot on is infinitesimal. If you take a short walk from your starting position, you’ll come upon your first spaceship. It’s slow and weak, but it’ll allow you to get off the planet’s surface and into orbit, where you’ll chart your next move.
Pulling up the galaxy mapwill provide a better view of your relative position in the galaxy. Your starting planet is one of several in a solar system. Each procedurally generated planet is home to one of several resources, which have their own value depending on its scarcity. When you’re on a planet’s surface, you can scan your surroundings. Valuable commodities are highlighted by a grid-like overlay. Blasting the resources with your multitool harvests them. You can sell your finds at space stations – every solar system has one – or deposit them at trading posts that dot some planets’ surfaces. When you have enough money, you can buy additional fuel for your ship. You’ll need that for the next step in your journey.
XCOM: Enemy Within hands-on - encountering new enemies in Operation Devil's Giant
POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT - this reveals a new type of alien for turn-based tactical add-on, XCOM: Enemy Within.
- this reveals a new type of alien for turn-based tactical add-on, XCOM: Enemy Within. If you've already decided that you're getting the expansion and would rather encounter and adapt to it yourself, give this preview a miss. This hands-on focuses on one particular encounter, for additional in-depth overview of Enemy Within's new features, you can also check out our other hands-on account.
All rise to salute the fallen. Sergeant Balls, start the bagpipes. AHEM. Lt. April "Congo" Palmer, slain by a Floater's light plasma rifle in Operation Devil's Giant. Eleven kills to her name. Squaddie Eric Stevens, mauled to death trying to taser a Chryssalid at melee range during Operation Flying Skull. My, my, what a mess that was. Lt. Shaojie Zhang, slain by a Thin Man at range in Operation Dark Vanguard. Rookie Dieter Kohler, strangled to death by a flying metal octopus During Operation Devil's Giant.
Wait, flying metal octopus? Balls, stop the bagpipes. Colonel Jenkins, stop crying. Nobody told me anything about a flying goddamn octopus .
INCIDENT DEBRIEF - OPERATION DEVIL'S GIANT
COMMANDING SOLDIER - April Palmer
PALMER: Responding to reports of alien abductions on Australian soil, we tracked down alien signatures to a small garage. We deployed from the Skyranger in a fan formation and commenced a sweep of the area.
OFFICER: And that's when you saw them, Lieutenant?
PALMER: Yes, sir. They were scouting the parking lot and cloaked when they detected us. A pair of giant flying metal goddamn octopuses, sir.
OFFICER: My god. How did you proceed?
PALMER: We deployed Lt. Ben Hudson and consolidated inside his protective distortion field.
OFFICER: How is Hudson coping with having no arms or legs?
PALMER: He screams whenever he sees his reflection, sir, but he says that putting on a giant mech suit with an on-board flamethrower is excellent therapy.
OFFICER: And then what happened, Lieutenant?
PALMER: Three Mutons burst through a door and a pair of Floaters attacked from the rooftop. Our sniper on overwatch nailed one of the flyers and Hudson used his flamethrower to waste an area, pushing the Mutons back behind some nearby vehicles. He then used his 'collateral damage' attack to destroy their cover. The cover was explosive cars, which exploded. The Mutons did not survive.
OFFICER: And on a scale of one to badass, how badass was this?
PALMER: This was actually extremely badass, sir.
OFFICER: And that's when they octopus attacked?
PALMER: One of them decloaked right next to Rookie Kohler, siezed his throat with its tentacles, and began to strangle him, sir. This seems to be their primary mode of attack. They seem to intentionally target the weak or the isolated, attack them, cloak again and resume hunting. Kohler, he'd already taken a hit from that damn floater. He ... he didn't make it, sir.
OFFICER: Other witnesses have described their methods as "balls-out terrifying". Would you concur?
PALMER: Yes sir, these new enemies are absolute bastards. They're an efficient counter to overstretched squads that might be rushing to activate those new Meld canisters in the field. They know we need them to power our mechs and genetic augmentations, and they know that we'll be rushing to get Meld before the canisters expire.
OFFICER: It's almost as though whoever designed these damn squid really knows what they're doing.
PALMER: Affirmative. the presence of these octo-squid, or "Seekers" as our scientists call them, slowed the team down considerably. We needed to put more soldiers on stationary overwatch to try and kill them as they decloaked. There's good news from the science labs, though. They've come up with tech that can inflate internal breathing tubes to fend off strangulation, and developed armour that electrocutes the bastards.
OFFICER: The amount of new research our scientists have been doing into cybernetic research and genetic modification is impressive, Lieutenant. We're particularly taken with the needle grenades that respect cover, but painfully disrespect anything fleshy trapped in the blast radius, and the invisibility grenade, of course, but I question their invention of the battle-fedora that assault soldier Lorenzo "The Hat" Ricci seems so fond of.
PALMER: It's my belief that the addition of the battle-fedora is mission critical, sir.
OFFICER: I hear that you dealt with the remaining X-Rays admirably, and got the rest of your squad back safely, thank god. How did you fare fighting in unfamiliar territory?
PALMER: It was a pleasure, sir. Recently, the aliens haven't just been attacking warehouses, forests and dime stores. We've taken on the alien threat in new urban areas, graveyards in the far-east, radar stations, farmlands and industrial piers. The multi-tiered battle zones offer plenty of raised sniping spots, and our assault soldiers just love dashing through those close interiors. There's also been a great variety of missions from the very moment he aliens invaded, and we were able to quickly draw up the specs needed to field mechs and genetically modded soldiers quickly.
OFFICER: Very good. But what can you tell me about that other incident, on that pier.
PALMER: The one with the whale , sir?
OFFICER: That's right, Lieutenant, that's exactly the one I mean.
PALMER: Well, sir, we were responding to an emergency contact when --[REDACTED]--
[REMAINING INTERVIEW CLASSIFIED PENDING COUNCIL REVIEW]
New Super Mario Bros. U Luigi DLC is the size of a full game
Some of the most exciting news out of today's 3DS-focused Nintendo Direct presentations doesn't relate to Nintendo's handheld at all. Rather, it seems that Nintendo's home console DLC plans have stepped up a gear, with the announcement of New Super Luigi U for New Super Mario Bros. U . The goliath DLC removes Mario from the equation, bringing the other brother in as hero with his own set of levels
Gametech 2012: Ian Livingstone versus the future of videogames
Spanning over two days, Gametech gave dozens of hungry minds plenty of food for thought, with the main course coming from keynote speaker Ian Livingstone. The Life President of Eidos, Livingstone has consistently been a key figure throughout the history of gaming, from co-founding Games Workshop and distributing Dungeons and Dragons in 1975, right through to his later involvement with the Tomb Raider
Nintendo going all-out for the Mario Kart 8 launch
With Nintendo Wii U sales flagging, the Japanese publisher is pulling out all the stops to make sure that the Mario Kart 8 launch boosts console sales as much as possible.
Anyone who buys Mario Kart 8 before July 31 via retail or the eShop, gets another Wii U eShop game for free, from a selection that includes New Super Mario Bros. U, Pikmin 3, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD and Wii Party U .
And an official Mario Kart 8 bundle will also be available next month, featuring a Wii U Deluxe system, Mario Kart 8 , a Wii Wheel accessory and a Wii Remote Plus controller. The bundle will cost $329.99.
The above Nintendo Direct also launched today, detailing much new information about the game, such as new items and the Mario Kart TV highlights recording functionality. Mario Kart 8 is due to launch on May 30.
PC Gamer Podcast #365 - Ghost Grenade Dad
We're back!
We're back! After a few weeks of work on special operations, we found a moment to catch us (and you) up on October and November's big games: XCOM: Enemy Within, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Battlefield 4.
Sprint across a flowered field and embrace PC Gamer Podcast 365 - Ghost Grenade Dad.
Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Send an MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com or call us toll-free at 877-404-1337 x724.
Subscribe to the podcast RSS feed.
@ELahti(Evan Lahti)
@tyler_wilde(Tyler Wilde)
@demiurge(Cory Banks)
Video: How modular design made Kerbal Space Program possible
"The real benefit was that we only had one module to check in order to debug every one in the game." - Kerbal Space Program developer Chad Jenkins elucidates the value of building your game with reusable "modules" of code.
Squad technical artist Chad Jenkins spoke at length about how modular design principles made Kerbal Space Program possible as part of the Independent Games Summit at GDC 2014. Jenkins claims that investing time in building flexible, reusable content creation systems can help indie teams save a significant amount of time and effort remaking assets over and over again. During his talk he explained how Squad did just that, tossing out its original design structure and building one that enabled them to update and expand Kerbal Space Program with (relative) ease.
It's a good talk that sheds light on how the modular design of Kerbal made the game easier to mod and upgrade by both its developers and the players themselves, which ultimately contributed greatly to the game's commercial and critical success.
We've taken the liberty of embedding the free video of "Sandbox Lessons: Modular Design in Kerbal Space Program " above, but you can also watch it hereon the GDC Vault.
About the GDC VaultIn addition to this presentation, the GDC Vaultoffers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.
Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech
XCOM: Enemy Within trailer introduces the Exalt, hints at base defence missions
Here's a trailer that focuses on the Exalt: those covert enemy operatives that Tyler revealed in his XCOM: Enemy Within preview .
. They're an enemy within, you see. Within the expansion, within your species, and, as your trailer shows, within your own base. While the trailer consists entirely of cutscene, it does suggest that base defence missions could be making a return.
If that is the case, then hurrah, base defence! The original X-Com's alien infiltrations were an excellent way to escalate the danger of the mounting invasion. It's not quite clear how that would work given the new game's multi-level dioramas, but hopefully the engine can cope. I found XCOM: Enemy Unknown frequently buggy when it came to mouse selection during interior battles over multiple floors.
One of the confirmed Exalt interactions involves you sending counter-operatives to infiltrate their own hideouts. For more on this, head over to Tyler's hands-on report, where he takes you through the tactical choices at the heart of the conflict against these enemy cells.
How fast can you die in... New Super Mario Bros U?
The first goomba. Right? Surely the rapid appearance of the first goomba will mean Mario is about to top our HFCYDI leaderboard. Ah, but you're forgetting the rules. The rules of How Fast Can You Die In are (and I quote): " Lo the timer will ftart from the inftant the button if verily preffed to commence the game, not from the moment one affumef control of thyne avatar " (yes, they're quite old now). So that means unskippable cutscenes will eat into any attempt. But are these long enough to deny the plucky plumber from planting New Super Mario Bros U at the top of the table? Let's find out... Enjoyed that? Then check out the rest of our HFCYDI videos and check back in a fortnight for the next one. It'll be a far cry from Mario, that's for sure...