Tom Clancy's The Division gets new story trailer revealed at Ubisoft E3 event

Ubisoft showed off new footage from Tom Clancy's The Division at E3 today.

today. As opposed to the gameplay we saw earlier todayat the Microsoft event, this trailer dove deep into the human stories that lie behind the broken buildings in the New York post-apocalypse.

Told through a stop-motion timelapse detailing the days and weeks following the release of the game's plot-driving virus. As a the world falls deeper into chaos, the story trailer shows members of the Division, civilian militia trained to secure the city on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, stepping in to stop some bad business.

The fact is, there's very little of this trailer that will translate directly into aspects of gameplay, but it's an interesting look at the tone and environment nonetheless. To see more details about how the game will actually play—as long as your co-op partners are well-rehearsed professionals, anyway—check out the gameplay trailer posted earlier today.

The Division was revealed last year and slated for release in early 2014, but it was pushed backto 2015 a couple of months ago.

Check out our continuing coverage of E3 here.

New Homefront trailer shows second American Revolution

The latest Homefront trailer shows the start of what Kaos Studios are calling the 'Second American Revolution".

The latest Homefront trailer shows the start of what Kaos Studios are calling the 'Second American Revolution". Judging from the trailer, it's likely to have more attack helicopters, armoured cars and rocket launchers than the first American Revolution, and a few more Koreans, too. Homefront has you playing a member of the American resistance in a dystopian future in which North and South Korea have united and formed a military state hell bent on oppressing the USA. You'll find the latest trailer embedded below.

Homefront will be invading our PCs on March 15 in the US and March 18 in Europe,with a few nifty PC-specific features, including dedicated servers and support for Nvidia's 3D technology. For more on the game, check out our preview, or head over to the official Homefrontsite. You'll find the trailer below, courtesy of Machinima.

[via RPS]

Duke Nukem is about fun, not being competitive says Pitchford

Talking to Gameshark , Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has said that the multiplayer component of Duke Nukem Forever is primarily about being fun, rather than the highly competitive nature that is frequently seen in titles such as Call of Duty.

“I think there are some people who play Call of Duty and Halo very competitively, but I think most players play to have a good time,” the Gearbox CEO told GameShark. “They're more casual about it." Read on for further insights from Pitchford.

“Those are great games for finding players and testing skills and having fun in the competition. Duke Nukem's multiplayer game is very specifically designed for the audience that prioritises entertainment and fun in their multiplayer games over all else.”

Pitchford went on to explain that his team deliberately focussed on on fun rather than tournament-ready balancing.

“Because [fun] was the goal, the priority of attention can be dedicated towards the rare and unique weapons and the support of so many different strategies rather than effort towards really competition oriented features that more than 90% of the players never notice or really need to worry about,” he said.

We'll be able to get our hands on the Duke and see just how far they've gone with the fun-factor when it's released on June 10.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris producer talks engine improvements, new scope

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris was one of the most unexpected announcements of this week's E3 , but already we've gotten to see a lot of gameplay.

, but already we've gotten to see a lot of gameplay. Scot Amos, executive producer for the new game, brought a four-player gameplay video with him to the Twitch E3 livestream on Wednesday and talked for a bit about the follow-up to the well-regarded Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.

The game is played from an overhead, isometric view, and in the flame-lit tunnels it looks like an updated, Lara Croft-themed remake of the classic Gauntlet arcade games. Lara and her partners explore the ruins of the Temple of Osiris, dual-wielding pistols and generally wrecking the place. Their anthropological caution, if nothing else, leaves something to be desired.

One of the first things that jumped out in the new footage was the dynamic lighting effects, perfect for gloomy ruins. “Lighting and atmospherics and effects, the things we can throw in screen for particle effects—those are things that we really want to take advantage of for next-gen consoles and high-end gaming PCs,” Amos said.

The dynamic lighting was on fine display as the four players worked to roll a ball-cage lit from within by magic fire. As the cage rolled across the level, the light and shadows spilled across the dirt floors. It looked pretty nice. More importantly, the cage was a solution to a sprawling navigation puzzle, a classic element of the Tomb Raider series since the beginning.

“There are asymmetric characters, and you have a variety,” Amos said. “Some people like puzzles, some people like combat. You can cooperate and compete according to what you like. That kind of activity happens between characters naturally.” The game will feature drop-in, drop-out multiplayer, and with four players working together, combat gets chaotic pretty fast.

“This is the action-adventure side of the Lara Croft franchise. We're looking at Guardians of Light as a blueprint for where we want to go in the future,” Amos concluded. Where Guardians featured a series of linear tombs, Osiris will include a unifying overworld that unites the ruins, letting players choose how to approach each mission and the story as a whole.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris was just announced, so we haven't heard a release date yet. Keep up with all of our E3 coverage here.

Homefront system specs revealed

THQ have released system specifications for their upcoming FPS, Homefront.

THQ have released system specifications for their upcoming FPS, Homefront. Find them below.

Minimum

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or AMD Athlon X2 2.8 GHz

RAM: 1Gb RAM (XP) or 2Gb RAM (VISTA/WIN 7)

OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7

Video Card: Shader Model 3.0 graphics card with 256Mb of memory (NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT or ATI Radeon 1600 XT)

Free Disk Space : 10Gb

Recommended

CPU: Quad Core CPU(AMD/Intel)

RAM: 1Gb RAM (XP) or 2 Gb RAM (VISTA/WIN 7)

OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 460/ATI Radeon HD 5700 or better

Free Disk Space: 10Gb

Will this be on your hard drive when it gets released in early March?

Duke Nukem Forever delayed, again

Yes, Duke Nukem Forever isn't getting released until June 14 in the US and June 10 for the rest of the world.

Duke. Offensiveor not so offensive, you're one tardy man.

Yes, Duke Nukem Forever isn't getting released until June 14 in the US and June 10 for the rest of the world. Last thing we heard, Duke was getting released in early May.

Randy Pitchford confirmed the delay on 2K's YouTube channel. Click more for the video.

Trine Surpasses 1.1 Million Sales On PCs, PSN, And OnLive

Homefront time-line details the invasion

THQ have launched an interactive time-linefor Homefront, which details the years leading up to the Korean invasion of America.

The time-line chronicles from 2010 through to 2027 (the year Homefront takes place), and includes a variety of artefacts such as newspaper cuttings and some Command and Conquer-like video clips. It's an entertaining feature for those interested in Homefront's alternative future.

Babe slapping in Duke Nukem: Gearbox head clarifies strength of gesture, anatomical target

Yesterday we reported on a multiplayer mode in the upcoming Duke Nukem Forever that plays like Capture the Flag, but features abductable women instead of flags.

on a multiplayer mode in the upcoming Duke Nukem Forever that plays like Capture the Flag, but features abductable women instead of flags. We also explained that the mode will allow you to slap the “babe” if she “freaks out.”

Since the story went live, Gearbox CEO, Randy Pitchford, has confirmed the direction of the gesture. Last night he tweeted“Get it right, folks! In the DNF MP game "Capture the Babe", Duke can give the girl a love smack on the booty - not face!” That still strikes us as creepy.

Official Xbox Magazinewere first to unveil the mode in their April issue, describing Capture the Babe as “Pretty much what you'd expect to see from a CTF-style mode, with one small touch: the “Babe” will sometimes freak out while you're carrying her (somewhat understandable we'd say) at which point you have to hit a button to gently give her a reassuring slap.”

The magazine also detailed four multiplayer modes which will support up to eight players each: Dukematch, Team Dukematch, Capture the Babe and Hail to the King. Duke Nukem Forever is due for release May 3, 2011.

Randy's clarification is welcome, but Duke is still capturing a woman and subduing her if she resists. If the “love smack” helps you to win the round, it's plain weird. If the “love smack” has no discernable effect, why is it there? So we can laugh at the "Babe" getting slapped before scoring a point?

Batman , Double Fine, Gravity Rush talks revealed for GDC 2012

Homefront's eight-hour campaign influenced by Half-Life

Homefront's single-player campaign will take players anything from eight hours to a full day, and is stylistically influenced by Valve's Half-Life series, comments Kaos' senior single-player designer Zach Wilson.

Homefront's single-player campaign will take players anything from eight hours to a full day, and is stylistically influenced by Valve's Half-Life series, comments Kaos' senior single-player designer Zach Wilson. Read on for the full story.

Talking to CVG, Wilson explained that: "We've been play-testing the game and we'll give the guys doing that the entire day, Some of them will get through it in eight hours, some of them will take longer than eight hours. There's a varying level of challenge depending on the skill of the player."

He added: "We've honestly seen players take more than an entire day play through the single-player campaign, sitting down and not doing anything else."

Encouragingly, Wilson also told CVG that Valve's Half-Life games were a big influence on their narrative approach. "Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are definitely the two big influences on the work that we've done. A lot of first-person shooters don't just let you walk through the world and appreciate the world. That's something that Half-Life 2 does really well."

Homefront's world looks like something that would be worth taking in, and being able to walk around and appreciate the setting would certainly be a large contributor to portraying the devastated society that Kaos seem to be aiming for. Players will be able to see just how successful Kaos have been with Homefront's campaign when the game launches on March 11.

Prey 2 teaser enhanced by MORE COWBELL

Perhaps you%26rsquo;ve seen the Prey 2 live-action teaser that posted today? It%26rsquo;s pretty awesome, yet its live action %26ldquo;Cloverfield on a Plane%26rdquo; approach seems to be operating under the faulty assumption we can clearly remember the events of a game we played half a decade ago. To better serve this anxiously awaited sequel, we went ahead and spiced it up using one of the original

Video: How Double Fine's 'Amnesia Fortnight' turned terror into triumph

According to Double Fine's Tim Schafer, "we live in crazy times." The game industry is being pulled in two directions, where big publishers are growing more enormous by the day, while independent teams are finding new ways to subvert the limitations of traditional businesses.

[Note: To access chapter selection, click the fullscreen button or check out the video on the GDC Vault website]



Mid-sized companies like Double Fine, then, are put in an awkward position, as they don't have the size to compete with the huge juggernauts, and lack the flexibility of the smaller indies. There's just less and less room for those in-between to find success, and just a few years ago, Schafer's studio realized it needed to try something new.

And at GDC 2012, Schafer and numerous other Double Fine employees hosted a presentation on a new approach to game production, dubbed "Amnesia Fortnight," which forgoes large-scale production in favor of something more suitable for a mid-sized team.

"We spent ten years as a one-team studio making one game at a time.. and it was very entrenched into our culture that that's the way we did things, but we managed to 'turn the battleship'... into a fleet of tugboats," Schafer said.

By splitting the studio into smaller, more agile teams, Double Fine was able to avoid the creative pitfalls of large-scale development, and release unusual downloadable titles like Costume Quest , Stacking , and Iron Brigade . These games were a drastic departure from full-scale console titles like Psychonauts or Brutal Legend , but they were essential in keeping Double Fine on its feet.

To learn more about Double Fine's new approach to development, be sure to check out the studio's full presentation, courtesy of GDC Vault.

Simply click the Play button above to start the video.
About the GDC VaultIn addition to all of this free content, the GDC Vault also offers more than 300 additional lecture videos and hundreds of slide collectionsfrom GDC 2012 for GDC Vault subscribers. GDC 2012 All Access pass holders already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription Beta via a GDC Vault inquiry form.

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. More information on this option is available via an online demonstration, and interested parties can send an email to Gillian Crowley. In addition, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault admins.

Be sure to keep an eye on GDC Vault for even more free content, as GDC organizers will also archive videos, audio, and slides from upcoming 2012 events like GDC Europe, GDC Online, and GDC China. To stay abreast of all the latest updates to GDC Vault, be sure to check out the news feed on the official GDC website, or subscribe to updates via Twitter, Facebook, or RSS.

Grey Goo launch trailer lays the foundation for the slimy RTS

The more I hear it, the more I like the name 'Grey Goo'.

The more I hear it, the more I like the name 'Grey Goo'. It's unusual. It sets this old-fashioned RTS apart from games called things Act of Missiles or Conquer & Sever or Eugene Crompton's War in the Maldives. Grey Goo. Grey Goo. Maybe it will be commercial suicide—we'll have to wait and see—but you've won me over, Petroglyph Games. Grey Goois out on January 23rd, and because it's not January 23rd yet, we can watch the launch trailer now.

Did you watch it? Yeah yeah, there's no game footage here, but you can easily find that on YouTube. Instead, the trailer gives context for the resource-focused war you're participating in, with the aid of Weta Workshop's accomplished CGI-ing. Would you look at all the pores on that alien guy! And really, any game featuring a scene where troops fire on a giant sentient blob is alright by me.

Grey Goo is being made by a lot of ex-Westwood Studios folks, and Rob Zacny was pretty impressedwith it when he went hands on back in December.

Before and after: the games that changed during development

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The story of the first Warcraft multiplayer game... ever

Grey Goo adds a fourth faction in free "Descent of the Shroud" DLC

The old-school RTS Grey Goo has added a fourth faction by way of the Descent of the Shroud expansion that went live today .

. The Shroud are a destructive alien life form who have come to Ecosystem 09 to feed off its energy, and destroy the Human, Beta, and Goo forces that are already there.

The Shroud's units “look and behave differently” than those of the other factions, with a focus on stealth and deception. The Mimic, for instance, will change appearance to blend in with, and spy on, enemy forces, while the Klaxon looks like a slow-moving armored unit but can “charge at and damage your units in a split-second.” Shroud units and structures also have the ability to evolve on the fly; the first of the Dirge's three stages is relatively weak, but “its final form can end a game in a matter of minutes.”

Descent of the Shroud actually went live just a couple of hours ago—1 pm EST, to be precise—and it's free for everyone who already owns Grey Goo. For those who don't, it's also available as part of the newly (and permanently) discounted Grey Goo Definitive Edition, which includes the base game, the Emergence campaign, and the soundtrack, for $30/£23. The Definitive Edition also adds three new units—the Human Valiant, the Beta Squall, and the Goo Siphon—a new “Herald of Silence” mission, new Shroud-related achievements, and “an extensive gameplay balance overhaul.”

Game levels that look like anuses

There are many examples of game level archetypes that designers go back to again and again. How many Sewers, Ice Worlds or Warehouse Maps have you experienced in your gaming life? We have a new one to add to the list: Giant Anuses. Think back on it and you’ll be surprised at how many hulking butt holes you’ve slogged through. Game characters find themselves neck-deep in monster rectum with alarming frequency. Don’t believe us? We have proof on video, just click play below. Here at GamesRadar, we strive to distill videogaming into its pure forms, unfiltered by corporate interest and unfettered by religious prudery. This video contains imagery that may be considered offensive , so if you are under 18 or wilt easily DO NOT WATCH - Ed. Jan 22, 2009

Tetris Mobile Games Achieve 100 Million Downloads

Grey Goo free to try this weekend on Steam

Grey goo is free to try this weekend, but then, when is it not?

Grey goo is free to try this weekend, but then, when is it not? Simply go out into the street and taste that squishy thing on the pavement—or, better yet, don't ever do that. Wait. Please stop. However, Grey Goo the game is only free to try this weekend , because, you see, Petroglyph's RTS is having a free weekend on Steam.

You know how Steam's free weekends work by now, I'm sure. Valve automatically, and slightly annoyingly, adds said game/s to your library, and then you look at the size of the download and never install it. Or, if you're not me, maybe you give it a go.

It might be worth it this time, as Ian Birnbaum rather liked the old-fashioned RTS when he reviewed it back in January. Grey Goo has since been expanded with the 'Emergence' campaignwhich, like the main game, is currently 60% cheaper for the next few days.

Five rules for introducing your girlfriend to gaming

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MechWarrior Online competitive Tournament Series starts Sunday

Now that private matchmaking has been firmly bolted in place, MechWarrior Online's first official competitive event is set to launch Sunday.

first official competitive event is set to launch Sunday. It's been dubbed Tournament Series: First Engagementand will to pit 12-man teams against each other across a variety of maps and game modes leading to the finals on May 30.

The first bracket begins Sunday with 32 teams for a showdown on the compact and varied Forest Colony map. Other maps to feature during the later rounds of the tournament are Frozen City Night, River City, Caustic Valley, before finishing with Crimson Strait in the finals. Spectators should be able to tune in and see how the later rounds of the tournament play out, as the quarter finals, semi finals, and finals will be streamedon the MWO website. At stake is a costly, real-money Hero mech to be awarded to the winning team members as well as a month's worth of Premium time in the free-to-play game.

MWO has long had a compelling spectator experience. With no respawn to fall back on, each encounter—and each decision—carries a lot of weight. Spectators, because of the UI available in the cockpit, get to see just how good a pilot is at map control, heat management, and weapon choice. And because mechs take damage in a modular wayand don't regenerate or repair themselves, great last-man-standing events happen all the time. Getting to see an over-matched, one-armed light mech pilot use tactics and speed to out-maneuver an opposing team in a game of conquest can be pure pleasure, if you're rooting for her of course.

You can check out the full list of competing teams as well as keep up with their progress through the bracket here. For more on MWO be sure to check our review.

Battle For Graxia to shut down at end of June, just two months after launch

It hasn't been a great year for Petroglyph Games, the former End of Nations devs who took to Kickstarter with their RTS Victory, a funding campaign they cancelled ten days later.

for Petroglyph Games, the former End of Nations devs who took to Kickstarter with their RTS Victory, a funding campaign they cancelled ten days later. Now, Petroglyph have announcedthat their free-to-play MOBA Battle For Graxia(a game built on the foundations of their 2011 effort Rise of the Immortals) is to shut up shop at the end of June.

The game will keep running until the 27th of June, at which point the servers will be turned off and you'll no longer be able to play Battle For Graxia unless you imagine it in your own head. If you're a fan of the game there is a sliver of hope, however, as Petroglyph have stated that they "reserve the right to bring BFG back online at some time and hope to do so in the future."

So it's dead, but it may yet come back to life. Battle For Graxia only launched just over a month ago, suggesting it's perhaps not the best time to add to the already over-saturated MOBA market.

Thanks, Massively.

TalkRadar 29 – all about LucasArts

This week we discuss Rogue Leaders, a tell-all book about LucasArts, written by PlayStation Magazine’s Editor-In-Chief Rob Smith... who patiently sits through our ramblings long enough to plug his massive tome. If you’ve ever wanted to know all kinds of trivial nonsense about Star Wars, Maniac Mansion or a planet called Fractalus, this is your podcast. For the rest of you, there’s talk of Left 4 Dead

War of the Vikings adds Shieldmaidens in first update

War of the Vikings has released its first update addressing a number of bugs and balance problems, as well as adding two new maps and a new player class: the Shieldmaiden.

has released its first update addressing a number of bugs and balance problems, as well as adding two new maps and a new player class: the Shieldmaiden. Though the maps and new player class are available to everyone, a the new Shieldmaiden DLC will be required for anyone hoping to customize the look and style of their new warrior.

The Shieldmaiden is designed to add some defensive depth to the tactics in War of the Vikings. New oversized shields and a special defensive stance make Shieldmaidens perfect for defending choke points. While making female characters available for all is a welcome addition, chargingfor the privilege of customizing the female avatar, and only her, seems a bit tone-deaf.

New balance tweaks have slowed down bows for all non-archer classes, given axes bonus damage against shields, and a number of other changes that should give different weapons more variety in tactics. New game modes, an addition that I was really hoping would come soon, are not on the list. The two new maps are a nice addition, but without new ways to play on them, my enthusiasm for the game remains a bit diminished.

Victory concedes defeat, as Petroglyph cancel Kickstarter campaign

Just over a week in, former End of Nations developers Petroglyph have cancelled the Kickstarter campaign for their RTS-MOBA mash-up Victory , after raising around $30,000 of their $700,000 goal.

, after raising around $30,000 of their $700,000 goal. In an interview with IncGamers, the team revealed that they've "learned that Victory is definitely not the type of game that the Kickstarter community craves", adding in the latestthat "multiple game publishers have expressed interest in Victory, based on your support, and we hope to still bring Victory to you with their help."

In the interview, Petroglyph also hint that they may return to Kickstarter later on, with a different and hopefully more victorious project. "We've received a ton of feedback, and it's been very helpful and appreciated. A better Kickstarter project for us would be to make a much more traditional RTS game that appeals to the nostalgia of classic RTS gaming experiences from the 1990′s. Fans have suggested spiritual successors to Dune 2, C&C, Red Alert as well as sequels to Star Wars: Empire at War and Universe at War: Earth Assault." I'd be quite partial to a new Dune RTS, just as it long as it lets you ride the Sandworm.

Thanks to BluesNews.

For Valve Software, Team Fortress 2 isn't just a game – it's a resource. Since its launch in 2007, Valve

has continued to update the game with new items, modes, and even a new business model . While these changes have certainly helped satisfy players, they've also helped the studio prepare for the future. In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Team Fortress 2 lead designer Robin Walker explained that while the game's primary goal has been to grow and maintain its sizeable audience, Valve has also used the title as a testbed for new ideas that could protect the livelihood of the entire company.

Team Fortress 2 : Valve's secret guinea pig

"Our secondary goal [with Team Fortress 2 ] was to see if we could explore specific game and business design spaces that we felt were potentially a requirement for the long-term survival of our company," Walker said.

One of those spaces, as it turns out, was the traditional MMO market -- and Team Fortress 2 's persistent item economy came about because Valve was hoping to learn more about what made those games tick.

"[When the game shipped], MMOs were the dominant story in the industry, and one concern we had was that we might not be able to survive if we didn’t build one," Walker said. "We didn’t think we were ready to undertake that, but we did think that we might be able to build some pieces of one, learning enough so that if or when we did need to build one, we had less risk on the table. We decided that persistent item design and storage seemed like a reasonable amount of risk for us to bite off, and could be made to fit into TF2 ’s gameplay."

Just a few short years later, when traditional MMOs had started to wane in popularity, Valve was beginning to sense another major trend looming on the horizon: the rise of free-to-play and microtransaction-based games.

"A couple of years later... we were starting to feel the same way about microtransactions as we did initially about MMOs: that our company was at risk if we didn’t have internal experience and hard data on them," Walker said.


Once again, Team Fortress 2 was chosen as the guinea pig, and in June 2011, Valve made the game completely free-to-play. This update proved to be one of the game's most significant yet, as it both increased revenues by a factor of twelve, and gave the studio the expertise it needed to adopt the free-to-play model in games like Dota 2 .

"At the time, one of the questions the fledgling Dota 2 team was asking was whether they should be free to play, and we wanted to be able to give them a bunch of data so they could make that decision with some confidence," Walker said.

Given everything Valve has learned from Team Fortress 2 over the years, Walker says the game's financial success is really just icing on the cake. The game's ongoing updates have allowed the studio to quickly adapt to market changes, making it -- if nothing else -- an invaluable research tool for the studio's future projects.

"In the end, TF2 has been ended up being one of the most useful tools we’ve ever built to reduce risk in our company’s future. It’s been really nice that it’s also brought in significant revenue throughout that time, but ultimately, the importance we place on understanding our business and our customers has made it totally worthwhile," Walker said.

"The thought that if we hadn’t done it, we’d be here today without any data or experience with service based monetization strategies is quite terrifying."

MechWarrior Online gets private matchmaking, and a glitch, in latest patch

In a move that could be transformative for competitive players as well as anyone looking to settle a grudge, MechWarrior Online has added a private matchmaking system.

system. Dubbed the "Launch Module"by developer Piranha Games, the free-to-play shooter now offers a variety of options for setting up and carrying out tournaments, leagues, and 1v1 showdowns, depending on a player's level of investment in the game.

While basic private match functionality is open to all players, beyond launching a game with a full lobby of 24 'mechs, additional customization of private matches is restricted to team leaders with a premium, real-money subscription to MWO. With premium time activated, more features become accessible, such as selecting specific map, group size, or class restrictions. A detailed rundown of the private match system is carried out in the video below.

Tuesday's patchalso includes its share of bugs, unfortunately. With the Launch Module system, MWO was set to make a major change to public matchmaking as well, with the introduction of weight and class restrictions to all public games. Public matches were to be organized around a new system dividing every 12-pilot team into balanced groups with three 'mechs from each of the game's four weight classes. But the new balancing proved unstable and has been turned offuntil Piranha can find a solution.

After the appearance of a new user interface, a stats reset, and an achievement systemin recent months, MWO is giving players more and different reasons to stick around. With a compelling combat experienceas its core draw, all the changes the game has seen so far feel meaningful and forward-looking, something long-time players are sure to recognize. Bugs aside, it bodes well for what so many veterans are likely waiting for—the eventual launch of MWO's metagame Community Warfare.

End of Nations beta weekend starts July 20th

You know what's brilliant?

You know what's brilliant? Tanks. Hundreds and hundreds of tanks. And mechs. And aircraft. All fighting at once in a massive massive battle, the bigger the better. How big are we talking? How about 52 armies controlled by 52 players playing on the same map at the same time? If that sounds like your cup of tanks, then you'll be interested in End of Nations, Trion Worlds' enormous MMORTS. You're in luck too, because it starts beta this month.

The game's first beta weekend will run from Friday 20th to Sunday 22nd, and you can sign up by going to the End of Nations website.They'll also be handing them out on their Facebookand Twitteraccounts.

If you're interested in End of Nations you can find out more in our End of Nations preview.

Man O' War: Corsair joins the Warhammer videogame cavalcade

Since we've already made the "in the grim dark future, there is only Warhammer " joke this week, I will instead say simply that there is yet more Warhammer on the way.

" joke this week, I will instead say simply that there is yet more Warhammer on the way. Man O' War: Corsair was announced today as a "game of high adventure, naval combat, and exploration" based upon a Games Workshop tabletop game set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Let the record state, there really are quite a lot of Warhammer gameson the way to your PC.

To be scrupulously fair, we are talking about Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40,000, and various spin-off properties like Battlefleet Gothic, Space Hulk, Mordheim, and even Blood Bowl. But they all fall under that great Warhammer umbrella, and so does Corsair, which will combine exploration and trading with "frantic naval action" featuring conventional armaments, flashy magical, and fantastical creatures.

"A captain in Man O’ War: Corsair can sail the coast of a huge continent in the Warhammer world. Visiting over 50 ports from Erengrad to Saratosa, the sea is yours to explore," the Man O' War: Corsair website says. "A heroic adventurer does not only have enemy ships to contend with. The deep and unexplored oceans hold terrifying creatures that few see and live to tell the tale. These deadly creatures emerging from the deep sea will chill blood and drop jaws in equal measure. The wise would attempt to flee but those brave enough to tackle such creatures will be famed throughout the world."

That sounds like it might be fun, doesn't it? Sid Meier's Pirates!, but with Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Skaven, Chaos, and great white sharks the size of jumbo jets, is a game I think I'd like to play. Man O' War: Corsair is slated for a 2016 launch. Find out more and sign up for the mailing list, if thar be your interest, at manowarcorsair.com.

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor hands-on

World of Warcraft is nine years old.

World of Warcraft is nine years old. If you want to take a moment to let that sink in, that's perfectly understandable. It has remained the biggest subscription-based MMO in the world throughout that period: it's still huge, even if the prevailing narrative surrounding it is of an empire in gradual decline. 7.6 million players doesn't really feel like decline: more like erosion, in the sense that a mountain erodes.

Warlords of Draenor is the first of a new kind of expansion for World of Warcraft. It's leaner, in some senses, than the expansions that have come before. It adds a new continent – the orc homeworld of Draenor, predestruction – and new features, plus tweaks to raids, the UI, and the game engine, but no new classes or races. On the surface, it appears more considered and modest than Cataclysm or Wrath of the Lich King – and, in returning the focus to the orcs, it's less of a tonal departure than Mists of Pandaria.

Blizzard are gearing up production on World of Warcraft with a view to putting out boxed expansions every year – rather than every 18 months-ish as it was before. They talk about having plans for the WoW expansion after this one, and the one after that, and the one after that: a salvo of erosion-slaying magic bullets loaded in a revolver, with Warlords of Draenor sitting ready in the first chamber.

At least, that's how Warcraft boss Chris Metzen put it, announcing the expansion at Blizzcon. I asked WoW producer John Lagrave about it later – how possible is it, in reality, to plan for the needs of a gaming community that far in advance?

“Let me continue the analogy,” he says. “First we have to build the bullet – and we're building a bullet for a gun we don't know the calibre of yet, so there's a lot of give and take. We have a plan for Warlords of Draenor – that's in the chamber and is being fired. For the next expansion, we're in talks about it. We focus, initially, on the story we're going to tell. Once we've got that, we try to figure out a sentence or two about what the 'vibe' is. What's going to be engaging? What's going to be fun? What is interesting about it?”

Warlords of Draenor is intended to recapture the feel of orcs-and-humans-era Warcraft, and to reintroduce the characters and conflicts that fans have followed for decades but that recent WoW acolytes might have missed among the panda warriors and world-consuming dragons. It's a time-travel story, and the Draenor it features is one that has been referenced but never actually presented in a Warcraft game. It's the same place as The Burning Crusade's Outland, but this isn't a Cataclysm-style overhaul: it's a full alternative take on the planet with entirely new zones to explore.

As players, our dimension-skipping adventure will be prompted by the escape of rogue horde warchief Garrosh Hellscream following his arrest at the conclusion of the 'Siege of Orgrimmar' update. Chasing his dream of an all-orc horde to a new extreme, he binds himself to a mysterious time-travelling ally and journeys to Draenor before the orcs became corrupted and invaded Azeroth. There, he stops the orcs from drinking demonic blood and, in its place, gives them loads of technology from the future and sets about building his own portal to Azeroth. So give a little, take a little, then.

Both factions have an interest in stopping Garrosh's 'Iron Horde', and that leads them to Draenor. An initial 'suicide mission' tutorial experience will take the Alliance and the Horde to Tanaan Jungle – formerly Hellfire Peninsula. After that, the Alliance will help defend a Draenei temple in Shadowmoon Valley, a temperate zone of rolling hills trapped in perpetual night. The Horde head to Frostfire Ridge – roughly where the Blade's Edge Mountains will eventually be – to help the Frostwolf Clan defeat some local ogres.

The Frostwolf Clan in this case is led by The ogre empire is in decline. You're slightly to blame. Orc architecture – 'orchitecture', if you will – hasn't changed. Thrall's dad, Durotan, and the sequence I played through involved helping both of them lay siege to an ogre fortress – at which point, through Pandaria-style phasing, it transitioned into being the Horde base of operations on Draenor. Blizzard have had a lot of experience bending and twisting the WoW engine into new shapes, and their work here displays the same inventiveness and attention to detail that marked out the best bits of Wrath of the Lich King. Post-conquest, the player is asked to free some orc scouts from a nearby ogre village. The path takes you back out of the ogre fortress, pushing through a crowd of Warcraft-style peons carrying stones and lumber back up the hill. It's a nice little nod to the past, and it made me smile.

You'll have to take the long way around, by the way: flying mounts are disabled in Draenor until some point post-launch. The journey to the new level cap of 100 will be made on foot.

In addition to seven new PvE zones, Warlords of Draenor will add seven dungeons – three at max level – as well as two raids with sixteen bosses between them. Blizzard are also taking a pass at Upper Blackrock Spire as part of their programme of classic dungeon reboots, and there'll be a new set of world bosses too. There will also be a full PvP zone on Draenor, called Ashran. It's intended to recapture the old days of World of Warcraft battlegrounds – the skirmishes over Alterac Valley that took days to resolve. Combatants will be drawn in from multiple servers using the cross-realm technology also used to fill out parties in the dungeon finder.

The current structure of WoW PvP is being revised. Blizzard regard the current system as too deterministic, leading players towards fixed rewards through a long grind – they want to shake it up, and they're approaching the problem from multiple angles. PvP matches will now grant random rewards on completion, from bind-on-equip items to rare PvP equipment and bonus Honor. The idea is to surprise players with rewards they weren't expecting, to lead people towards upgrade paths they might not have considered by adding a degree of chance.

The other approach to freshening Player vs Player is the exact opposite. Warlords of Draenor will introduce Trials of the Gladiator, new arena combat events where players use standard, balanced gear – creating a competition that is entirely about skill.

End of Nations preview

End of Nations may well be the largest multiplayer RTS we've ever played.

End of Nations may well be the largest multiplayer RTS we've ever played. Rift creators, Trion Worlds and the ex-Westwood veterans at Petroglyph are making a free to play real time strategy game, and they're making it big. Its largest maps will let two teams of 26 players fight with up to 20 units each. That's 1040 troops on a single battlefield, controlled by 52 different people. End of Nation's campaign will take place on an even greater scale. As a member of one of End of Nation's two factions, every victory will count towards an ongoing win/loss competition that will let your clan take take and hold territory on a grand strategic map of the planet.

The 52 player maps weren't ready to be played when I met up with Trion to get an early look at End of Nations recently. Frankly, Trion wouldn't have been able fit enough people into the demo room to show it, but I did spend some time with a few of End of Nation's other modes including a co-op survival map and a tense 4v4 control point arena. End of Nation's grand war is driven by fast, accessible skirmishes between highly customisable units. Every kill earns experience, which allows for advancement along detailed tech trees bristling with powerful new tanks, VTOLS, infantry squads and robots. It's smart, addictive, and fun. If you have a "ones to watch in 2012" list, you'll want to add this one with a big fat marker pen.

There's no base building in End of Nations. Once you've chosen your troop line-up your entire army is air-dropped into your team's deployment zone. Whenever a unit gets blown up, you can call them back in using points earned defeating enemies and capturing points, a system that will feel very familiar to World in Conflict players. With no mining, gathering or base building to think about, my focus for most of each game was on the constant fighting for control points carefully positioned around the map.

That's intentional. Trion and Petroglyph want to strip away the battlefield-wide micromanagement associated with traditional RTSes so that players get on with the fun bit: turning the enemy army into smoking wrecks. After the demo, I spoke to Trion senior producer, Chris Lena about the decision to cut out bases and concentrate almost entirely on combat. He hopes that this direct approach will bring disaffected strategy players back into the fold. "We think a lot of people over the years that used to play strategy games and RTS games have moved away because the genre hasn't changed," he said. "In some ways it's become more hardcore over time. We think we've solved some of those problems."

End of Nations battles don't rely on the kind of precision, timing and resource control that dominates the average StarCraft 2 scrap, it's all about fast micromanagement. Each type of unit has a unique special ability. My mammoth tanks could go hull-down, sinking into an immobile defensive posture to better guard control points. My flimsy artillery could sit at the back and throw down a circular overwatch area that they would shell repeatedly, perfect for putting pressure on chokepoints like narrow streets and bridges. I also gradually gained access to a suite of general commander abilities as my artillery continued to obliterate the hordes of incoming infantry. These would let me repair vehicles quickly or call down big area of effect buffs, improving the resilience of all allied units.

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Smart use of these abilities can win fights, and they can become game-changing as you use them in co-ordinated attacks with allied commanders. Teamwork is essential, and End of Nations is built to encourage players to form squads. "We're fans of MMORPGs and other games that have been getting a lot of people together" said Lena after the demo. "I think recently a lot of games the most fun is other people, right? That's definitely a big part of it."

That's where Trion's MMO experience comes in. "We find that what's really worked is a lot of the social features," Lena says. "like clan mechanics, chat, friends lists, being able to find groups together. We want as manypeople as possible in the game because it makes it more fun for everyone else." As we talk, we end up using MMO phrases like PvP and PvE time and time again, partly because of Trion's MMO background, but also because End of Nations is making a determined attempt to bring the scale of a free-to-play MMO to the RTS.

That means PvE, too. Once they've rolled out the End of Nations multiplayer build this summer, Trion say that Petroglyph will be readying up a massive co-op campaign offering squads massive co-op missions. These will pit armies of players against the AI controlled Order of Nations faction. Lena says that some of these will let 52-player armies take to the field together in huge areas akin to MMO zones, to take on environmental hazards and battle multi-stage bosses.

Factor in the massive levelling system, the in-game currency that can be spent on customisation and unit upgrades and the grand war for control of Earth, and there's going to be plenty to get our teeth into when the first build of End of Nations rolls out later this year. We'll have to wait and see exactly what the microtransaction scheme will be like, but for now Lena assured me that it won't be a "pay to win" game.

End of Nations is shaping up very nicely indeed. There have been attempts to create massively multiplayer strategy games before, but few with this much ambition. If those 52 player rumbles can live up to our expectations, End of Nations could be pretty special.

The dying game

Page 1 of 7: Page 1 Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Sep 28, 2007 Game over. Continue? If only life was that simple. We've all died thousands of times in videogames. But never do we think 'well, that's it then' and put the pad down. There's nearly always the prospect of another life or a continue, or at worst having to start afresh with a new game. But game death has given us so many

Did Fallout 4 need a new engine?

The internet is a sea of opinions, and many of them concern Fallout 4.

The internet is a sea of opinions, and many of them concern Fallout 4. Hot takes roam the comment threads like Deathclaws prowl the Commonwealth. “Fallout: New Vegas is a vastly superior game,” argues one, oblivious to all of New Vegas’s many faults and failures. “It’s a really bad FPS with statistics,” reckons another, blind to the fact that it’s a great FPS (with statistics). “A brilliant, massive sandbox of systems,” says me, in my review. It’s opinions all the way down.

Most are harmless enough, and some even make a good point. But one repeated refrain bothers me greatly. It’s the idea that Bethesda should have created a new engine; the suggestion is that, by sticking with Skyrim’s Creation Engine, Fallout 4’s developers were in some way being lazy. This isn’t just wrongheaded, but damaging. It propagates the idea that developers should be forced to utilise the latest, best tech, despite all the ways that could harm a project.

On some level, it sounds sensible. Fallout 4 has its fair share of bugs and glitches. It functions in a way reminiscent of past Bethesda games. It even looks like like past Bethesda games. Given the increased popularity of Bethesda’s RPGs, it’s understandable to see familiarity breeding contempt. It’s easy to get carried away when you play Fallout 4—to imagine a version that’s prettier, smoother and more polished.

The problem is that game development doesn’t work like that. Fallout 4 is a complex, dense production. It works because its development team is now very good at making the kind of games Bethesda makes. They’re deft at weaving together disparate systems into a player-led adventure filled with moment-to-moment choice. A whole new engine could well upset that balance. I suspect that’s why, for all of Skyrim’s improvements, its Creation Engine was just a heavily modified version of Gamebryo. It’s this tech that allows Bethesda’s designers to do what they do, and so it seems counterintuitive to expect them to deviate from it.

Bethesda should be celebrated for sticking to a modest, sustainable model, because the alternative is fraught with problems.

The assumption made is that, because Bethesda is a successful studio, it’s also a large one. That isn’t so. A photo of the development team was released at the time of Fallout 4’s launch, showing just over 100 employees (and a dog.) That isn’t many people. I think Bethesda should be celebrated for sticking to a modest, sustainable model, because the alternative is fraught with problems.

As open worlds become more complex, the returns need to be so much higher. It’s likely this reason that Assassin’s Creed games now flirt with microtransactions; why Metal Gear Solid V has a tumultuous development history; and why Just Cause 3 is a huge, lavish, beautiful space with sod-all in the way of interactivity. Fallout 4 has a season pass, but, based on the studio’s past games, its DLC will at least be substantial. And where every other big release features a lengthy, complicated pre-order reward plan, Fallout 4 had none. There are big consumer benefits when a company can afford to develop its games properly.

The Creation Engine has other benefits, too. The most obvious of these is mod support. Time and again we’ve seen developers invest in new, more complex engines, resulting in an editor too unwieldy to release to the public. Mod support is the lifeblood of any Bethesda RPG. It will keep Fallout 4 relevant for years to come.

Despite all this, Bethesda is, to an extent, responsible for the criticism it has received. The announcement trailer for Fallout 4 was pure marketing hype—presenting moody and beautifully lit versions of environments that look much plainer in-game. The most egregious shot is Nick Valentine walking through the town of Goodneighbor. In the trailer, it’s bathed in smoky reds and purples—a scene impossible to recreate in-game without mods. But bullshit marketing is a different problem. It’s not a reason to criticise Fallout 4’s developers for creating an excellent game within their means.

Tech-up with 50 battle buddies in End of Nations

End of Nations isn't the most creative name, but you gotta give Petroglyph credit for being direct--we can be certain this game involves, at least to some degree, the ending of nations.

credit for being direct--we can be certain this game involves, at least to some degree, the ending of nations. But we're holding out hope that any creativity unspent on the title was invested into the concept and gameplay--and from what we've seen so far, it has. EoN is banking on making the MMO-RTS genre a success on the back of co-op gameplay.

EoN has the potential to be a real standout in both the MMO and RTS space, and the promise of co-op is especially intriguing to someone like myself who is petrified at the thought of a competitive RTS (I was ruined by a Korean exchange student).

Three Warhammer classics come to GOG

If you can't over the feeling that what you really need in your life is more Warhammer games, then boy oh boy, do I have good news for you.

games, then boy oh boy, do I have good news for you. These are not new Warhammer games, however, but old ones— Chaos Gate, Shadow of the Horned Rat, and Final Liberation—that are now available on GOG.

To be completely fair, not all of these games belong to the Warhammer 40,000 line that's seen so much action lately. The turn-based strategy game Chaos Gate is, but Shadow of the Horned Rat, a real-time strategy game that follows the adventures of Grudgebringer commander Morgan Bernhardt, is set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe, and Final Liberation is part of the WH40K Epic offshoot that takes place in the same game world but features battles on a much larger scale.

But they're all Games Workshop, and more to the point, this is, according to GOG, the only place (possibly aside from your local abandonware joint) you can get them. "These games have been next to impossible to find anywhere for years," GOG VP Oleg Klapovsky said. "Reviving them meant that we had to dig a lot deeper, but we're excited to have acquired the rights to re-release some of the most important entries in the Warhammer legacy."

Games Workshop has been on quite a licensing tear yesterday, with a chessgame, a MOBA, an FPS, an RTS, and, as of yesterday, an action-RPGall in the works. In light of that, it's not terribly surprising that it would go rooting around in the attic to see what else it could come up with. Shadow of the Horned Rat and Final Liberation are available now for $6 each, while Chaos Gate will set you back $10. All three games come with their original soundtracks (and a "MIDI track pack" for Shadow of the Horned Rat), and, as always, have been "meticulously tested, fixed, and prepared to run perfectly on modern Windows operating systems."

Here's what's really powering Fallout 3's metro train

Yesterday, via 4chan , the internet enjoyed the story of how Fallout 3: Broken Steel's Presidential Metro car worked.

, the internet enjoyed the story of how Fallout 3: Broken Steel's Presidential Metro car worked. The train, it was said, was actually a hat worn by an NPC who would run beneath the level upon activation—thus neatly faking the appearance of a working rail system. A good story, and one, but it's not exactly correct. I spent the morning tinkering with Fallout 3's editor, GECK, only to discover that the truth is also pretty silly.

The moving Metro cab is an item in Broken Steel called 'DLC03MetroCarArmor'. It's not a hat, but rather an arm piece. Below, you can see Rivet City's Abraham Washington* wearing it.

There, in the bottom picture, you can see that his right hand is missing. That's because the Metro cab is his right hand. Videogames!

More significantly, it's not an NPC that powers the train. It's the player. After repairing the train, the player gets in and turns it on. This activates a script that equips the item and activates a package called 'DLC03MetroCameraPackage'.

'DLC03MetroCameraPackage' plays an animation called 'LooseDLC03MetroCamera'. In motion, that animation is pure gif gold.

Incidentally, I'm not sure why running the animation in GECK causes the train car to flip sideways. Clearly that doesn't happen in the game. The route Washington takes above does map to the route you take in the game, however.

There you have it. Without access to Fallout 3's editor, you'd never know this was what was happening behind the scenes. Which, after all, is the whole point of an ingenious workaround to an engine limitation. If it works, it works.

*Why Abraham Washington? Partly because that's a very presidential name, which is fitting for a Presidential Metro. Mostly, though, because, as an Abraham, he's top of Fallout 3's NPC list. I am quite lazy.

Rift: Planes of Telara Preview

Trion Worlds, the team behind the upcoming inter-dimensional MMO Rift, look like they know what they're doing.

Trion Worlds, the team behind the upcoming inter-dimensional MMO Rift, look like they know what they're doing. When it comes to the interface, they're not reinventing the wheel; they're simply taking the best bits from the best MMOs, and burnishing them.

Jumping into combat feels familiar, and comfortable. You hit auto-attack for your basic melee skill, then go to work on your abilities and spell rotations, all bound to the number keys. Sound familiar? The end-product is punchy and substantial; there's some satisfying audio feedback during scraps, and the unit animations are a pleasure to watch.

One tidy little innovation really made me smile when I played: area looting. If you've slain a bunch of mobs, you don't need to rifle through every individual pocket. Within a certain radius of your character, you can auto-loot every item from every corpse you have looting rights to.

And you'll be looting a lot of corpses. Rift is built around a dynamic content system that spawns four flavours of elemental rift into the world, through which demonic entities pour. If these rifts are left to linger, they create what's known as a 'foothold', the visual representation of which is a knot of slimy tendrils that anchor the floating rift to the earth. Their corrupting influence spreads the longer they're left, and increasingly tough enemies appear, who drop consequently better and rarer loot.

Players must tackle these to defeat the invaders and close these rifts, or they'll spread incrementally across the server. What happens if they're left unchecked? The world gets messed up good and proper. If towns are engulfed, players no longer have access to the facilities there, so it pays to play Neighbourhood Watch and keep the beggars in check. To my mind, it sounds a little like Warhammer Online's public quest system, but with a sense of creeping growth. Or degeneration, depending on how you look at it.

What's really compelling is the intricacy and fluidity of Rift's class system. The basic classes – or callings, as Trion have dubbed them – are Clerics, Warriors, Mages and Rogues. That pretty much covers healing, ranged DPS, melee DPS and tanking, but beneath your basic classchoice, you also have three class specialisations, or Souls, to tinker with and switch between on the fly. These push your class in specific directions, so warriors can become damage dealers, or area-of-effect specialists, or some other battlefield role, as the situation warrants.

The flexibility this will bring to partyplay could be phenomenal. Every MMO player has experienced those 'where are all the bloody healers!' moments when waiting to tackle an instance. I can't see that being an issue when a whole bunch of players in your group are likely to have a cheeky healing spell tucked under their magely skirts.

The demo I was taken through dealt with the opening scenes of the game, and initial character creation. After tinkering with your toon's looks, you choose a race. There are six in total; three which fall under the allegiance of the Guardian faction, and three which fall under the allegiance of the Defiants.

You're then treated to a remarkable series of cutscenes which detail the neardestruction of the world of Telara, and as a result, your genesis. The story is an esoteric one, and as my character was part of the Defiant faction, I saw the Defiant side of the story. Just as the world is going to ruin at the hands of Telara's arch-nasty The Destroyer, the Defiants use their advanced technological knowhow to create you, the perfect hero. They then open a portal to the past, and your destiny is set: as the last, best hope of the Defiants, you're thrown back in time to close The Destroyer's rifts and stop the war before it spirals out of control.

The first staging area for your character is the base where the Defiants created you. It's a place to learn more about the world, the conflict, and the way character classes work, before you head past cheering NPC allies, through the time-portal, and into the game-world proper.

What I've seen so far of Rift excites me. There's depth and flexibility in the class system, a unique storyline, and it kicks pretty much every MMO into touch when it comes to visual fidelity.

But we've still only seen a fraction of the game. Presumably there are more activities to engage in than just the endless cycle of mob-bashing and rift-closure. What are the quests like? Are there many party-friendly instances? If so, are they engaging, and as unique as Rift's mythos and backstory? How developed is the endgame content? And what really happens if a server goes unchecked, and rifts cover the world? There's so much left to see before we can draw any real conclusions. But what I've seen so far inspires hope for this brave new entry into the MMO scene.

Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr announced

Believe it or not, there's another Warhammer 40,000 game in the works.

Believe it or not, there's another Warhammer 40,000 game in the works. In development at Incredible Adventures of Van Helsingstudio NeocoreGames, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr is a "persistent sandbox action-RPG" that will set players off "into a grim and secret war among the stars as the agents of the ever-vigilant Inquisition."

The studio didn't reveal much in the way of specifics about the game, although it did say that the sandbox mode will kick in after the core campaign is over. "The story continues in a colossal sandboxed game set in the same secluded sector of this vast universe," it explained. " This persistent setting grants years of constant entertainment, gradual development and a continuous flow of content that enriches the Action-RPG gameplay."

"There’s a reason why we chose the world of Warhammer 40,000," NeocoreGames Producer Zoltán Pozsonyi said in a statement. "It’s intense, brutal, visceral—a perfect material for an action RPG."

It's also very well-trodden territory. There's been a slew of Warhammer 40K games announced or released recently, including, in no particular order, Regicide, Dark Nexus Arena, Space Hulk: Deathwing, and Battlefleet Gothic: Armada. But as Games Workshop Head of Licensing John Gillard said, "A Warhammer 40,000 action RPG has been notably absent from our portfolio of videogames so far," and so here we are.

There's a (very) brief teaser posted on Neocore's Inquisitor - Martyr sitethat promises cleansing through pain and fire, in an appropriately deep and rumbly voice. Warhammer 40,000: Martyr - Inquisitor is expected to come out in 2016.

16 Movies That Predicted Technology Right

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You can yell, "Beam me up, Scotty!" all you want, the only thing that will happen is you'll elicit a bunch of bemused stares from passersby wondering if you've bonked your head recently.

You can yell, "Beam me up, Scotty!" all you want, the only thing that will happen is you'll elicit a bunch of bemused stares from passersby wondering if you've bonked your head recently. The sad fact is human teleportation devices don't yet exist in 2013, and even if they did, the tremendous lagwould make it extraordinarily impractical. Such is the reality of science that it doesn't always mesh with our fantastic visions of fictional futures filled with flying cars and other implausible technologies. In other words, reality sucks compared to what we've grown up watching on television.

That doesn't mean Hollywood got it all wrong, however. Take a look around you and you'll notice quite a few inventions that not only don't suck, but some of which were predicted by movie makers decades ago. You can draw a parallel, for example, between swiping and gestures in Minority Report versus today's touchscreen computing and motion-controlled sensors like the Kinect. The further back you go in the movie archives, the more interesting these parallels become.

Join us as we look back at 16 films that, for the most part, correctly predicted future technologies in use today. What was your favorite science fiction movie? Let us know in the comments below!

Wearable Computing - Back to the Future II (1989)
The Back to the Future franchise got some things right and many things wrong, but one that falls into the former category is wearable computing. The glasses you see the McFly family donning at the dinner table serve as a precursor to Google Glass and even the Oculus Rift, which themselves are both in their infancy. Sadly, toy hoverboards still don't exist - drats!

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Naked Body Scanners - Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)
Among all the mishaps and far fetched scenarios presented in Airplane II, a film you'll apt to either love or hate, intrusive full body scanners revealing passengers' naked bits seemed so silly at the time you couldn't help but laugh. Almost three decades later, nobody found it funny when the TSA actually implemented nude image scanners at airports. They've since been removed.

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Self Driving Cars - Total Recall (1990)
Arnold Schwarzenegger played the part of Douglas Quaid, a construction worker who couldn't stop dreaming about Mars and one of its female inhabitants. The film is a sci-fi exploration of virtual reality, but one scene that sticks out involves self-driving taxis known as Johnny Cabs. Today, Google is one of the biggest advocates of autonomous cars, and there are now three states where self-driven cars are legal for testing purposes.

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Skype - 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Stanley Kubrick's vision of our modern day world is eerily accurate on so many accounts, we could fill an entire gallery with just this film alone. Sure, the video phone looks rudimentary by today's standards, but the underlying concept is undeniably Skype-like. Space tourism, tablet computing, and personal TVs embedded into airplane seats also appeared in the film.

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Home Automation - Electric Dreams (1984)
This one's admittedly a stretch, but in Electric Dreams, it's man versus machine during the dawn of the PC era when hardly anyone knew anything about computers. That would explain why it seemed so scary that a PC could take over the home and control the lights, lock doors, and so forth. We've since learned to peacefully coexist with PCs, and home automation is a wonderful thing.

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Touch Interface - Minority Report (2002)
There have been so many comparisons of real-life technologies to those portrayed in Minority Report that we almost hate to give the flick yet another mention, but if compiling a list like this, it's only fair to include it. After all, the movie did accurately predict gestures (like swiping) and touchscreen computing being the norm, not the exception. Let's hope predicative policing isn't next.

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Military Robots - Short Circuit (1986)
It's easy to fall in love with Johnny 5, the wise cracking robot from Short Circuit. However, he was built with a more serious matter in mind -- as a prototype military robot. Now we have unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) that can operate autonomously and without the risk of gaining sentience if struck by lightning. Equip one with Siri and you have the modern day Johnny 5.

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Space Travel - Woman in the Moon (1929)
Man didn't land on the moon until 1969, but 40 years prior, the silent film Woman in the Moon showed what it might be like. There was a multi-stage rocket, a media frenzy at the launch event, and a countdown leading up to the anticipated event. Well played, Fritz Lang.

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Robot Assisted Surgery - Sleeper (1973)
Woody Allen is a lot of things, but he's not a doctor. However, he masqueraded as one in Sleeper, a wild comedy that attempts to take a nostalgic look at the future. In one scene, a talking computer offers analysis and suggestions during surgery. Many years later, it's not uncommon for surgeons to use remote-controlled robotics to assist with surgery.

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Smartphones/PDAs - Star Trek: The Original Series (1966)
Every Star Trek fan is familiar with the Tricorder, a handheld device that records data, analyzes data, and is used for sensor scanning. Do you know what else can do those things? Smartphones! We're not saying they're the same device by any means, but given all the things today's smartphones can do and the wide selection of apps available, the Tricorder is, in some respects, a forerunner of today's mobile gadgets.

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Digital Billboards - Blade Runner (1982)
A jaunt through the cityscape in Blade Runner reveals a world in which digital billboards are fairly ubiquitous. We're not quite there yet, but digital billboards are certainly more common today than in the 1980s. If you live in a big city, you may even see a trailer for Blade Runner 2 on a digital billboard, which is in the works with a script that includes several of the original characters.

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War Driving - WarGames (1983)
Years before the Internet would became a mainstream thing, WarGames offered up a glimpse of what to beware of in a connected world, including general hacking, cyber warfare, and war dialing (using a modem to scan a list of telephone numbers), which would later lead to wardriving (driving around looking for Wi-Fi networks). WarGames is also the first movie to use the term "firewall."

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Robot Vacuum - The Jetsons (1962)
No, we're not commuting to work in flying cars or eating entire meals in pill form, but several technologies in The Jetsons were ahead of their time. There was video chat, tanning beds, a TeleViewer (similar to an iPad), and of course automated vacuum machines, a cartoony predecessor to the iRobot Roomba.

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Home Genetic Testing - Gattaca (1997)
The corporate world hasn't yet descended to DNA tests in place of job interviews as portrayed in Gattaca, nor does a birthing doctor give you a rundown of all the ailments your newborn baby is likely to suffer, along with a precise age expectancy. You can, however, pick up home DNA tests ( 23andme) to get a heads up on your genetic health risks.

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3D Printing at Home - Weird Science (1985)
There's a loose connection between the 1985 movie Weird Science and 3D printing, but a connection nonetheless. In the movie, two teens with raging hormones create the "perfect" woman using a computer and a plastic Barbie doll. With a 3D printer today, you too could create Kelly LeBrock in your home using a PC and some plastic. It'd only be a replica, but who knows what will be possible in another 28 years or so.

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Siri - 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
We know we already mentioned 2001: A Space Odyssey on this list, but the iconic HAL 9000 robot from the movie easily deserves its own slide. For fans of the movie, the phrase "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" will forever portray the idea of robot evilness. Like with HAL, you can converse with Apple's Siri program if you have an iPhone. Hopefully Apple's device won't be half as evil.

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Rift endgame revealed in new trailer

Trion Worlds have just sent over a new Rift: Planes of Telara trailer that gives the first look at the endgame content.

Trion Worlds have just sent over a new Rift: Planes of Telara trailer that gives the first look at the endgame content. A short-skirt-wearing, pale-skinned lady called Alsbeth appears to be in charge. I'm going on first impressions here, but she doesn't seem to be very friendly.

We recently interviewedScott Hartsman, Chief Operating Officer of Trion Worlds about the new content. Tom Senior (our resident Rift player) was so intrigued he managed to land an exclusive interview with design producer Hal Hamlintoo.

If you're playing RIFT and are not already a member of the PC Gamer guild, what the hell are you up to? Join up here, silly.

System Shock 2 hits Good Old Games tomorrow

As far as PC cult classics go, System Shock 2 is the whip. Unfortunately, that "cult" bit is part of the problem--Ken Levine's lauded BioShock predecessor has been mired in licensing issues for years, preventing a re-release despite clamoring fans. No longer. System Shock 2 will hit Good Old Games tomorrow, with a release on Steam set for some time in the future. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has more on the

Age of Ascent attempts to create the largest PvP battle in history March 14

According to the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2014, on July 28, 2013, the battle of 6VDT-H in EVE Online reached a total of 4,070 pilots fighting simultaneously, making it the largest PvP battle in history.

reached a total of 4,070 pilots fighting simultaneously, making it the largest PvP battle in history. On March 14, Age of Ascent will attempt to break that record.

Age of Ascent is a “full sandbox MMO” set in space developed by Illyriad Games. The British studio is named after its first game, Illyriad, an incredibly dense MMORTS with gameplay videosconsisting mostly of pages of text and graphs. Illyriad Games says that if you enjoy games like EVE Online, or are looking forward to Star Citizen, you'll be interested in Age of Ascent, especially if you're a fan of the kind of depth Illyriad offers.

The event will demonstrate the PvP component of the game, allowing (hopefully) thousands of players from around the world to directly pilot ships in dogfights across a single, continuous battlezone. Illyriad Games will attempt to do this without sharding or slowing down gameplay (what EVE Online calls “time dilation”).

It's essentially trying to prove the worth of some of the technology that the developer is working with, namely WebGL and Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud technology. WebGL allows games to run natively in your browser without downloads, installs, or plugins. That's how Age of Ascent and the March 14 record breaking attempt will work. You'll go to the URL, be assigned to a red or blue team, and go.

Illyriad games says that the single node architecture that MMOs typically use has reached its limit, and that Age of Ascent's technology has more in common with a Wall Street algorithmic trading company than a traditional gaming company. As CEO James Niesewand explained it in an interview with Massively, Age of Ascent will monitor ship movements in a similar way that these Wall Street trading algorithms monitor commodity price movement in multiple markets in microseconds.

“We don't actually know how many players the system can achieve.” Illyriad Games says on it website. “Although we've put heavy loads on the system with real and simulated players, nothing beats massive numbers of actual players dogfighting in space. So, in short, we have no idea how many players the system can support. We'd really like to find out.”

You can find out more about how to join the grand experiment on Age of Ascent's website.

Create three-class combos in Rift: Planes of Telara

You have died.

You have died. That's the start, not the end of Rift. You are simply too awesome to stay dead. Instead, you start the game fighting your way through limbo back to the land of the living, at which point you'll emerge at an interdimensional crossroads, and into the game proper.

Rift is a fantasy MMORPG in a world that's being invaded by not one, but about half a dozen other planes of existence. Through, yes, rifts. Game-wise, that makes it an unpredictable landscape of sudden attacks pouring out from these portals, and unexpected opportunities to jump through them and explore a completely different universe.

“The entire idea of the engine that the game sits on,” says development director Scott Hartsman, “is that it lets us do some interesting things with dynamic content that you're not gonna see in other games.” So it's not just a few ambling critters wandering out of a hole in spacetime – there are rival factions who can take over whole settlements depending on your actions.

“Having the world reacting to what the players are doing, so that the balance of power can be pushed from faction to faction, is definitely one of the things we'll be doing with this system,” says Scott. “There's a system behind it that knows the state of all the players in the world, so we have ways of intelligently doing this without stepping on the poor level six guy who just wants to beat up the undead.”

Without seeing something like that in action, it's always hard to judge how much of it is a nice theory and how much will truly make the game world a more exciting place to be in. So the most interesting thing about Rift, to me, is the way that they're handling classes.

“Players are ascended souls,” Scott says, “and there are some souls that weren't quite strong enough to make it. So when you begin the game, you choose what your soul was in its life – a Pyromancer, a Nightblade – and that's the soul you begin with. That determines your abilities, your power system, the primary resource mechanic, and the gear you can use. Then later on, through questing or advancement with NPCs, you can discover other souls. You can collect and, not to sound vampirey but, embrace these other souls.”

You can ultimately embrace up to three different souls at the same time, and they can be different classes to your own. You then pick and choose how to invest your powers across them: spreading them evenly across three different classes, keeping your original as your primary, or even investing everything in one of the new souls you've picked up to completely change your character. “It lets players create their own combinations of classes and cool combinations of powers that even we didn't really foresee,” says Scott.

“In all the MMOs I've worked on, people have always wanted more and more ways to do interesting things with their classes, and what we've done is taken class play and class experimentation and almost turned it into primary gameplay.”

A quick way to find out if someone really loves the game they're working on is to ask them how they play it. Scott immediately lights up at the question, then hesitates. “Hmm, am I playing announced classes, or classes that I can't talk about? Right now I've been playing a Nightblade/Ranger combination that's quite a bit of fun. So it's a guy who has the ability to attack from afar, has the ability to have a buddy out there in the field, and then also has some throwing weapon abilities and an excellent melee finisher.”

Between them, Scott and his team at Trion have worked on 27 different MMORPGs. Sharing and analysing that experience has informed their decisions about Rift on every level, right down to the nitty-gritty like group size. “We're doing five-man groups – and ten- and twenty-man raids,” says Scott. “The last few games I've worked on have been six person groups. The reason we ended up going with five-man groups is if you want to create challenging content, you end up having to solve what's called the two healer problem.”

“In a six-person group system,” he explains, “if you make content that's hard, people will bring two healers to it. Two healers, a tank or two, and a couple of damage-dealers. And what happens if you balance for that kind of group is that you just make it even harder for groups to get off the ground, since healers and tanks tend to be limiting factors.”

“So our goal is to not make it even harder for players to get into groups. It's one of those things that you don't really realise until you've been doing something the same way for seven years and you think: 'You know, there's probably a better way of doing this.'”

It's nice to think that the sheer number of fantasy MMORPGs out there might actually start making them better, rather than increasingly hard to tell apart.

Publisher: Trion Worlds Developer: In-house Release: 2011 Link: riftgame.com