THQ lays-off 118 at Relic, Vigil as Warhammer 40K MMO Dark Millennium goes single-player
THQ announced today that it has laid-off 118 full-time staff at its highly-regarded Relic Entertainment and Vigil Games studios.
today that it has laid-off 118 full-time staff at its highly-regarded Relic Entertainment and Vigil Games studios. Vigil was the hardest hit, with 79 of the layoffs, as its Warhammer MMO makes an abrupt transition into what a THQ press release now calls "an immersive single player and online multiplayer experience with robust digital content, and engaging community features." Dark Millennium Online is now just Dark Millennium.
It's further evidence of THQ's dire financial situation in the wake of a disastrous 2011. Indeed, back in early February, Giant Bomb's Patrick Klepek notedthat THQ admitted "Dark Millennium Online is a game where THQ has to be 'realistic about [their] resources' and is seeking a partner to work on the game with."
Today's statement from THQ strongly suggests that no partner or additional funding was available, and that forced the publisher to re-purpose Dark Millennium as a single-player game.
"Based on changing market dynamics and the additional investment required to complete the game as an MMO," said CEO Brian Farrell, "we believe the right direction for us is to shift the title from an MMO to a premium experience with single and multiplayer gameplay.”
This might not be as drastic a change for Dark Millenium as it sounds. THQ has not been very public with its plans for Dark Millenium, but last year THQ made an interesting admission that Dark Millennium stood in the wayof a sequel to Relic's own Warhammer 40K shooter, Space Marine. If there was a great deal of overlap between those games, it might well be that Dark Millennium ultimately makes more sense as an action game than an RPG.
Still, what is most worrisome about today's announcement is that THQ is now making deep cuts at its flagship studios as they handle one of the publisher's most important licenses. The press release emphasizes that Vigil is continuing work on Darksiders II and Relic is continuing to "focus its development expertise on THQ's franchises including Company of Heroes and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War." It is not clear how the layoffs, and the financial straits that forced them, will affect development on those other projects.
Twitch Plays Pokemon inspires more chat-based experiments
Following the overwhelming success of Twitch Plays Pokemon, other developers have begun playing around with the idea of utilizing Twitch live chat to interact with the game currently being broadcast.
Twitch Plays Pokemonallows thousands of Twitch viewers to simultaneously play the original Pokemon together via livechat. It's been so popular that Twitch is having issues with the load on its chat servers.
Now a developer called Zach Gerlock has put together Twitch Plays Zelda-- and it's exactly what you'd expect, with hundreds of viewers all playing the original The Legend of Zelda together via Twitch livechat.
As reported previously, there's interesting moves in the world of AAA game development and Twitch chat too. Blacklight: Retribution company Zombie Studios says that it has been playing around with the idea of Twitch chat altering broadcastingof its upcoming horror game Daylight .
Viewers watching a PlayStation 4 or PC broadcast of the game will be able to say specific words into the chat that cause disturbances in the game for the player. Notably, viewers will not be told which words work, and will instead have to discover them for themselves.
Darksiders 2 release date set for summer, preorder bonuses abound
We'll be donning death's gloomy robes in the height of summer this year when Darksiders 2 hits shelves on June 26 in the US and June 29 in Europe.
We'll be donning death's gloomy robes in the height of summer this year when Darksiders 2 hits shelves on June 26 in the US and June 29 in Europe. If you enjoyed the decent monster mashing of the first game, and are dead set on picking up the second, you'll soon be able to preorder to get access to a variety of packs, some of which are much better than others. Anyone want a set of angelic scythes? How about an "exclusive visual trail" for your crow? Anyone? Hello?
Gamestop pre-orders come with a load of extra side missions that will let you "aid an ancient Construct, battle The Bloodless and retrieve Karn's lost treasure" in a pack that adds two hours of bonus quests. The Amazon version comes with a "Deadly Despair" pack that makes Death's horse run faster for the entire game and the Best Buy edition comes with a unique armour set, matching scythes and that visual trail. We don't know what it looks like, but it'd better be some sort of rainbow, though I'd settle for a trail of deathly flame.
The THQ storeis currently offering a free copy of Metro 2033 with every Darksiders 2 pre-order as well. The angelic armour set and a few of the characters you'll get to meet in the Gamestop side mission pack are shown in the five new screenshots below.
New Max Payne 3 trailer reveals story details
Baldness and Brancos!
Baldness and Brancos! That's your takeaway from today's new Max Payne 3 gameplay trailer. In it you'll find multiple Maxes, another glimpse at the setting, which spans New York and Sao Paulo, and plot details concerning Payne's employer and the kidnapping of his trophy wife.
We recently got a hands-on demo of the game, so we should have more details for you as we get closer to its May 29th (US), June 1st (Europe) release date.
Now there are fish playing Street Fighter II on Twitch
A camera captures where a couple of fish move in a tank, and converts their positions into moves in a game of Street Fighter II , allowing the fish to battle each other in the game.
We've seen plenty of unique livestreams on Twitch this year, including the original "Twitch Plays Pokemon"-- but "Fish Plays Street Fighter"is really something special.
This isn't the first time fish have played a game on Twitch -- most recently "Fish Plays Pokemon"showed it was possible -- but "Fish Plays Street Fighter" is arguably the best use of the concept yet.
Max Payne 3 release date pushed back to May
Rockstar have announced that they're pushing back the release date for Max Payne 3 from March to May 29 in the US and June 1 internationally.
Rockstar have announced that they're pushing back the release date for Max Payne 3 from March to May 29 in the US and June 1 internationally. "We do not take changes to our release schedule lightly," said Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick in a statement. "This short delay will ensure that Max Payne 3 delivers the highest quality, groundbreaking entertainment experience that is expected from our Company."
Maybe Take-Two are taking the time to polish Max Payne 3's multiplayer mode, new territory for a series that's so far been entirely obsessed with the life and times of its gurning protagonist. The third Max Payne looks like it'll try to merge the shadowy film noir stylings of the first two games with the sun-baked slums of Brazil, and will be bringing some of Rockstar's impressive animation technology to Max's graceful dives. See some of that animation in action in this Max Payne 3 trailer. Check out our Max Payne 3 previewfor more information on Max's latest adventure.
Darksiders 2 screenshots show new creatures, monstrous axe
If death dies on the battlefield, who comes to claim his soul?
If death dies on the battlefield, who comes to claim his soul? What happens to everyone else who dies when death's not about? Darksiders 2 probably won't answer these questions, but it definitely will let you hit things with a giant axe. You like hitting things with a giant axe, right? See a gallery of the various things you can hit with a giant axe in the latest batch of Darksiders 2 screenshots below.
Darksider's creature design was one of its stand-out features. You could make friends with giant stone doors. Instead of opening like a normal door, they'd turn into a lumbering stone golem and wander off. More of this sort of thing, please, creature designers.
Dungeonmans Wants to be Rogue-like, Dungeon-Crawling Heaven
It’s not easy building up an academy for adventurers in the RPG world.
proves that task to be as treacherous as ever with its all-out turn-based, tactical overworld movement and combat. Players create a character with classes and skills to prepare for a life of questing into the most dangerous parts of the world. A word of advice to new players: Don’t get attached to your characters, as they will eventually expire and your next hero will pick up where they left off. The game works off a guild-based structure, allowing people to start off questing, and should they perish within the dungeons, the next character they create can find their remnants and get a little bonus loot off their permadeath spot.
Players can fully equip the character’s bodies with armor and items, complete with cheeky description for each in the UI. Achievements include bonus rewards for returning books and artifacts, or upgrading the alchemy lab by running errands for the alchemist there. The soundtrack is also worth a note, since it’s very cinematic and doesn’t overpower the game atmosphere with its upbeat, battle-ready tunes.
Dungeonmans is currently in Early Access, and can be found on the game’s Steam page here. The full release date is scheduled for December 9 on Windows PC.
Poker Night at the Inventory
Telltale games have just unveiled a poker game at PAX.
Telltale games have just unveiled a poker game at PAX. It'll be a comedy poker game starring four characters from games you know and love, or that you meant to play but couldn't get into because of the obtuse puzzles. It'll cost you $5/£3, and it'll be out "this fall."
It will star Team Fortress 2's Heavy, Strong Bad of HomeStarRunner.net, Max of the Freelance Police, and Tycho of Penny Arcade(or, more to the point, the ill-fated Penny Arcade Adventures). The Steam store pagepromises that "These characters come together in ways some never thought possible, in a setting few would have predicted." I mean, it's at... the inventory, right? That's what it says. I'm guessing they come together to... play poker? Here is the teaser video from a few days ago:
As they mention in their, Telltale will have to draw heavily on the personalities of the characters in order to pull this off - otherwise it's just a poker game, innit? Also, do they plan on giving Tycho a voice, or what? And how does Strong Bad hold cards with those boxing gloves on?
Warhammer 40K MMO shooting for "flexible" business model
When I was in high school, I could do the splits.
When I was in high school, I could do the splits. I'm pretty proud of that, so I thought you should know - but also, that's about what I imagine striking a "flexible" balance between subscriptions and free-to-play in the modern MMO space to feel like. That, however, is exactly what THQ's hoping to do with Warhammer 40K: The Dark Millennium. How?
"The markets are different around the world for the business models with which you can ship an MMO," CEO Brian Farrell said during a recent conference call (via IndustryGamers). "So what we've done is make the business model within Dark Millennium Online flexible, so we can use different business models in different territories and exploit the game on a worldwide basis."
"We will have not just one business model, like subscriptions. There will be other monetization mechanisms in the game... The team there is being very thoughtful about how we maximize monetization in this game."
So then, we could be looking at anything: subscriptions, microtransactions, fingernail-prying labor in the salt mines - you name it. Here's hoping, however, that players' wallets don't end up getting torn to shreds in the crossfire.
Nintendo keen to stay out of the E3 fray for now, but can it last?
There's one thing clear after watching this morning's Nintendo Direct stream and attending its pre-E3 press gathering at the Los Angeles convention center.
There's one thing clear after watching this morning's Nintendo Direct stream and attending its pre-E3 press gathering at the Los Angeles convention center. The company is putting its faith in its games -- and its established IP.
This morning, my Twitter feed was split between people who complained of the lack of innovation on show in Nintendo's E3 lineup -- it showed off the latest Smash Bros. title, alongside announcing Mario Kart 8 , a new Donkey Kong Country , and Super Mario 3D World -- and people who were ultimately satisfied with what the company showed, thanks to its general commitment to quality alongside repetition.
But many of them -- fans and haters alike -- wondered aloud about the Wii U's fate all the same. It's far from settled, and E3 does not seem likely to change things drastically.
At its closed-door press showing, 3D World producer Yoshiaki Koizumi promised that the team has "poured our best ideas from years of making 3D Mario games" into the title, while Nintendo's design god, Shigeru Miyamoto, even directly acknowledged the lack of new franchises, but said that when it comes to the latest iterations of its existing IP, "with each and every one of them we've tried to do something new."
If you play its games, you can see this. It was clear from his demo that Pikmin 3 has grown considerably during its 9-year absence, but even the two 2D Mario games that were released last year had each had an indentifiably different design ethos.
But is it enough?
This strategy, of resolutely launching new games in old franchises, worked really well for the 3DS, launching it from doldrums to a must-buy console for many -- but in concert with a price drop, which was not in evidence for the Wii U at E3 despite rumors in the runup to the show.
There was an aloofness about Nintendo's participation in E3. Doing its announcements via a pre-recorded Nintendo Direct video is both an extension of its current PR strategy and utterly different from how E3 usually goes, and despite the logic of doing it this way, it also feels weird compared to the circus that the occasion demands.
But the company seems completely content to appeal directly to its fans from now on, and gradually announce new projects throughout the year instead of saving up blockbusters till June. Another Nintendo Direct, with a new game or two, is quite possibly right around the corner.
But I also picked up on a sense that maybe Nintendo is simply content to let Microsoft and Sony duke it out this E3. Could the company take a totally different tack and go way big next year again? It seems reasonable. With no price drop and no big surprises, maybe "sitting this one out" and relying on its fan base to carry it through another year makes some sense.
In the end, unlike most of the games released into the packaged goods market, Nintendo's are generally perennial sellers, and it may be building up a head of steam for a real mainstream push down the road once it's got some stocked up hits to back up the real game-changing surprises.
Or maybe not.
The company may never have a Wii-level success again. Perhaps tablets have eaten away at the core consumer that bought into motion controls. Perhaps the Wii U's GamePad is less Wii Remote and more like the Nintendo 64's controller: idiosyncratic, deeply useful for developing great games in the Nintendo style, but not intrinsically interesting enough to lure in a broader audience.
The Wii was an unprecedented success for the company. "Unprecedented." Words have meanings. It may be impossible to re-attain it, in fact.
So its E3 presence was understated, despite the fact that it has an embarrassment of polished and promising exclusive second and first-party games ( The Wonderful 101, Bayonetta 2, New Super Luigi U ...) That's because Nintendo puts itself in a box by (mostly) relying on its existing IP.
Will Wii Fit U bring in the expanded audiences who bought the original? Maybe not. You never heard much about the new Brain Age game. Nintendogs didn't lure in casual consumers at the 3DS launch.
Only Nintendo could be accused of being in a holding pattern as it executes on a cascade of new software. But without big news, the company actually may have carved out a comfortable niche for itself amongst the hullabaloo -- as it has with the 3DS and may yet do with the Wii U, even if it never ends up being a true successor to the Wii in the eyes of casual consumers, publishers, or the market.
PC Gamer UK September issue - Dragon Age 2
PC Gamer 217 is now loitering on the shelves of a newsagent, petrol station, or supermarket near you.
PC Gamer 217 is now loitering on the shelves of a newsagent, petrol station, or supermarket near you. Go forth! Buy it! Try not to talk to anyone on the way there! Don't get in any strange cars! And in case it's too dangerous to go alone, take this handy guide to the best of the mag.
Our cover story is Dragon Age 2 - flip to page 46 for eight pages of screens, interviews, and puns. The forthcoming sequel to Bioware's 94% scoring RPG spans a decade of your character's life, giving plenty of time for the stories of your party members to develop without having to cram it into the epilogue. The combat has also been turbocharged. There's no more preparing to prepare to begin to prepare to attack - when you punch your most powerful skill, some punk gets an arrow in his neck yesterday .
Then, after a short ad for this very website (is your rather generous testimonial on there?), we've got four pages of Space Marine , Relic's new third person shooter set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, for your eager perusal. It starts with a soul-stirring quote from the Space Marine Codex (shut up, the Codex Astartes is great) and ends with a dev from Relic laughing off the monumental challenge of squaring up to the likes of Killzone and Gears of War. Relic, like the Space Marines, know no fear. Unlike the Space Marines, their fingers are small enough to use a keyboard.
There's plenty more where that came from. As well as our first look at Portal 2 and Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online , our Civilization 5 hands-on and new details on Elemental: War of Magic , we've reviewed Transformers: War for Cybertron, Flotilla, Sniper: Ghost Warrior, Sam & Max Episode 3, the new Total War DLC, Lego Harry Potter, and Tropico 3 , to name a few. We bring you up to speed on the latest Red Orchestra update, teach you which ArmA 2 mods to install, and take a fond look back at Portal .
To subscribe to the magazine and get it posted earlier than everyone else, with a special subscriber cover and free hugs, click here. You can buy the latest issue here.
Darksiders 2 trailer shows Death in action
The first bit of in-game footage of Darksiders 2 has been spotted by VG247 , showing Death's fighting style.
, showing Death's fighting style. He's much, much faster than War from the first game, and has a wide range of weapons hidden about his person. He switches between a pair of scythe blades, a normal scythe, a bloody massive scythe, a hammer and various purple energy attacks as he combos his way through a helpless room of demons. The plot of the second game will run alongside the first, but the locations we'll be fighting through will be up to twice the size. Darksiders 2 is due out next year.
Adventurer Manager Releases, Lets You Guide Heroes to Glory
Too often have we played the typical part of heroes saving the world, but this time, we get to be the backseat driver of fantasy quests.
Adventurer Manager has you guiding a pack of individuals through the daily measures of heroism and the inevitable loot and glory it brings.
An evil illusionist, Miraj, dreadfully murders the your parents and vies for control of Adventuria. Starting with creating the ruler, the game’s tutorial brings players up on the first hero you get. Full of diverse races, the game randomizes every individual players will encounter: The options include human, elf, dwarf, drow, and so on. Furthermore, there are 13 distinct classes available, such as paladin, mage, cleric, ranger. Each person comes with unique personality traits that affect gameplay, so greedy heroes affect money outcomes.
As players strategically form parties of four, they can guide them through a dungeon yourself and direct them in combat, using various special abilities. Or, players can send them off on “automatic” adventures and come back later, seeing how they do. Loads of loot drop from every dungeon, giving plenty of micromanaging options for each adventurer. Furthermore, there are equipment crafting, customizing, and university schooling systems to scratch that management itch.
Adventurer Manager has plenty more features, and all that information can be found on Steam’s store page.The game releases today for $9.99.
Grim Fandango Remastered pre-order listing appears
Grim Fandango Remastered (Grimmer Fandango?) is now available to pre-order through GOG .
. While PC Gamer's official guide to pre-ordering games is just a single line that reads "Nooooooooooooope," I am going to mine the page for juicy information.
For instance, the release date. That'll be 27 January.
How about the price? A whole £9.29, or $15.
System requirements? Yes, you can probably run it. Assuming, that is, you've got a GPU that supports OpenGL 3.3 and 4GB of RAM.
But what new features does the Remastered part of Grim Fandango Remastered refer to? Repainted, high-res character textures, for one thing. Also dynamic lighting, an orchestral score and two-plus hours of developer commentary. Oh yeah, and move away from the much lamented tank controls.
I'm pretty down on pre-orders in general, but Grim Fandango is a classic, and Double Fine would have to do something pretty drastically wrong to mess it all up. Weirdly, the pre-order period is exclusive to GOG. On release, Grim Fandango Remastered will crop up on other PC distribution platforms.
The Humble Bundle Nordic sale contains good games
The Humble Nordic Bundle first appeared over a year ago, but re-emerges this week to let you pay what you want for great games like Supreme Commander and Titan Quest and Darksiders, and strange games that might be fun for a few hours if you need to work off a sugar rush, like underwater Descent-a-like, AquaNox.
The basic pay-what-you-want tier includes Supreme Commander's Gold Edition, which means the awesome Forged Alliance expansion is included, as well as Aquanox, Aquanox 2, adventure game Black Mirror, and venerable RPG Summoner.
If you pay over the average donation amount, currently $6.31, you get Darksiders, Red Faction: Armageddon, the overlooked action RPG, Titan Quest and MX vs. ATV Reflex. Pay $10 or more and you'll get Darksiders 2, SpellForce 2 and Deadfall adventures.
As always, you can use sliders to determine how your payment is divided between developers, the Humble Bundle folk, and supported charities, The Red Cross and Child's Play. You'll have to pay at least a dollar if you want Steam keys for your games. Here's a video teasing the collection, featuring some lovely dodgy early 2000s CGI work.
Grim Fandango Remastered pre-order listing appears
Grim Fandango Remastered (Grimmer Fandango?) is now available to pre-order through GOG .
. While PC Gamer's official guide to pre-ordering games is just a single line that reads "Nooooooooooooope," I am going to mine the page for juicy information.
For instance, the release date. That'll be 27 January.
How about the price? A whole £9.29, or $15.
System requirements? Yes, you can probably run it. Assuming, that is, you've got a GPU that supports OpenGL 3.3 and 4GB of RAM.
But what new features does the Remastered part of Grim Fandango Remastered refer to? Repainted, high-res character textures, for one thing. Also dynamic lighting, an orchestral score and two-plus hours of developer commentary. Oh yeah, and move away from the much lamented tank controls.
I'm pretty down on pre-orders in general, but Grim Fandango is a classic, and Double Fine would have to do something pretty drastically wrong to mess it all up. Weirdly, the pre-order period is exclusive to GOG. On release, Grim Fandango Remastered will crop up on other PC distribution platforms.
A few years ago Adriaan de Jongh was at a party playing Werewolf, a popular social roleplaying game where
friends coerce, flatter and fib. "I fell in love with this girl," de Jongh says, "and during the course of the game, she completely changed. She became a person I'd never seen before." "She was shouting, calling people names, and it was bizarre," he continued.
You and me become we: Dancing with Bounden
"She was shouting, calling people names, and it was bizarre," he continued. "I couldn't wrap my mind around it. That was one of the moments when I figured, shit, I really want to continue making games that are social."
de Jongh's game designs aim to make mobile devices into little lozenges of connection -- objects that close distance between people, rather than create it. Of course, that's a cliche about the smartphone, that it's a distancing device, that people are too occupied with it, that people can't put it down. But take Game Oven's-- you put your hand on a phone, and so does your partner, and you have to be the one to touch it the longest. That's it.
That's the game: you're enduring the playmate's unfamiliar, sweaty thumb-smudge on your screen. Or watching them endure your hesitant, intrusive touch on their intimate property. That's Friendstrap , the uneasy, shallow act of holding still over the prized black glass while the screen prompts you to make awkward conversation. Or think of GameOven's, where your twin fingers and an acquaintance's are led into a courtship walk on the face of a tablet, drawn to fumble and scissor together, digits straddling one another lewdly.
That's the kind of interaction that makes you think about the difference between "mobile game" and "mobile as game." Game Oven's work explores that smudgy, anxious fourth wall, where the device is mostly an accessory to an experience that makes people more aware of themselves, not less.
The latest is upcoming, a coy, eloquent dance game in development with a little help from the Dutch Ballet. You can see the video here, where professional dancers delicately pinch an inch of phone between them, as if the device were a kind of fluid little hinge for the choreography. Playing Bounden with my friend's young art school roommate Emily was not nearly as elegant.
"What is it," she asked, when I hesitated in her bedroom doorway to see if she'd play a game with me. At first she didn't stand up: We held the phone between us and rolled it around, wrists twisting, until we couldn't really see the screen anymore. There is an orb in the center of the screen, and a little crosshair radial that must trace little paths all along the surface of the sphere, like biking among archways on a tiny planet. You tilt and roll it together.
"We have to stand up," I told her apologetically. "We're supposed to be dancing."
Solemnly as mourners we held the phone between us, waltzing. Emily doesn't really play video games. I can't even explain normal ones to her, let alone this abstract geometric ballet. Our arms wrap mistakenly, Twister-like, around each other. We're not really doing anything right. Bounden is going to ask a greater cooperative effort of us than this. This is already a little too much touching. She looks like she wants to get back into studying.
"People are not used to trying to figure out something with someone else," de Jongh tells me. "You're putting yourself in a very vulnerable position."
Bounden isn't supposed to be awkward, not much. "We want to actually make people dance, in the end," he continues. "In the beginning of Bounden you're really focused
"We want to actually make people dance, in the end." on the screen, this ball, and learning how it translates. And then in the end, instead of thinking about what's happening on the screen, they realize things translate to real-life motions, and that's the point where it becomes less awkward."
People who play digital games generally have a high tolerance for steep learning curves. Players love being thwarted, if the success of the Dark Souls brand is any indication. They love the chance to persist against the limitations of unfamiliarity, to master and familiarize. But their tolerance for frustration seems much lower in an in-person game, a physical game. At times like that, there are more factors in play: the fear of failing in front of someone, the fear of failing them. Maybe they make eye contact for a little too long, or not at all.
"It's really difficult to steer that process," de Jongh reflects. "In the end, you'll have to figure it out together. There's a lot of feedback and we're still iterating on the tutorial, but we hope in the end everything becomes clear enough, people have the awkward feeling less, and they'll just roll into the rehearsal mode."
de Jongh doesn't feel he makes "folk games" -- small games that are portable, teachable, tangible, can be spontaneous and require players to self-govern -- because the role of the device in his work is too strong. But he's okay if you call him a folk game-maker. A lot of folk games adore that uncomfortable-silly air that fills the room when people have to play physically with one another; they love watching the player muddle through an uneasy conversation with a recused and gloating system. I think of Doug Wilson's Dark Room Sex Game , where players flick vulgar, grunting Wii remotes at one another in the dark. Or Spilt Milk's Hugatron , which provoked many conversations on the ethics of designing a public game about inescapable embraces.
But if de Jongh is a folk designer, he's not like that: He lives for the moment when people "get it," when they feel fluent. When he talks about Friendstrap , he can barely contain his laughter. "I'd be like, 'yeah, just put your thumb on the white circle and if you let go, you lose,' and they look at me like... 'what kind of game is that,' and then after one second, they get it," he enthuses. "For me, personally, that is one of the most amazing experiences in games that I've made so far."
He enthusiastically cites Bernie Dekoven's definition of that illuminating moment in cooperative play, where a "you and I" is visibly transformed into a "we." When Bounden 's dancers have finished fumbling around their shared purpose, when, hand-in-phone-in-hand, they begin those first halting steps toward physical fluency together.
"I always wanted to make games that go beyond the screen, and that's vague -- but I'll continue to keep it vague, a bit," he says. "I wanted to think about players, thinking about each other."
"Even if you make all these errors, you're still making them with someone else," he reflects. "For a lot of people, that's most of the fun of Bounden , where you're trying to figure
"I'm aiming the experience to be the satisfaction of having learned a dance with another person, and then finishing the dance, and being like, 'holy shit, we just did this. We can do this dance." out how to do it properly, together. I'm aiming the experience to be the satisfaction of having learned a dance with another person, and then finishing the dance, and being like, 'holy shit, we just did this. We can do this dance.'"
Yeah. I showed Emily Bounden . She held it, and I held it. If we had only made it to the we to the we figured it out , the we did it . We touched an invisible wall in our friendship, and it was the color of black phoneglass.
de Jongh makes countless prototypes, and one in about every 10 feels strong enough to him to develop further. Game Oven will be crunching meticulously on Bounden for each day of the less than two weeks till the game goes to review. Every detail needs to be right, and the tutorial needs a lot of work, he says.
"It's difficult to explain a kind of game nobody has ever seen or played before, which has mechanics that no one has seen or played before," says de Jongh. But people who press past that invisible wall learn to attain the satisfaction of being a we , moving fluidly together. "I was rehearsing a dance with the girl I fell in love with during Werewolf --"
I interrupt: "You started dating that girl, and now she helps you test Bounden ?"
"Yeah," says de Jongh. "I tried a dance out with her, for 15 or 20 minutes, and suddenly we could do it fluently, and we sometimes didn't have to even look at the screen any more. It's a divine moment... and I feel like we can get there, I feel like people can have that feeling that I've had with my girlfriend playing."
"Emily," I shout into the next room after De Jongh and I have said goodbye. "Try playing this game with me again, and see if you want to become my girlfriend."
I'm joking. I mean, we're both seeing other people already. I'm not being sincere. She laughs, and it also sounds insincere.
"No, but we should try it again," I volunteer awkwardly. "Okay," she replies, and the sort-of promise hangs in the quiet apartment across the space between us.
Grim Fandango remaster will feature live orchestra soundtrack, original art assets
Tim Schafer and Double Fine blew the doors off of E3 this summer with the announcement that Grim Fandango would be being remastered and re-released.
would be being remastered and re-released. After a horrifying few hours where it was rumored that the release would be exclusive to the PS4, we now know that Grim Fandango will be returning hometo the PC. At a special panel at PAX Prime 2014, artists who worked on the original talked about their efforts to overhaul the classic.
“This is about making Grim Fandango, the original, the way it was intended to be seen,” Tim Schafer said. “Making the game run the way it was supposed to. We built it on 386s and a week after we released it, 486s came out and broke a bunch of the puzzles. So it became very hard for people to keep playing it within a few years.” One developer likened the process to getting a Blu Ray edition of Casablanca—you want to make everything about it superficially better, but you wouldn't dare change a line of dialog or a bar of music.
The team also showed off touch controls working with the point-and-click interface, which would make the game playable on tablets. For PC, the game will be working at 1080p and will feature per-pixel lighting effects. Even better, the original art assets will be available, a nostalgic touch seen in previously remastered games like Curse of Monkey Island.
The original concept artist, Peter Chan, is back to work at the new project. The character of Grim was designed on San Juan island in Seattle, Chan said, because he had quit LucasArts and gone freelance. Every Thursday he would ship his drawings down to Schafer in California so they could use them in the Friday pitch meetings.
The music is also being redone by Peter McConnell, the composer of the original soundtrack. Though Grim Fandango featured a lot of live swing music, but the game's less-famous orchestral score was synthesized. For the remaster, that will be changing: “We never really conceived of the possibility that the orchestral tracks might be done by a live orchestra,” McConnell said. “But I'm happy to say that we're going to be able to do a lot of those tracks with a live orchestra.” The Melbourne Symphony, which recorded the Broken Age soundtrack for Double Fine, will come back to do the orchestral pieces in Grim Fandango.
In response to an audience question, Schafer wasn't able to confirm that the game would include developer commentary, but he did give a little hint and a wink. “We want to have a lot of special features, and we do love to talk. So those are two facts that exist.”
The original game was built at a different time in software development, and in many ways it's miraculous that it came out as well as it did. Chan told a story that because of the intense deadline pressure, his concept art for every room in the game was his first draft—he didn't have time for revisions. “When we made that game we put everything we had into it,” Schafer agreed. “The day we signed off on that game and said it was ready to ship, we sent it out the door and I went home and took three months off. I didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone.”
The original Grim Fandango was released by LucasArtsin 1998, but we don't know when the remastered version will be launching on PC. For all of our team's coverage of PAX Prime, check out thispage.
Ex-Vigil devs at Crytek USA looking to rescue Darksiders IP from THQ's smoking ruins
One of the big surprises of the THQ fire-sale was that no one stumped up to save Vigil , creators of Darksiders .
. A sad end to the company though that was, not all of Vigil's staff did so badly, with many of the refugees reforming as Crytek USA. Now their CEO David Adams has announced an ambition to buy back the Darksiders name, tweetingthat he'd "put 7 years of heart and soul into that franchise" and that "it belongs at home with its creators."
Good news for undernourished-horse fans everywhere!
Darksiders and its sequel were imperfect games but not unambitious ones, mashing together a Zelda-ish lite-RPG structure with a gratifyingly deep combo-brawler and Prince of Persia-style environmental acrobatics. What appeared initially to be a rather adolescent fiction about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse took some genuinely weird turns, as the roving eye of the developers flitted across styles and settings, all brought into lurid detail by an extremely accomplished art team. Even Jesper Kyd's score for Darksiders 2 is an overlooked gem.
I know the game has carved a little home for itself in the heart of several PCG staffers - and we'd love to see where the Darksiders team's talents take them next.
Thanks, Reddit.
Double Fine confirms Grim Fandango remaster coming to PC
Double Fine boss Tim Schafer revealed last month that Grim Fandango, the cult classic LucasArts adventure, was being remastered and re-released for modern systems.
that Grim Fandango, the cult classic LucasArts adventure, was being remastered and re-released for modern systems. Unfortunately, those systems were the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita, and not the PC. Schafer didn't leave us out in the cold completely, however, saying at the time that there would be "talk about other platforms soon," and today he was as good as his word.
Schafer, who designed the original Grim Fandangoback in 1998, acquired the rights to the game last year following Disney's closure of LucasArts. In a classic "good news, bad news" twist, the revival of the game was announced at Sony's E3 press event as a PlayStation exclusive. But no longer.
"Reap your heart out!" Double Fine tweeted. "We're pleased to announce Grim Fandango will also be available on PC, Mac, and Linux alongside PlayStation 4 and Vita!"
In further good news, Double Fine confirmedthat all versions of the game will launch simultaneously, "So everyone can play day one and not have to worry about those spoilers you've been successfully avoiding for the past fifteen years." When that day will come remains a mystery, but right now the fact that it's happening at all is good enough for me.
Video: Satoru Iwata - Disrupting Development
In 2006, the Wii launched, shaking up the console industry.
In 2006, the Wii launched, shaking up the console industry. It would turn out to be the crowning achievement of a career full of highlights for Nintendo's late president and CEO, Satoru Iwata, who passed away this past Sunday.
Here, we present Iwata's 2006 GDC keynote speech, in which he spoke about the development of the company's disruptive products, including the Nintendo DS and the Wii -- and how the company was forced to "reconsider its strategy and how it could recover overall leadership" in the game space once Sony's PlayStation came onto the scene and trounced the Nintendo 64 (that quote, by the way, is delivered as part of a witty anecdote about the battle between Coke and Pepsi for soft drink supremacy, not the console wars.)
The speech is a great reminder of the visionary thinking that led to Nintendo's major success under Iwata's watch, and delivers a peek into how the company charted a path through the "red ocean" to the blue one.
If you missed it in person, watch it for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel.
For more Satoru Iwata, you can read this reflection on his career(with plenty of wisdom direct from Iwata himself) or this collection of quotes.
About the GDC Vault
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vaultand its new YouTube channeloffers 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
Remastered Grandia II is coming to Steam
The Sega Dreamcast version of Grandia II, the JRPG that came out in 2000, holds a very impressive Metacritic rating of 90/100 ; the PC version that followed in 2002 earned a rather more tepid aggregate score of 70 .
. 13 years later, it's time to try again: GungHo Online Entertainment told GameSpottoday that a remastered version of the game is on its way to Steam.
The remastered release is based on the Sega version of the game, and was driven by an "overwhelming" demand for the game in a survey circulated via Twitter last month. GungHo America President Jun Iwasaki said the advent of the digital market makes it "especially important that classic games continue to remain available to play in some form."
GungHo gave no indication about a possible release date.
Jedi Knight 2 HD remake mod in the works
One of the best memories from my Star Wars gaming holocron is loading up a LAN multiplayer match in Jedi Knight 2 with a low-gravity mutation switched on and a lightsabers-only weapon restriction.
One of the best memories from my Star Wars gaming holocron is loading up a LAN multiplayer match in Jedi Knight 2 with a low-gravity mutation switched on and a lightsabers-only weapon restriction. It was silly loads of fun, but the Force wasn't with publisher LucasArts' wishes to continue the series, as Disney closed the studiolast April. Our only hope lies with the power of JK2's lingering community, where a brave modder is taking on the huge task of uplifting the entirety of the game's graphics in a HD remake mod.
Developer Raven Software released JK2's source codewhen it learned of LucasArts' demise, handing over the legacy of the Dark Forces series to the players. The code's availability meant modders could delve into the game's inner workings more deeply with total access to textures, scripting, and AI behavior.
The remake mod, as explained by author JDBArtist on the Gaming Nexusforums, will focus on overhauling JK2's single-player missions and some multiplayer arenas with improved lighting and sparkling new textures for every single surface. It's likely a long wait before a full release—the author is part of a mod team building a custom MMORPG, and the remake is a one-man effort—but JDBArtist seeks more texture artists and code-crafters to join in the effort via forum PM.
Have a look at some in-progress screenshots below, and keep track of the Gaming Nexus forum threadand Mod DB pagefor additional images. For more from the Star Wars modding scene, don't miss Evan's excellent adventures as a traveling robot Jedi.
At 70M sold, the PlayStation 3 is neck-and-neck with the Xbox 360
When the dust settles at the end of this current console generation, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 might end up neck-and-neck in total worldwide sales.
Sony said on Friday that as of November 4, 70 million PS3s have been sold worldwide since its launch in 2006. To put that into perspective, Microsoft claimed that same number for its Xbox 360 when it filed its financial reports for the quarter ending September 30, just over a month prior.
The news might come as a surprise for those following the U.S. market closely, where the Xbox 360 had a year's head start and has been outpacing the PS3 fairly consistently (and has, in fact, been the top-selling home console for 22 months running).
The situation's a bit different in the rest of the world, however. Europe has always shown a slight preference for the PS3, and in Japan, the Xbox 360 is almost a non-factor: the 1.6 million that tracking firm Media Create estimates it's sold as of last week is well behind the 8.6 million PlayStation 3s it has tracked.
Microsoft does however command the lead for motion-sensing peripherals. Sony says that its Wii-like Move controller has sold 15 million units to date as of November 11. By comparison, Microsoft revealed in an interview earlier that month that it had sold 20 million Kinects.
I've played pretty much every first-person puzzler under the sun, so it's rare for me to find a game
in this specific genre that really throws me a curveball. Glitchspace is from Scottish developer Space Budgie, which launched the game on Steam Early Access earlier this month.
Glitchspace is a first-person programming game
is from Scottish developer Space Budgie, which launched the game on Steam Early Access earlier this month. It's described as "a first-person programming game," and the moment you begin playing, it's not difficult to see why. Each obstacle in the game can be manipulated via simplistic visual coding, using classes, booleans and values to shift the world around at your every whim.
Need to pass through a block? Set the collision detection on the block to "False." Want to reach that platform way up above? Aim at the platform you're currently standing on, and ramp up its Y Axis value. All of this is done through a first-person coding interface, and it all gels so wonderfully.
So who the heck is Space Budgie then, and where did they come from all of a sudden?
"Space Budgie started out at the University of Abertay last year as six people who wanted to start an independent studio," the studio's Karl Inglott tells me. "We all studied games related courses at the university and were due to graduate that year."
The studio's first game, called 9.03m , was released last September -- it was an experience that aimed to humanize the victims of the Japanese tsunami. The game was an instant success for the group of six, and immediately managed to find its way onto Steam, raising more than $10,000 for charity.
"As a company, our mantra is to make games to benefit people in more than just entertainment." With this initial success under its belt, Space Budgie prepared for the next game, with one mantra in mind: "Make games to benefit people in more than just entertainment."
"We want people to play games and take something away with them," adds Inglott, "such as a new outlook, knowledge, or change the world in some way."
That's why Glitchspace , which has been in development for around 10 months, is the team's next step towards that goal. The game asks, "What would the player do if given the ability to change the code in a game?"
"This spawned the idea of a programming gun that fired code," explains the dev. "We designed an open world multiplayer sandbox game initially, and this was prototyped with a near functional programming gun, multiplayer, and an enclosed procedurally generated world. It was lots of fun!"
Alas, the Space Budgie team was unable to secure funding for the game, and the scope of the experience had to be significantly scaled down.
"We decided to go with a puzzle platformer, as this would allow us to integrate lots of what we thought was important to the concept, whilst making it maintainable within our means," notes Inglott.
Of course, other games have attempted to incorporate coding into the actual video game experience, including the ill-fated Code Hero . Says Inglott, he's glad that Space Budgie didn't attempt to go down the same path as the Code Hero team.
"It's funny, because we had started planning out a Kickstarter, but decided to drop it because of the scaling down," he notes. "I’m glad we didn't roll with it."
"We wanted to go with a simple approach to the programming," he adds. "Scratch and Kismet were our main inspirations for creating 'Null' (our programming language), but we needed to try and simplify it further, otherwise we risked making the game too complicated, and thus creating a barrier for enjoyment."
Thus, Glitchspace 's programming language 'Null' is a fairly accessible experience, that is focused around a small part of what programming is all about. Still, it does offer players an idea of how to think like a programmer.
"For our original open world concept, we had considered making the programming visual as we have currently, but with a code-based option in the game for those who want to delve into the coding on a more traditional manner," notes Inglott.
"We had started planning out a Kickstarter, but decided to drop it because of the scaling down. I’m glad we didn’t roll with it!" Space Budgie is currently at a crossroads in terms of its future. Glitchspace has just launched on Steam Early Access with around an hour of content currently in place, and the idea is to build that up to a final release later this year.
But the team itself is quite divided right now, again due to the aforementioned funding woes. While all six were working on the game to begin with, one left to get a paid job partway into development, while three others have gone back to studying for them post-graduate degrees.
In fact, the whole game is currently being put together by lone programmer Albert Elwin, with Inglott providing the marketing, PR and business-running elements.
"We still have a fair amount of work left to do," notes Inglott. "The environment needs a lot more attention to make it a more alive, and we need to get the rest of the level content finished! We're eyeing up the idea of possibly getting it onto some other kit, too."
And the team is already eyeing up is next big project after Glitchspace -- a game that revolves around the Great War.
"I cannot say much more than that right now, but we're really looking forward to it," he adds. "We would also one day like to develop the open world variant of Glitchspace , although that may largely depend on how the puzzle platformer version of Glitchspace does on Steam."
You can grab Glitchspace from Steam now.
Fan imagines Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a LucasArts-era adventure game
As great as new adventure games are, there will always be a piece of our hearts devoted to the LucasArts classics, like Day of the Tentacle or Curse of Monkey Island.
classics, like Day of the Tentacle or Curse of Monkey Island. Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer has also become something of a classic, so it seems a natural fit to see it set up in that art style.
Artist Andrew Scaifetook a scene from seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and illustrated them in this style, complete with an inventory stocked with Buffy's wooden stake and references to the show's characters.
If you're lucky enough to be going to the Bristol Comic Expothis weekend, Scaife will be there with prints to sell. Otherwise, you can enjoy the full gallery on Scaife's websiteand dream of games that might have been if LucasArts hadn't sadly closed down.
Homefront: the open world shooter that feels like urban Far Cry
Homefront: The Revolution sounds exciting.
exciting. Ostensibly a sequel to Kaos Studios' bland 2011 FPS, it's elevated by a new plot, new development team, and new focus on emergent open world design. Before I get to play it, Deep Silver Dambuster describes a shooter that attempts to capture life as a guerilla fighter.
It, they say, is a world where you are outgunned; where you're nipping at the heels of a more powerful force. It, they say, is a shooter where you'll need to know when to withdraw. Soon after, I get to play a section of its open world. Once, during a scripted sequence, my panicked squadmates tell me to retreat from a fight. I do, but only because there's an objective marker. Outside of this mission, the sense of being the underdog dissipates completely. I can wipe out patrols without fear of retribution, and capture Strike Points with relative ease.
Getting a bit cocky, I decide to throw myself at a heavily defended outpost, and, fair enough, I am swiftly killed. But the rest of the time, I seem to be a one-man army able to kill every KPA oppressor foolish enough to have a go. Based on what I played, Homefront: The Revolution doesn't feel like a game about resistance fighters in a desperate struggle for freedom. It feels like an urban Far Cry, or a military Watch Dogs. Its main inspiration is not guerilla fighters, it's the Ubisoft school of open world design.
Homefront: The Revolution takes place in a Philadelphia now under the control of the Korean People's Army. It features a map, and on that map are Strike Points. Complete a Strike Point, and the camera swishes around the area to show nearby activities and rewards. As you complete events, the map gradually shifts colour to show your increasing influence.
"The basis of it is similar to what you may have seen in other games," says senior level designer Fasahat Salim. "When you take a Strike Point and you unlock that space you get the content revealed to you, but we're not killing off the enemy. There's always an enemy presence in that space. The only thing that's changing is you now have more of a resistance influence in that space as well. What you see is more resistance fighters on the ground, more resistance fighters taking vantage points."
Weapons are scrappy, makeshift affairs that offer plenty of customisation options.
I like the sound of this approach. One of my major problems with Far Cry 3 was the way that, by completing its outposts, I was creating safe spaces where the enemy couldn't move. It felt as if I was slowly eroding away all the fun I could have in that world. Homefront: The Revolution differs in that it won't restrict the KPA's movement—emergent patrols and events will still trigger in areas with a resistance presence. The threat will always remain.
Even within Homefront: The Revolution's familiar template, there are still things that stand out. The weapons are scrappy, makeshift affairs that offer plenty of customisation options. New scopes, barrels and attachments can be crafted and installed on the fly. There's toys, too. Explosives, remote hacking devices and noisemakers can each be unleashed via a number of different delivery mechanisms. You can attach a hacking tool to an RC car, drive it under a drone, detonate it, and watch as the drone seeks out an enemy sniper nest and self-destructs inside. It's a gimmick, but it's a good one.
I hope my reservations will be answered by the other zones. The demo I play takes place in a 'Red Zone'. These derelict, bombed out streets are found along the outskirts of the city. Civilians aren't supposed to be there, so KPA patrols and snipers will shoot on site. It is, to be fair, exactly the sort of setup that lends itself to the Ubisoft-style theme park. The Yellow Zones sound more interesting, although Dambusters isn't showing them yet. "It's a completely different kettle of fish," says Salim. "It's a ghetto; it's where the population has been focused. There is a lot more population present. Security cameras are everywhere, and it's heavily policed and heavily patrolled." These areas are all about stealth, and building up support among the populace to trigger riots against the KPA.
In missions, players will also explore the Green Zone. "This is the central part of Philadelphia where all of the high-rises are," says Salim. "The opulence; where you see iconic things like city hall. We wanted to create very contrasting experiences in each of the zones." The existence of these distinct areas and experiences makes me hope that this is more than just a sandbox reskin. It won't be revolution, I don't think, but, combined with some accomplished combat and fun gimmicks, Homefront: The Revolution could still be an entertaining shooter.
Homeworld Remastered 2.0 update goes live, full patch notes are out
Today is June 7 and that means the Homeworld Remastered 2.0 update is live, and the full list of patch notes is now available to the public.
2.0 update is live, and the full list of patch notes is now available to the public. The complete list of changes can be seen here, but highlights include a rebalancing of the entire game—both single and multiplayer—and a complete overhaul of the formations system “to better support Homeworld 1 formations.”
“Formations will break on combat into combat groups based on the ships that are part of the formation. This is to more closely emulate HW1 and to make sure that ships perform as optimally as you would expect,” the patch notes state. “Formations have a unit cap depending on the ships and formation used. This is to ensure formations are as effective in combat as possible and so that the game performs at a reasonable speed.”
All ships in the game have been rebalanced to work more effectively in the new formations, and have also had their flight dynamics and “engagement behaviors” improved. Weapons may now use ballistic rules rather than RNG to determine hits, and tactical settings have been split into separate “Rules of Engagement” and “Stances,” to simultaneously emulate Homeworld 1 and 2 gameplay.
One important thing to be aware of is that pre-2.0 saves will not be valid after the patch is installed. Campaign progression will remain in place so you won't need to start over from the beginning, but mid-mission saves are out.
Homeworld Remastered also debuted on GOGtoday, and is currently available for half-price.
Grim Fandango finally a point-and-click adventure game, thanks to modder
Grim Fandango is one of the best adventure games ever made—an epic journey through a world that meshes Casablanca with DÃa de Muertos , as brilliantly imagined by Tim Schafer.
, as brilliantly imagined by Tim Schafer. First released in 1998, it was just about the peak of storytelling in the genre, but it always had one huge problem: the controls. But a new mod may solve those problems, changing the game's controls from keyboard-based "tank" movements to a point-and-click interface.
The modder in question is Tobias Pfaff. “I got annoyed by Grim Fandango's tank controls, so I made a classic point & click interface,” he says on ResidualVM's forums. “The game is now 100% playable with mouse only.”
Grim Fandango was the first LucasArts adventure game that ditched the SCUMM engine in favor of the newer, 3D Grim Engine, hence its name. With the transition to 3D, LucasArts also changed the controls to keyboard or gamepad, instead of the point-and-click mouse controls the genre is known for.
Navigating 3D environments from changing, fixed camera angles was problematic enough at the time, especially with “tank controls” (think about the first Alone in The Dark). The controls were even worse here, in an adventure game that required you to interact with specific items in the environment.
Pfaff says that the mod is still in alpha and probably rotten with bugs, but you can get it from GitHub, test it, and report them to make it better.
THQ in trouble: Metro: Last Light, Company of Heroes 2 and South Park game delayed
THQ's stock has halved in value after the publisher's Q2 financial report announced a delay to the games arriving early next year.
announced a delay to the games arriving early next year. Though the delay shows an investment in the quality of those titles, the plummeting share price could leave the company facing bankruptcy before they reach market.
Needless to say, this would be a tremendous shame, as many of the games on THQ's roster are very well-liked here at PCG. Metro: Last Light and Company of Heroes 2 look particularly promising, and later releases, like Crytek's take on the Homefront licence and a new Saints Row game should do a lot to chivvy up sales - assuming THQ can find the cash to fund their development. Then there's Darksiders - which I rather enjoyed despite its weak-sauce PC porting - but the last game hasn't made its money back, despite 1.4 million sales.
As such THQ faces a tough call: gamble money it doesn't have to fund and polish its forthcoming projects or jeopardise the quality of its titles and face diminishing returns. There are other options of course, though not especially welcome ones: a mergers and acquisitions consultant has apparently been hired, presumably to look at the possibility of a buy-out.
If THQ can last out a little longer, then the sales of Metro: Last Light and Company of Heroes 2 may well make or break the company. If you're looking forward to those games, it might be worth considering this fact should you find yourself with pre-order-shaped wad of cash come Christmas-time.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak gameplay showcased in new video
After putting out a couple of lovely Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak story trailers ( here and here if you missed them), Gearbox today released a proper gameplay video showing off nearly seven minutes of action recorded during an “Artifact Retrieval” multiplayer match.
Despite taking place on the surface of a single planet, Deserts of Kharak, at least as it appears in this video, looks very much like its space-based predecessors. Massive land-based carriers—“at once a battleship, a support vehicle, it's your key economic unit”—are the focal point of the game, while smaller, special-purpose units roam the desert in formation, working in concert to support one other in battle.
Even the interface is familiar, including the “feedback dial,” which was incorporated to give Deserts of Kharak “a Homeworld vibe,” and also to provide quick access to important terrain and tactical information. “Though we are set on a planet, the 3D concepts play a powerful role in the gameplay,” the developers say in the video. “So manipulating the terrain and kind of planning your attack patterns around it is really important.”
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak will be out on January 20.
Star Wars: Attack Squadrons is Disney's free-to-play space combat game
Now here's an idea that makes a lot of sense: Take World of Warplanes' gameplay and monetization model, slap some Star Wars on top of it, and stand clear of the avalanche of money that's about come your way.
Now here's an idea that makes a lot of sense: Take World of Warplanes' gameplay and monetization model, slap some Star Wars on top of it, and stand clear of the avalanche of money that's about come your way. That seems like the gist of Disney Interactive's announcement today that it is developing Star Wars Attack Squadrons, a free-to-play space combat game.
Disney said that it will have more information in the coming weeks, but you can already sign up for the beta here.
The press release describes it as a team-based dogfighting multiplayer game with up to 16 players at a time, allowing players to customize popular Star Wars ships from both the Rebel Alliance and Empire. It currently lists three competitive modes: Free For All (deathmatch), Team Dogfight (team deathmatch), and the more intriguing Base Defense.
The game is being developed by Area 52 in conjunction with Disney Interactive and LucasArts. Area 52's official websitedoesn't list any previous, current or future projects. It doesn't even say where it's located, though a quick lurking on LinkedIn suggests that it's in the Seattle area, where Area 52's CEO Jason Robar is located along with other "industry veterans."
Robar's experience is with free-to-play, browser-based games, and Unity 3D (and the frightening term: Advergaming), which along with the press release stating that Attack Squadrons is an "open web" game might mean that it will be browser-based as well.
Star Wars: Attack Squadrons also promises items, upgrades, and customization for your ship, and regular content updates every month. The whole plane porn aspect of World of Warplanes is completely lost on me since I didn't build models as a kid and am not very interested in the history of aviation. I did, however, pine for X-Wing and Tie Fighter toys, and nerded out over this bookdetailing every vehicle in Star Wars' universe, so this all poses a real danger to my financial situation.
The 100 game giveaway! (US only)
Observe, if you will, our Facebook page .
. As of this writing, we count 92,271 intrepid souls among our fans--a number that grows, inexorably, with every passing day. Our forces grow stronger even as I write this, and when we top 100,000 fans, our army shall be unstoppable.
In order to hasten the advancement of our forces and to reward the courageous and forward-thinking fans who have made us the number one source of news in the whole world devoted exclusively to the great wonder that is PC gaming, I, Logan Decker, decree that we shall give away 100 games this week. That's 20 per day, in a different genre each day, every day of the week through Friday.
In order to declare yourself eligible for the daily giveaways we'll be hosting all week-long, all I ask of such a heroic and sagacious people is that you “like” the PC Gamer Facebook page (in the unlikely event that you haven't already), and then “like” the daily post announcing the games that we'll be giving away that day. “Liking” that post will automatically enter you in that day's drawing. Winners will be drawn at random at 5pm PST and announced the following morning.
(If your Facebook page is set to private, we won't be able to contact you with your loot, so it is with a heavy heart that I must declare such entries ineligible for a free game. You may, of course, set your profile to public just for this week.)
For our friends and fans in other regions, I beg your forgiveness for limiting this contest to US residents only, and I give you this pledge: once we have amassed our forces and PC gamers rule the planet from the North Pole to the South Pole, from Newfoundland to Equatorial Guinea, our first task shall be to break free of our chains and abolish the oppressive laws that prevent us from sharing our largesse among all the great members of our community!
I declare that today's game giveaway shall be in the honorable genre of the first-person shooter. We have 10 download codes for Crysis 2, five for Homefront and five for Monday Night Combat. Winners will receive one of these fine entertainments chosen at random.
I serve you with honor and gratitude. May these free games demonstrate my fealty to you all.
Signed,
Logan Decker
Editor-in-Chief
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak trailer reveals the "Primary Anomaly"
Gearbox has released a story trailer for the twice-renamed sci-fi RTS Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak that digs into history of the people of Kharak, and the discover of the “Primary Anomaly” that set them on their quest to reclaim their homeworld of Hiigara.
The video is (or at least looks like) an in-engine cinematic rather than a demonstration of gameplay, but even so the Homeworldheritage is obvious. The massive, desert-crawling flattop is almost certainly the terrestrial equivalent of the Mothership, and the visual style and audio cues ring true, too. And is it just my imagination, or does the pair of red-trimmed fighter-like ships that flash across the screen at 1:34 look awfully Bentusi-like? I don't know how the Bentusi would figure into this stage of Kushan history, but as straight-up fan service a brief appearance wouldn't surprise me at all.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is available for preorder on Steam, at 20 percent off the regular $50/£30 price for owners of the Homeworld Remastered Collection; non-owners will get the Homeworld Remastered Collection free with a regular-price preorder. It comes out on January 20.
Ron Gilbert reveals how he'd make a new Monkey Island - stresses that he isn't
Ron Gilbert isn't making a new Monkey Island game.
Ron Gilbert isn't making a new Monkey Island game. This is a fact he's very clear about. A whole two parts of his seventeen point speculative design brieffor the definitely-not-happening sequel are dedicated to ensuring you understand that it's definitely not happening. That aside, it's an interesting look at how the series' creator would handle a follow-up. Which he isn't.
For starters, it would be an "enhanced lo-res" game, combining retro art with modern techniques like depth of field and parallaxing. But the old-school vibe would go beyond the visuals: Gilbert also states his desire to make it a hardcore adventure. "You're going to get stuck. You're going to be frustrated. Some puzzles will be hard, but all the puzzles will be fair."
It would also do away with the latter games in the series. "It would be called Monkey Island 3a. All the games after Monkey Island 2 don't exist in my Monkey Island universe. My apologies to the all talented people who worked on them and the people who loved them, but I'd want to pick up where I left off. Free of baggage. In a carnival. That doesn't mean I won't steal some good ideas or characters from other games. I'm not above that."
Gilbert claims his imaginary sequel would be fully voice acted, retain the series' dialogue puzzles, and feature a rebuilt SCUMM engine. "Not SCUMM as in the exact same language, but what SCUMM brought to those games ... I'd build an engine and a language where funny ideas can be laughed about at lunch and be in the game that afternoon. SCUMM did that. It's something that is getting lost today."
So far, so promising, so why isn't the game being made? For one thing, Gilbert notes that he's no longer interested in working on games whose IP he doesn't own. "The only way I would or could make another Monkey Island is if I owned the IP. I've spent too much of my life creating and making things other people own.
"Not only would I allow you to make Monkey Island fan games, but I would encourage it. Label them as such, respect the world and the characters and don't claim they are canon. Of course, once the lawyers get a hold of that last sentence it will be seven pages long."
You can read the full thought experiment on Gilbert's blog, where he also goes into how the Kickstarter pitch might work: "No concept art or lofty promises or crazy stretch goals or ridiculous reward tiers. It would be raw and honest. It would be free of hype and distractions that keep me from making the best game I could."
Then, take a look at how our resident adventure expert Richard Cobbett would reboot the series.
Petroglyph announce Victory - a squad-based battle arena, with tanks
With development of troubled MMORTS End of Nations now in the hands of Trion Worlds, former developers Petroglyph have returned with Victory.
of Trion Worlds, former developers Petroglyph have returned with Victory. To be clear, Victory is their triumphantly named Kickstarterhopeful, not (yet) a statement of success. It's an action strategy game that unfolds in real-time, but Petroglyph are saying it's not an RTS. At least, not in the way that you'd traditional think of the genre.
"If World of Tanks, StarCraft and League of Legends had a baby, it would be Victory," writes project lead Oksana Kubushyna. It's part team-based online battle arena, with full squads of tanks and infantry replacing the menagerie of disparate fictional styles that characterise most MOBA hero line-ups. There are definite RTS-elements blended in, too. Teams are fighting over capture points, and if a player's starting army is wiped out, they're out of that match.
Players can customise their squad make-up, buying new troop types through earned experience. Petroglyph state that the game won't be free-to-play, which suggests that unlocks will be purely tied to progress, not micro-transactions.
Victory is looking for $700,000. You can see a more detailed exploration of how the game will work in the video below.
The fuse of war is lit in new Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak trailer
Last week, Gearbox released a Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak story trailer about the discovery of the “ Primary Anomaly ,” the first small step in the long quest of the Hiigaran people to reclaim their homeworld.
,” the first small step in the long quest of the Hiigaran people to reclaim their homeworld. Today, a new trailer went out, this one called “The Transmission,” that sets the stage for the inevitable slide into war.
The planet Kharak was riven by centuries of religious warfarethat had left it devastated and exhausted by the time Kiith Galsien, formerly one of the dominant Family Houses of the Kushan people, was finally forced into exile. 400 years later, the discovery of the anomaly prompted a coalition of other Kiiths to launch an expedition into the swath of northern desert the Galsien had claimed as their new home, to recover and decode its secrets. Learning of the mission before it began, Kiith Galsien struck first, taking advantage of the technology it had stumbled upon in its wanderings to begin a new war against the heretics.
Homeworld: Desert of Kharak will no doubt fill in a lot of blanks, but the broad strokes of Kharak's history were actually established in the original Homeworld, through the Historical and Technical Briefingsection of the instruction manual. I actually find that comforting. The game's the thing, but I'm happier than you might think that retconned or half-assed pre-Homeworld lore isn't being shoehorned in just to justify a new release. I'm also happy that, based on our preview, it looks very much like Deserts of Kharak will be a proper successor to one of the finest RTS games ever made.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak comes out on January 20.
Prey 2: Still in limbo, but still not officially cancelled either
“P2 hasn’t been officially cancelled, only in limbo.” Cheever correctly points out this isn’t entirely new news as Bethesda said back in April that Prey 2 “has not been cancelled but the game will not be released in 2012 as planned. The delay is due to the fact that game development has not progressed satisfactorily this past year, and the game does not currently meet our quality standards.” But while
Bethesda will be "announcing new stuff" later in 2013
Bethesda Vice President Peter Hines has confirmed the publisher will announce new games later in 2013, and by new games he doesn't mean Dishonored DLC.
he doesn't mean Dishonored DLC. Speaking to OXM, Hines specified that the publisher has news forthcoming that is related to neither the Elder Scrolls Online or Dishonored, and that the publisher will be "making considerably more noise" than they did in 2012. "We will be announcing new stuff and making some noise, and I think when we get the chance to show you guys what we're up to, that you'll sit up and take notice."
There are a few possibilities: Fallout 4is widely rumouredto be in production, and Bethesda was hiring for an unannounced next-gen title back in February. Elsewhere, there's the long given-up-on Prey 2, the rumoured Fallout MMO and of course, Doom 4, which is similarly unlikely to release any time soon because it looks to be in development hell.
So, Fallout 4 then?
Rise of the Immortals now in open beta
Petroglyph has just opened the doors on a beta version of its MOBA game Rise of Immortals to anyone who's interested—now's your chance to try out a mixture of PvP and PvE elements in a three-lane, hero-team setup.
PvE elements in a three-lane, hero-team setup. By signing up for the beta, you'll get some exclusive swag and a bit of in-game currency for your trouble.
RoI's most notable feature is its persistent character system, which lets you collect stat-boosting items and accumulate experience as you play more matches. That's not to say veterans will greatly surpass the capabilities of new players—though you do gain persistent levels in both PvP and PvE instances, it never skews the balance of the game. If you sign up and participate in the open beta, you'll get a spiffy, beta-tester-exclusive skin for robotic baddie Psychozen (pictured above, rocking the C-3PO look), and a little over $10 worth of the in-game currency used to buy vanity items and boosts.
For characters, I also recommend Aislynn, the tattooed support tank. Few things are more awesome than howling like a wolf every few seconds, then calling down massive damage on an enemy with the power of the moon.
What we want to see from Doom 4
Article by Nathan Ditum
Apparently refusing to avail itself of the teleportation technology that kickstarted its earliest predecessor, Doom 4 has been creeping towards us slowly from the shadows since it was announced in May 2008.
Apparently refusing to avail itself of the teleportation technology that kickstarted its earliest predecessor, Doom 4 has been creeping towards us slowly from the shadows since it was announced in May 2008. Since then it's been teased, mentioned, and even glimpsed in a leaked selection of artwork that suggested anyone looking for finely detailed neo-classical balconieswas in for one serious thrill ride when the game finally arrived.
We're less focused on the neo-classical balconies, though, and more on the shooting and the hellspawn. Here are a few ideas we'd like to see propping up the big first-person shooter's return.
Barrels
This is a call for barrels in an emblematic sense, which is exciting as it's something that might never have happened before. The thinking behind it is that the barrels in the original Doom and Doom II weren't necessarily a sublime piece of game design, but did and do effectively recall the /style/ of play. They're placed apparently at random, but also in places where an early shotgun blast will set off the exaggerated “ker-TUSH”explosion followed by the slick sound of entirely inside-out enemies capitulating to gravity. There is a cartoon kineticism to the original games, epitomised in the barrels, and in dodgeable fireballs, and the ability to strafe so quickly you can see the side of the rocket you've just fired. Translating this directly would be disastrous, obviously, but a sense of it is what was missing from the hollow horror of Doom 3, and will be crucial to Doom 4 (and if that leaked art is anything to go buy, it looks like we're covered).
Hell
It's very important that the game take us to Hell in a literal, lakes of fire, citadel of Pandemonium, walls of the agonised damned way. This is what gave the brash original its exploitation punch - you're not popping your way through a familiarly demonic arcade metropolis, you're in /actual/ Hell, a Roger Corman stakes raising that contributes significantly to Doom's shotgun abandon. The leaked art shows New York torn apart by some kind of pan-dimensional event, the poor Public Library getting a very similar going over to the one it received in Ghostbusters II. It looks like an up-to-date-ing of Doom II's Hell On Earth scenario, and Id Software has talked about gameplay involving post-civilisation survival. We're fine with all of that, as long as the upshot is that we get to go back to Hell and shoot it in its face.
An unshakeable faith in the power of the shotgun...
...except when there's a plasma weapon handy. Doom more or less defined the 1-2-3-4, fist-pistol-shotgun-chaingun notion of armoury escalation in first-person shooters. It is the standard from which Halo deviated with its potent handgun and two weapon limit, which many others have followed. How Doom 4 returns to and passes comment upon this is unclear, but by virtue of its lineage simply including guns in the style of any other shooter is not an option. It needs to either knowingly defy or satisfyingly play upon expectations - make the shotgun a death-packing standout maybe, or offer a chainsaw attachment to all weapons - and it must remember the direct feedback and deadly simplicity which made scaling Doom's firearm pyramid such a thumping rush.
A hero generic to the point of invisibility
This sounds counter-intuitive if not deliberately askew. But! If ever there was a series to free us from the tyranny of shooters that bleed feelings and force character into action then it is surely Doom 4. Stop leaking emotion all over our loading screens. Stop sending us impassioned grunts recorded in downtown LA soundbooths that are intended to somehow make shooting demons more meaningful, as if there could be any meaning more powerful than them being demons and us having a gun. Doom is about purity of purpose and big expositional screens filled with small red text that tell all the story you need apart from a small angry face raising its eyebrows and occasionally becoming a bruise with a orifice in the middle. It would be excellent if it could stay this way - and happily, from the looks of the leaked art the character designs couldn't get more generic without having their virtual features sanded down to a raw nub.
An engine that works
Rage was designed to show what id Tech 5 could really do. For months, marketing materials and developer diaries crooned about the new engine's "mega textures" that would give artists complete mastery over the surface detail of Rage's rust-coloured canyons. But come launch day, it just didn't work. The textures took long moments to load in every time you turned your head, offering smeary geometry where there should have been fine detail. Whether id decide to pursue the claustrophobic survival horror trappings of Doom 3 or joyously embrace the lurid slaughter of Doom 1 and 2, the engine needs to show us the treasures promised by Carmack and co. in the run up to Rage.
What would you like to see from Doom 4? Do you want to mow down the hordes of hell, or cower in the dark with a flashlight?