Details revealed about Hearthstone’s first Blackrock Mountain boss

If you missed Blizzard’s PAX East announcement last week—or the data-mining the week before—Hearthstone’s next single-player adventure has been officially announced.

the week before—Hearthstone’s next single-player adventure has been officially announced. Based off of the World of Warcraft zone of the the same name, the Blackrock Mountain adventure will follow a similar format as Hearthstone’s Curse of Naxxramas adventure by pitting you against bosses from some of Blackrock Mountain’s raids. The first boss will be Coren Direbrew in 'The Grim Guzzler Bar', and thanks to the folks over at BlizzPro, details on his fight have come to light.

First off, the obligatory spoiler warning : If you’d rather keep Blackrock Mountain’s fights a surprise, stop reading.

Now then, let's enter the Grim Guzzler. Coren’s hero power and health were confirmed in a post on Hearthstone’s official site. As seen by the image above, it’s called ‘Pile On!’ and automatically puts a minion from each deck onto the board at the start of his turn. BlizzPro revealed that the Heroic difficulty version of this power puts two of Coren’s minions on the board to your one, and his deck is full of huge, high cost minions to be grabbed. Because the effect happens on his turn, your minion will be able to attack first, but if your deck doesn’t have large bodies to match you could quickly fall behind.

Additionally, he uses a new card called the Dark Iron Bouncer, a boss-only card that won’t be collectable. The Dark Iron Bouncer is a 6 mana minion with 4 attack, 8 health, and the card text “Always wins Brawls”—referring to the Warrior card Brawl, which Coren also has in his deck. BlizzPro says Coren would play a Dark Iron Bouncer when he was falling behind on board, then Brawl the next turn to wipe everything but his own Bouncer. It’s a powerful combo, and one I’m actually glad we won’t be able to see in constructed play.

Blackrock Mountain doesn’t have a release date yet, but is due out next month. These details are a good indication that this adventure will feel familiar to those who enjoyed Naxxramas. Head over to BlizzProto read about their full experience fighting the Coren Direbrew.

Edit: I was initially under the impression that Coren Direbrew's title was "The Grim Guzzler" but was incorrect. The Grim Guzzler is the name of another WoW location and the place you will fight him in the Blackrock Mountain adventure, not a nickname Coren earned for guzzling grimly. I have updated the text to reflect this.

Goat Simulator and SuperData talks revealed for GDC Europe 2014

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 trailer tries to survive Paris

Here's a bit of footage of Modern Warfare 3's Spec Ops survival mode from the Call of Duty Elite event in LA, spotted on CVG .

. It shows a new map set in Paris. Judging by the suicidal nature of the enemies, it's a very early round, but it doesn't take long to get to unlock a sentry gun to take out a horde of pesky attack dogs. For an overview of the Spec Ops mode, check out this analysis of the official Spec Ops survival trailer. That shotgun seems satisfying, but it doesn't look quite as flash as the Parisian map currently in beta testing in that other shooter, does it?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 trailer shows Kill Confirmed and Keep the Flag game modes

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is out next week.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is out next week. In terms of the sheer mass of copies flying off shelves and raw marketing hype it's likely to be the biggest launch of the year. It's surprising, then that we've heard so little about the multiplayer changes that Infinity Ward are planning for the multi-quadrazillion dollar sequel. As well as some very promising tweaks to perks and kill streak rewards, new game modes hope to add more variety to CoD's obscenely popular arena-based man shoots.

Firstly, there's a capture the flag mode that asks you to hold on to the flag as long as possible to rack up points, dashing round the maps and finding hold up points that will let your team mates defend you. Kill Confirmed, meanwhile, won't give you any points until you snatch the dog tag of a downed enemy, forcing players to fight at close quarters. Will that finally remove CoD's devastating snipers from the equation? Find out more about the new changes in our Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 preview.

Hearthstone Goblins vs. Gnomes: 37 cards from the new expansion

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The Escapists channels Bond, James Bond for its latest DLC

The Escapists is getting some new DLC, and despite this weekend, it's not Halloween-themed.

is getting some new DLC, and despite this weekend, it's not Halloween-themed. No, it's James Bond-themed, probably to tie in with that film that's just come out. You know the one. Unlike The Escapists: The Walking Dead, it's not an official James Bond thing, but yeah, it's called Duct Tapes are Forever, and it asks you to plot your escape from a supervillain's underground lair.

Duct Tapes Are Forever. What a bafflingly bad pun. But the trailer is cute:

There are a few new achievements, and leaderboards too, but this DLC is all about the new level, which will set you back £2.99 / $4.49 / €3,99 on November 3.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 trailer is an awesome action movie

Last night Infinity Ward released the first proper video of Modern Warfare 3.

Last night Infinity Ward released the first proper video of Modern Warfare 3. The worldwide conflict will be sending us to the US, Germany and Three-ngland, I mean, 3ngland. Damnit. ENGLAND. This is our first look at the upgraded engine after the first rush of teaser trailers, and there's no denying it looks good, but is it as fancy as the Battlefield 3footage?

How the Jagged Alliance 2 developers dealt with '90s gun culture

Beyond Eyes is about being brave in an untrustworthy world

It would be tempting to describe Beyond Eyes as a hidden gem, but for the fact that I think everyone who saw the game at GDC last week has already felt compelled to tell other people about it.

It would be tempting to describe Beyond Eyes as a hidden gem, but for the fact that I think everyone who saw the game at GDC last week has already felt compelled to tell other people about it. The first thing I felt when I saw the game was actually a pang of worry, because Beyond Eyes is precisely the sort of game that will inevitably have a certain type of comment thread blowhard querying whether it’s actually a game at all.

I’ll field that at the end, but first, here’s what you do in [spoiler warning] the game. You are Rae, a young girl traumatised by an accident which has left her blind. Your best friend is a stray cat who goes missing at the start, leaving Rae to venture into the world and look for it. “The game is more about overcoming fears and facing problems head on,” says Sherida Halatoe, who began prototyping Beyond Eyes while studying game design at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht in the Netherlands. “It’s kind of a coming of age story.”

The idea began with its art style, which as you can see is absolutely arresting. Rae is a forlorn smudge in an unfinished watercolour. As you guide her through the world, foliage sprouts, flowers bloom, and objects are painted in once they’re close enough to touch or be heard. Because of the layered way in which they’re drawn, by which I mean the timing of their appearance is staggered—not everything arrives at the same speed—it’s a bit like watching sped-up stop motion footage from a nature documentary.

Beyond Eyes in motion

Click the expand icon to watch Beyond Eyes in motion

The effect is something like a cross between Okami’s paint-the-world ability and the Genesis process from Star Trek. It’s addictive to look at, in the same way parallax scrolling was the first time I saw it. “I wanted to make the game so every screen could come from a story book,” explains Halatoe. “Because she’s been blind from a young age, instead of being born blind, her memories of the world are influenced by how children perceive the world.” Essentially: the world looks like a picture book, because that’s how Rae remembers it.

There are implications to the art style beyond pure prettiness. Rae’s remaining senses are potentially unreliable. When she hears the tinkle of water she initially assumes it to be a fountain, but as she gets closer the colours desaturate and it morphs into a sewer grate. Likewise, what at first seems to be a sheets drying on a clothesline turn out to be a more sinister scarecrow. These disappointments, and more immediate threats like a barking dog and a busy road to cross, have an instantly detrimental effect on Rae’s mood. Her head hangs and her shoulders hunch. Bright pastels are replaced with bleak smears.

Overcoming these obstacles is less about solving puzzles, though Rae can perform rudimentary interactions, than it is about overcoming her fear and pressing on with the exploring. Encouragement is offered by the occasional sounds that she intuits might be the cat, which appears for a few seconds, glimmering golden, before she loses it again.

Halatoe expects the game to last between two and four hours, depending on how thoroughly you plan to explore. “I’m very inspired by films and shorts,” she says. “I kind of like the idea of having short games with interesting stories to try to build a connection between the player and the avatar. So, instead of having just this empty vessel that you can throw off cliffs or do whatever you want with, I wanted to show the player that their actions influence the way that she feels.”

Having discovered Beyond Eyes via its Indiegogo campaign, Team 17 picked it up for publishing and now has 12 people based in Leeds, in addition to Halatoe, working on a release sometime later this year. Having already helped launch Penarium and Sheltered, the publisher, best known for the Worms series, is becoming an increasingly interesting indie incubator.

With its emphasis on overcoming fear, and Dear Esther-style artfulness, Beyond Eyes is a particularly intriguing project. “When she starts out, [Rae] kind of feels that being blind is all that she is,” says Halatoe, “and by progressing she kind of learns about herself. I wanted to make a story about someone who might initially be thought of as a victim, but actually learns to manage herself and grows in the process a little bit.”

And why is it a game? Because Beyond Eyes already seems worth playing.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer tested by crack team of glitchers

Infinity Ward have flown in a crack team of testers to crush exploits in Modern Warfare 3's mutiplayer maps, reports CVG .

. The mapMonkeys are a team of gamers who pride themselves on discovering hacks, glitches and bits of broken code that could lend players an unfair advantage when the game goes live. They're essentially The A-Team of QA. They've joined the sizeable team of testers already working for Infinity Ward to put the new maps through their paces with the aim of making sure Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer scene is as fair and competitive as possible on release.

"They're a great addition to an already rigorous QA process that the internal team here at Infinity Ward / Sledgehammer and additionally at Activision have been doing since development began," Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling told CVG.

"While we've been hammering away testing on it since it's been up and running, these guys focus specifically on exploits that can potentially be used to an unfair advantage, such as getting outside a map's playable area, inside geo, or find weapon / equipment exploits that were not intended by the designer so that we can catch and address these before it gets out to the public."

The four members of the mapMonkeys Infinity Ward flew out to see the game have been expressing their excitement on the mapMonkeys forums. The team will get the chance to play Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer maps months before release

"We've been flown out to test other games in the past (Such as Call of Dut:World at War and Modern Warfare 2), but we only had 2 or 3 days to test the game and find glitches, which wasn't nearly enougn time. This time, Infinity Ward is keeping us there an entire week so we can find more bugs and glitches than ever before!" writes mapMonkey Rezzzo, who also mentions that he's bought a new camera for the trip. Any photos of the game itself are likely to be held under tight lock and key, however.

Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer is rumouredto have an all-new killstreak system. We'll find out if there's any truth to the hearsay when Modern Warfare 3 comes out on November 8.

Rumors were circulating the depths of the internet last week, as it looked likely that the PlayStation

3's popular karaoke series SingStar was going free-to-play. As it turns out, it's perhaps not as free-to-play as you would have guessed. At the end of October, SingStar will launch as a free-to-download client for PlayStation 3.

SingStar goes free-to-play... well, not really

will launch as a free-to-download client for PlayStation 3. No longer will you need to put discs in to boot up the SingStar store -- instead, you can access the store directly, buy songs, and sing along without heading down to your local game shop.

To call the set-up "free-to-play", however, is to use the term very loosely. Users will be granted one demo song of about a minute in length from a small selection of demos to get started with, and from there you are required to buy any additional songs. You could say that SingStar will be about as free-to-play as iTunes currently is.

Still, whatever you describe the business model as, there's no doubt that as a next move for SingStar , it's definitely a step in the right direction. The franchise's senior producer Chris Bruce explained to Gamasutra that making the client free to download was "the logical next step" for the series.

"We did the Singstar viewer originally, which was a little application where you could go and browse the songs, and this was just a logical progression from that," he noted.

The SingStar client itself is receiving a small visual update as part of the move, said Bruce. "We've made a few changes to it so that people can get around the game easier and quicker, to really try to make it much more accessible for all those new people coming to the game."

"It's still totally recognizable to anyone who has been playing Singstar," he added. "It's just little changes to the ways users get around the menus. You can get into the game quicker and get singing."

This new update, due at the end of the month, will also allow users to get to the community options more quickly, all them to "start browsing all the user-generated content straight away," said Bruce.

"There's also some recommendation stuff, so that people can find the songs that they really love easier." The disc-swap feature, which lets players use their old SingStar discs, is another example of where the dev team has fiddled with the original, as the feature is now more prominently-placed, based on community feedback.
Free-to-play?I questioned whether SingStar is truly going "free-to-play" -- it's especially questionable given that you only get one free snippet of a song. Even by free-to-play game standards, that's stingy.

"So you're right that it's not strictly free-to-play," he admits. "Obviously you need to buy the songs, and we have a licence to pay to the licensors, but we obviously want to get as many people trying it as we possibly can. Someone who has never bought a song before will be able to download a short demo song to give it a go."

Those SingStar fanatics who own the game discs will still have to put the discs in to sing along with those supplied songs -- "that's one of the restrictions that we have to work with," says Bruce -- and the prices currently in the SingStar store will remain as they are, bar promotions every once in a while.

As an afterthought on the idea of injecting the free-to-play business model into the music game genre, I asked Bruce whether he thought the once-popular genre could see any sort of uprise if it were to adopt a price-free entry fee.

"I hope so," he answered. "I think like any genre, everything goes through peaks and troughs. There was obviously a massive peak a few years ago with Guitar Hero , but is no longer any more."

" Singstar has been here for five years now on PlayStation 3, so we're not planning on going away, and hopefully this is the next step for SingStar , and we can restart that next peak."

Humble Bundle goes Jumbo (again)

Humble Jumbo Bundle 4 is a nice collection of words to say.

Humble Jumbo Bundle 4 is a nice collection of words to say. Not the 4, so much, but certainly the rest. Give your mouth a treat by saying them aloud right now. (Incidentally, how has there not been a Humble Jumble Bundle yet?)

That's enough mouth fun for one day. Humble Jumbo Bundle 4is also a nice collection of games, all organised into different pay-what-your-want tiers.

The most basic tier will get you Outland: Special Edition, Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes and Mercenary Kings. Beat the average—currently $4.63—and you'll also get Endless Space: Emperor Edition, The Stanley Parable and The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II.

At the very top end, you can pay $18 or more to get Space Engineers added to the mix.

There's some good stuff there. The Stanley Parable is excellent, and Endless Space is a decent 4X strategy—albeit not quite as good as Amplitude's follow-up, Endless Legend.

The bundle will be available for two weeks, and additional games will be added later in its run. The proceeds can be split between the developers, Humble, and this bundle's two charities, Save The Children and charity:water.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 release date revealed, Infinity Ward respond to leak

"A lot of hype & a lot of leaked info on #MW3, some still accurate, some not.

Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling has responded to last week's Modern Warfare 3 mega leakon Twitter, saying that not all of the leaked information is correct.

"A lot of hype & a lot of leaked info on #MW3, some still accurate, some not. To avoid spoiling the experience, I'd wait for the real reveal," he said.

One part of the leak that's looking more and more certain is the release date. A Modern Warfare 3 poster, and retail sources have all but confirmed Tuesday November 8 as the big day. The poster features artwork identical to the Modern Warfare 3 box artleaked a couple of weeks ago, suggesting that that, too, is legitimate. You'll find the poster image below.

Bowling also pointed the way towards four Modern Warfare 3 teaser trailers, and advises fans to keep an eye on the new Modern Warfare 3Facebook page for further updates. Here's that poster, courtesy of IGN.

Win tickets to IEM San Jose this weekend + Roccat gear

Intel and the ESL are putting on a little tournament not far from our San Francisco office this weekend, and we'd love to see you there!

Intel and the ESL are putting on a little tournament not far from our San Francisco office this weekend, and we'd love to see you there! If seeing some of the best League of Legends and StarCraft II competitors duke it out wasn't enough, the winner will also receive some gear from Roccat.

Enter our giveaway. The giveaway closes on Friday at 3 PM Pacific.

All we need is your email address so that we can contact a winner on Friday afternoon (Pacific Time). Thanks to Roccatfor providing us with stuff to give away.

Free add-ons released for Endless Legend and Endless Space

Remember last week , when I was all like, "Endless Legend is getting a free add-on next week"?

, when I was all like, "Endless Legend is getting a free add-on next week"? Well now it is next week, or "this week" as we've decided to call it. Did Endless Legend get a free add-on? Yup.

Called Visions of the Unseen, it adds a new minor faction, the unseeing Eyeless Ones. They are literally eyeless, hence how they got the name, but possess a sixth sense—"kanjwe"—that lets them "feel all that is visible, and some that is not"." As with other minor factions, they can be pacified and assimilated—allowing you to build their units.

There's other stuff, too. Here's the major additions and changes of the add-on:

Added a new minor faction: the Eyeless Ones. Added new 10 side quests. Added Faction-related diplomatic interactions. Added loading tips. Added the Vaulters' outgame view. Added VFX to the unique quest weapons. Added more data to the save files, in order to allow parsing for league/stats database.

You can peruse the full patch notes here.

Endless Space got some love, too. Chronicles of the Lost adds a bunch more events for the Disharmony expansion. Here's the big stuff:

Added 24 colonisation events: these events can now be triggered when colonizing a new planet Added 8 exploration events Added the Vaulters’ introduction cinematic Added the Vaulters’ Victory and Defeat screen

And again, full patch notes are through this link.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to get "exceptional post-launch support"

Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling says that post-release support "major focus" for the team once Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is released on November 8.

Gamerzinesspotted Bowling's comments on Twitter, where he said that players can expect "exceptional post-launch support" and "constant patches" for Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer.

Bowling says that fan feedback on Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer has motivated the team to provide better support for the sequel. Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer suffered numerous hacks and cheats when it came out in 2009, and Infinity Ward were criticised for taking too long to patch up new exploits. Hopefully Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer will be more secure. For more on the next Call of Duty game, check out last week's huge Modern Warfare 3 info-leak. There's also a shiny new Modern Warfare 3 site, which contains the four teaser trailersActivision released over the weekend.

Intel Extreme Masters New York: world's best CS 1.6, LoL and StarCraft 2 players to fight for $93k

The best Counter-Strike 1.6, StarCraft 2 and League of Legends players will clash in New York next month, hoping to win a share of the enormous $93,000 prize pot up for grabs at the Intel Extreme Masters Global Challenge event.

The best Counter-Strike 1.6, StarCraft 2 and League of Legends players will clash in New York next month, hoping to win a share of the enormous $93,000 prize pot up for grabs at the Intel Extreme Masters Global Challenge event. It all kicks off on Thursday October 13 and runs through until the finals on Sunday October 16. The best teams will also win the chance to participate in the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship in Hanover, Germany next year.

Counter-Strike 1.6 players will be competing for the largest sum. The best team will take home $16,000. Top prizes of $12,000 will be awarded to the victorious League of Legends team, and the winning StarCraft 2 player stands to win $6,500. The rest of the prize pool will be divvied out among the runners up. For coverage of the qualifiers, and more information on Global Challenge New York, head over to the Intel Extreme Masters page.

The prize pools for each IEM competition seem to keep growing and growing as esports become more popular, and more exciting to watch. Many of the matches should hopefully be broadcast through ESL TV's standard streaming service, with paid upgrades available if you want higher quality video.

Interview: Endless Space and StarDrive developers talk about 4X design

At the Game Developers Conference in March I previewed Endless Legend , a fantasy 4X strategy game from Amplitude Studios that is now available on Steam Early Access.

, a fantasy 4X strategy game from Amplitude Studios that is now available on Steam Early Access. I wanted to spend more time talking to Amplitude's creative director, Romain de Waubert de Genlis (above right), about the recent resurgence of the 4X genre and the success of his previous game Endless Space. We decided to talk over lunch with another 4X designer, Daniel DiCicco (above left), who is working on a sequel to his indie success StarDrive. Over the course of an hour we discussed different approaches to 4X design, their all-time favorite 4Xs, what they think the genre is missing, and more.

It's a long, meaty conversation about one of the most complex corners of PC gaming. Read on to join us for lunch.

Wes Fenlon, PC Gamer: To start off with a topic: [Romain], earlier we were talking about you having a really active community for the first version of your game. You guys had that with Games2Gether, fostering that. Let's talk about doing early access to your games and how that influences your development process.

Romain de Waubert de Genlis, Amplitude Studios: Although we've been in the industry for quite a bit, and we're big fans of 4X, we had to look at how to make a 4X. We had some ideas, but what I was really scared about was the balancing in the end. There are so many things. A game that lasts 10 or 12 hours, generally what you tend to do is play a lot of the beginning and polish it, but it's really hard to get the proper data to balance a game through the end. It needs to be interesting until the end. It needs to have stuff coming in that balances out the rest of the game.

That's one of the two reasons why we came to Games2Gether, to make sure that we had people who could help us and teach us how to make a 4X, particularly on the balancing side. On the technical side or the art side, we're not that scared. I wasn't too scared about any of the global ideas. Just the balancing. And also not having people get drawn into the details. It was a mix of that.

The thing is, when you're unknown, you need to find a way to have people that want to share the adventure with you. With that, what we saw in Games2Gether… Let's promise that we can create the game in front of them and include them in the process, so they really are part of the creation of the game. That way, as a player, I would find that a lot more attractive than just playing the part of a witness.

Dan DiCicco, Zero Sum Games: For StarDrive, we didn't have anything quite so formal as the Games2Gether, but we had a similar approach. Including the community early on, saying, we're going to make this game in front of you. The feedback that we got helped shape the game, and it's also very encouraging, to see that people like the first course. Here's what we've made up, here's what we're trying to do. They care enough to come back to the forums and post about it and tell you all the things they like or don't like. It helps me keep going, day to day.

PCG: What changed with the first StarDrive, getting feedback from people playing it?

Dan: There were some major systems that didn't even exist at the beginning. They came into being after people played the game and said, hey, it would be really nice if we could manage the power grids on our ships. StarDrive had this module-based ship construction system, and we added this SimCity-like power management, so you have to make sure all your modules are powered.

I love our community. It has its drawbacks, too. We learned the hard way, every time you engage with your community and tell them about something you intend to do, it's basically treated as an implied promise, even if it's not an actual promise. For me, I screwed up by saying I wanted to do multiplayer, and then decided after exploring the concept further that it wasn't realistic for StarDrive. I made a lot of people mad by doing that. There's a downside to strong community engagement also.

Romain: Yeah, I'd agree with that. For us, what we're trying to do is make sure that we have a scope which is very clear. We want to make sure that the vision is clear to everyone. We try not to go outside that vision.

People can get hurt easily if you say, this is what my game's going to be about, and then you change it. This is also why we didn't want to go on Kickstarter. I had many chances to change the game. The game begins as one thing and it ends as something else. As you make it, the game evolves. Some stuff that you promise at first turns out to just not be fun or interesting or challenging. It's better to kill that and do something else instead. With a Kickstarter, people pay money ahead of time for a feature that's on the Kickstarter. If I remove it, what happens?

That's why we wanted to make sure that we paid for the whole game. When people pay for the game before it's released, before they can play the game, when the game comes out, there's already a contract between them and the creator. But we did have some stuff that we kind of promised. Multiplayer is a tricky one. As players and designers, it was awesome. Technically, getting more into the details, it was more and more difficult. We'll do it, but it'll be painful.

Dan: A similar concept has been on my mind lately. A lot of indies have chosen to be full-on indie, but both of us have chosen to partner with a publisher. To me, the benefits seem obvious. There's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of games. It's easy to get lost. It's nice to have partners who know more about business. What do you think about that?

Romain: I think our approach is a bit different from yours, because we don't have the same relationship with Iceberg. First, when we decided to work with [publisher Iceberg Interactive], we were already working directly with Steam. But at the same time, we knew that Steam was only 90 percent of the digital sales we could make. We also knew that a boxed version could work out in some territories. We wanted to have boxes. That's why I came to Iceberg. I wanted them to take care of that 10 percent, and the boxes. Also, we asked them to take care of PR and promotion, because again, we didn't have time and resources to take care of that. We wanted to focus on what we can do best. At the same time, we lead the communication at stages.

Dan: My relationship with Iceberg is different, I think. Part of it is the structure of our company. You have 35 guys now?

Romain: And you have one.

Dan: Yeah, I have one, plus a bunch of freelancers. When I started, I hadn't ever made a video game. Here were people who knew the industry. They knew how to get a game to market. If I'd tried to be a completely solo indie, I just might have been lost. I see a lot of indies out there making a lot of success, and I think that can be a bit misleading to people who are trying to break into the scene. They all want to be the big hit, but they don't realize that there's so much more.

It's not just making the game. It's marketing the game. Things like [GDC], where you can meet with journalists. It's been on my mind lately.

Romain: For us, we're able to do more on that side, because we had a lot of publishing-side experience previously. It may come out wrong, the way I say it. But from what I've seen, being on the publishing side, I realized that publishers were probably the worst ones at selling indie games. Each time, I was seeing these games that we were making, and you always had some marketing guy coming in with his own recipe. Which is the same for every game that he ever does. You do a small game, and it's the same recipe as for any other—web advertising, TV if you can. Wait, what if I don't have TV? What will I do? I don't have TV [ads] on this game! I'm lost!

That's why we realized, if we went with a publisher who would lead the communication, again, we'd be on this classical way of doing things. We know that's not the way to do it with a smaller game. We're only aiming at an audience of maybe 60,000. That's what we're hoping for. And they're all over. We have a few thousand in France, a few thousand in Germany, a few thousand in the U.S. Traditional advertising wouldn't reach those guys. We knew we had to find another way. That's why we chose this community-centric approach.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 trailers blast four major cities

At the end of last week, an enormous Modern Warfare 3 leak spilled a megaton of plot and character information onto the web.

spilled a megaton of plot and character information onto the web. Activision have decided to roll with it and release four Modern Warfare 3 teaser trailers over the weekend. They show attacks on four major cities in England, America, Germany and France, and include a short message from the game's central villain.

Infinity Ward dev Robert Bowling broke the news of the trailers on Twitter, admitting that the leak had taken Infinity Ward by surprise.

"Wasn't planned, but you're clearly hyped, so here is the 1st of many Modern Warfare 3 videos coming in hot today!"

And here they are. Each one features the voice of Modern Warfare's big baddie, Makarov, speaking in Russian. VG247translate the words as “One… will destroy the enemy's hope for victory.” More is set to appear soon on the new Modern Warfare 3 Facebook page.

E-sports TV show draws over a million viewers

The first episode of Eurosport's coverage of the Intel Extreme Masters aired recently, and drew over a million different viewers.

The first episode of Eurosport's coverage of the Intel Extreme Masters aired recently, and drew over a million different viewers. The show went behind the scenes at the Global Challenge Shanghai Counter-Strike 1.6 tournament, following the highs and lows of Team Fnatic's campaign to become Shanghai's new Counter-Strike champions.

The Global Challenge Shanghai competition saw world famous Counter-Strike pros team NaVi and Team Fnatic battling it out for the $57,000 prize money. The program concentrates more on the behind the scenes drama and preparation of the teams involved rather than the matches themselves, but nevertheless drew over a million different viewers between its initial broadcast and repeats on Eurosport and Eurosport 2. The program's success acts as another sign of the broadening appeal of competitive gaming as a spectator sport.

The show is available to European viewers on demand on the Eurosport player. For international viewers, the Intel Extreme Masters have put episode 1 on Youtube, part 1 of which is embedded below. Episode 2 will be broadcast on Eurosport 2 on Thursday at 9:30PM GMT, and the series is planning to cover the whole Intel Extreme Masters league season all the way up to the event's finale in Hanover next March. For more information on the competition, check out the official Intel Extreme Masters site.

Endless Legend preview: making real-time, turn-based combat work

Endless Legend , the fantasy 4X strategy game from Endless Space developer Amplitude Studios, is a month away from hitting Steam Early Access.

developer Amplitude Studios, is a month away from hitting Steam Early Access. Endless Legend will be Amplitude's second game to launch on Early Access— Dungeon of the Endless, its roguelike-meets-tower defense experiment, has been playable in an evolving alpha state since late 2013. And the developer has now built its Games2Getherbusiness model around getting player feedback during development.

Last time we saw Endless Legend, Amplitude wasn't ready to show off its combat system, the vital "exterminate" slice of the 4X experience. Now, a few weeks out from Early Access, creative director Romain de Waubert gives me a tour of Legend's strange real-time turn-based battles. Combat in Endless Legend is like knocking over a series of dominoes, if the dominoes were hulking orcs and squads of elven swordsmen and archers placed upon a hex grid that looks an awful lot like Civilization V.

Warfare in Endless Legend plays out in turn-based phases on a macro level. When a battle begins, the game quickly wipes away the details of its vibrant tilt-shifted hex landscape in favor of a cleaned-up battlefield.

"We don't want to go down to micromanagement," de Waubert says. "We want you to stay a general, and while this battle occurs, you can do something else. So we want to make sure you are only at the high levels and giving big directions—like I want to keep that high ground, I want to tactically process the terrain and put the right units in front."

Elevation plays a major role on the map—if one hex is a few levels higher than surrounding hexes, its sides will be blocked off by impassable cliff faces. A height advantage also gives units like archers an expected combat bonus.

de Waubert says that intelligently using those elevation differences is key in combat, since there's no micromanagement. You give each unit a simple order—where to move and then who to attack—and then end your turn and watch combat play out. Each unit in the battle takes its turn in a sequence that's displayed at the top of the screen.

"Now the battle is happening in real time, but it's turn after turn based on [unit] initiatives," de Waubert explains after giving his units orders and ending his turn. "The faster initiatives play first. The whole trick is to make sure the other guy's units with fast initiatives are being killed first or stopped first. So in a way you can combo and only have your guys play."

By paying attention to that sequence, you can target the enemy units that are moving first and potentially wipe them out before they get to attack. Dominoes.

Long battles can play out over three phases, with multiple turns in each, though the skirmish I watched de Waubert manage ended in only two turns. He lost.

"I should not have lost that battle," he says laughing. "It's all about how you place your troops and which you place first. It's high strategy: more about the big decisions and not the extreme details that, in a way, I think are the same [in many 4X games]. I think it's more interesting to have to play on the initiatives and have a combo where the others can never play."

While you're making turn-based combat choices, other players in a multiplayer game can wander into range of a skirmish and watch the elves and trolls and other fantasy warriors take their turns in real time. It's a strange hybrid, and I didn't get a chance to see how smoothly everything will mesh together in a real game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 box art leaked?

Kotaku has been reporting on a series of possible Modern Warfare 3 leaks, and has turned up what might just be the cover for the PC edition of the next Call of Duty game.

has been reporting on a series of possible Modern Warfare 3 leaks, and has turned up what might just be the cover for the PC edition of the next Call of Duty game. The logo on the cover image is the same as the one uncovered by a separate leak on the Electric Hydra forums, suggesting that this box art could be legitimate. There's also a logo for "Call of Duty Elite," which could be the premium Call of Duty online service that Activision have hinted at in the past. You'll find both images below.

In the recent Activision Blizzard earnings call, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg discussed the formation of another Call of Duty "platform" in addition to Modern Warfare 3 and the micro-transaction funded Call of Duty Online.

"I told you we had formed a wholly-owned development studio called Beachhead to lead the creation of an all-new connected digital universe for the Call of Duty franchise," said Hirshberg, "this platform will include a suite of services and content plan that will unite and ignite the community like never before."

If Call of Duty Elite is real, it might well be this. There are more Modern Warfare 3 announcements to come soon enough. We'll have to wait and see if the following images are real.

At The Gates not ready to open; Jon Shafer's turn-based strategy delayed to 2015

Alpha testing is a bit like inviting a barbarian horde to ransack your city.

Alpha testing is a bit like inviting a barbarian horde to ransack your city. Sure, you might think you've built sturdy walls and impenetrable defences, but sooner or later the throng of testers will find a crack. That's what happened to Jon Shafer's appropriately named turn-based strategy At The Gates. Its alpha testers, having breached the early code, went on to make a number of reasonable and sensible design requests based on the issues they identified. The savages! In response, Shafer is extending the game's development past the planned mid-2014 release date and into 2015.

"I've noted in both the original Kickstarter pitch and subsequent updates that the goal with AtG is not just to make a strategy game that not only breaks new ground but also one that is polished at release," Shafer writes in his latest backer update. "This recipe calls for one key ingredient which has no substitute: time.

"AtG could be released as originally planned in mid-2014 as a 'good' game. But would it be one of the best strategy games ever? Probably not. As such, I've made the decision to push back AtG's release until 2015."

Based on the testers feedback, the game's alpha build has already incorporated changes to give the early game more purpose, and tweaks to the game's economy. Beyond that, Shafer notes that the biggest problem is a lack of structure and goals. The aim, he says, is to focus on AI diplomacy, letting your opponents needs and demands become a driving factor.

"I know this is disappointing news," Shafer finishes, "but at the end of the day what we all want is a great game, and our team is willing to stick with AtG as long as it takes to get there. This kind of flexibility is only possible because our funding comes from your generosity, and while painful in the short term it will no doubt pay off over the long term. I think I speak for everyone in saying that what we want is an amazing game, even if it means a longer wait."

For more on At The Gates, check out our interview with Jon Shaferfrom earlier in the year.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Endless Space's fifth free add-on now available for Disharmony owners

Here's a more sedate representation of space than that offered by some of today's other interstellar stories.

Here's a more sedate representation of space than that offered by some of today's other interstellar stories. Endless Space may not be as infinite as its title suggests, but thanks to Amplitude's commitment to free add-ons, it is constantly expanding. The fifth of these add-ons, called The Search for Auriga, is now available for owners of the game's Disharmony DLC.

The main features of this update include the special planet Auriga itself, new heroes, a new wonder, tweaks, adjusted features and some AI improvements.

Despite all that, one of the most important changes is a tweak to the Disharmony penalty for the Harmony faction. "Disharmony now affects the planet only and not the system any more: thus the player can more easily colonise planets with dust and earn some industry/resources from it. However, the science and food will decrease faster than before but only on the planet." That should go a long way to un-nerfing the DLC's added faction.

You can see the full list of changes via Amplitude's forum. The Search for Auriga should already have squeezed through the update pipes of Endless Space owners.

Editorial: Call of Duty fans deserve better than Rezurrection

Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection came out on Friday.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection came out on Friday. The pack adds five new arenas to Call of Duty: Black Ops' zombie survival mode, except four of them aren't new at all. Nacht der Untoten, Verruckt, Shi No Numa and Der Riese are all "remastered" versions of zombie maps from Call of Duty: World at War, released in 2008.

That means 80% of the map pack is made up of recycled, three year old content. What's more, those who bought the Hardened and Prestige editions of Call of Duty: Black Ops received the new maps as part of the deal last year. The asking price? £11.50 / $14.99. This has to stop.

Most of the advertising for Rezurrection so far has understandably concentrated on the new lunar map. Moon is good. It's funny, spooky, tremendously gory thanks to the new wave gun, and generally a blast with friends, but as the only fresh piece of content in the whole pack, it can't possibly justify the price tag. To put it in perspective, for just a few bucks more you can pick up the superb Left 4 Dead 2, which comes with five core campaigns, each of which are four or five times larger than a Call of Duty zombie arena.

The success of First Strike, Escalation and Annihilation prove that a certain percentage of Call of Duty's enormous fan base will shell out for a slim collection of virtual architecture, and no doubt just as many will buy Rezurrection, even though four fifths of it is made up of used goods.

Re-using old maps is nothing new, of course, and it's not a practice that's exclusive to the Call of Duty series either. Battlefield 3's Back to Karkand pack consists entirely of re-engineered maps and weapons from Battlefield 2, but there's a difference between putting a new spin on a classic map, and reheating stale content. When ported into a new engine, with updated Battlefield 3 classes and mechanics, old architecture can be made to feel fresh and worthwhile. Rezurrection doesn't. The updates consist of some upgraded lighting tech, and some weapon spawn tweaks. It feels like artificial padding designed to meet a ludicrous price point, and is only the very latest in a stream of overpriced DLC packs. Call of Duty fans deserve better.

Modern Warfare 3 is out in November, with a new DLC strategy. Subscribers to the Call of Duty: Elite network will receive smaller collections of new maps on a month by month basis. It will be interesting to see if we get many remastered Modern Warfare 2 maps appearing as part of the deal, or maybe a few from the original Modern Warfare.

It's a lot quicker to take an old map and spruce it up than to make something entirely new, but we're not talking about a small studio putting out their first release. This is Call of Duty. The biggest shooter in the world. Surely we can do better than Rezurrection.

Valve announces Steam Machine manufacturers, open to making its own

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today, Gabe Newell was blinded by a bright future as he revealed the manufacturers working with Valve to release this year's line of Steam Machines —living room PCs which will come equipped with Valve's free, Linux-based SteamOS .

. The current lineup includes Alienware, Materiel.Net, Alternate, Next, CyberPowerPC, Origin, Digital Storm, Scan Computers, Falcon Northwest, Webhallen, GigaByte, Zotac, iBuyPower, and Maingear.

Along with the Steam Machines, Valve will be producing and selling the notably owl-like Steam Controller. Regarding producing its own hardware in general—including Steam Machines, perhaps—Newell said, "We'll continue to make that decision as we go along." With such a large list of third-party manufacturers, we don't expect significant news on that front soon.

Below are the photos intrepid reporter Cory Banks snapped of the boxes on display—which is most of what has been announced at CES, except Maingear's machine, a last minute addition, and the systems from Origin and Scan.

$499 and up | AMD/Intel Core i5 CPU | AMD Radeon R9 270/Nvidia GTX 760 | 8GB RAM | 500GB storage

$499 and up | Quad core AMD or Intel CPU | Radeon GCN Graphics | 8GB RAM | 500GB+ storage

$599 | Intel Core (TBD) | Nvidia GeForce GTX TBD |RAM TBD | Storage TBD

Price TBD | Intel Core i5 | Nvidia GT 760 | 8GB RAM | 1TB storage

Price TBD | Intel Core i7-4770R | Intel Iris Pro 5200 | 8GB | 1TB SATA 6Gb/sata

$1,098 | Intel Core i5 4440 | MSI GeForce GTX 760 OC | 8GB RAM | 8 GB + 1 TB SSHD

$1,799 to $6000 | CPU is customizable | Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan | 8 to 16 GB RAM | up to 6 TB storage

$1,499 | Intel Core i7 | Nvidia GT 780 | 16GB RAM | 1TB SSHD

$1,339 | Intel Core i5 4570 | Gigabyte GTX 760 | 16GB RAM | 1TB SSHD

Bolt II $2,584 (starts at $1,900) | Intel Core i7 4770K | Nvidia GTX 780 Ti | 16GB RAM | 1TB HDD + 120 GB SSD

Origin PC Chronos

Price TBD | Intel Core i7 4770K (3.9 to 4.6 GHz) | 2 x 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX Titans

Scan

$1,090 | Intel Core i3 4000M | Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M | 8GB RAM | 500GB

Endless Space: Disharmony to get first free add-on next month

Amplitude Studios have been generous in their post-release support for sci-fi 4X strategy Endless Space .

. Four free add-on packs followed the game's launch, adding new factions, heroes and technologies, and boasting excellent sci-fi names like Lights of Polaris and Rise of the Automatons. Now they're set to continue that generosity with a free major update to the game's Disharmony expansion. As before, it will bring expanded content and a strong name: The Search for Auriga.

"'The Search for Auriga' will include new heroes, a special wonder, a unique planet, in addition to new features such as Rally Points as well as AI and balancing improvements," announces Amplitude's development blog.

Normally I'd be more excited for the new stuff - particularly the prospect of making a strategic push for special planets and wonders. Having played Disharmony, though, it's the AI and balance improvements that I'm anticipating the most. Hopefully they'll do a lot to fix existing problems with the expansion's new faction, The Harmony, who are an interesting idea let down by some pretty severe penalties that make them a chore to effectively play.

The Search for Auriga is due out next month. In addition to their continued development of Endless Space, Amplitude are also working on two other games set in the same universe, Endless Legendand Dungeon of the Endless.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 promotion offers free XP with snacks

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 ' Rank Up XP ' promotion spotted by Forbes will put codes on bottles of Mountain Dew and packets of Doritos crisps that give players double XP time in-game.

So when you take a headshot from a high level sniper rifle, you won't be able to tell if they've played more of the game guzzled a truckload of potato chips. Perhaps the guy heading a server with every unlock is quite good at Call of Duty, or he's just consumed more litres of luminous energy drink than you.

There's apparently no limit to the lengths marketers are prepared to go to shift a big new game, but cheapening your entire unlock and experience system for the sake of a drinks promotion crosses a line we didn't even know existed.

Where will this end? They should rename the series Call of Dewty and replace all of the grenades with exploding cans of soft drink. Claymores can be packets of Doritos that explode when enemies approach, shredding them with a cloud of tasty nacho shrapnel. Then they'll see a kill cam replay of their maizy death, sponsored by Pepsi, of course.

Valve celebrates Steam Machine launch with a huge sale

It might have been lost in the blizzard of Fallout 4 news, but Steam Machines launched today in the US.

It might have been lost in the blizzard of Fallout 4 news, but Steam Machines launched today in the US. To celebrate, Valve is running a sale on SteamOS compatible games over at Steam, so you can start filling up your box with games. For anyone without a Steam Machine or SteamOS for that matter, you can still get these games cheap for Windows.

Highlights include 50 percent off Alien: Isolation and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, while the Metro Redux bundle and Amnesia: The Dark Descent have a whopping 75 percent discounted. The recently ported Galak-Z is there with a nice discount, as is still-fresh survival horror Soma. Check out the extensive list here.

Tech guru Wes reviewed both the Steam Linkand Steam Controllerearlier today, but found both lacking. The controller doesn't do a good job of replacing a mouse, while the Steam Link has a less-than-healthy relationship with Windows.

Dungeon of the Endless revealed as a tower defence roguelike, set in a sci-fi fantasy

A week is a long time when you're riding the PC gaming news bus.

A week is a long time when you're riding the PC gaming news bus. After ten days of announcement bumps and trailer plotholes, you'd be forgiven for not remembering Amplitude Studios' mysterious announcement for Dungeon of the Endless. Luckily, we can turn this vehicle around with a link. If you're all caught up, let's get this engine started, because a new trailer reveals more about the game.

The two halves of this pixellated saga have been smooshed together here. Pop to the 1:20 mark to see the new segment.

The video, while charming, still doesn't explain what the game is. For that, we turn to Joystiq, who describe it as a tower defence sci-fi fantasy roguelike. Er, okay. Set in the same universe as Endless Spaceand the also recently announced Endless Legend(yes, those two are linked), Dungeon of the Endless will see 'heroes' killing monsters, spending resources and bolstering defences. The developers are aiming to give players infinite replayability and brutal difficulty, because roguelike.

Dungeon of the Endless is due out on Steam Early Access later this year.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection trailer goes gross, double XP weekend kicks off on Friday

[bcvideo id="1167798036001"]
Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection is out this Thursday, bringing us the mad new zombie map, Moon, and four other remastered zombie survival missions from Call of Duty: World at War.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection is out this Thursday, bringing us the mad new zombie map, Moon, and four other remastered zombie survival missions from Call of Duty: World at War. Yes, it's yet another Call of Duty: Black Ops map pack, but this may well be the best of the bunch. The zombie maps have consistently been the best part of the rest of the DLC, with brand new enemies and some memorable weapons. The Moon map will have its own selection of mad weaponry, including moon grenades . See them action in the truly disgusting new Rezurrection trailer above. Everyone will earn double XP this weekend in Black Ops to celebrate the last bit of CoD DLC before Modern Warfare 3 arrives. But will it be worth $14.99 / £11:49? Hmmm.

Silverstone's new mini-chassis could house a fine Steam machine

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Dungeon of the Endless announced, from the developers of Endless Space

Amplitude Studios are gearing up to announce their second game, after the stately 4X space strategy Endless Space.

Amplitude Studios are gearing up to announce their second game, after the stately 4X space strategy Endless Space. Dungeon of the Endless is... well, actually, we don't yet know what Dungeon of the Endless is. For now, the developers are keeping the specifics a mystery, choosing to the reveal the game through a tantalising pixel cutscene of spaceship destruction, planetary crash landings and an unanswered question.

The question the devs are posing is "what's behind the door?" And they've set up a contest for people to. Personally, I'd say the more interesting question is: what does the Endless of the title refer to? Is it that the game is set in the Endless Space universe, complete with its varied alien races? Certainly the trailer could be the fallout from one of that game's battles. But the title could also be more literal: Endless in the roguelike sense of procedural generation. My money is on both.

We'll find out for sure later in the month at Gamescom, when Amplitude plan to officially announce the game.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Could Call of Duty go the same way as Guitar Hero?

Last week Activision canned their long running Guitar Hero series on consoles.

Last week Activision canned their long running Guitar Hero series on consoles. Releasing a new version of the game every year had worn customers out, and it was decided that nobody would want yet another entry in the series. With Activision committed to releasing a new Call of Duty game every year, could the same thing happen to the shooter series?

That was the question Industry Gamersasked a series of industry analysts, who concluded that Call of Duty is unlikely to be milked to death in the same way that Guitar Hero was, though the risk is there. DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole says "there is a very real danger of milking a franchise and causing quality to decline, which can result in turning consumers off. With COD I think the danger is trying to maintain the quality of the franchise and making sure they don't release product just to release product."

Another analyst cited Call of Duty's multiplayer community as the source of its staying power, saying that Call of Duty "has a vibrant online community that keeps growing. When a new version comes out, the 'network effect' kicks in, and many people buy it because their friends have done so. The risk to the franchise is competition, not people tiring of the gameplay... CoD won't fade unless Activision opens the door to competition by making a bad game."

There's no shortage of competition. DICE are standing in the sidelines ready to take the crown. This year will likely see Battlefield 3 go head to head with the next Call of Duty game. What do you think, could yearly releases burn out the Call of Duty series?

[via CVG]

CyberPowerPC reveals its $500 Steam Machine

CES 2014 exhibitors are churning out Steam Machine models almost as fast as gimmicky iPhone accessories.

CES 2014 exhibitors are churning out Steam Machine models almost as fast as gimmicky iPhone accessories. Earlier today, we reported on Digital Storm's $1900 Bolt II Steam Machine, aimed at the highest end of the market. Now, CyberPowerPC revealed its own Steam Machine at a price point aimed directly at the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

CyberPowerPC's Steam Machine will come in two pre-configured options: the Steam Machine A, starting at $499, and Steam Machine I, starting at $699. Both models can be customized further, just as you would any other rig you'd buy from CyberPowerPC.

The $499 Model A will get you the CyberPowerPC Steam Gaming Chassis, AMD Radeon R9 270 2GB GDDR5 video card, AMD A6-6400K 3.90 GHz processor, 500GB SATA-III 7200 RPM HDD for storage, 8GB DDR3 1600MHz dual channel memory RAM, mITX motherboard with 802.11 WiFi and Bluetooth, a Steam Controller, and pre-installed SteamOS.

The $699 Model I will upgrade the video card to an Nvdia GeForce GTX 760 2GB GDDR5, processor to an Intel Core i3-4330 3.50 Ghz, and motherboard to mITX with 802.11AC Wifi and Bluetooth.

CyberPowerPC has not revealed the size of the case, nor if and how you'd be able upgrade it after purchase. Of the Steam Machines so far, it seems most like iBuyPower's model, which includes similar parts and is also priced at $500.

To be fair, the price of both models isn't as competitive with Microsoft's and Sony's consoles as it may first appear. If you're trying to play a game that doesn't run natively on SteamOS—meaning the majority of games that are not compatible with Linux—you'll still need to steam it from another Windows computer.

Endless Space: Disharmony screenshots show mostly menus, release date set for next week

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Activision will "never, ever charge" for Call of Duty multiplayer

A few months back, when asked what his one wish would be for his company, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said “I would have Call of Duty be an online subscription service tomorrow,” which understandably had gamers worried that Call of Duty's multiplayer modes might come with an added monthly fee in future.

“I would have Call of Duty be an online subscription service tomorrow,” which understandably had gamers worried that Call of Duty's multiplayer modes might come with an added monthly fee in future. Activision have spoken out today to firmly put an end to those rumours.

Speaking to IndustryGamers, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg said “are we going to be charging for multiplayer? The answer is no,” adding that “the experience you have out of the box, connecting with the online community to play Call of Duty is absolutely integral to the experience and we'll never charge for that. It's not going to be something we'll attempt to monetize; it's part of the package.”

He continues, saying “there are certainly a lot of behavioral shifts towards long-standing online relationships… But at the end of the day, all I'm trying to get across is I can unequivocally say we will never, ever charge for the multiplayer.”

It would be hard for Activision to deny it more strongly than that. For more Call of Duty multiplayer goodness, check out our pick of the funniest Call of Duty: Black Ops kills, and a guide to the best killing spotsin Call of Duty: Black Op's many varied maps.

[via VG247]

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls patch 2.1 out now, new video rounds up its features

Diablo III's first major post-2.0 patch releases today.

Diablo III's first major post-2.0 patch releases today. As with other patches, 2.1.0 adds new things. But which new things? It's a questionwe've already answered, but should reading words be a torment on your very being—to the point where this sentence, in all its selfish continuing, causes tears to run unbidden into your screaming cheeks—then Blizzard have made a video. Watch that instead.

See the full patch notes here.

Endless Space celebrates selling 300,000 copies with fourth free content update

Endless Space has received its fourth free add-on pack, Virtual Awakening.

has received its fourth free add-on pack, Virtual Awakening. The update, launched in celebration of selling 300,000 copies of the 4X turn-based strategy, adds a bunch of new features unlocked during last year's free weekend. The more people who participated in that event, the more new items would be unlocked. And given the size of the changelist, it's safe to say the galaxies were swarming with would-be colonisers.

Four new heroes have been added, including the titular Virtual Endless, along with new buildings, technology, planet anomalies, random events and exploration awards. There are pirates, too.

"Driven by their need to terraform and cultivate, it was only a matter of time before the Automatons turned their eyes to the least hospitable planets: Gas giants. A probe ship departed for an uncolonized system, hoping to test technology that could transform these jovian worlds into something livable.

"It was a nice plan, but luck and reality had other ideas. The gas giant had a derelict platform orbiting it that had been of the Virtual Endless war effort -- and the Virtuals had left a guard behind. Worse yet, the system was rich in minerals from its asteroid belts, so a small but well-equipped group of Pirates was also keeping an eye on it."

Amplitude Studios have also rolled in a round of balance changes, bug fixes and AI improvements. In all, it's a meaty update to the game. The full patch notes can be found here.

If you're interested in picking up Endless Space, which we were impressed byeven before the inclusion of four free add-on packs, it's 50% on Steamfor the next week, reducing the price to £11.49.

Take shelter, it's the Call of Duty: Black Ops launch trailer

The launch trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops is here and 'death from above' seems to be the theme.

The launch trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops is here and 'death from above' seems to be the theme. Stealth planes cruise overhead, attack helicopters annihilate jungles, and men jump away from the explosions in slow motion to the sounds of 'Gimme shelter' by the Rolling Stones. It looks like the best action movie ever, and it's embedded below.

A shelter isn't going to be good enough for the firepower on show; a nuclear bunker would do a better job. The game is due out next Tuesday, the 9th, and is available to pre-purchase right now on Steam.

Diablo 3's massive 2.0.1 patch goes live later today, bringing the Loot 2.0 system

It's not quite Reaper of Souls - the Diablo 3 expansion that's bringing Act V and Adventure Mode - but the unassumingly named patch 2.0.1 will still significantly change the game.

that's bringing Act V and Adventure Mode - but the unassumingly named patch 2.0.1 will still significantly change the game. There's a revamped Paragon system, clan and community features, and the big Loot 2.0 - which paves the wayfor the Auction House's destruction. And while the expansion is still a month away, Blizzard plan to equip patch 2.0.1 later today.

The update's release was revealed last night, via a Tweet by Diablo 3 lead producer Alex Mayberry.

@Beckster188 thanks for saying so! Patch 2.0.1 goes live tomorrow. RoS is will be here soon! February 25, 2014

Essentially, 2.0.1 lays the groundwork for Reaper of Souls, updating Diablo 3's systems for all players ahead of the expansion's new content. Changes include a dynamic difficulty system, a new "Cursed Chests" event, removal of the Paragon level cap, and "smart drops" - rare drops tailored toward the character that finds them.

2.0.1 will release at an unspecified time later today. Reaper of Souls is due out on March 25th.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Endless Space free update adds Christmas wonder, optional pirates, new hero

Slick 4X strategy game Endless Space received a free update yesterday adding a mysterious Christmas wonder called The Polaris Factory.

Slick 4X strategy game Endless Space received a free update yesterday adding a mysterious Christmas wonder called The Polaris Factory. Wonders were added in an earlier free update, they're hidden facilities and phenomenon that can grant great boons to an expanding empire. This one is an ancient machine couched in the deep arctic ices of a frozen planet, but what does it do?

"Raw materials are collected, goods are produced and packaged, and an endless stream of boxes disappear into ships, portals, and sleds for distribution," reads the official description. "What is this unceasing travail? What is the purpose of these strange, colorful, impractical objects that they build?"

Sounds like an intergalactic santa's grotto. We'll have to find it to discover its purpose, but hopefully it's some sort of "ho ho ho" happiness bonus for your beleaguered citizens. The update also adds a new "Oros Gec Faction Hero" and slips in a few community-requested features like "enhanced battle action AI," new Steam achievements and a "No Pirates” Option.

Here's the full update list from Steam.

LIGHTS OF POLARIS (1.0.45)

CHANGES AND ADDITIONS

New balance of Factions traits (first pass). Added abilities tree pictures for each hero class in "inspect" panel. Added Steam cloud management system for saves. New game introduction panel. Added a new hero from minor faction. Added a new natural Wonder with associated FX on planet. Some additional texts translated in RUS/POL/ITA/GER.

STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS

Added new Steam achievements including [G2G] Votes: Marco Polo with Tentacles / Have a Trade Route with every other system in the galaxy [Nosferatiel] Alien and Eve / Colonize a Garden of Eden [groovytadpole] Cake² / Clone Galdos AI [Adder] There's no Place like Home / Terraform a planet to your home planet type [EvilTactician] There can only be One / Be the only remaining empire in a game with 8 starting empires [Monthar] Cultural Assimilation / Envelop another empire's system in your Influence Area [FreeMarket]

EVENTS

Added exploration events flag option to remove the visual feedback in the galaxy view. Removed exploration and random events making spawn pirates when the "no pirates" options is enabled.

BATTLES

New pre-battle cards selection system with adapted GUI and report panel [G2G vote] AI can use retreat cards now (not allowed to pirates however). New weight-balance of battle cards for AI use. Added a new option in game options to enable or not the manual battles.

MULTIPLAYER

Players (including host) now forward orders to themselves instead of treating these locally. Fixed wrong construction gets canceled/bought out leading to desync. Fixed construction UID mismatch leading to desync. Fixed fleet's orbit assert. Fixed an issue where AI tries to buy out infinite improvements. Fixed loading issue to MP session when pressing cancel after "Connecting to server" message appeared. Fixed an issue when a client quits a session in progress then he will not be able to rejoin from the server list, since the session will no longer be displayed.

FIXES

Fixed an issue where Dust miser and co-opetition corporate hero abilities effects were mixed-up. Fixed an issue where debug could be noticed on the battle notification. Fixed an issue where the selfish dust bonus of the dust rain event was not displayed in the dust income summary tooltip. Fixed an issue where the effects from exploration and random events were not properly applied after reloading a save. Fixed some issues of GUI and localization.

Call of Duty: Black Ops video blowout

A series of exciting and spoilerific Call of Duty: Black Ops videos have hit the web.

A series of exciting and spoilerific Call of Duty: Black Ops videos have hit the web. Two videos show short sections of the single player campaign and a third shows the zombie mode in action. On top of all that, the player characters for the zombie mode have also been revealed, and they're amazing. All the videos can be found below. Be warned, though, here be spoilers.

First up, the campaign footage. It's impossible to figure out any story from these two videos, but they do reveal how two of the missions are going to play out. The second one in particular you may want to leave as a surprise.

Next up, footage of the zombie mode, making a return after proving popular in Treyarch's last Call of Duty game, World at War. It asks players to hold up against hordes of endless zombies, earning cash for each kill in order to upgrade your weapons and slaughter even more monsters.

Here's the best bit. In Call of Duty: Black Ops, there's also going to be a cold war themed alternative to the traditional zombie mode. This will be set in the Pentagon, and have you playing as one of the four new characters. Introducing: President John F Kennedy, President Nixon, Secretary of Defence John Strange MacNamara and, er, Fidel Castro.

What Call of Duty: Black Ops loses in historical accuracy, it gains in managing to assemble the most insane and brilliant posse of video game characters you could hope to play as. The idea of playing Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon and blasting the heads of zombies while saying "impeach this!" makes me wish that the Call of Duty: Black Ops release next Tuesday 9th November would arrive sooner.

[via VG247]

Diablo 3 2.0.1 patch will remove Paragon level cap, add point-based system

Diablo 3 historians will probably mark the time after patch 2.0.1's sweeping changes as "post 2.0.1." The upcoming update's major systems revamp—such as the removal of the real-money and gold auction houses , scaling difficulty , and the implementation of clans —marks a divide between the old (and dubiously designed ) Diablo and a new Diablo far more in tune with what players want.

) Diablo and a new Diablo far more in tune with what players want. Its end-game Paragon system will get a complete rework as well, and in an official blog post, Blizzard explains how the new system will work in Reaper of Souls.

Originally, players earned Paragon levels as a means to increase their likelihood of finding rare items and larger stacks of gold along with boosting their stats to weather encounters in higher difficulties. The ceiling for those levels is now gone, swept away with Blizzards's icy Ax of Deletion and replaced with a points pool sized by how much time you want to invest in your character. All of your heroes will share a singular Paragon level, making it easier to climb ever higher in power, but the points you earn will stay tied to the individual character.

The points funnel into four categories—Core, Offensive, Defensive, and Utility—which provides a number of benefits such as stronger primary stats, beefier defenses, more powerful attacks, or a higher chance to find more gold. There is a cap on how many points each category will take, but don't except to hit it anytime soon—Blizzard says you'll need to be around Paragon level 800 (!) to fully max out every category. If you're up for that extreme pledge of devotion (or you're just a grinding madman), you probably deserve to turn into a walking god.

Blizzard also assures that the transition from the old Paragon system to 2.0 won't be a jarring experience. It writes: "When Paragon 2.0 goes live with patch 2.0.1, we'll being adding up all the Paragon experience on each of your heroes and then using that combined total (the total amount of Paragon experience you have, not the total number of Paragon levels) to determine your shared Paragon level."

It seems Diablo 3 will be more in line with its much-lauded predecessors when Reaper of Souls releases on March 25. Whether or not that's a good thing depends on how you've perceived the game's performance up to this point—Blizzard's ambition with taking Diablo in some new directions is a commendable effort, but a notoriously rocky launchand a community very much vocal of its opposition to item monetization tempered Diablo 3's record-breaking sales numbers. It's had a rocky history, for sure, but Reaper of Souls looks like Blizzard's best effortso far to turn Diablo 3 into a truly legendary RPG.

Endless Space update adds Automaton faction and other player-chosen features

The super-slick 4X space strategy, Endless Space, gained a new faction overnight.

The super-slick 4X space strategy, Endless Space, gained a new faction overnight. The Automaton were designed by Endless Space player and community contest winner, Panzer. His idea was voted on by fellow players using Amplitude's Game2Gether system. That lets players sign in to vote to decide on what the devs should work on adding next. The last voteoffered a choice between random events, faction homeworlds and the ability to destroy entire star systems. Guess which one won (hint: the one with all the bombs).

The latest update implements a number of voted-on features, including a trade routes sum-up section and "custom faction affinity" which lets you choose any art for your custom faction. Pore over the full list of changes on Steam News, features with a [G2G] note next to them have been voted for by the community.

Rich enjoyed Endless Space' sublime interface when he reviewed it for us saying that it "streamlines empire-building better than any other." Read the full verdict in our Endless Space reviewand find out more on the Endless Space site.

Call of Duty: Black Ops achievements (contains spoilers)

Never tell your terrible secrets to Treyarch - they're leakier than a chainmail umbrella.

Never tell your terrible secrets to Treyarch - they're leakier than a chainmail umbrella. An achievements list for Black Ops has dribbled out all over the floor of the internet, and Treyarch community manager Josh Olin more or less confirmed that they were legit.

In his tweet, Josh said that there were minor spoilers and to stay away - hardly something you could say about a fake, right? Here's the list of achievements:

Sacrifice

Ensure your squad escapes safely from Cuba

Death to Dictators

Use a single round to bring down Castro

Vehicular Slaughter

Destroy all enemies on vehicles during the prison break

Give me liberty, or give me death

Escape Vorkuta

Slingshot Kid

Destroy all slingshot targets in 3 attempts

VIP

Receive orders from Lancer

A safer place

Sabatoge the Soviet space program

Tough Economy

Use no more than 6 TOW guided missiles to destroy the tanks in the defense of Khe Sanh

Looks don't count

Break the seige in the battle of Khe Sanh

SOG Rules

Retrieve the dossier and the defector from Hue City

Raining Pain

Rack up a bodycount of 20 NVA using air support in Hue City

The Dragon Within

Kill 10 NVA with Dragon's Breath rounds

Heavy Hand

Use the Grim Reaper to destroy the MG emplacement

Up close and personal

Silently take out 3 VC

Double Trouble

Use only dual wield weapons to escape Kowloon

Broken English

Escape Kowloon

Lord Nelson

Destroy all targets and structures while making your way up the river

Never get off the boat

Find the Soviet connection in Laos

Pathfinder

Guide the squad through the Soviet outpost without them getting killed

Mr. Black OP

Enter the Soviet relay station undetected

With extreme prejudice

Get to the POW compound in the Hind using only rockets

Russian bar-b-q

Incinerate 10 enemies with the flamethrower attachment in the POW compound

Light Foot

Escape the ship with 2:15 left on the timer in Veteran.

Some wounds never heal

Escape the past

I hate monkeys

Kill 7 monkeys in under 10 seconds in the Rebirth labs

No Leaks

Make it through the NOVA 6 gas without dying on Rebirth Island

Clarity

Crack the code

Double Whammy

Destroy both helicopters with one TOW guided missile from the deck of the ship

BLACK OP MASTER

Complete the campaign on Hardened or Veteran difficulty

Stand Down

Complete the campaign on any difficulty

Frag Master

Kill 5 enemies with a single frag grenade

Sally Likes Blood

Demonstrate killer economic sensibilities by taking down 3 enemies with a single bullet

Unconventional Warfare

Use the explosive bolts to kill 30 enemies

Down and Dirty

Complete "SOG" and "The Defector" on Veteran difficulty

It's your funeral

Complete "Numbers," "Project Nova" and "Victor Charlie" on Veteran difficulty

Cold Warrior

Complete "Operation 40", "Vorkuta", and "Executive Order" on Veteran difficulty

Not Today

Complete "Crash Site," "WMD" and "Payback" on Veteran difficulty

Burn Notice

Complete "Rebirth" and "Redemption" on Veteran difficulty

Closer Analysis

Find all the hidden intel

Matinee

Watch a film or clip with a friend

Gamblin' Fool

Finish 5 Wager Matches "in the money"

You can do it

Reach rank 10 in Basic Training

The Collector

In Zombie mode, buy every weapon off the walls in a single game

Hands Off the Merchandise

Kill the Pentagon thief before it can steal your load-out

Sacrificial Lamb

Kill 6 zombies after getting shot by a Pack-a-Punched Crossbow bolt

"Insert Coin"

Access the terminal and battle the forces of the Cosmic Silverback in Dead Ops Arcade

Easy Rhino

In Dead Ops Arcade, use a Speed Boost to blast through 20 or more enemies at one time

So you'll be shooting Castro, sabotaging the Soviet space program, doing escort missions in Russia, doing something in Hong Kong, firing explosive crossbow bolts, battling "the forces of the Cosmic Silverback," and all sorts of ridiculous nonsense. Pffft. When I were a lad, we had panzerfausts, M1 Garands, and people shouting "MEIN LIEBEN!", and we were bloody grateful.

[via Kotaku]

Warcraft 3 is getting a belated patch next week too

A couple of days ago , Diablo 2 was patched for the first time in five years, an update that makes the statesman-like (i.e., old) ARPG play nice with newer operating systems.

, Diablo 2 was patched for the first time in five years, an update that makes the statesman-like (i.e., old) ARPG play nice with newer operating systems. At the time, Blizzard teased that there was more to come from its old games, leading many to believe that remasters of the early Diablos, Warcrafts, and StarCraft might be on the way. Now we have more fuel for the speculation machine, as a new patch is on the way for Warcraft III.

Patch 1.27 is coming March 15, and will be released simultaneously around the world. That's a mere four years since the last update, 1.26a, hit in 2011.

Robert Bridenbecker, head of Blizzard's classic games group, announced the patch via the following YouTube video, aimed at Warcraft III's community in China. He doesn't say what's in the update, but notes that it's only the "first stop" on this "journey". Looks like we have more teases to come—can we expect a patch for the original StarCraft next?

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Comments
Our Verdict
A space strategy game that streamlines empire-building better than any other.

A space strategy game that streamlines empire-building better than any other. Combat and AI could be better.

This is a 4X strategy game – which sounds a bit like a punch-up fuelled by crappy beer. In fact, the four 'X's stand for the classic principles that underpin this particular offshoot of the genre: explore, exploit, expand, and everyone's favourite – exterminate!

Endless Space focuses on macro-management rather than down-and-dirty detail-fiddling. It makes galactic control streamlined, helped enormously by the slickest interface this type of game has ever seen, a beautifully designed UI that keeps things only one or two clicks away.

It feels good just to fiddle with. The overall focus of your empire, from what direction the tech is moving to what each system is producing, is all present on the main galaxy view, so a quick glance at the beginning of each turn tells you where everything stands. It's a great achievement, even though there are inevitably one or two things nested away in counter-intuitive places: unlocking ship designs, for example, only unlocks the hull, which you have to incorporate into a custom build before production.

The feel of the game flows from this uncluttered interface. Playing as one of eight races (or building your own by pick-and-mixing attributes), the choices are good old-fashioned warfare, an economic victory, a scientific victory, an expansion victory or the rather odd 'Supremacy' victory of taking over the other races' homeworlds. Bit unappetising, that last one.

The mechanics are always the same: fly colonies to other star systems, exploit them, develop tech, and deal with other players. It's the resources that make the difference: science for tech, food for population, industry for production, and the magical currency of Dust. Strategic resources are sprinkled around that you can't detect without a bit of teching, and these are crucial to certain playstyles. Military types, for example, want Titanium-70 for construction of their battlefleets.

After a few games, you realise the most important thing is... everything. Tiny advantages can become the pivot on which the fate of empires turn, and wasted production cycles never come back. The AI varies: the military and expansion-focused races are by far the best singleplayer thopponents; races intended for diplomacy or teching victories don't work so well, just asking for free resources and trying to form alliances willy-nilly.

Those more subtle wins aren't unattainable, it's just that the AI feels too clumsy to carry them off. In multiplayer it's different, although there games take so long that many matches end up abandoned by all but the early leader.

The one thing I didn't like is the combat: a rock-papers-scissors series of choices followed by a cutscene result. The unskippable videos are beautiful the first couple of times, but rapidly pall. Your only option in the late-game is to set battling to automatic rather than manual, or sit through 20 in a row.

Nevertheless, this has the foundations of a great game, and judging by the devs' willingness to incorporate community suggestions, it will get even better. If you're all about space battles, it doesn't quite deliver. But anyone who's a fan of backroom deals, the exploitation of natural resources, and the crushing of all who defy you, will find Endless Space is their kind of universe.

The Verdict

Endless Space

A space strategy game that streamlines empire-building better than any other. Combat and AI could be better.

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