Blizzard show off the new Draenei of World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor
World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion will feature a major graphics overhaul for the almost-10 year old MMO.
World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion will feature a major graphics overhaul for the almost-10 year old MMO. Blizzard have been slowly teasing the new character models of Warlords of Draenor; most recently with a new look at the male Draenei. As you can see from the new screenshots, the model has had a pretty subtle redesign – most noticeably gaining HD head ridges.
"Today we're showing you our work on the male Draenei," writes World of Warcraft art director Chris Robinson. "The original was one of the better character models in the game, so it didn't require a ton of translation—but with higher-resolution textures and more polygons to work with, we were able to bump up his fidelity quite a bit, as well as improve how we convey emotion through a new animation rig."
Back in April, Blizzard shared the new female Draenei models. See them below.
GDC 2013: IGF and GDC Award winners revealed
This year's GDC has been the source of many interesting industry tidbits .
. But forget them for now, because it also hosted two award shows last night. Shiny, slightly crass and easily digestible in a handy list format - we've got all the winners from the Independent Games Festival Awards and Game Developers Choice Awards right here. Did Hotline Miami's masked protagonist beat the living snot out of the FTL crew for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize? Did Incredipede's creepy-crawly monstrosities scare away the other Visual Art nominees? Did any game not called Journey win a GDC Award? Read on to find out.
We'll start with the IGF Awards, primarily because its the one that wasn't dominated by a PS3-exclusive game about plodding through a desert.
Independent Games Festival Awards
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games) FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games) Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier) Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation) Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)Excellence in Visual Art
Incredipede (Northway Games and Thomas Shahan) Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer) Guacalamelee! (Drinkbox Studios) Loves in a Dangerous Spacetime (Asteroid Base) Year Walk (Simogo)Excellence in Narrative
Thirty Flights of Loving (Blendo Games) Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier) Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer) Dys4ia (Auntie Pixelante) Gone Home (The Fullbright Company)Technical Excellence
StarForge (CodeHatch) Perspective (DigiPen Widdershins) Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation) Intrusion 2 (Aleksey Abramenko) LiquidSketch (Tobias Neukom)Excellence In Design
Samurai Gunn (Beau Blyth) FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games) Starseed Pilgrim (Droqen & Ryan Roth) Super Hexagon (Terry Cavanagh) Super Space (David Scamehorn and Alexander Baard/DigiPen)Excellence In Audio
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer) Bad Hotel (Lucky Frame) 140 (Jeppe Carlsen) Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games) Pixeljunk 4AM (Q-Games)Best Student Game
ATUM (NHTV IGAD) Back to Bed (Danish Academy of Digital Interactive Entertainment) Blackwell's Asylum (Danish Academy of Digital Interactive Entertainment) Farsh (NHTV IGAD) Knights of Pen & Paper (IESB - Instituto de Ensino Superior de Brasilia & UnB - Universidade de Brasilia) the mindfulxp volume (Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center) Pulse (Vancouver Film School) Zineth (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)Nuovo Award
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier) Spaceteam (Henry Smith) Dys4ia (Auntie Pixelante) Bientot l'ete (Tale of Tales) 7 Grand Steps (Mousechief) MirrorMoon (SantaRagione + BloodyMonkey) VESPER.5 (Michael Brough) Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)Audience Award
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)Thoughts? Firstly, congratulations to Zineth, deserved winner of Best Student Game. It's great, and you should play it. More obviously, well done to Richard Hofmeier for the runaway success of Cart Life. I'm sure many will be surprised by just how well it's done, especially among such a strong list of contenders for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. If you're currently thinking "Cart What now?" let Christopher Livingston's Sim-plicity columnon the game fill you in.
Elsewhere in the list, I'm surprised to see Little Inferno getting a Technical Excellence award (it had nice fire, I guess), unsurprised to see FTL nab the Audience Award, and marginally disappointed to see Hotline Miami go back to its DeLorean with nothing. Although, hey, it's still got a chance at a Games Developer Choice Award! Haha, no, just kidding. Journey won everything .
Game Developers Choice Awards
Game of the Year
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks) The Walking Dead (Telltale Games) Mass Effect 3 (BioWare/Electronic Arts) XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games/2K Games) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)Innovation Award
Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment) FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games) The Unfinished Swan (Giant Sparrow/Sony Computer Entertainment) ZombiU (Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft)Best Audio
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment) Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games/Devolver Digital) Sound Shapes (Queasy Games/Sony Computer Entertainment) Assassin's Creed III (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft) Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)Best Debut
Humble Hearts (Dust: An Elysian Tail) Polytron Corporation (Fez) Giant Sparrow (The Unfinished Swan) Subset Games (FTL: Faster Than Light) Fireproof Games (The Room )Best Downloadable Game
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games) Spelunky (Derek Yu/Andy Hull) Trials: Evolution (RedLynx/Microsoft Studios) Mark Of The Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)Best Game Design
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks) Mark Of The Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios) Spelunky (Derek Yu/Andy Hull) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment) XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games/2K Games)Best Handheld/Mobile Game
Gravity Rush (SCE Japan Studio/Sony Computer Entertainment) Hero Academy (Robot Entertainment) Sound Shapes (Queasy Games/Sony Computer Entertainment) The Room (Fireproof Games) Kid Icarus: Uprising (Sora/Nintendo)Best Narrative
Spec Ops: The Line (Yager Entertainment/2K Games) Mass Effect 3 (BioWare/Electronic Arts) Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks) The Walking Dead (Telltale Games) Virtue's Last Reward (Chunsoft/Aksys Games)Best Technology
Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft) PlanetSide 2 (Sony Online Entertainment) Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios) Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Treyarch/Activision) Assassin's Creed III (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)Best Visual Arts
Borderlands 2 (Gearbox Software/2K Games) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment) Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft) Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks) Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)Ambassador Award
Chris Melissinos, curator of The Smithsonian's The Art of Video Games exhibitPioneer Award
Spacewar creator Steve RussellAudience Award
DishonoredLifetime Achievement Award
BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg ZeschukConclusion: award show judges really love Journey.
Iranian media mistakes Medal of Honor footage for real warfare
It's been nearly six years since Electronic Arts published the 2010 Medal of Honor reboot, and yet in 2016, footage from the game is being mistaken for real life.
reboot, and yet in 2016, footage from the game is being mistaken for real life. The video above, which has reportedly circulated on Iranian television news this past month, doesn't look life-like at all, but news organisations in that country have claimed it's footage of Hezbollah commandos sniping Islamic State fighters.
French news site French24was the first source to pick up on the hoax. Anyone intimately familiar with this MoH instalment (that's probably not many people, nowadays) will recognise the HUD elements depicted in the video, though some adjustments have been made to the image's contrast (presumably to obscure the unmistakably polygonal worldof the original).
It's not the first time this has happened: just last year an Egyptian news agency used footage of Apache: Air Assault to demonstrate Russia's superiority over ISIS. Arma 2 has been used to mock up purportedly real world scenarios as well.
Blizzard releases level 90 primer videos for all World of Warcraft classes
When World of Warcraft's Warlords of Draenor expansion finally completes its march to reshape Azeroth as we know it , we'll have a new level cap of 100.
, we'll have a new level cap of 100. Blizzard has already introduced some services to prep new, returning, and current players alike for the next adventure—the most noticeable being a $60/£35 (or free on pre-order) boost to level 90for a selected character. For fresh heroes, that's a nice jumpstart for Warlords' content—unless you've no idea how Shamans shoot lightning out of their hands or where to even begin with your magical zombie Mage.
Luckily, Blizzard whipped up a series of brief explanatory videoson how each class works from a damage-dealing perspective. Time for a class on classes.
It's important to note these videos overview each class in terms of abilities and methods that deal damage. You won't learn how to most efficiently heal on your Priest, for example, or how to tank on your Warrior. What you'll watch is how to beat or zap the living daylights out of anything sorry enough to look your way, and that's about as fundamental you'll get for staying alive in MMOs. The videos also don't account for the major ability and class changesWarlords brings, but they're a great starting point regardless.
Watch the videos for two of my favorite classes below, and head to Blizzard's hometo see the rest of them. World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor will arrive this fall.
Dishonored and The Walking Dead score high in Game Developers Choice Award nominations
The Game Developers Choice Awards are the other side of a coin that also contains the IGFs.
The Game Developers Choice Awards are the other side of a coin that also contains the IGFs. Sure, indies are allowed into this GDC organised awards show, but they have to promise to be on their best behaviour. And wash behind their ears.
The nominations for this year's award - chosen by a panel of game developers - have been announced, with The Walking Dead and Dishonored scoring plenty of nods. Not the most, though - that honour goes to Journey, which is apparently a PS3 game about collecting scarves. Or something.
Dishonored picked up four nominations, including Game of the Year, Best Game Design, Best Narrative and Best Visual Arts. The Walking Dead also received nominations for Game of the Year and Best Narrative, as well as a chance to nab Best Downloadable Game. Wait, aren't all games downloadable?
Other PC relevant nominations include Game of the Year nods for Mass Effect 3 and XCOM, a well deserved Best Audio mention for Hotline Miami, and a Best Technology listing for Planetside 2. FTL also did well, being nominated for the Innovation Award, along with a shot at Best Debut for its developer, Subset Games.
Game of the Year
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks) The Walking Dead (Telltale Games) Mass Effect 3 (BioWare/Electronic Arts) XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games/2K Games) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)Innovation Award
Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment) FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games) The Unfinished Swan (Giant Sparrow/Sony Computer Entertainment) ZombiU (Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft)Best Audio
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment) Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games/Devolver Digital) Sound Shapes (Queasy Games/Sony Computer Entertainment) Assassin's Creed III (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft) Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)Best Debut
Humble Hearts (Dust: An Elysian Tail) Polytron Corporation (Fez) Giant Sparrow (The Unfinished Swan) Subset Games (FTL: Faster Than Light) Fireproof Games (The Room )Best Downloadable Game
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games) Spelunky (Derek Yu/Andy Hull) Trials: Evolution (RedLynx/Microsoft Studios) Mark Of The Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)Best Game Design
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks) Mark Of The Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios) Spelunky (Derek Yu/Andy Hull) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment) XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games/2K Games)Best Handheld/Mobile Game
Gravity Rush (SCE Japan Studio/Sony Computer Entertainment) Hero Academy (Robot Entertainment) Sound Shapes (Queasy Games/Sony Computer Entertainment) The Room (Fireproof Games) Kid Icarus: Uprising (Sora/Nintendo)Best Narrative
Spec Ops: The Line (Yager Entertainment/2K Games) Mass Effect 3 (BioWare/Electronic Arts) Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks) The Walking Dead (Telltale Games) Virtue's Last Reward (Chunsoft/Aksys Games)Best Technology
Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft) PlanetSide 2 (Sony Online Entertainment) Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios) Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Treyarch/Activision) Assassin's Creed III (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)Best Visual Arts
Borderlands 2 (Gearbox Software/2K Games) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment) Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft) Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks) Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)The winners will be announced at GDC on March 27. Can you think of anything that's been unfairly missed out?
Medal of Honor: Warfighter day one patch contains essential fixes
Day one patches are sometimes used to circumvent disk deadlines, giving developers the opportunity to keep fixing things right up to launch day.
Day one patches are sometimes used to circumvent disk deadlines, giving developers the opportunity to keep fixing things right up to launch day. If a game has to be shipped but isn't entirely polished yet, a day one fix can do the trick. Medal of Honor's birthday update is particularly essential. It adds "new features" like to the ability to "add friends and join parties while in-game." It also fixes weapon bugs like a classic "very exploitable" no-scope bug and changes the VOIP team channel so that it "no longer includes players from the other team." Hmmm.
The patch also fixes "an issue where the default difficulty was set to Easy instead of Normal" and fixes instances in which "controls would become unresponsive under certain conditions." It also removes "progression stoppers" in the single player campaign. Unsurprisingly, EA "heartily encourages all Medal of Honor Warfighter players to download and install the patch as soon as they are able." You can find the full patch notes over on the EA site. Right click on Medal of Honor in your Origin library and select "check for updates" to get your copy fixed up.
Blizzard apologizes for Warlords of Draenor launch, adds free time for subscribers
The World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor release didn't go as smoothly as anyone would have liked.
release didn't go as smoothly as anyone would have liked. Players had trouble accessing overcrowded servers, a situation exacerbated by a DDoS attacklaunched the day the expansion came out. The situation is apparently better now, although it's still not perfect, but Blizzard is continuing to work on it, and Executive Producer J. Allen Brack is doing everyone a solid to make up for the hassle.
"I know how much everyone was looking forward to this expansion, and once you were able to get in and start having fun, all the comments I've seen indicate that this is one of our best yet," Brack wrote in message posted on the World of Warcraft forums. "But the quality of the content does not excuse the subpar launch experience we delivered, and I apologize for that."
Blizzard is expanding its use of new instancing technology that helped improve server queues over the past weekend, which Brack said will roughly double the pre-launch capacity of each game realm, enough to greatly reduce queues or even eliminate them altogether. It's also extending every subscription in the Americas, Oceania, and Europe that was active as of November 14 by five days to make up for the aggravation players experienced during the first few days of release.
"The support voiced by many of you as we worked through the challenges was immensely appreciated," Brack wrote. "We're extremely grateful to be part of such a passionate community. We love World of Warcraft, and we're very proud of this expansion, so stumbling out of the gates like this was very disappointing for all of us."
Technical issues notwithstanding, the Warlords of Draenor expansion seems pretty good: Our review-in-progress(which remains in progress) says it's "a good start for this new, old world."
Killing Floor's Halloween Horror Double Feature update brings out the Zeds
The co-op survival-horror FPS Killing Floor has been around for since 2009, and yet somehow it's still going strong.
has been around for since 2009, and yet somehow it's still going strong. In fact, it was just this past May that developer Tripwire Interactive revealed that players had fired more than 400 billion bullets over the past half-decade, killing more than 20 billion Zedsin the process. The studio is now hard at work on Killing Floor 2, revealed herethis past May, but it's not neglecting the game that started it all: With Halloween just around the corner, the Killing Floor Halloween Horror Double Feature is now live on Steam.
Looking for something to do on Halloween? Check out Club Clandestine, a new map in an underground club packed with everything you need for a hot night out. If demonic possession is more your thing, perhaps you'll enjoy a journey to the Devil's Dollhouse, included in the update as part of the Toy Master Mod. And Zeds! You thought Zed was dead, baby, but they're back, along with all their achievements and unlockable characters.
Best of all, the Halloween Horror Double Feature update is completely free to all owners of Killing Floor. And if you don't happen to be one of them, this is a good time to change your ways: The game is on sale until the end of the monthfor five bucks, or as part of the Killing Floor Bundle, which includes a ridiculous mess of DLC, for a little under $20. (Steam's new Canadian pricing makes it hard to say precisely what games cost in real money.) And if you can't spare the fiver, you can still leap into the action, at least for a couple days: Killing Floor is part of the Steam Free Weekendthat's currently underway.
The frustrating reality of Medal of Honor: Warfighter
There's a mounted gun bit in the demo for Medal of Honor that was on display at GDC last night.
There's a mounted gun bit in the demo for Medal of Honor that was on display at GDC last night. It's a spectacular piece of entertainment, a real showcase of what the tech they're using to make the game can do. You're driving along on a dingy as waves lash a flooded Thai city. You're ferrying rescued aid workers to an extraction point where you're met by two transport helicopters. They hover, and, in a cutscene, your character attaches ropes to the base of the choppers and you're lifted away into the sunset.
[VAMS id="LQQef7Jk0EhBd"]
Throughout the presentation, Greg Goodrich, the creative mind behind the Medal of Honor revival earnestly explains just how important it is to respect the community of special forces operatives that have helped craft the game. They've got “an unprecedented group of two dozen” special forces operatives working as technical advisors, and full-time staff. The game itself is based on a book written as a way for two former operatives to “vent” on how they'd fight the war on terror. The game hops around high and low profile special forces missions from the real world: “every relevant mission from the past 30 years,” explains Greg, “including the capture of Noriega.”
The other section shown is a blast through a building. Terrorists hide behind tables, stalk round stairs, and die with graceful ragdolls. The player plants the ironsights over their faces, and they fall over.
The presentation is earnest and respectful.
But it's still a mounted gun bit. And it's still a corridor shooter bit.
Medal of Honor is immensely frustrating to me. Here's the problem: I want to believe the hype. I want to see a publisher with the financial might of EA push to create a game that pushes the boundaries of what games with guns in do. I love Battlefield, but it's better in hardcore mode. I'm happy with playing CoD, but I'd much prefer to be in ArmA.
Any reader of PC Gamer knows exactly what they're going to get with Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The demo last night did nothing but tick boxes. But the presentation and the discussion made me pine for a game that offered so much more than the corridor shooter they displayed.
It's out on October 23rd.
The Old Republic: Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion announced
The first Star Wars trailer revealed at EA's E3 press conference wasn't for something entirely new.
The first Star Wars trailer revealed at EA's E3 press conference wasn't for something entirely new. Rather, it was a new chunk of something old. Knights of the Fallen Empire is the next expansion for The Old Republic, and, according to EA, it takes the Star Wars MMO "back to the routes of Bioware style storytelling".
The expansion will feature new worlds, new companions, and a story centred around a dangerous new faction. It will also raise the level cap to 65, and let you to create a new level 60 character in order to jump straight into the expansion's story.
"Your character will become the Outlander," reveals Bioware's announcement post, "a veteran of the Great Galactic War who comes face-to-face with a new threat to the galaxy: the Emperor of the Eternal Throne."
Knights of the Fallen Empire is due out on October 27, and will be free to The Old Republic subscribers.
Killing Floor and Tropico 5 free to try this weekend
Whether you want to shoot monsters or become one, Steam is hosting a couple of free weekend trials for Killing Floor and Tropico 5 .
. Both games are free to download through Steam right now through to 1pm Sunday Pacific time / 9PM GMT.
Both games are cheap this weekend as well, so if you enjoy your extended demo, you can pick up either game at 75% off. Killing Floor is particularly worthwhile if you convince some friends to pick it up with you. It's a co-op horde survival shooter with some immensely satisfying guns (courtesy of Tripwire, who made the great Red Orchestra games).
Tropico 5 is a more measured and darkly humorous game about running a dictatorship which we rather enjoyed. "Over the course of my extended presidency I've smuggled rum into a prohibition America, sided with Axis powers during both World Wars, systematically stripped away the liberty of my citizens, and assassinated a grandma for opposing my regime," wrote Phil in our review. Sounds like a good time to me.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter announced, built with Frostbite 2
Warfighter is an advanced follow-up to 2010's Medal of Honor reboot.
Warfighter is an advanced follow-up to 2010's Medal of Honor reboot. It's being built with Battlefield 3's Frostbite 2 engine and developed by Danger Close. DICE handled Medal of Honor's multiplayer mode, but GImention that Warfighter's singleplayer and muiltiplayer will be built by Danger Close this time round. EA have shared "a visual inspiration and representation" (man with gun pic) of Warfighter on the Medal of Honor site. There will be "more details to come in the next few weeks," they say. We'll have plenty more info for you in the next issue of PC Gamer UK.
There's no release date yet but if it's out this year it'll likely be going head to head with the next Call of Duty, which is rumoured to be Black Ops 2. Can it compete? For more of an idea of what they're working with, check out our Medal of Honor review.
All the details on the World of Warcraft: Legion expansion
It was only a couple of months ago that I reflected on what World of Warcraft's Warlords of Draenor expansion had become over the months since launch, and at the time I suggested that it was "a placeholder while the team scrambles to come up with something better." Based on what Blizzard revealed on the main stage at BlizzCon today, the upcoming Legion expansion might be that "something better," after all.
Today, after months of flagging attention in World of Warcraft and declining subscriber numbers, Blizzard shows it still knows how to get our attention with some jaw-dropping cinematics. The main trailer for Legion depicts King Varian Wrynn aboard a ship besieged by the titular Legion, whereupon he's helped by none other than Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, a longtime Horde adversary (and fan favorite). The ship goes down, goes boom. Is Varian dead? No, he's changing specs (or something) and kicking ass! It's great stuff that ties directly into the storyline—so great, in fact, that many are claiming that it's better than the full-length Warcraft movie trailerthat aired earlier in the day.
It sets the tone for the expansion, which seems to show the Horde and Alliance finally getting over their petty squabbles (to an extent) to work together and destroy an adversary that threatens them all. To that end, the expansion will kick off with a new 40-person scenario split evenly between the Horde and the Alliance as they rush to the tomb of Sargeras on the Broken Isles that serve as the expansion's setting.
The focus onstage then shifted to the new Demon Hunter hero class, which models itself on the emo Night Elf Illidan Stormrage from Warcraft III and starts players off at level 98. Long-awaited, the class nevertheless looks like it plays about as much as you'd expect based on previous Warcraft lore, right down to the hero slicing things up with oversized glaives. Illidan himself guides the class through its starting level, which takes place back in time when Illidan was still doing Hamlet impressions at Outland's Black Temple.
"Unprepared" for an assault on the fortress, Illidan sends his flock of homegrown Demon Hunters to the demon prison world of Mardum, which is crammed with both new and familiar varieties of demons. The Demon Hunter players slice through them, picking up their couple of hotbars' worth of skills from the very bodies of demons, and Illidan's even nice enough to give them a (rather ugly) semi-skeletal mount. The party ends, though, when Maiev Shadowsong jails all the new Demon Hunters for years, until at last they're set free in the unseen second half of the Demon Hunter starter zones to save the world.
Blizzard then devoted a huge chunk of its panel to showing off the art design of the six new zones for the Broken Isles, which are admittedly lovely. This is all that's left of Suramar, a vast region that was destroyed in the Sundering thousands of years ago.
One problem is that the zones seem to push the theme park concept a little too literally in contrast to previous expansions, as if going for a scattershot "greatest hits" appeal rather than a coherent theme. In one corner, for instance, we have Val'sharah, a leafy, druidy zone that contains Shaladrassil, the big tree that was once the entrance to the mysterious Emerald Dream. In another, we have Stormheim, full of the brawny Viking-like Vrykul warriors who were so popular during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Elsewhere still we have the Highmountain zone that's filled with Tauren with moose antlers, a pretty Greek island-themed zone called Azuna, and the sprawling city of Suramar itself, which is full of former Night Elves who've long been corrupted by the magic that's protected the place for all these years.
More interesting is how we'll level through this content. Instead of guiding the 100-110 progression through specific zones in order, the content will scale according to your new "legacy" weapon, thus allowing you to venture through the beautiful theme park in an order of your own. The upshot is that it's also a great way to allow players of different levels to play together, and that it also allows Blizzard to use every zone for endgame questing content.
The questing content itself sounds attractive, as Blizzard claims it wants to combine the story focus on endgame quests from Mists of Pandaria with the choices available in Warlords of Draenor. Now, they say, you'll be able to choose which missions you want to undertake, and some of these may take multiple days. Some are profession-specific, some are PvP-related (apparently there's still some bad blood there, cutscene to the contrary), and some will bring back minigames. The whole game will share the same quests in this regard, so it won't be necessary to hop to other servers to find the one you want or need.
And, naturally, there are new dungeons and raids. Legion will kick off with the seven-boss Emerald Nightmare raid set in the Emerald Dream (so much for that being a whole expansion) and the 10-boss Suramar Palace where Gul'dan apparently hangs out these days. Ten dungeons will make an initial appearance, with five being aimed at leveling up and five being aimed at the endgame. Legion even sees World of Warcraft rip a page from Diablo III with its Challenger's Keystone for Challenge Mode dungeons that recall Nephalem Rifts, although with modifiers that shake up the dungeon behavior aof enemies.
That's what we now know about Legion in a nutshell. This all sounds like great stuff, but here's to hoping Blizzard continues to dish out meaningful content for it after it launches next summer, rather than letting it chug along on autopilot as it did with Warlords of Draenor.
Blizzard said it plans to release Legion sometime in summer 2016.
We've killed 20 billion zeds since Killing Floor launched five years ago
Time sure does fly by when you're having fun (also guts).
Time sure does fly by when you're having fun (also guts). Killing Floor is celebrating its fifth birthday, and Tripwire has shared an infographic of impressive numbers and trivia to mark the occasion. Did you know that Killing Floor was originally released as an Unreal Tournament 2004 total conversion mod in 2005? Or that the retail version we know and love, and which went on to gain 3 million players, was first developed by a team of 10 people in just 3 months?
They grow up so fast. Five years and more than 20 billion dead zeds later, Tripwire Interactive is now at work on Killing Floor 2. For more on that game, make sure you catch up with Wes' exclusive first look, and his chat with Tripwire about how it aims to make gaming's most realistic guns.
Medal of Honor 2 teased in Battlefield 3 boxed copies
It's been widely hinted that Danger Close - who made the single-player campaign of last year's beardy MoH reboot - is working on a new instalment of the franchise.
Boxed copies of Battlefield 3 come with a flyer for an upcoming Medal of Honor title, according to a post on NeoGaf.
The reboot split audiences and critics, mainly due to it being ... really not great, but having very nice box art. The addition of a coupon granting purchasers entrance into the Battlefield 3 beta may have been a tempted some to give it a punt.
It seems things have gone full circle with the new flyer, which merely shows a toothy shield with the number one in the centre - presumably a reference to the game's Tier One Navy Seal team.
It also advertises Medal of Honor's official site, but that doesn't seem to have been updated for about a million years. Here's the flyer image. Would you be interested in a new Medal of Honor?
World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm Beta Key Giveaway
World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm Beta Key Giveaway Thanks to our friends at Blizzard, games™ is giving away 100 beta keys a day for the next ten days for the hugely anticipated Cataclysm expanasion pack. So, maths fans, that means we have 1000 keys up for grabs. All you have to do to enter the draw is click here and answer the simple WOW-related question. Make sure you fill in your details and, if you’ve come here via Twitter, then make sure you retweet the original tweet and include your Twitter name with your answer – they’ll be checking! At the end of each day, 100 names will be drawn from the proverbial hat and winners will be emailed their beta keys, so keep an eye on your email…
Killing Floor 2: How Tripwire aims to design gaming's most realistic guns
Pictured above: Tripwire's David Hensley, John Gibson and Bill Munk holding weapons that appear in Killing Floor 2.
Tripwire Entertainment knows a thing or two about guns—both the real deal, and the ones they create in video games like the upcoming Killing Floor 2. In 2006, as a mod-team-turned-development studio working on World War 2 shooter Red Orchestra, they managed to create reload animations smoother and more detailed than the large teams developing Battlefield and Call of Duty.
"[Back then] we heard 'how come these guys' reload animations are better than yours?'" says Tripwire's president, John Gibson, thinking back to the competitive World War 2 market in 2006. "We heard the same thing about our sounds. We had pretty good sounds in the first Red Orchestra game. And the DICE guys actually said that motivated them to want to do better, and that's why Battlefield Bad Company had such amazing sounds. They were like 'crap, we have to do better than these guys.'"
For Red Orchestra and Red Orchestra 2, Tripwire earned a reputation for authenticity. With Killing Floor, Tripwire's wave-based co-op shooter released in 2009, fans started calling Tripwire's digital firearms “gun porn.” Killing Floor players praised how fun the guns were to fire and how detailed and different each firearm was. Killing Floor also let Tripwire get weird, with completely fictional weapons like the Zed Eradication Device.
Now Tripwire is developing Killing Floor 2 with eyes on an Early Access release for SteamOS and Windows. The crazy mutant freak hordes of Killing Floor and its sci-fi trappings don't mean Tripwire is giving up on accurately rendering real-world weapons, though. Gibson just wants every single gun to be cooler than ever.
Animated fire
Before making Red Orchestra 2, Tripwire's developers fired dozens of guns to record audio of each weapon and study how it performed. They used their study session to create more accurate recoil for machine guns. Killing Floor 2's larger budget means the team can go one step further: full motion capture for insanely high framerate reload animations.
"Guns shoot at such a high framerate, if you animated the gun at 30 frames per second, you're only going to get six frames per second when you go into slow-mo in detail to show that gun animating," says lead animator Bill Munk. At 30 fps, most gun animations just show a "generic forward and back motion." For KF2, Tripwire committed to higher framerate animations that would preserve the details of firing and reloading even in Zed Time, the slow-mo system that kicks in when cool things happen in Killing Floor.
"Using the Bullpup as an example, we animated at 242 frames per second, which gives us 22 frames per shell that ejects out of the weapons," Munk tells me. "The weapon shoots at 660 rounds per minute, which equals 11 rounds per second. In slow-mo you can actually see every kickback. In realtime you can't see these details but it makes the guns feel more powerful. We've come up with a formula to calculate: we have a weapon, this is its rate of fire—how many frames to do want to have per actual kickback, to make sure the fidelity of it is absolutely perfect? To my knowledge, no game is doing something like that, or would even think it would be worth doing something like that."
Gibson breaks it down. "At this rate of fire, you'd have one frame of animation to shoot. To put that in perspective, if you've ever done one of those little flipbook animation things, a frame is essentially one page. So you'd have one page to represent the barrel wiggling, the shell ejecting, the bolt moving back. It's a small touch, but it adds to the feel of it really happening."
Gibson gets even more excited about KF2's new gun technology when he talks about weapon accuracy and recoil. Most games, he explains, represent accuracy with a bullet spread. Less accurate guns will have a wider spread on their bullets, so planting your crosshair dead center on a target doesn't guarantee a hit. "We wanted to actually have the gun physically move instead of having some magic number that you tweak that makes the bullets go in random directions. The gun's accurate; if you can manage to keep your sights on an enemy, you will hit it. The crosshair's just moving around, but wherever that crosshair is, that's where the bullet's actually going."
For the motion captured weapon reloads in KF2, Tripwire researched speed reloads on Youtube, watching and imitating the reload tricks of modern gunslingers. Each gun in the game has four different reload animations: two regular and two faster "elite" reloads, based on whether a magazine is partially full or empty. The elite reloads are locked behind perk abilities: you'll have to earn them.
There's a noticeable difference in speed between the regular reloads and elite reloads with rifles like the Bullpup, which will be a lifesaver in tough Killing Floor 2 matches. Munk promises that other weapons will have reloads that are as ridiculous and badass as they are useful.
Tripwire motion captured every reload to create third person animations. But Killing Floor is a first-person shooter. Munk is proud when he talks about how they used the motion capture recordings.
"The raw mocap data just gets authored two separate ways to create the third- and first-person [animations]," he says. "Creating third [person] is actually way easier. If a guy's moving and shifting his weight, it's great, but in first person it's really weird...it feels really awkward and stiff. That's one reason why Arma feels really awkward. In third-person they're using the first person animations, so it doesn't feel like it's been specifically edited for that. We've massaged it so it's perfect for what we're doing."
Weapon balance
Despite Killing Floor 2's over-the-top sci-fi tone, Tripwire still aims to keep its weapons fairly true to life. The designers match rate of fire with real guns and have gone out of their way to correct some lingering inaccuracies from the first Killing Floor and its progenitor, an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod. In KF1, a round from the 9mm pistol actually dealt more damage than a bullet from the Bullpup rifle. That's not true in KF2.
Weapons are also being balanced more carefully. Each perk has four primary weapons, ranked weakest to strongest, and no future DLC weapons will change that tier system. The most powerful assault rifle will stay the most powerful assault rifle, but "sidegrades" will offer more options—higher rate of fire but lower damage, higher stun or knockback against the Zeds. Damage values aren't rigorously beholden to the real-world weapons.
"With RO2, the model is, make it just like real life," Gibson says. "The recoil, the way the gun moves when you shoot, the accuracy of the weapon, the damage of the weapon. For the most part we model reality."
Gibson explains that Red Orchestra's balance comes from controlling access to weapons. "Some games have unlimited snipers! Not in RO2. There are a couple snipers on a team, a couple machine guns, and we try to take a realistic format that was fairly balanced in the real world and apply it to the game. What we've always said about the RO franchise is we take the fun parts of realism. It is not fun to be cowering in a trench getting artillery dropped on you for hours on end and crapping your pants. But it is fun to line up a shot on a distant target while your guy's breathing and you finally nail that long distance shot and you know that it was challenging and rewarding to do."
With four weapon tiers spread across a planned 10 perks, plus backups like pistols and melee weapons, balancing Killing Floor 2's entire arsenal will be a big job. So far, Tripwire isn't talking about most of the game's arsenal. The SCAR 17, AK-12, Bullpup, and 9mm AR-15 are Commando weapons already implemented in the game. The Mossberg 500 shotgun will also make an appearance.
Tripwire knows how to nail the feel of KF2's weapons, but perfect balance can only come from large scale playtesting. Enter Early Access and the Killing Floor community.
"It's about getting the players' feedback and letting that inform us to make smart decisions for what becomes the full release," Gibson says. "We're excited to get it into peoples' hands. We don't want to wait...we want to see their reaction, get their feedback. That's a big driver to do Early Access."
Tripwire won't say when Killing Floor 2 is coming, but its weapons may set a new bar for FPS fidelity. If, in a couple years, you're playing the next Battlefield and notice that the reload animations are especially detailed, you'll know who DICE was hellbent on beating.
For more on Killing Floor 2, make sure to read our exclusive reveal feature.
Danger Close are making a new Medal of Honor
Despite their first game in the franchise's reboot receiving lukewarm reviews, Danger Close are developing a second game in the modern-day-set Medal of Honor series.
Producer Greg Goodrich revealed in a blog post entitled “ In case you were wondering…”: “Yes, Danger Close is currently working on the next Medal of Honor.”
Goodrich went on to say: “Since our launch last October, we've studied, listened and absorbed much of your feedback and are very excited to be marching forward on the next title. We can't wait to tell you more about it, so check back often to the website and the fan page on Facebook.
“It's going to be a fun ride for the Medal of Honor franchise. We are happy to have you aboard.”
Whilst Danger Close had already announced it was recruiting for a new AAA FPS title, speculation had been than the EA studio would be working on a different franchise. Tonight's confirmation demonstrates that even in the face of it's ridiculously high-selling rival Call of Duty, Medal of Honor still plans to persevere.
Killing Floor 2 exclusive first look: co-op FPS horror with the most advanced gore system ever
Paris is burning.
Paris is burning. The sky behind the Eiffel Tower glows an ominous orange through a haze of billowing smoke. Sparks and ash and scraps of paper float through the dark streets of the city, where cars and offices stand eerily abandoned.
A manhole opens. For a moment, nothing happens. And then a zed, a naked genetic freak sheathed in slimy grey skin, pops out of the hole like a horrorshow jack-in-the-box. The zed has the mind of a child. It doesn't know much, but it knows it wants to kill.
The zed manages two steps from the manhole before a stream of bullets blast it off its feet. More bullets tear into it in midair, splattering blood across the street and unburdening its gut of a generous helping of internal organs. Everyone in the dark conference room at Tripwire Interactive laughs or oohs as they watch the most complicated gore system in gaming—a gore system they've been building for Killing Floor 2 for the past two years—eviscerate the zed in a way they've never quite seen before.
Since shipping World War II FPS Red Orchestra 2in 2011, Tripwire has dedicated itself to the sticky art of digital dismemberment for the sequel to 2009's co-op wave-based shooter. They want each and every exploded brain, severed leg and bloody gutshot to look unique. Bill Munk, creative director and senior animator at Tripwire, has a saying: Red Orchestra is realism. Killing Floor is coolism.
"Killing Floor is a simple game," says Munk. "You have weapons. You see something that looks messed up. And you kill it. You get money for doing it and you buy better weapons. Rinse and repeat. The more enjoyable that small little loop is, the more successful the game is."
Munk is one of Tripwire's co-founders. He couldn't hide his enthusiasm for games if he tried; over dinner, he gushes about how he played a borrowed copy of Metal Gear Solid in his college dorm for an entire weekend, substituting caffeine for sleep. When Munk talks about Killing Floor 2, most of his sentences end with "as sick as possible."
"This project on an animation end has been a dream come true for me," he says. “This is the first time we had the budget for me to do mocap for everything and try to make everything look as sick as possible."
When Munk says everything, he means it. The gun animations are mocapped. Melee is mocapped for first- and third-person perspectives. Killing Floor 2 is still a simple game. But this time, it looks good .
A killer mod
"[Killing Floor 2] is the first time we've been able to develop a game from start to finish with what I would call a reasonable size staff and a reasonable size budget," says John Gibson, Tripwire's president and a co-founder along with Munk.
Gibson is entertaining and outspoken for a company president. Tripwire's pedigree for realistic weaponry stems from Gibson's passion for them. Many guns in Killing Floor 2, like the Commando class's SCAR Mk 17 and AK-12, are modeled from his own personal collection. If he's not talking about guns or videogames, there's a good chance he's talking about cars. "Have you ever ridden in a DeLorean?" he asks me with a grin when we take a break for lunch. I have now ridden in a DeLorean.
Gibson and the other founding members of Tripwire had to take out loans to pay for their first game, Red Orchestra. They started as an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod team. Killing Floor was another Unreal mod, created by Alex Quick. Once Tripwire turned RO into a standalone game, they convinced Quick to port over Killing Floor. They played the mod so much, Gibson put Red Orchestra 2 on hold mid-development to turn Killing Floor into a full game. Ten people made the game in three months. As of 2014, Killing Floor has sold nearly 2.5 million copies.
Tripwire is now 50 employees strong. Killing Floor 2 is coming to Steam Early Access for Windows and Valve's SteamOS. When? Not as soon as I may want, Gibson says, but sooner than I may expect. After watching them play KF2, I know they got at least the first half of that statement right.
PC Gamer US podcast 244 - Aeronautical Authorities
This week: news!
This week: news! News for every genre! Evan chats about Medal of Honor's awkward multiplayer, Civilization V has Gaelic Warriorsand why aren't you killing Caesar with them yet , and our Gold-ranked duo of Dan and Andy help us mull over the StarCraft II 1.1.2 patch with us, which deployed yesterday and totally nerfed Thors, but not High Templars, which is unfair . We also remind you to watch the MLG Pro Circuit SC2 tournament in Washington D.C., which begins in just a few hours.
Want to subscribe to us on iTunes? Follow these instructions to add the podcast to iTunes manually:
In iTunes, go to to the advanced menu and select “Subscribe to podcast” and copy and paste this URL into the box: http://www.pcgamer.com/feed/rss2/?cat=29038
Push OK, and that's it! The podcast will now auto-download whenever an episode is released.
Warcraft film footage emerges online
We know that Warcraft is " pretty much a finished movie " according to its director, but it's not scheduled to release until June next year.
" according to its director, but it's not scheduled to release until June next year. We've seen some images from the film, but now we catch a glimpse of how it will look in action, thanks to an apparent leak.
You'll need to head over here to see it. It's a trailer full of grandiose war scenarios and orcs, so it's pretty unmistakably Warcraft. Where it came from, though, is another question. Gamespotpublished the leak but did not indicate where it comes from, though behind-closed-doors sessions happened at ComicCon last month, so it's likely something to do with that.
Whatever the case, the grainy footage is long-awaited: the film has been in discussions for over a decadenow.
Get this exclusive Killing Floor 2 skin in the print edition of PC Gamer US #254
"Dosh here, grab it while it's hot!" Killing Floor 2 exists .
. The follow-up to the gory, cooperative, wave-based shooter impressed Wes when he went to visit Tripwire in Georgia for our exclusive first look. Coupled with our coverage of Killing Floor 2 in our magazine, though, is a special gift: a unique character skin that you can only get by buying the print magazine .
Let's face it: when you're surrounded by hordes of the living dead, who want only to feast upon your flesh, your biggest concern is going to be, “Do I look cool?” Lucky for you, we can make sure you look your best right before you're torn to bits. Because if you're going to be a corpse, you should look badass.
All print subscribers and print newsstand purchasers will receive a Steam code in the magazine. You can redeem the code in Steam immediately, but the skin won't be available until the game is released, of course. Subscribers should receive the issue soon, but look for this cover on newsstands by May 27 :
How to redeem your Killing Floor 2 code
1. Go to store.steampowered.com, or log into the Steam client on your PC.
2. In the top menu, click on “Games,” then “Activate a product on Steam”
3. At the Product Activation window, click “Next”
4. Click “I Agree” to the Steam Subscriber Agreement
5. Input the code below, click “Next,” and the skin will be added to your account
The US print issue is now avialable in the PC Gamer web storeon the same date. The item will also be available in the July issue of PC Gamer UK, on-sale July 3, 2014 .
The Killing Floor 2 "Dosh" skin code is only available in the print edition of the magazine
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Our Verdict
MoHs inventive and thoughtful sections are undermined by its desire to mimic other games it just cant beat.
Medal of Honour citation: Sergeant First Class xSN1PERRx, pretend videogame army, distinguished himself with actions not quite above the Call of Duty while serving in Afghanistan as a super-secret megasoldier operating in a hush-hush 'Tier One' unit, sometimes switching brains to become a frontline grunt who learned about the futility of war and stuff like that.
Sergeant xSN1PERRx spent eight hours trudging around a geographically accurate but worryingly beige combat zone in southern Afghanistan. While on duty dressed in the skin of both Tier One operators and Army Ranger, he was ambushed repeatedly by infinite streams of Taliban fighters. Facing their withering assault, Sergeant xSN1PERRx was able to identify and click on each of their heads in turn until they fell down and their bodies disappeared.
Sergeant SN1PERRx willingly gave his life, choosing to hurl himself into a room waving a shotgun after his teammates told him to hang back, because he was bored of staring at yet another brown rock. His extraordinary badassishness and mouse-wielding ability are in keeping with the highest traditions of videogame service and reflect great credit upon himself, and acceptable credit on Medal of Honour's developers. Now he's dead, 75%. OMGLOL.
Blood and tiers
Let's take a moment to salute our fallen brother. Have you saluted your monitor? Good. Medal of Honour is very strict about that kind of thing. It's a shooter made with the close involvement of real-life soldiers: special forces so classified that before the game was released, publishers EA could only show them off with their faces hidden and their voices masked. Their input was intended to give the game a sense of respect and understanding for the soldiers involved.
It's a fine line to walk, ruminating on the nature of the warrior in a game about inserting digital bullets in skulls, and MoH stumbles regularly. At times, it goes mawkish, the overt sentimentality of years of battlefield cooperation squidged into an ill-fitting shooter template. There are a lot of cod-meaningful man-glances that feel forced, busting in on your good shootin' time with slow-paced cinematics.
On the other side, attempts to even the conflict and move it away from goodies vs baddies are undermined by a black and white approach. Almost every soul who lives in the game's southern Afghan region of Takur Ghar takes potshots at you within milliseconds of you arriving in their area; those that don't are goats. If Medal of Honour's enemy count is even vaguely accurate, the coalition forces in Afghanistan are outgunned seven hundred to one. New fighters pop into existence every couple of seconds in the game's lengthy and repeated 'defend until extraction' objectives. These vignettes are tense but tiresome: in a real battle they'd be frantic scraps for seconds of life; in Medal of Honour, they're click click click from behind the same point of cover until a timer ticks down to zero.
But damn, if I didn't get suckered in. The first section of the game is in the secret shoes of Tier One operators, and feels resolutely retro in its approach: four men versus the world. Halfway in, you get control of an Army Ranger – a more typical grunt. Before, I was an extension of the nighttime scenery, silently killing in the dark. In the combat boots of the Ranger, the rocks and dust of Afghanistan itself seemed to want to kill me, twatting mortar strikes and RPG fire into my landing point. My helicopter ride downed, I felt a minuscule approximation of the confusion and panic EA's co-opted soldiers mentioned in their pre-game primers. For a short while following that ambush, every “OO-RAH!” that I'd otherwise have winced at became a statement of intent, every kill-shot a revenge strike for the unfair murder of my pretend buddies. Much more and I'd have broken out whooping “USA! USA!” Tough to explain to the office. By the time I was stuck in the bed of a valley with my Ranger squad, tributaries of Taliban forming a river of pissed-off militants, I'd lost my cynical critical connection, and was genuinely wishing for evacuation. I didn't want to die in the dust.
That was a high point. Prior to the stand in the desert, Medal of Honour isn't sure what it is. The first segment of Tier One missions are Call of Duty rejects, cod-CoD gimmicks that get used once or twice then tossed. As decreed by ancient law or something, I was forced to direct shots fired by everyone's favourite military namedrop, God's own giant fucking plane o'guns – an AC130. I aimed a screen-filling sniper-rifle repeatedly, puncturing heads from a kilometre away as my spotter called out targets in a watered down version of Modern Warfare's silky 'one shot, one kill' mission. When MoH isn't trying to ape its peers, it fares a lot better.
Back in the Afghan desert, my four-man squad and I were faced with a well-fortified machinegun nest. My shooter instincts kicked in, and I went to flank, hopping up and down at a low wall in front of the gun like an impatient, gun-toting whack-a-mole. That didn't work. I tried a grenade, only to see it pop apologetically in mid-air. Stymied, I skipped over to my squadmates, who gave me a job. It wasn't to be the bunny-hopping hero – it was to provide covering fire. I did so, shouldering my light machinegun and popping occasional shots in a semi-accurate haze around my foe.
A woollier game might've made that process tiresome, but MoH's shooting is fundamentally crisp and satisfying. Each bullet elicits the proper reaction. In the case of a shotgun applied to a head, that reaction is “oh no, I don't have a head any more.” At least, that's true of your hordes of enemies – on normal difficulty, your own character has no trouble absorbing bullets.
This disconnect is even greater when you take your exploits online, the multiplayer portion of the game having been handled by an entirely separate studio: DICE, of Battlefield fame. Weapons there are turbocharged, killing near instantly. I also found them to be more accurate: I had a float to my mouse-moves during the singleplayer that suggested the game was built for analogue sticks; online that was stripped away to leave me with a headshot-perfect reticule.
The ease of death on Medal of Honor's multiplayer servers will frustrate some. It frustrated the (honour – Ed) out of me. But I adjusted to the slow tempo and rhythm of combat, and found it one of few games I've played against other humans where I've deployed actual battlefield creativity to succeed. An example: penned in by four assailants in an alley, I hurled a frag grenade forward. I didn't expect a kill, but was able to use the dirt and dust kicked up by the detonation to scramble behind a bin before I was spotted. From there, I was able to plug two of them in the back of the head, and hide in a stairwell.
The online war is occasionally pretty – burning embers and smoke whipped across my field of vision as I sprinted for cover – but it's never beautiful. I had most success as a sniper, squatting on a grey rock and scanning the horizon. Like the singleplayer campaign, MoH online matches are brown, grey, beige, serious, and rarely imbued with any kind of triumph.
Medal of Duty
Medal of Honour is a game that struggles with identity. It's sometimes brave enough to let players not be the hero, and it's invigorating when it does so. The back half of the game is more retreat than fightback, sprints away from combat and into the welcoming rotors of evac choppers. Moments like these carry the sense of martial respect that the game's developers have tied the game up with, but they're undone by tiresome tropes cribbed from contemporaries.
It may follow its dumber peers directly into pointless gimmickry, but for valour in attempting a tonal shift for genre, Medal of Honour should be rewarded.
The Verdict
Medal of Honor
MoHs inventive and thoughtful sections are undermined by its desire to mimic other games it just cant beat.
We recommend By Zergnet
Interactive Warcraft trailer takes you on a ride over Stormwind
Legendary Pictures has released a "360 video inspired by the Warcraft movie" offering a high-above, all-around view of the city of Stormwind, seen from the back of a soaringgryphon.
movie" offering a high-above, all-around view of the city of Stormwind, seen from the back of a soaringgryphon. Created by the famed Industrial Light and Magic, the results are pretty cool—although the seam directly behind the gryphon is very visible. It also requires Google's Chrome browser in order to operate; Kotakusays it "looks busted and broken" on other browsers, but on Firefox (at least, my Firefox) it just flat-out doesn't work. Don't have Chrome? Here you go.
While you're here, have a look at the pair of movie posters released at the San Diego Comic Con and served up by Screen Rant, one featuring Sir Anduin Lothar, the knight in command of the human army, and the other, the great Orc chieftain Durotan. They both have the look of guys who'd rather be doing just about anything else, and as the site notes, there's an expectation that the film will forgo a simple good guy/bad guy narrative in favor of digging into the moral and political complexities of the Warcraft setting.
Director Duncan Jones stated late last week that, close to ten years after production first began, the Warcraft film is "pretty much a finished movie." It's slated to hit screens in June of 2016.
Why I Love: the grappling hook
Why I Love
In Why I Love , PC Gamer writers pick an aspect of PC gaming that they love and write about why it's brilliant.
, PC Gamer writers pick an aspect of PC gaming that they love and write about why it's brilliant. Today, we get into the swing, as Phil explains his love of grappling hooks.
If you go back through the Why I Love articles I've written to date— stealth on ships, TF2's Scoutor playing Chinese-style operain Audiosurf—all have, to a greater or lesser extent, been about systems or experiences that change how you traverse through a level. The Scout can double-jump. Ship-based stealth levels are tighter and more claustrophobic than their inevitable "big warehouse" counterpart. Monkey Bee has one of the most distinct middle-sections I've yet to see emerge from Audiosurf's level generator.
A satisfying traversal system isn't the only thing I look for in a game, but it is one of a few broad areas that define my taste. If I can move around a game in interesting ways, then I will probably like it. I like Prototype—a game in which you can run up, and leap off, and glide over buildings—even though a part of me suspects that it's really a bit rubbish. I'm a somewhat overweight guy in his thirties. Sometimes it's nice to tell gravity to go and do one.
There's another traversal tool that I consistently love in games: the grappling hook. My appreciation for good grappling hooks—and good here doesn't mean realistic—started with the original version of Worms. Friends and I would play multiplayer matches with a very specific set of rules: no turn timer, unlimited girders, and unrestricted access to the grappling hook (or "ninja rope," as it's called in-game). You can use the ninja rope multiple times per turn, and we gave ourselves unlimited time to make our way across the map. With these rules, a worm can travel from one side to the other—their turn ending only if they take fall damage.
That's where the girders came in. We'd place them above the level, both to protect our own guys from air strikes and to have more surfaces to grapple on to. Worms' rope mechanics are, in essence, bizarre. They're also consistent in their implementation, which led us to a great understanding of their potential. With some effort, it's possible to swing 180 degrees and beyond—eventually landing on top of the platform the worm is swinging from. The trick is to extend the rope fully, smack into a solid surface, and then retract. That maximises the speed boost from bouncing off the wall, and, with luck, propels the worm up and around.
To anyone but those directly involved in the match, this was an unspeakably tedious spectacle. To us, it was thrilling.
Subsequent Worms games enforced turn times, essentially ruining my enjoyment of them. But a few other 2D games feature that same spirit of exploitable traversal. Trine is, intentionally or not, all about this. One of its three characters is a Thief, and her grappling hook allows for a similarly awkward battle against physics. Here, you can even grapple onto one surface, break off and re-attach to another, all while still in mid-swing. You can, on select levels, chain these swings—at times resulting in long, unbroken stretches of undulation.
Used properly, it can be a graceful tool. But both Trine games also contain a secret hidden mini-game for grappling hook aficionados. This game is called "can I use the Thief to complete this section, even though it was obviously designed for the Wizard?" Often, the answer is yes.
At this point, I should probably point to another 2D grappling hook game—one designed entirely around swinging as the main method of level traversal. It's called Floating Point, it's free, and it was made by PC Gamer's former section editor Tom Francis. It's a more sedate grapple-space to move through, and rare in that its freedom of movement is the idea rather than an exploitable quirk in the engine. If you're here because you like grappling hooks, then it's relevant to your interests.
In three-dimensions, the grappling hook is a less sure-fire hit. Too often, it's restricted—kept to specific grapple-points in order to stop the player breaking the level in ridiculous ways. Most recently, you can see this in Far Cry 4. You have a grappling hook! You can jump from the rope and re-attach it to another point before hitting the ground! You can only do this at specifically marked points around the map. I'd like you to imagine a sort of anti-exclamation mark, and place it on the end of that last sentence.
Some games are better at it this than others, and they tend to be the ones that are more open about their freedom of movement. Arkham City's Grapnel Gun combos satisfyingly with the glide. You can't swing, but you can shoot it to build speed across the map—using it to all but fly. And then there's Just Cause 2, or Let's Do Fun Shit With A Grappling Hook: The Game. You can attach onto a plane, or to cars, or to an explosive barrel that is shooting vertically into the air. You can use it in conjunction with a parachute to create a free-form system of movement more distinct and enjoyable than any of the game's vehicles.
Maybe that's another reason why grappling hooks, specifically, are one of my favourite methods of traversal. They're inherently ridiculous. There is no way to put an unrestricted grappling hook in a game and still have it be a serious tool, because it's either inherently exploitable or inherently unrealistic. It is a jointly a tool for motion and a tool for fun.
Case in point: the 3D version of Bionic Commando. It had a grappling hook as its central gimmick, and yet its story still felt the need for a Serious Emotional Payload. How was that done? With the late-game reveal that your bionic grapple-arm was also your wife. Your wife, who was used to create a strong emotional bond with the robo-limb.
That is dumb. But that is what happens when you try to inject emotional pathos into a game with a grappling hook—it throws off your sense of what's appropriate. At some point, a developer must have questioned whether wife-in-a-robo-arm was good storytelling. I suspect they saw their hero swinging care-free through a city and lost all sense of perspective. "Yes," this hypothetical employee thought, "it makes total sense that this bionic commando's arm is his wife."
It didn't, though. It was stupid. That's why grappling hooks can never be serious. Not true, freeform, use-'em-wherever-you-like grappling hooks. They're silly and fun—a tool for engaging with, perfecting, and enjoying the feeling of motion. They are, in practice and philosophy, the opposite of a wife in an arm.
More grappling hooks; less wives in robot arms. That feels like a strange place to end things, but also like good words to live by.
Medal of Honor dev defends Taliban name change, new launch trailer
Medal of Honor developers, Danger Close recently caved in to growing pressure , and renamed the Taliban forces.
, and renamed the Taliban forces. Danger Close marketing director Craig Owens spoke out recently about the reasons behind the name change. Read on for his comments, and the explosive new launch trailer.
Speaking to Joystiq, marketing director for Danger Close, Craig Owens, explained why the company chose to rename the Taliban, saying "The objection was, kind of from an older generation that doesn't understand games, that the soundbyte was 'Play as the Taliban and kill US soldiers. There still is, it seems, a group that's still a little bit leery of a game taking place around an active conflict."
"Really the big thing was playing as a Taliban killing US troops. So we basically just changed it to 'Opfor' -- which is a term they [the US Armed Forces] use, some of our competitors use -- more out of respect." Owens claimed the decision had nothing to do with the decision by Army and Airforce Exchange Service not to stock the game on army bases, saying “always been about the respect for the troops. It's not about Afghanistan. It's not about the enemy. It's about the brother beside you.”
What do you think, have Danger Close made the right decision? We'll have our Medal of Honor review on the site today.
The Warcraft film is "pretty much a finished movie"
It's a little known fact that production of the Warcraft film actually began during the Reagan administration, but people didn't hear about it because the internet hadn't been invented.
actually began during the Reagan administration, but people didn't hear about it because the internet hadn't been invented. Is that really true? Of course not—ARPANET, the precursor to the internet as we know it today, was actually established in the 1960s, long before Ronald Reagan became President of the United States. But that's not important. What is important is that, according to director Duncan Jones, the movie is just about complete.
That doesn't mean you'll be watching it anytime soon, since it won't hit theaters until next summer. But it's "pretty much a finished movie," he told io9, with fewer than ten VFX shots remaining to be polished off and inserted. You'll also be happy to hear that he reckons it's a pretty good flick, too.
"I've got to see [it], I know that it's good. I've shown it to people that I trust, whose opinions I respect, and who are honest with me, and they've said it's good," he said. "So now I just clench my fists and grit my teeth, and wait for everyone else to see it."
Jones also said that if the film is a success, it could become a trilogy. "If it goes well, I am pretty convinced that Chris Metzen from Blizzard and I have a very good idea of what story we could tell in three films, given the opportunity," he continued. He'd like to return to direct future films in the franchise, but he also wants to get to work on a "pet project" called Mute. "If I can squeeze in Mute before Warcraft even comes out, then that would give me my kind of 'little indie' I wanted to make, and then I'd love to jump back into this," he said,
Warcraft—the film, not the game, or the World of—is scheduled for release on June 10 of 2016.
Steam Free Weekend will have ten free games starting tomorrow
If for some reason you budget your video game spending by the weekend, then here's good news: you can spend that money on something else.
If for some reason you budget your video game spending by the weekend, then here's good news: you can spend that money on something else. May I suggest: nicer food. A new pair of shoes. A trip to the nearest theme park.
The reason is, Steam is making ten games free this weekend as part of its aptly titled Free Weekend promotions. The games include Company of Heroes 2, XCOM: Enemy Unknownand Grid 2. You'll have over 48 hours to play them, as they unlock 10am Pacific time on Thursday, October 16. After that you'll need to pay for them, with the promise of substantial discounts.
Awesomenauts
Blade Symphony
Company of Heroes 2
Don't Starve
Grid 2
Injustice
Killing Floor
Payday 2
Trine 2
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
It's a good week for free games: GOG.com is giving away Alien versus Predator Classic this weekas part of a GOG Galaxy test run.
Don't be fooled by this "EA Sports" FIFA World Cup phishing scam
World Cup fever can manifest in a variety of ways.
World Cup fever can manifest in a variety of ways. Usually it involves a great deal of shouting and drinking, but scammers are also having a field day doing what they do best: scamming. One such scam is playing out on Instagram at present, where a fake EA Sports account is promising new and exclusive playable characters, including Neymar. Problem is, if you follow the link provided and enter your Origin password, you'll fall victim to a phishing scam.
The 'easportsut2014' Instagram account is the main culprit. Malwarebytes Unpackedreports that it's approaching 9,000 followers with a very active community. The usual trick is to invite users to be among the first to click a link in the account's description in order to gain access to 'exclusive' goodies. Naturally, you should not do this.
It's not the first time a phishing scam has taken on the identity of EA Sports: several Twitter accounts purporting to be official EA Sports support channels popped up earlier this year. Through a process of cunning trickery the accounts directed users to a site requesting Origin details. It's a jungle out there.
In more positive FIFA news, FIFA 15 for PC will debut the fancy new Ignite Engineon our beloved platform. Apparently it's pretty nifty.
ClusterTruck made me feel like an incredibly clumsy Neo
Back in September we took a look at a game called Nuclear Business by Landfall Games , and it seems Landfall makes games that are born to be GIFs.
, and it seems Landfall makes games that are born to be GIFs. Here's another in the same vein as Nuclear Business. ClusterTruckis an absurd action game in which you have to get from point A to point B by riding the tops of a long convoy of trucks whose drivers, from what I can tell, have never driven a truck. At its best, ClusterTruck makes you feel like Neo from the Matrix, smoothly jumping from one truck to the next. At its worst, it makes you feel the cold embrace of the asphalt—repeatedly and without remorse.
The head of Landfall Wilhem Nylund tells me he prefers to make “very mechanics based games,” which is why they work well as GIFs, as “the meat of the game is visible at a glance.” He’s definitely right about that, because I could wax poetic about jumping from truck to truck all I want, but all you really have to do to understand the appeal of ClusterTruck is watch this clip of Nylund playing on one of the latest levels added to the game.
It's important to note that he makes this game look easy. I can promise you: it is not that easy. The controls allowed me to be very nimble between jumps, but that also meant they didn’t function how I initially expected they would—especially with the time-slowing ability, where I thought I would have enhanced movement like in GTA 5. Additionally, everything is constantly moving and the textures are mostly solid colors, so I didn’t have many reliable points of reference for just how fast I was going. But once I got more comfortable with it, I started experiencing a few little thrills—though nothing as impressive as above.
Honestly, it's hard enough to just survive the driver AI, even without the traps and obstacles. One of the hardest levels I played was simply a long line of trucks on an even longer (completely straight) path. Everything starts out okay, but once one truck falls it all goes to hell.
There were occasionally blissful moments in ClusterTruck. Moments where the chaos melted away as I carelessly rode the hood of a moving vehicle past crashes and explosions. I didn't have to jump, never needed to switch trucks, or bother myself with anything quite so stressful as all that. I just let myself be haplessly carried downstream to my destination. That is, of course, before the truck I was on inevitably toppled over at the last possible moment.
But these moments were few and far between, and not moving always felt like the riskier strategy. Running fast and maintaining momentum let me respond to unexpected crashes quickly, where as standing still left me like a sitting duck—if that duck were on top of a moving car. I could take my chances and stay at the back of the pack the whole level, but that usually just meant there was more chaos happening in front of me.
The elegant cruelty of many of the traps and obstacles kept me interested and eager to reach the next set of levels. The final game will have 100 levels broken into 10 sets, each with their own theme and special hurdles to overcome. The GIF above shows off a crystal themed world with deadly lasers scattered about. Lasers are a simple but incredibly effective way to put you out of your comfort zone, forcing you to move when you otherwise wouldn’t need to. Lasers are also a simple, but very effective, way to murder you. The level complexity escalates when those lasers start moving, trucks start swerving, and so on and so forth until Nylund has created a level even he can’t beat.
I only got to play the current alpha version, and it's definitely still early days for ClusterTruck, but I'm excited to see where Landfall Games takes it. More exciting than the levels Landfall still has to make is that a level editor and Steam workshop support will be coming with the game’s launch. Releasing with a strong set of levels and then letting the community run wild past that could take ClusterTruck from being an amusing distraction to a cult classic.
Landfall Games expects ClusterTruck to cost around $10and come out officially sometime around April—though Nylund told me that they “initially intended for the game to be a small project with a short development,” but have extended development since then, and are considering pushing that date back even further since the game has been “gaining more and more traction.” You can find regular updates about the game (and lots more impressive GIFs) on the ClusterTruck subreddit.
Trine 2 shows off its custom maps in new trailer
Back in September, Frozenbyte released the Trine 2 editor into public beta.
into public beta. Since then, a number of community-created maps have made their way onto the game's Steam Workshop page. Those maps are now highlighted in a new trailer for the game.
Trine 2 is a protagonist-switching platformer in which you shift between three characters—a wizard, a knight and a thief—all trapped in the same body. More accurately, it's a protagonist-switching platformer in which you try to break the physics engine by doing improbable things with the thief's grappling hook.
It's good, and I'm glad the release of the editor has spurred the community in making new stuff for the game.
Early last year, Bungie's decision to invite games writers to a bombastic Destiny preview event where
no actual game was shown inspired Gamasutra to ask what traditional video game previews are for , and how the media should approach them. Kickstarter and Steam Early Access have matured, affording developers new ways to raise money that often see them communicating directly with their customers and sharing their work with the public.
Do previews still matter to developers?
In the intervening 18 months platforms like Twitch and YouTube have flourished, giving rise to a new class of media: the enthusiast broadcaster, often affectionately known as the YouTuber.
The nature of game development has changed so radically that we're driven to take another look at preview culture and ask: Are traditional game previews effective anymore? What value do they still hold for developers, if any?
And what would developers do if more consumer press outlets reduced their efforts to cover games pre-release, as Kotaku recently did...or even stopped doing previews altogether?
Preview coverage is still important, but the press...not so much"If news outlets stopped showing interest in previews, direct outreach would become even more important for developers like us," says Chris Harvey, CEO of Guacamelee developer DrinkBox Studios. "When it comes down to it however, I think people want previews...and so if traditional gaming news outlets stopped doing them, I don't think they would actually go away -- they'd just move to some other medium."
Where would they go? Harvey recommends platforms like Reddit and YouTube as places where small-
"If traditional gaming news outlets stopped doing previews, I don't think they would actually go away -- they'd just move to some other medium." and mid-size studios can find outsized success drumming up buzz for their games prior to release. And for developers using pre-release funding platforms like Kickstarter and Early Access, getting people excited about your game prior to launch isn't just a good studio morale booster -- it's also now a vital part of your business strategy. One of the most effective ways to do it these days, according to Larian Studios chief Swen Vincke, is to target popular YouTubers instead of traditional media outlets.
“Whenever a popular YouTuber did something [about us], we saw a significant impact on the sales curve,” says Vincke in reference to Divinity: Original Sin , an RPG the studio successfully Kickstarted and later sold via Early Access. ”Not so much for written press, though during our Early Access/preorder campaigns, coordinated written press efforts did show a small bump.”
We heard as much from many indie developers earlier this year, while looking into how YouTube is affecting the traditional games press.
At the time YouTubers reported that their options for pursuing pre-release coverage of AAA games was limited compared to traditional media outlets, but the rising importance of the YouTuber has not gone unnoticed in AAA development. PR veteran Eric Wein claims that more big game companies are pushing their PR teams to work with “community evangelists,” which typically includes popular YouTubers and Twitch streamers.
Wein serves as a VP of the Bender/Helper Impact PR firm, where he oversees the game division. The firm has worked with game companies like Konami and Bandai Namco, and Wein says that its clients also still pay for traditional preview campaigns because they can inspire retailer confidence in a game, driving storefronts to give it a more prominent promotion slot.
But while those campaigns are still seen to be effective, they're shrinking. "The difference in preview strategy in the last few years is shorter campaigns,” says Wein. “Consumers may no longer have a demand to learn about a game 12-18 months prior to release and prefer awareness closer to availability" because, Wein says, the proliferation of information and devices to consume it on has made "new content" more valuable than ever.
Wein adds that there's still some legacy "game theory" at work when AAA game companies pay for preview campaigns, in that "competitive titles are offering preview opportunities, so other companies need to mirror that."
Your mileage may vary depending on what kind of game you're makingMany developers who operate on a smaller scale can't afford to bankroll lavish preview events, and have found success circumventing preview culture entirely by communicating directly with their customers.
Vlambeer, Riot, Mojang and Klei are “just a few examples of developers and studios that have built sizable followings can communicate directly with their fans when and how they want -- whether journalists pick up the story or not,” says Joel Dreskin, an experienced AAA game marketer who’s currently working with a number of indie developers. In his eyes, these studios
"Studios that have built sizable followings can communicate directly with their fans when and how they want -- whether journalists pick up the story or not." have made themselves self-sufficient -- if the business of game previews crumbled tomorrow, they'd barely notice.
But many of those developers make games whose appeal stems from their systems, rather than their stories. They can afford to show their fans what they're working on or make pre-release builds of their games publicly available because there's little risk they'll spoil the experience of playing the finished product.
Developers of story-driven games say they still find preview coverage very valuable, especially if they're unable or unwilling to rely on crowdfunding. Taking preview builds to events like PAX, or directly to media outlets on press tours, gives studios like DrinkBox a modicum of control over how they talk about their work with the media, which can in turn drum up buzz for the game that leads to stronger sales.
“In that sense, previews are more important than ever,” says Harvey, who suggests that if preview campaigns stopped generating interest from the press it would significantly affect the future of game development. “Without previews, games with strong social/community/replayability aspects and large marketing budgets have the advantage, and I would expect a corresponding shift in the kinds of games that are successful.”
Evolve PR director Tom Ohle agrees. “Without previews or pre-release attention, you really rely on long-tail efforts to maintain interest," says Ohle, who's worked with studios like Larian and Paradox Interactive. "Games with emergent play, long-term DLC plans, mod tools, etc. all have a much longer shelf life. Hype for single-player, story-driven games without DLC and other gameplay updates would be relatively short-lived."
Few developers believe previews will ever completely disappear from traditional media -- the demand for fresh content is too great. But what if traditional media downplays pre-release coverage in order to focus its efforts on covering games in the weeks and months after they launch? That's exactly what Kotaku is making a public show of doing, and it's likely that other games media outlets will follow suit -- if they haven't quietly done so already.
Wein believes that such a shift in the industry will benefit developers large and small by boosting long-tail sales at the expense of some pre-release hype. It may also lead to a renaissance of "cult classic" games as media outlets turn to cover the cults themselves.
“If a game is released to mediocre or poor reviews but players embrace it and media’s coverage reflects that, the marketing/PR campaign is [effectively] extended and there are better sales opportunities weeks after release,” notes Wein. "I anticipate previews will continue to be important for media but if media’s new direction is away from previews, we’ll adjust."