Archived News:
After three months of development and what is described as extensive playtesting, a new
beta 1f of the Q3F Quake III Arena mod is now
available, described as "(absolutely) packed with new features and gameplay
adjustments." Q3F is a class-based teamplay modification that features new
weaponry, and support for "Capture the Flag," "Command Point,"
and "Capture and Hold" games.
The Battlecruiser Galcom News Network
has word of a batch of 28
new Battlecruiser Millennium screenshots along with an extensive explanation
of the scenario the shots represent, and the implications this has on gameplay
in the upcoming space epic. There is also news of a new Beta test page
with a bulletin about CD-ROM availability for those in the beta program.
Sons of
Wolfenstein, Part III on 3DActionPlanet continues their series examining the
first-person shooter. In part three they round up Tim Willits of id
software, Rich "Zdim" Carlson of Rogue Entertainment, and Dave
Georgeson of Dynamix to discuss art of the genre, addressing whether there are
inherent limitations to game design when it comes to creating an FPS, and
whether those limits have been reached.
In a coincidentally related vein to the above, NOLF Designer on Innovation, Exclusive Screenshot
on GA-Source talks with Monolith Entertainment's Craig Hubbard about "where
he feels the FPS genre is moving in terms of innovation." In addition to
the short essay on the subject, the page also hosts a new exclusive screenshot
from No One Lives Forever, Monolith's now-gold spy send-up shooter.
Elite Force Center
interviews Brian Pelletier talking with the Raven Software creative director about
their namesake game, Star Trek: Voyager--Elite Force. The conversation includes
long answers to the questions about the amount of creative freedom they were
afforded with the licensed properties from the show in creating the Trekkie
shooter and about what they wanted to include in the game but didn't, as well as
more questions and answers about the aftermath of the game's release.
GameSurge
interviews Pete Hines of Bethesda Softworks to discuss progress on Sea Dogs,
the upcoming RPG that puts you in the salty role of the captain of a sailing
ship. The interview offers a detailed discussion on how gameplay will be
handled, including ship-to-ship combat, multiplayer possibilities, and even
queries about the inclusion of such classic pirate stand-bys as grog and Monkey
Island.
The official Evil Dead: Hail to the King site now offers the game's intro movie for download, available in four different formats. The movie runs for two and a half minutes with pre-rendered footage setting the story to the game, naturally accompanied by the voice of Bruce Campbell in his role as lead character Ash. Additionally, a new FAQ page is online, offering an updated release schedule, as well as addressing why there will not be a demo or a level editor, among other topics. And finally, if you have the stomach for even more Evil Dead, the third developer diary has been added which, while over a month old, never seems to have made it to Dreamcast.IGN.com where the previous two installments were posted. In this edition, producer Scott Krager discusses the project from inception to the current crunch mode at developer Heavy Iron Studios.
German developers EgoSoft have released a new beta patch for X-Tension, bringing their space combat expansion pack up to version 1.6. The patch is available for both English and German editions of the game, and offers a lot of changes and fixes as listed on this page.
A week after the previous release, a new version 2.08 of the Admin Mod front-end for Half-Life is available on its official site, reverting to the old authentication system and fixing a problem that popped up due to the latest Half-Life TFC patch. A new "public_slots_free" cvar has also been added.
Gamer's Pulse has conducted an interview on Zero-G Marines, talking to designer and director Dan Høecke about the space-based first-person shooter in development at Strategy First. Dan explains the game's premise and storyline, their new engine, and some of its features. Here is a quote on the design process they went through to arrive at the current concept :
GP: What was the over-riding factor or influence to start the team on the design process of this title?
Initially, I wanted to do a space combat game but with major changes. I was tired of
the repetitive nature of the actual combat. Generally this meant outturning an
enemy fighter. There was also a lack of the sense of movement, which was
addressed by using a large space station as the world. At this point fighters were
rejected for very maneuverable space marines who could use the station and its
modules for cover. It was later, as Oliver progressed with our graphics engine, that
we decided to go further and allow full interior combat and this changed our
direction to FPS type action.
Terminal Reality and Gathering of Developers have released the final playable demo of 4x4 Evolution, superseding the earlier test demos of this off-road racer. You can download the PC version here and the Mac version here, both from FilePlanet.
Hot on the heels of yesterday's release comes a
new version 1.11 Beta 2 patch for Sin. The patch is available for download
at Ritualistic, and contains the same new features and fixes as yesterday's
version 1.11 Beta, but also fixes some installer issues, and adds a new cvar
to force even teams.
Daily Radar's MechWarrior 4 Week comes to a close with no less than four
movies featuring in-game footage from MechWarrior 4: Vengeance. All four
movies are in MPEG format, and range in size from 7 to 8.8 MB. And elsewhere, Gamecenter has posted the first of four weekly movies of their own.
Loki Software has released a
new patch for their Linux port of Soldier of Fortune. The patch brings the
game up to version 1.06a, and according to the README file, this release fixes
an OpenAL issue with tiny WAV files.
PC.IGN interviews Todd Howard of
Bethesda Softworks, talking with him about their upcoming RPG The Elder
Scrolls III: Morrowind. Todd talks about how they're creating a "free-form
universe" where you can go and do just about anything you want, and touches
on the challenges of telling a story in this format, and how the game will be
extendable via the included level editor.
Also new on PC.IGN this morning is an
interview with Wes Eckhart, the producer at NovaLogic on their tactical
FPS Delta Force: Land Warrior. Wes goes into detail about the real life Army
project the game is based on, and also lists the various weapons that will
be at your disposal, in addition to explaining how the new characters system works.
Gamers.com is reporting that
the county of St. Louis has passed a new ordinance that bans the sale of rental
of video games with "graphic violent or sexual content" without a
parent's permission. The controversial law kicks in on November 10th, and more
details can be found in this
article at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
A new preview
of Gangsters 2 Vendetta is up at Daily Radar this morning. The preview contains
a decent description of the gameplay and how it differs from the first Gangsters
title, as well as quotes from Jason Stapleton of Hothouse Creations and three
new screenshots.
Arkane Studios has updated
their news page with word that they have signed a publishing agreement with
Fishtank-Interactive for ARX, their first person RPG. Fishtank is a subsidiary
of German company Ravensburger, and just yesterday it was announced that they
will also be publishing Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, another
first person RPG in development ( story).
GameSpot
has reprinted quotes from SquareSoft's Sakaguchi Hironobu from a recent
issue of the Japanese gaming magazine Weekly Famitsu, where he describes a recent
playtest of Final Fantasy XI, their upcoming massively-multiplayer RPG (that
will be released for both the PC and Playstation 2). Hironobu compares it to
Ultima Online, and says that the game, "will be able to run smoothly even
on a 28.8Kbps modem."
It's slightly off-topic, but just in time for Halloween, Winamp
version 2.666 has been released. This latest version has a new MP3 input plugin,
fully ISO compliant decoding, spiffier credits and lots more.
Daily Radar has conducted a
new interview with Oleg Maddox of Maddox Games, talking about their upcoming
combat flight sim IL-2 Sturmovik. Oleg discusses the extreme levels of realism
they're striving for, why he was motivated to make the game to begin with, and
lots more.
The seventh
and final chapter of Daily Radar's massive walkthrough for Baldur's Gate
II: Shadows of Amn is up, as is the
first part of the walkthrough at Baldur's Gate Haven. In FAQing news, German
site Max Payne Zone has posted a
comprehensive Max Payne FAQ. It's in German, so be sure to consult Babel Fish
for a translation.
Gamecenter's
PS2 Reactions features quotes from various members of the industry regarding
the Playstation 2, including id Software's Todd Hollenshead, 3DO's Trip Hawkins
(who is quite enthusiastic about the system), Ritual's Mark Dochtermann and
Ray Muyzaka of BioWare. In Dreamcast news, Day
Four of Daily Radar's Quake School is online, dealing with something PC
users have been familiar with for ages now: lag. Atari nuts simply have to check
out this page devoted to a homemade
portable 2600 (thanks Hugh Tomb Byrne).
The Stratos Group is having a contest
to win the game of your choice. To win, you'll have to answer a question a day
for the next few days, so head over there
and get started. The newly opened ShadowBane HQ is
holding a contest to win slots in the upcoming ShadowBane beta test.
Stomped chats
with Robert Waring, the "biz guy" on Team Evolve, who talks about
the reactions to their recently released beta version of PainKeep Arena. Day
four of Eavy's eight day preview of his Assault Bonus Pack is online, spotlighting
another map from this soon-to-be-released UT add-on. Lastly, the second portion
of Machinima.com's
Seal of Nehahra postmortem is online, and Total-Reload
has posted a new AVI movie from the Hostile Intent mod for Half-Life.
I was originally planning on writing my PS2 impressions here, but I think I'll
wait until I've spent more time with the games I've got. Suffice to say, I was
able to get one on Thursday, and I've got a whole bunch of games to try out
this weekend. So far though, SSX definitely looks like the best game in the
lot, followed closely by Kessen. By the way: if you haven't seen it yet, I recommend
downloading the Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth gameplay movie released
yesterday ( story), it's a hoot.
Link of the Day: LaserMAME (thanks
Slashdot by way of Ant).
Story of the Day: Hackers
boldly break-in Microsoft (thanks Chris Rhoton).
Story of the Day (2): High-flyin'
porker (thanks Chris Johnson).
Westwood has released a patch for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, available for download from their ftp server (363 KB). The patch brings their just-released RTS to version 1.01, and is also available through the auto-update feature in the game (thanks to the readers who notified us of that earlier), but there is currently no information on the changes it brings. Furthermore, Westwood has also released their official FAQ for download. Update: Tim Tibbetts sends word that the patch addresses one issue: "Fixed a user interface lockup when switching between lobbies on Westwood Online."
On the occasion of Delta Force: Land Warrior going gold today ( story), Gamecenter has conducted a quick interview with producer Wes Eckhart, who discusses the game's premise, the new 3D accelerated engine, and multiplayer support.
GameSpot kicks off a series of weekly previews of the mechs in MechWarrior 4: Vengeance, and today's installment covers the Awesome, Atlas, Hellspawn, Chimera, and Mad Cat Mk. II, including a description, specs, and of course a whole bunch of new screenshots.
Coinciding with the game going gold today ( story), GameSpot also wraps up their series of Sacrifice previews examining the five gods in Shiny's 3D action/strategy title. Today they profile the last God, Pyro, listing his spells and the creatures he can summon, naturally accompanied by a downloadable WAV file and a few more screenshots.
A new beta release of the Tread
3D editor is now available (thanks Stomped).
This new version is a beta release, and adds rudimentary support for Quake III
Arena in addition to other changes. It's available for download as a 14 MB full
install, or a 6.8 MB version that doesn't include the documentation.
Digital Extremes, the co-developers
of Unreal Tournament, have created a new "competition version" of
the CTF-Command map. The map is basically the same, only it modifies the layout,
making it symmetrical. It's available for download on
their news page.
A patch for the Science & Industry
mod for Half-Life has been released, that fixes problems with the recently
released Half-Life version 1.1.0.4. The patch isn't completely necessary, but
those that don't get it will experience graphical glitches. It's available as
a single patch for both clients and server admins.
Speaking of Half-life mods, version 2.4 of the
Jumbot has been released. This is a large update to the bot, and features
a new leader/squad system, bot sniping (if enabled), a "moron" type
bot, and lots more.
MacNN Games has conducted an
interview with Jesse Spears, who is currently working on the Mac OS port
of Escape From Monkey Island for Westlake Interactive and Aspyr Media. The interview
covers a variety of subjects, including Jesse's background in the industry,
Mac gaming in general, and of course, what he thinks of Escape From Monkey Island.
GSC Game World and CDV have released an updated demo of Cossacks: European Wars, their real-time strategy game that allows you relive the battles that raged throughout Europe during the 16th through 18th Centuries. The new demo clocks in at 45.2 MB and there's also a 7.3 MB patch to update the previous demo.
- TRIBES 2
Tribes Center has posted half a dozen new TRIBES 2 screenshots, illustrating the upcoming team-based shooter by Dynamix.
- Venom
The first three screenshots in this Venom gallery on Russian site GameStone offer new scenes from this first-person shooter, and GameStone also sends word that the upcoming demo will have two single-player/co-op levels and two CTF levels.
- Anachronox
Three new Anachronox screenshots on GameSpy.com show off more from the 3D role-playing game in development at ION Storm.
- Monkey Island
GameSpot has posted four new screenshots of Escape From Monkey Island to celebrate that the 3D adventure by LucasArts went gold (story).
- Sea Dogs
Another half dozen screenshots of Sea Dogs has been posted at GA-RPG, offering some in-game and interface images from Akella's imminent 3D RPG.
- Giants
VoodooExtreme has posted four new Giants: Citizen Kabuto screenshots snapped from their build of Planet Moon's third-person action game.
- Neocron
The last four screenshots in this Neocron gallery on neoTERM sport some new scenes in the futuristic world of the MMORPG being developed by Reakktor Media.
- The Mummy
This The Mummy gallery on SpieleCity mixes some new with mostly familiar screenshots of this third-person action adventure by Rebellion and Konami (try Babel Fish for an English translation of the description).
- Game of Death
German developer BURNS Entertainment has announced their 3D horror action adventure called Game of Death, and SpieleCity was the first to post the seven screenshots that were released to show what it looks like (here's another Babel Fish).
Five
new characters for SWAT 3: Elite Edition are available for download at AVault
this afternoon. The characters are "inspired by" the Agents from the
movie The Matrix, and the download is a bite-sized 800k.
An Original War demo has been released
by Czech developers Altar Interactive. Original War is an RTS with RPG elements,
and the 95.4 MB demo contains two missions from the American campaign. As the
game's official site is painfully slow (not to mention Flash heavy), a
mirror is also available at World Online Games.
GA-Source has posted a
new movie featuring footage from The Unholy, a horror-themed first person
RPG from OtherWorlds InterActive. The movie is a 13 MB AVI file, and this is
the first gameplay footage revealed from this Jet3D engine title.
The second
of the planned eight gameplay movies from Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners
of the Earth is up at German site ZOCKS. Today's movie is a 7.9MB MPEG file,
and contains 58 seconds of gameplay, including a glimpse at some enemies, one
of the weapons, and the ability to drag a body. In other Cthulhu news, GA-Source is reporting that developer HeadFirst Productions has announced that the game will be published by Fishtank-Interactive, the interactive arm of German company Ravensburger.
As noted on the official site, Sacrifice has gone gold, and this 3D action/strategy game by Shiny and Interplay is expected in stores early next month. Thanks Marc Liberatore for the tip. In related news, Gamers.com has updated its Sacrifice preview with multiplayer impressions, more screenshots, and a second movie clip with a minute of in-game footage.
Spanish site Arsenal66 has posted an early playable demo of Blade of Darkness, which happens to be called Severance: Blade of Darkness in Europe and Blade: The Edge of Darkness in Spain and Latin America. The demo clocks in at a hefty 102.1 MB and is in Spanish only (with no word on when to expect an English version), but nevertheless allows you try out a level from this third-person melee-combat action game by Rebel Act. Thanks Pulsar for the tip. Updates: a US-based mirror is available at 3D Gamers, and Spanish site Area66, who are apparently premiering the demo on Arsenal66, has also done a Spanish preview special on the game.
A new interview
with Jon Galloway of Ritual Entertainment is up at Computer and Video Games,
talking to him about Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale, their upcoming
Nocturne engine title. Jon talks about their use of the Nocturne engine, how
closely he worked with Blair Witch creators Haxan Films and more.
Raven's Brian Pelletier updated
his .plan with an excerpt from an interview he gave with a German magazine,
where he addressed the concern by some gamers that Star Trek: Voyager - Elite
Force is too short. Here's an excerpt from the first half of his answer, and he says the
second portion will be posted on Monday:
Most of the consumers you're
hearing from are hard-core FPS players and most of them are playing on Normal
difficulty, which wasn't suppose to be the desired difficulty setting for them.
This setting is actually the easy mode with challenging being the medium difficulty
and what experienced players were intended to play. There is a HUGE difference
in difficulty between Normal and Challenging. This is our fault in our use of
terminology, as we originally only had 3 difficulties (Normal, Challenging and
Hard, easy to figure out that Challenging is medium since there are only 3)
and then we added the easy difficulty in the last month of the game development,
which was basically an effortless difficulty mode...
From my experience with the game testers we had come into Raven, along with
our internal testing and feedback we get from other average game players is
that it will take well over 15 hours to play the single player storyline game
for a casual gamer. The hard core FPS gamer takes a lot shorter to play because
of the nature of how they play shooter games, which is fast, furious and running
through the levels to get to the next. Average gamers are much slower and not
as good, and since we are also creating a game for the average player and Star
Trek fan, we didn't want to make it too hard for them. So because the game is
a little easier to play for hardcore players on top of the fact that they are
playing on easy difficulty, made for one of the reasons why I believe the game
was short for those types of gamers.
As noted in this press
release at the game's official site, Rune, Human Head's third person Unreal-engine
title of Viking conquest, has shipped to stores. Look for it to appear on your
local store's shelves within the next few days.
Daily Telefrag has conducted an interview on BigWorld: CItizen Zero, quizzing producer Steve Wang about the MMORPG in development at Micro Forte. The interview skips the usual introductory questions and dives right into the game's features, such as character skills, the player killing rules, their server architecture, and several other topics.
- Venom
GA-Source has posted four new screenshots of Venom along with word that an updated playable demo for this first-person shooter by GSC Game World will be released next week. There are two additional shots on AVault as well.
- TRIBES 2
The first two screenshots in this TRIBES 2 gallery on GameScreenshots sport new views into the team-based shooter world being crafted at Dynamix.
- Anachronox
There are three new, high-res Anachronox screenshots on VoodooExtreme, illustrating the upcoming 3D role-playing game by ION Storm.
- Startopia
Ten new screenshots of Startopia are up at EuroGamer, showing off more from the 3D space station management game by Mucky Foot.
- Dark Conspiracy
GameSpot UK has posted a brief preview of Ground Control: Dark Conspiracy with a bunch of screenshots (complete with their typical color distortion), looking ahead to the upcoming 3D action RTS expansion pack by High Voltage.
- Blitz
The first screenshot in this Blitz - Disc Arena gallery on Daily Telefrag offers a new scene in the 3D action game being developed by Southend Interactive.
- Desperados
Also on GameSpot UK this morning are nine new screenshots of Desperados, showing off the isometric tactical combat game by Spellbound and Ubi Soft.
- NOLF
Another lonely screenshot of No One Lives Forever on GA-Source accompanies more quotes from lead designer Craig Hubbard on Monolith's first-person shooter that will be out in stores soon.
- Evil Twin
German site SpieleCity has posted five new Evil Twins: Cyprien's Chronicles screenshots, showing off the oddball 3D adventure by In Utero and Ubi Soft.
Ensemble Studios has released their
weekly random map script for Age of Empires II: The Conquerors. This week's
map is called "Graveyards" (just in time for Halloween) and features
a cemetary-themed battlefield.
The second
part of 3D Action Planet's Sons of Wolfenstein article is online. This part
of the article focuses on the future of the FPS, and sports Q&As with Warren
Spector and Kenn Hoekstra, who talk about what the most influential FPS games
are and what they feel are the genre's limitations.
In a blast from the past, Ritualistic has posted a new beta patch for SiN, bringing Ritual's first-person shooter to version 1.11. The patch adds GameSpy3D support and new user CTF levels, and fixes some compatibility issues. The patch is a beta (also demonstrated by the fact that the installer refers to Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2 in several places), and requires version 1.04 or later to be in place. And all this nearly two years after the game went gold on October 30, 1998. ![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif)
Also new on Computer Games Online this morning is a
preview of Clive Barker's Undying, the first person Unreal-engine horror
game from Dreamworks Interactive. Like the Gunlok preview, it's got quotes from
the developers, and it also contains some new screenshots and artwork.
Computer
Games Online's Gunlok preview looks at this upcoming action/strategy RPG
from Rebellion. What the preview lacks in new screenshots (the ones posted are
all from the official site) it makes up for in content, with a well-written
description of the gameplay, complete with quotes from Rebellion's Jason Kingsley.
Italian site GameON has posted a
brief Q&A with Peter Molyneux, the founder of Lionhead Studios and the
lead designer on their much-anticipated 'god game' Black & White. Peter
comments on a number of diverse subjects, including console systems, B&W's
single player mode, the challenge of making such a complex game accessible for
the masses, and more.
The newly reopened Voodoo Extreme has conducted a
Q&A with Pancho Eekels from Digital Extremes, talking with the lead
level designer about their upcoming massively multiplayer deathmatch game Dark
Sector. Pancho explains how they're allowing for character customization, the
changes they're making to the Unreal engine and more, and there are also some
concept art images up (which are made of both in-game and pre-rendered images).
Also new on Voodoo Extreme is the
second edition of their Morrowind Developer's Diary. In this edition, "Erik" a
programmer at Bethesda Softworks (not to be confused with erik of Old Man Murray)
explains how he got into the industry and talks a bit about his work on the
collision and gravity systems for the game.
As noted in this press release, NovaLogic's squad-based tactical first-peson shooter Delta Force: Land Warrior has gone gold, and is scheduled to appear on store shelves around November 8. Thanks Land-Warrior.com for the tip.
Pandemic Studios has released a new patch for Dark Reign 2, updating their 3D action RTS to version 1.3. This patch supersedes the previous version 1.2 beta ( story) and requires to have version 1.1 installed first, but as before fixes the same two specific problems with multiplayer games of 6 or more players.
Stomped
interviews Steve Fowler looking ahead at MechWarrior 4: Vengeance, the
upcoming installment in the MechWarrior series. The conversation discusses
various aspects of the near-complete game, and also offers four new screenshots.
There's a Kenn Hoekstra and Michael Raymond-Judy
interview on Well Rounded Entertainment talking with the pair from Raven
Software in a sort of Elite Force post-mortem, as many of the questions address
why certain things are handled how they are in their Trekkie shooter, and what
would be done differently, if they had it all to do over again.
Sean Brook sends along the following email he received from LucasArts
announcing the latest installment in the nutty Monkey Island series is ready to
rumble: Gold, it's every pirate's dream! With great fanfare and the
distant sound of squealing monkeys, the development team for Escape
from Monkey Island (PC WIN) steered this highly anticipated title into the
harbor. Expected in stores the week of November 6th (U.S. and Canada), Escape
from Monkey Island is a swashbuckling adventure loaded with side-splitting humor
and more monkeys than the three previous Monkey games combined! And now, Stan
invites you to visit The LucasArts
Company Store. (Exclusive offer: Signature edition game box and collectible
magnet).
Back To School-A Beginners' Guide For
Quake Newbies on Daily Radar offers their third day's worth of tips for
Quake III Arena for newcomers to the game by way of the Dreamcast version. Sony Explains PS2 Shortages
on PS2.IGN.com offers details on why the systems were in such short supply
for yesterday's launch. Don't believe they were hard to come by? Check out the
price paid for a PS2 on this eBay
auction.
- The release notes for the upcoming Unreal Tournament 'Game of the Year'
edition are up on Unreal Universe...
- Stomped's
Joel Thomas interview talks with this concept artist from Rogue
Entertainment about his contribution to American McGee's Alice...
Congratulations to the Yankees (except the bat-thrower) on a classy victory in a
hard-fought world series. MrsBlue and I are baby-sitting for my youngest brother
(my dad's dog) Sparky, who is helping me with this update (in case you notice
I'm making more sense than usual). Since tomorrow is loony's shift, I'll jump in
today and point out tomorrow will be the birthday of both John Romero and Bill
Gates, let's wish both a good one personally...as I've pointed out before Mr. G.
actually reads every word written on the Internet. Also, Chris
Morris points out that today is John Cleese's 61st birthday, a funny walk
would seem to be in order.
Link of the Day: YourCoffin.Com.
Thanks monkeybrns{moo}.
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