Archived News:
PC.iGN.com has posted a new preview of The Thing, the survival horror game in the works at Computer Artworks that's based on the John Carpenter movie. While devoid of any new screenshots, the article features new details on the game's premise and features, including the team-based system that sees you controlling Engineers, Soldiers, and Medics, and the three aliens forms you're battling (Scuttlers, Walkers, and Ruptures), while also offering brief impressions of a movie trailer they saw.
Also on PC.IGN this evening is a preview of Grandia II, looking ahead to this PC port of the Dreamcast console RPG that being developed by Game Arts. The preview includes an overview of the story and the main characters, as well as some of the game's features, and is illustrated with ten screenshots that appear to be taken from the Japanese console version.
As promised ( story), Westwood has released the version 1.08 patch for Emperor: Battle For Dune. It's currently only available through the auto-updater, and includes firewall support, 2 new maps, and other features and bug fixes. Thanks Shacknews for the tip.
The official Medal of Honor: Allied Assault site has been updated with a feature on the music in the WWII first-person shooter in development at 2015. The brief article describes work by composer Michael Giacchino and the Seattle Symphony on the game's sound-track, and it's accompanied by five video interview clips in MPEG format totalling some three minutes of footage, as well as two music samples.
GameSpot has posted a new video interview on Return to Castle Wolfenstein which they brought back from QuakeCon, showing off the upcoming WWII first-person shooter and talking to Gray Matter's Greg Goodrich. The video runs for more than three minutes as a downloadable MPEG of 39.7 MB or in the usual streaming choices, and shows plenty of new gameplay footage with Greg commenting on the action.
In a day full of AvP2 news, GameSpot has also posted their third and final Aliens Vs. Predator 2 preview, profiling the Marine character in Monolith's three-way first-person shooter sequel. The article describes the particulars of this playable race (which you can try out in the demo released today-- story), the challenges when facing the ominous Aliens and Predators, and more, all illustrated with a new, one minute gameplay movie in several streaming formats or a 10.0 MB downloadable MPEG clip.
Our little ftp server is working overtime today, as Volition has now released the multiplayer test demo of Red Faction, and we have a local copy with mirrors online. This is a reasonable 44.5 MB download, and it includes "two 16-player Deathmatch levels as well as a 16-player Capture the Flag map. Please note
that this is a technology Test and not a fully-featured demo."
The Emperor
Battle for Dune website has word that the eagerly-anticipated version 1.08
patch ( story) for Emperor "will go live on the Westwood
Online servers within the next 24 hours." Word is: "It's a biggie,
too, including firewall support as well as two new maps, and a ton of new
features! Keep your eyes online and soon you'll be able to take advantage of all
the new toys." Thanks Ant.
Monolith CEO Jason
Hall updated his .plan with a press release with word that he is stepping
down as CEO of LithTech, Inc., the company that licenses the LithTech engine to
outside parties. His replacement is Jeffery Hutt, "who held several senior
product development and planning positions at Nintendo of America, (and) is a
14-year veteran of the interactive entertainment industry." Jason Hall continues
to be the CEO of Monolith.
id Software's Paul Jaquays sends along a
press release announcing the winners of the QuakeCon 2001 Map Object Model
contest. He had hoped to get these out right after the show, but he was feeling
a under the weather, hence the delay. While the winners are listed in the
release, the winning objects are not yet ready for download, as Paul says "that
will still take some time for me to process them in my spare time." In
other QuakeCon-related news, A
QuakeCon 2001 Story Part I on Cached.net "follows the tournament from
single-elimination all the way to the finals, reviewing several demos,
interviewing gamers, and capturing the spirit of the competition." Also, Neptune News' QuakeCon 2001
gallery features a bunch of photos snapped at the event. Update: Paul
Jaquays updated his .plan with basically the same information, but also
included a QuakeCon 2001 Model Contest Gallery Map
link to id's FTP server, and a little poking around and we discovered that a gallery map with the entries in
the modeling contest was uploaded
to CDROM.Com (13.8 MB-direct FTP link) a couple of days ago if you want to
check them out.
An "unscheduled" update to the Shadowbane News
page that describes itself as tall, if not big, has word that they've added
a page on the Lore of the Half Giants
for Wolfpack Studios' upcoming MMORPG, and for some background while you are
reading that, they have also added a new music clip called March of the Northmen
to their Multimedia
page.
Tahldain sends along word that the
Quake III Arena Gold edition page on EBgames.com we mentioned last month ( story) now features the box image, in case you are looking for a
mug shot to track the game down when it's available, or if you are curious as to
just how much gold is involved. Also, while not yet shown on the FINAL QUAKE: BFG PC page we likewise reported ( story), that box shot is already available as a direct link as well. On a related note, Jonah
Falcon has found the Heroes
of Might and Magic IV order page, which likewise has the HoMM4 box art.
Even as the Aliens versus Predator 2 demo that allows you to play as the Marine
character leaks out on the Internet (see next story), AvPNews.com
interviews William Westwater, the lead designer at Monolith on AvP2.
The conversation starts off with some general inquiries about LithTech engine
enhancements and the current state of the project, before moving on to the very
timely topic of the Marine character and his role in the game. William describes
their goal of creating a character whose life consists of "a combination of
terror and teamwork," the Marine's background, whether his scale versus the
taller Aliens and Predator characters is more evident than in the original AvP,
and more detail along those lines.
Demonstrating, as with last week's Red Faction demo, that a demo intended for release on European print magazines' cover disks invariably makes its way on to the Internet, the Aliens Vs. Predator 2 demo has now appeared online ahead of its intended release tomorrow. So, we are now hosting a local copy with mirrors of the 52.8 MB download (courtesy of AvPNews.com), which allows you to play one level as the Marine in Monolith's sequel to the three-way first-person shooter based on the Fox movie franchises.
A newly-opened Black &
White section on the Feral Games website (thanks Inside
Mac Games) has the official announcement of the project currently underway
to bring Black & White, Lionhead's god game, to the Macintosh platform. As
IMG points out this is "one of the admittedly worst-kept secrets of the
year," as we have already seen official comments on the Mac port, and even
a potential release date, directly from Lionhead ( story), who
have said they hope to have Mac Black & White in stores for this Christmas.
This
Microids press release has word that Far Gate, winner of the 2000
Independent Games Festival Audience Choice Award, is being prepared for a North
American release. The game, developed by Seattle's Super X Studios,
will be published by Microids, the French
publisher responsible for the game's overseas distribution (the game has been
available in Europe for some time now), and distributed by Titus
Interactive. Word in the release is that the 3D RTS game, which they say
"begins where games like Homeworld and StarFleet Armada left off,"
should be reaching North American stores by September 11. Here is a
new batch of Far Gate screenshots that accompanied the press release.
Using His Gray Matter on HomeLan
offers an article based on a chat with Gray Matter Studios' executive producer Greg Goodrich
discussing Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the upcoming semi-follow-up to
Wolfenstein 3d, id Software's seminal first-person shooter. Offering the
interesting perspective that some of the far-out aspects of gameplay like mutant
super-soldiers are "based heavily on historical fact," proposing with
a smile the theory that the game might be based on a true story, the
conversation also discusses how production is going, touching on the partnership
it involves with Nerve Software who are creating the game's multiplayer
component, as well as the obvious involvement of id software, who are
supervising the project.
There is a brief preview of Ghost Recon on Games Domain, based on checking out Red Storm's tactical shooter at the offices of publisher Ubi Soft. While devoid of any new screenshots, the article offers a succinct overview of the game's premise and features, as well as their impressions of the gameplay, improvements to the planning system, the graphics and more.
Computer Gaming World sends
word that they will be premiering the Aliens versus Predator 2 demo sometime
tomorrow, which would make this demo available about a week earlier than we were
first led to expect. We don't have any big graphic to splash across the page
about this, but we will be another of the sites hosting the download upon its
premiere, as well.
Following the theme of yesterday's article about fighters, Disciples II Units
Magic Users on GameSpy.com, written by Pro Sotos, producer on this upcoming turn-based strategy sequel from Strategy First, offers a look at magic-users, another set of units in
Disciples II. Like the article that preceded it, this one offers
an image of each of the units, along with a description of their
characteristics, and an overview of their role in the game.
EA GAMES Ships Shogun Total War Warlord Edition for the PC
is the press release announcing the release of the expansion that will add
"Kublai Khan's invading Mongol hordes" to this strategy game set in
Feudal Japan. Also, word on Gone Gold
is that Dragonriders: Chronicles of Pern is now available. Also, the Independence War
website has word that the US version of Independence War 2 is now gold, and
according to the update, should be released on August 25. Finally, the Shattered Galaxy
website is accepting Shattered Galaxy pre-orders until the game is released on
August 20.
Novus Delta to Produce “Dark Relic”
is the press release announcing a collaboration between Novus Delta and the Dark
Relic team for production on this upcoming "3rd Person Action/Adventure RPG
with a gripping story about the good and evil within us all." In
conjunction with the announcement, the Dark Relic
website has been launched with a load of screenshots and artwork from the
game.
The IL-2 Sturmovik website now
features a new video trailer showing off gameplay from this upcoming game set in
World War II that will allow you to fly for the Soviet Union over the unfriendly
skies of the eastern front. The file is a 4.7 MB download.
Xbox Console May Face Delay
(thanks AndyS) is an AP report speculating that a flaw in the Intel Xbox
motherboards may cause a delay, which inspired denials from Microsoft. There are
some Duke Nukem: Retribution
screenshots on GBAnet.nl (thanks Shacknews)
showing off images from an upcoming GBA Duke project.
WhiteClouds Quake III Arena Strategy Guide
on Cached.net is a downloadable guide to Q3A. Also, an update to the Darkfall
FAQ offers new information about eating in the upcoming MMORPG, as well as
"how to avoid PvP if you don't enjoy fighting other players, and find out
if Darkfall has safe zones or not." Also, there's an
Avenger Guide on PlanetDiablo with tips on how to create an avenger-style
Paladin. Also, the
Yuri's Revenge FAQ has been updated with more on Westwood's upcoming Red
Alert 2 add-on. Finally, there's a
From Dusk Till Dawn mini-walkthrough on The Gamers Press with tips on
completing the demo.
The Mucky Foot Productions
website now has an updated version 1.02 modding guide for StarTopia for
download.
It is with great sadness that I report that, at least for the time being,
loonyboi has accepted a part-time position on Shacknews. Make no mistake,
this is fallout from all the bad Internet mojo that's been floating around for
some time now, and while there have been some promising developments lately,
loony found himself unable to continue to work on the promise of being paid for
his work in the future, because, as you can imagine, even if you are willing to
accept such promises yourself, it's difficult to get people like grocers and
landlords to likewise accept them. This is not the final word on this subject,
as the door will remain open should we be able to return enough deposit bottles
to satisfy those grocers and landlords, but sadly, for the time being we must
bid a fond fondue to the first Blue's News employee, and send him off into
"the world" with our best wishes.
Link of the Day: Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus.
Java required. Thanks Brendan Reville.
Bonus Link: Ja Da.
Flash required. Thanks Jekub, nin, and Brian. Warning... contains chubby nude
kangaroos.
Story of the Day: Insurance
blowout threatens rabbit skinning titles (smh.com.au). Thanks again Brendan Reville.
Quote: "I'm a little bit devastated because really it's not the sort of
thing we make a lot of money from, the day is more about entertainment."
Weird Science: Artist Wants to Paint Moon, But Physics May Foil Plan
(Space.Com). Thanks Mike Martinez.
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