Archived News:
A 2K Boston Job Listing
spotted by
superannuation reveals the next project for the BioShock development studio
is another shooter, as it calls for "a talented, experienced game designer to be
the driving force behind the combat experience in on our next big project, an
unannounced shooter." They also
point to an old
GearboxSoftware Job Listing from about a year ago that may be from that
Duke Begins project with which Gearbox has been
connected, as it sought an environmental artist to work on an "unannounced
shooter based on one of the most famous shooters ever created." So while it may
not have been Duke, we're pretty sure it was for a shooter.
Why there's hope for classic Bullfrog IP returning on Kikizo revisits the
hopes that some of Bullfrog's old IPs may some day be revived by EA, who owns
their rights. "For me, I love the old Bullfrog IP, it got me really passionately
into games, and I'm really proud that Bullfrog is part of the heritage of Bright
Light", Harvey Elliot of EA Bright Light Studio tells them. "I'm personally a
huge fan of Populous and Theme Park, they were some of my favourite games - many
years ago, obviously - and I'd love to see both of those remade." He also says
they may still have members of the Bullfrog team on staff, but what's really got
them speculating a Bullfrog revival may be in the offing is his description of a
project they had been working on "based on an old IP that EA has" that's since
been passed on to another studio. From other comments, however, it doesn't sound
like this is actually a Bullfrog game, as he says: "It's become one of those
projects we've started a few times over, and it's like what I was saying about
the classic Bullfrog IP; I loved the game when I was growing up." and when they
come out and ask if this was a classic Bullfrog IP he says: "No, I'd say it was
an EA IP." Thanks Mike Martinez.
Knuckle Cracker Games now offers
Creeper World, a real-time strategy/tower defense game for both Windows and
MacOS. Word is: "Creeper World promises to change the nature of the bad guys we
all know and love/hate. Imagine the player's base surrounded by an organic
blanket that creeps and flows through valleys and around hills. No longer is the
opponent just another army of discrete and individual units. Instead, the enemy
flows and creeps across the map like a thick and destructive sludge." A playable
demo is available, and retail purchases include both the Windows and Mac
editions of the game.
Steam News announces a
new patch is now automatically available for
RailWorks. The new
version of the transportation simulation adds a bonus Foliage Pack, adds air
brakes to steam locomotives, and addresses some bugs.
DC Universe Online interview on MMORPG.COM chats with famed comic artist Jim
Lee about creating the upcoming PC and PS3 superhero MMORPG, while
this
interview talks with long time comic writer and editor Marv Wolfman about
the project.
Why Lou Castle Left EA for InstantAction on IndustryGamers is an interview
with Lou Castle about his departure from EA to head up
InstantAction. In an interesting bit of logic, Castle is now king of a
company some of the subjects understand better than he does: "So I had an
opportunity to join a company that was already proficient in the parts I frankly
don't have as much experience with." This is not an issue for Castles boss Barry
Diller: "As the first major native web video game publisher that brings together
developers, gamers, web publishers and consumers, InstantAction needs a leader
who can seamlessly integrate all of these components and continue to push the
boundaries in 3D browser-based gaming," says Diller. "Lou Castle has the right
combination of skills to do exactly this. He is not just a proven business
leader, but also an accomplished story-teller, visionary, artist and inventor."
A Q&A with Todd Harris on Ten
Ton Hammer talks with the executive producer of Global Agenda at the
conclusion of this weekend's closed beta testing of the espionage-themed MMORPG.
They discuss PvP, PvE, and co-op play, and from Todd's responses, the testing
went pretty well: "Things that were maybe pleasant surprises were the really
positive response to group PvE, specifically. We knew people were going to love
the PvP because we’ve been testing that ourselves for some time. The PvE is
newer for us because we worked backwards from the devices that were balanced for
PvP and then adopted the PvE systems around that. And as you guys know, we just
introduced that fairly recently at E3. We had a lot of the building blocks in
place over the past 4 years but we put it together for missions around the E3
timeframe. Since people really responded well to group PvE, that’s where we’re
going to be working on more content in the short term."
Link of the Day:
Harrison Ford on Family Guy. It didn't seem that funny until I saw this
this YouTube clip. Thanks Ant.
The Crytek
Presentations Page has materials from Crytek's presentation at a SIGGRAPH
2009 session on advanced real-time rendering. They offer slides in a
Adobe Acrobat-format document and a PowerPoint presentation, as well as a pair of
AVI-format movies showing the power of their upcoming CryENGINE 3. Thanks
inCrysis.
The PC edition of DiRT 2 will be the "best-looking racing game ever"
thanks to its DirectX 11 support, Ralph Fulton of Codemasters tells
VideoGamer.com at a recent event in London. It was recently
announced that the PC edition is being delayed for DirectX 11 support, and
Ralph is confident this will pay dividends: "And that was a decision we took, to
delay the PC version, to take advantage of DX11, purely because we weighed it up
and said, look, what it allows us to do is make the best-looking racing game
that has ever existed. Not just of the year or on PC, but has ever existed,
because we were the first with an already cutting-edge game to take advantage of
this technology, so it would definitely be worth putting it back."
WoW.com
reports rumors of plans for two new races to be added to World of Warcraft
by the coming Cataclysm update, saying this information comes their way through
"multiple sources close to the situation" (remember, standing too close to a
situation can cause situation burn). The two new rumored races are the Worgen
for the Alliance and the Goblin for the Horde, leading them to say: "This
information has been speculated upon by multiple places, and we're pleased that
everyone's speculation has turned out to be more or less true." Thanks
Joystiq.
Hearts of Iron III is now available in US stores, following the
digital release of the World War II real-time strategy sequel. A
playable demo is also available as well as a version
1.1 patch. Here's the word on the release: The battle has begun.
Paradox Interactive has released the third installment of its popular World War
II strategy series, Hearts of Iron III.
Featuring in-depth simulations of World War II battles, veteran soldiers and new
recruits alike will find much to satisfy their appetite for strategic planning
in Hearts of Iron III. Set in the wartime period of 1936-1948, Hearts of Iron
III retains the popular core gameplay of previous installments in the series,
and adds brand new features such as a huge game map with more than 14,000 land
and sea provinces.
Battle it out and take the reins of larger superpowers such as Russia or the
United States, or build up smaller nations such as Costa Rica. Hearts of Iron
III enables strategy fans to choose the outcome of one of the grandest wars of
all time. The power, responsibility and decision-making process of a nation at
war all lies within your hands.
Hearts of Iron III is available for purchase in US retail stores and all major
digital-distribution channels.
Video Games Are Dead – Part 1 on Players Only is a video interview with game
journalists, developers, and industry analysts commenting on the impact of the
economy on gaming, reasons for declining retail sales (here's
the latest sour news on that front), how the industry has been stumbling,
and what the future holds. There seems to be a consensus that games being sold
at retail will continue to decline in the face of digital distribution, leading
Oddworld's Lorne Lanning to say "when we look at the future of games at retail
we don't see it," and to suggest that finding games in stores in five years will
be as rare as finding music on vinyl.
The Eagle Dynamics Website
now offers a new patch for DCS: Black Shark to update the combat
helicopter simulation to version 1.0.1.
This page has the
complete change list, and it is warned that the new version is not online
compatible with the shipping version 1.0 and tracks from 1.0 version will not
play correctly in 1.0.1 version.
There's a
Company of Heroes Online Update on the Company of Heroes Website talking
about progress on bringing Relic's World War II RTS online in China. The update
is by Tim Holman who introduces his successor Greg Wilson as Tim takes a new
role at THQ, and the new CoH producer at Relic offers further hints that this
project may not be hidden behind the Great Wall of Chine forever, as they will
soon be opening beta testing to the rest of the world: "I’ve been at Relic for
about a year ago now and am honoured to be a part of this amazing franchise.
These are exciting times indeed! The entire Studio is eagerly awaiting the
Commercial Launch of COHO:China and we would like to invite COH fans around the
world to join up and tell us what they think. Stay tuned for details on how to
play the COHO Open Beta."
Fatshark AB announces Lead and
Gold: Gangs of the Wild West is in the works at their Swedish development
studio for digital distribution. This third-person shooter emphasizes team-based
multiplayer and co-op, and will be built using GRIN's Diesel Engine (Bionic
Commando, Bionic Commando Rearmed, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced
Warfighter). A trailer for the game debuted last week on
GameTrailers, and word is: "Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West catapults
the player straight into the dramatic crescendo of the Western myth. Relive the
high-noon duel on the main street of a frontier town or the intense firefight
during a bank heist. Immerse yourself in gameplay drawing from a perfect mix of
cool-headed player skill and the brutal close quarter brawl of the classic
Western shoot out."
A playable demo is available for The Filmmaker, a first-person puzzle
game following a horror theme from independent developer
Unimatrix Productions. From
what we can see on
The Filmmaker
site, this was actually released a couple of months ago, but this is the first
we've heard of it. Word is: "This demo features the first 5% of the full game.
Much of the opening cinematic has been removed, due to file size, and some
hotspots have been altered to make a more cohesive demo. Very little of the
story is revealed in the demo itself. Instead, the demo focuses on exploration
(about 50% of the theater can be explored) and puzzle solving (6 puzzles are
available in the demo), to give gamers a taste of the "feel" of the full game."
The demo was released on
Adventurespiele.net and
FilePlanet (registration required) and now new mirrors are available on
AtomicGamer and
Gamer's Hell.
Computer
and Video Games has what may be the old school LucasArts announcement
teased Friday. Update: It is, as confirmed on
Twitter. They are announcing
three games coming to the Nintendo Virtual Console, saying Super Star Wars may
be available even as these words are written. Word is: "Super Star Wars: The
Empire Strikes Back and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi will be added later
and all three (which were originally released for SNES) will set you back 800
Wii Points each."
Edge
Online has quarter financial reporting from Square Enix, with the Japanese
developer reporting drops in sales, operating income, and net income compared to
the same period last year, obviously partially influenced by their takeover of
Eidos, though sales are up in the gaming segment. Word is: "Year-on-year
Square’s game segment saw sales rise 7.2 per cent to 8.152 billion yen
($83.9m/£50.3m), but recorded an operating loss of 922 million yen
($9.5m/£5.7m), compared to an operating profit of 1.665 billion yen for the same
quarter last year."
Phantom EFX promises a playable demo for Darkest of Days tomorrow,
offering the chance to travel back in time to influence history by your actions
in famous historical battles in 8Monkey Labs' first-person shooter. Here's
word: Cedar Falls, Iowa – August 10, 2009 – Phantom EFX, a leading
developer and publisher of entertainment software, with independent game
development studio 8monkey Labs confirmed today the PC demo of Darkest of Days,
a free-to-play version of the highly anticipated historically-based first person
shooter, will be available on August 11, 2009.
“Custer's infamous last stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn, and the Battle
of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history… these are just a few of
humanity’s darkest days, and you can dive into both of these in the Darkest of
Days demo,” said Aaron Schurman, Chief Executive Officer at Phantom EFX. “This
hour-long demo lets players experience unrivaled carnage and to experience what
it’s like to use futuristic weapons in period settings and see what happens when
you alter history while fighting against hundreds of enemies during some of
man's greatest struggles in History!”
The demo features some serious action, throwing players into the middle of
raging battles, while also giving players great hands-on time with a variety of
weapons. To get a more in-depth look at the rich weapons loadout, check out the
weapons training video at Gametrailers.com.
Variety has details on plans for a film adaptation of Just Cause, the
open world action game from Avalanche Studios. Word is film rights have landed
with Liongate to be adapted for the big screen by Adrian Askarieh, producer of
the Hitman movie who is also part of efforts to create film adaptations of Kane
& Lynch and Spy Hunter. Word is: Askarieh is looking to produce "Just
Cause" independently and has been working with Creative Artists Agency to
package the property and put together roughly $30 million in independent
financing for the pic.
It has not yet been submitted to a studio.
1C Company announces it will be the European publisher for Red Orchestra 2:
Heroes of Stalingrad, Tripwire Interactive's upcoming World War II shooter
sequel (this is the first we've seen of the "2" in the title). Word is the game
will be shown off next week at
Gamescom 2009 in Cologne, Germany, and the announcement also has a new
feature list, reproduced here in all its glory: RO multiplayer taken to
new heights: In addition to the award winning Territory gametype from RO,
all new gametypes such as Firefight and Countdown add greater diversity,
replayability and fun.
Persistent Stats Tracking and Player Progression: Grow in rank, earn
medals, improve abilities, and become a Hero - all visible to the complete
online gaming community and embedded within the game.
Heroes: Obtain the ultimate goal and become a Hero online. Players with
hero status inspire troops around them and cause fear in their enemies. Heroes
have access to the best and rarest weapons and equipment, and will stand out
visually from the rest of the soldiers.
Stalingrad Campaign: The Stalingrad campaign will feature the multiplayer
maps used in a campaign layout recreating the battle for Stalingrad from both
the German and Russian sides.
First person cover system: Experience the ultimate firefights that a
cover system allows, from the immersion of a first person view. Peek or blind
fire over and around cover and more.
Squad Command: Command fire teams on the battlefield using an easy to use
first person interface.
WWII weaponry redefined: true to life ballistics, bullet penetration,
breathing, adjustable sights, free aim, weapon bracing, photo-real graphics and
more.
Co-op: Players can connect with their friends and battle the AI in
multiple game types including the Stalingrad Campaign, Skirmish Mode, and more.
Morale: Experience what it is like to be a soldier in one of the
bloodiest conflicts in history and the importance of a soldier's state of mind
and how it can turn the tide of battle.
We had a preseason tackle football sighting this weekend. If me getting excited
about the NFL getting back underway sounds odd in August, then you are probably
not a Mets fan like I am.
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