Archived News:
The Steam version of the new Reborn DLC for F.E.A.R. 2: Project
Origin is now available, and though Monolith announces this should also be
on sale for $9.99 USD via other portals like IGN (Direct2Drive) and Digital
River, it has not shown up elsewhere yet (the manual patch for the previous DLC
release trailed the Steam release by a week).
Steam also has the
automatic patch to update Monolith's scary shooter sequel with support for the
new DLC and the new slow-mo deathmatch mode. Here's word on Reborn:
Experience four brand new single-player levels in this additional DLC
campaign for F.E.A.R.2! Coinciding with the events seen in the full game, you
will experience the chaos of Alma’s aftermath from an entirely new point of
view: that of Replica Soldier 813. Your mission begins with an orbital Powered
Armor drop to reinforce your fellow Replica squad… But not everything is as it
seems. Supernatural events run wild in the apocalyptic remains of Auburn.
Another voice is beckoning you; contradicting orders from Replica command. Find
out the answer to this, and many new questions, in the DLC campaign F.E.A.R.2:
Reborn!
A playable demo for Ironclads: High Sea is now available for those
interested in sampling the tactical naval combat in this simulation set during
the American Civil War. The demo is available from
Totem Games and it is mirrored on
AtomicGamer,
ComputerGames.ro,
FileFront, and
Gamer's Hell.
Champions Online
Website announces plans to offer a free retcon for the de-nerfing pleasure
of participants in their early start program who created characters prior to
their launch day patch for Cryptic's MMORPG. Word is: "We are currently working
on a system to issue this retcon to early start characters. As soon as we have
the technology in place to do so, we’ll let you know. Thank you all for
supporting the game through the first few days of the launch."
Indie developer
Playbrains announces Madballs in...Babo:Invasion will be released for
PCs next week, following the arcade shooter's successful debut on Xbox LIVE. The
game will be released on Steam, for $9.99 in the US and Canada, £6.99 in the
UK, €8.99 in Western Europe, and €6.99 in Eastern Europe. Here's word on the
game: "The spiritual successor to the massively popular freeware top-down
Shooter BaboViolent2, Madballs in Babo:Invasion is an arena based 3D shooter
offering players a satisfying and immersive experience in both single-player and
multiplayer, including 'Invasion Mode' where players are able to design their
own combat maps almost instantaneously by placing a combination of map tiles to
create a never-before-seen map before gameplay starts. Truly, no two games are
ever the same."
Frogster
Interactive announces details about The Origin, a new high-level
dungeon to launch on September 15 in Runes of Magic, their
subscription-free MMORPG. The announcement includes some
new
screenshots, and word is: "Players will have to confront four bosses before
they can unlock the secret of the Elves and bring the sacred tree, Falynum, back
to its senses. The encounter with the giant tree presents a huge challenge: In
the course of the combat, Falynum summons assistance. Later on, an opponent who
was already believed to have been beaten returns to the fray."
Uforia
announces details on the gameplay modes in
Mercenary Wars, their
upcoming online military-themed first-person shooter. Accompanied by some new
Mercenary
Wars screenshots, the
announcement
outlines their plans to offer four game types: Team Deathmatch, Plant the Bomb,
Mercenary Team Deathmatch, and Destruction Race.
Instinct Technology has collaborated
with Dark Water Studios to
create a movie showing how their middleware product Instinct Studio is able to
use NVIDIA's CUDA technology to offload AI from the CPU onto the GPU of the
graphics card. The trailer shows GPU-controlled flocking behavior in
DogFighter that allowed them to display a ridiculous (as in over 4000)
number of aircraft on the screen at once, all controlled by a single
CUDA-enabled graphics card (that's a lot of flocking planes). The clip is posted on the
YouTube, and here's
word: The demo shows 4096 bot planes handled solely on a single GPU
parallel to game rendering. The bot planes use steering behaviours for flocking,
navigation and obstacle avoidance. The planes are fully lit and rendered (with
shadows). The demo runs with interactive frame rate on main stream CUDA enabled
graphics cards. In comparison the same simulation without utilizing CUDA
achieved a similar frame rate on a decent machine with only 512 planes in our
tests. The steering computation for 512 planes requires about 260.000 neighbour
queries while for 4096 planes this grows to a whopping 16 Million queries. The
algorithm can be easily parallelized, explaining the advantage of technologies
like CUDA for this kind of problem. Even if there is a potential to optimize the
algorithm for CPU the clear benefit for us is a heavily reduced development
time.
The launch trailer for Mini Ninjas paves the way for next week's launch
of this action/arcade ninja adventure, accompanied by a haiku, of all things:
"The Mini Ninjas - Small yet strong and big of heart - Fight like Animals!" The
clip can be found on
AtomicGamer,
FileFront, and Gamer's
Hell.
EA and Black
Library Publishing Announce Forged by Chaos, a third original novel
based on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the fantasy-themed MMORPG from
Mythic Entertainment. The novel will be available from
The Black Library Website and
bookstores this fall, and here's a bit on what it's about: “With the
first two Warhammer Online novels, EMPIRE IN CHAOS and DARK STORM GATHERING, we
saw the Realm vs. Realm conflict from the besieged viewpoint of Order,” said
Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer for Mythic Entertainment. “FORGED BY CHAOS
provides readers with their first look into the dark, megalomaniacal minds of
the forces of Destruction. Rife with internal conflict, shifting allegiances,
and a never-ending lust for murder, we see firsthand how this unholy alliance of
Destruction is just as deadly to each other as they are to the armies of
Order.”
For your skinflinting pleasure:
- Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight on
CnCWorld.
Thanks Mike Martinez and
C&C DEN.
A new "a warrior's journey" clip is now available for Majesty 2: The Fantasy
Kingdom Sim, showing off combat from this real-time strategy sequel under
construction at 1C: Ino-Co. The clip is available on the
YouTube, and here is
the accompanying explanation of the way of the warrior: "Across the great lands
of Ardania, monsters and the undead rampage throughout the wild countryside. As
these foes attack trading posts, ambush caravan routes, and shock the poor and
hapless peasants with their ghastly practical jokes, the economy grinds to a
halt. The situation cannot be allowed to continue. A hero must rise to take on
the challenge. Enter the warrior."
Atari sends a response to the news last week that Turbine is
suing them over the marketing of Dungeons & Dragons Online and Turbine's
allegations that Atari was maneuvering to breach their agreements over the game
to pave the way for a competing project. Atari has filed a motion to dismiss
what they call a "frivolous" legal action saying Turbine's suit "can ultimately
do a great disservice to D&D fans and to the MMO community at large." They have
also filed a counteraction, which presumably is no such disservice, word is:
“Last week, with no warning, Turbine filed what can only be viewed as a
frivolous lawsuit against Atari. This action can ultimately do a great
disservice to D&D fans and to the MMO community at large. Turbine’s actions also
appear intended to divert attention from the contractual obligations that
Turbine owes to Atari. In response, today Atari served a motion to dismiss the
entirety of Turbine’s lawsuit. Atari also filed a separate complaint to recover
monies owed to Atari resulting from an independent third party audit of Turbine.
While Atari hopes for a quick and fair resolution, it remains fully committed to
the D&D communities worldwide and will vigorously protect the franchise and its
own integrity in this matter.”
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity is now
available, offering base jumping-based gameplay from Dejobaan Games. A playable
demo for the game also known as AaaaaA is available if you want to
check it out before taking the plunge, and digital distribution of the full game
is available from Dejobaan Games,
GamersGate, Impulse, and
Steam. Here's word on the
game: The jumps you make off buildings floating above Boston,
Massachusetts are all about style and timing. You perform stunts, weaving around
the bustling City for points, making split-second decisions: do you snake around
those girders to earn a dozen "kisses," or glide along the side of that steel
super-skyscraper for massive "hugs"?
Aaaaa! then throws in the spectators -- as you fall, give fans the thumbs-up and
protesters the finger. And if you're hungry for a bit of civil disobedience, you
can even ready the spraypaint and tag government buildings for points.
The game will also teach you how to debristle a pig.
A new Assassin's Creed II trailer is now available with the
promised look at gameplay from the upcoming stealth/action
sequel. The more action than stealth clip is available on the
Assassin's Creed 2
website as well as
Eurogamer and the
YouTube, depicting some assassinations, some acrobatic navigation, and a
little da Vinci-style hang gliding. The game previously had a
holiday 2009 release window, but the clip concludes narrowing this to November
2009.
The Secret World trailer mentioned in the story below is now available on
Dagbladet.no offering a cinematic
promoting Funcom's upcoming conspiratorial MMORPG. Cast (in order of
appearance): Feather, blonde, birds, a demon, and a pump-action shotgun, which
seems like a recipe for success. Thanks
Kotaku.
Funcom paves the way for the revelations about The Secret World they've
promised for PAX 2009 with
word they will
today be unveiling the three secret societies in their upcoming MMORPG
through several partner websites with previews and a new cinematic trailer.
Meanwhile, Dark Days Are Coming,
the game's official website, offers an aptitude test to see which of these
cabals will suit you best, and registering for one of them will afford you
several benefits, including the chance to be invited into the game's beta test.
This aptitude test has also allowed us to figure out what these three factions are, which
are the Templars, which they call "the world's least secretive secret society,"
the Illuminati, "the most ambitious, cut-throat and furtive of secret
societies," and the Dragon, who "have survived for millennia by playing their
enemies against each other."
There's a
Guild
Wars 2 Interview on Kill Ten Rats chatting with ArenaNet designer Jeff
Grubb about the upcoming online RPG sequel. Topics include how we can expect
further revelations of lore and history of the game world, the reasons dragons
have set their alarm clocks to coincide with the sequel, more on the role of
humans and human gods in the game, Dwarves, the Mursaat, and more.
An Advert for In-Game
Violence on Technology Review discusses the results of some research
suggesting that violent content in video games may help aid retention of the
messages from in-game ads. The study involved two different versions of a simple
racing game, and it seems players better recalled the ads in the more violent
version: "Those who played a violent version of the game, where the goal was to
run down pedestrians, resulting in a blood-splattered screen, demonstrated
significantly better recall of advertised brands than those who played the
regular version. The researchers presented their work at the International
Conference on Entertainment Computing last year." Thanks Mike Martinez and
Slashdot.
Twisted Pixel Games announces
they will reveal a new project at PAX. They will unveil a video revealing their
third IP at 7:00 pm EDT tomorrow (4:00 pm local time at booth 3102, if you are
attending), and they will post the video to their website after the show
concludes.
The Influence of Metacritic on Game Sales on Bitmob takes a look at a
limited sample of sales figures and attempts to correlate the impact of
Metacritic scores on sales. The results
are mixed, but the general conclusion drawn from the data they worked with
suggests that well-received games do not necessarily sell well, but that games
with poor reviews almost never do. We hear more publishers emphasizing the
correlation between reviews and sales lately, and it would be interesting to see
analysis of this using a larger data set.
The
Tomb Raider: Underworld Postmortem on Gamasutra was originally
published in a print issue of Game Developer magazine, offering a look
back at the latest Tomb Raider game. They specifically discuss pitfalls they
encountered despite their efforts from the outset to avoid them, saying: "In
light of that, some of the 'wrongs' will be discussed in terms of how our
methods to avoid known issues fell short." These "wrongs" include the ambition
to create a unified shared code base for this and other games, the ripple effect
of refactoring, an unproductive preproduction phase, acts of god, and an overly
ambitious design. Among the things they feel went right with development were
the game's long alpha period, the team's focus on their goals, the flexibility
of their production process, their establishment of proper movement metrics of
Lara, and that the team never actually lost their minds during development.
Okay, at this point it looks like we had all of one month of summer this year,
and now fall is upon us here in the greater New York area. I guess I can deal
with more spring and autumn, but I'm really not going to be happy if we end up
having a six-month winter as a result of this. Brrrr.
R.I.P.:
Rest in peace Esa Repo of the DOOM community.
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