Archived News:
Petroglyph announces Guardians of Graxia, an upcoming fantasy-themed strategy game to be released for PC this summer that will tie-in with a standalone board game. Here are a couple of screenshots from the game, and here's a bit from the announcement: "The Guardians of Graxia board game features dynamic strategic gameplay using cards, figurines, and map tiles in a fantasy-based environment. The PC version of the game combines the best of both online and board game aspects in a highly replayable fantasy setting, and will contain more than 240 unique unit and spell cards at release. The game will support both single and multiplayer gameplay."
Legacy Interactive announces they will launch a boxed retail edition of Max and the Magic Marker for PC and Mac this summer, offering another way to get this offbeat indie platformer. They celebrate the news with the release of a new gameplay trailer and a batch of screenshots. Here's a bit on the game: "The PC/Mac game, developed by Play Press and slated to launch in April, 2010, gives players total control as they draw out solutions to overcome challenging obstacles. Limited only by the imagination of the player, every obstacle has an endless number of solutions." Here's the embedded version of the trailer. Continue here to read the full story.
Square Enix-owned developer IO Interactive ( Hitman) has laid off approximately 35 employees, according to a Danish report on Computerworld, noted on Gamasutra. The report quotes general manager Niels Jorgensen saying: "We are sorry to have to say goodbye to employees, but it is a natural process when working in a project organization."
Steam News has word on the release of a new patch for Serious Sam HD that's automatically available via Steam. The patch notes follow. Continue here to read the full story.
The BostonHerald.com reports on the talk given by Curt Schilling at PAX East, as the former major league pitcher talked about game development at his startup, 38 Studios, developers of the MMOG codenamed Copernicus and owners of Big Huge Games, who are creating the RPG Project Mercury. They reference a recent presentation by Schilling at Harvard Business School last month, where he said: "after one year at junior college and 23 years in professional baseball, it cost me nearly $30 million to get to Harvard," quoting a BusinessWeek blog by venture capitalist Jeff Bussgang, who says Schilling has been funding 38 Studios almost entirely out of his own pocket.
There will be no more episodes in Penny Arcade Adventures following the two already released installments in the webcomic-based game series originally planned for four installments. Joystiq has word on this from Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins, who is vague on who made the decision to end the series, saying Hothead "could've" developed a third episode in the series along with DeathSpank: "They definitely could've done both games. I think they could've made DeathSpank and Episode 3 but I think Episode 3 would've suffered. I mean, I know it would have suffered. So we'd rather not do it than do it half-assed and so we're going to finish that story but it's going to be on our website."
Game Developers eXchange 2010 is in Savannah, GA on April 16. This year's keynote speaker is Richard Taylor, director and designer at Electronic Arts. You can find full details in this announcement.
- AI War: Fleet Command on Steam. Save 50%.
- AI War: The Zenith Remnant on Steam. Save 50%.
- All QUAKE Games on Steam. Save 50%.
- Empire: Total War on Direct2Drive. Save 66%.
Still on sale (previously reported)
Continue here to read the full story.
Thanks Mike Martinez and Acleacius.
The countdown on the BioWare website has concluded with the announcement of the BioWare Bazaar, continuing a grand tradition of these countdowns not concluding as anticipated. Update: It should be noted this is in the US only, and residents of Florida and New York are not eligible. Here's word: To show our appreciation of fan support over the last 15 years, we have created the BioWare Bazaar!
The BioWare Bazaar is a week long series of online auctions featuring over 400 prizes, ranging from custom painted PC's to BioWare apparel and more!
To bid on these auctions, fans will have to collect tokens through various challenges. On April 6th on 9AM PST the first BioWare Bazaar auction will begin, with new prizes being auctioned every 15 minutes until 4PM PST on Saturday.
The Battlefield Blog has word that Battlefield 1943 has reached the one million unit sales milestone on Xbox LIVE Arcade faster than any previous game. So far the World War II shooter has sold zero units on the PC, but this may change shortly, as they say: "Soon our PC fans will also be able to get in on the action that Xbox 360 and PS3 users have been enjoying since July 2009." Last August EA announced BF1943 for the PC was delayed until early this year.
Hi-Rez Studios is now offering a free trial of Global Agenda, their sci-fi MMOTPS. Players of the trial version will have a number of restrictions: They cannot advance past level 15, cannot select their PvP Match Type, cannot join an agency, cannot play AvA, cannot use Mail, the Auction House, Craft, voice chat, and more. Thanks MMORPG.com.
The seventh installment in the Call of Duty series (mentioned below) may be released as soon as October, reports VG247, who have a list of Xbox 360 release dates from UK retailer GAME. The list, which is not official or set-in-stone, mentions dates for Brink, Singularity, Fallout: New Vegas, and Crysis 2, among others: - Band Hero 2 – October
- Brink – September
- Call of Duty 7 – October
- Crysis 2 – September 24
- Fallout: New Vegas – October
- Guitar Hero 6 – September
- Lego: Harry Potter: Years 1 – 4 – May 28
- Singularity – June 28
Reports are surfacing with purported details on the upcoming seventh installment in Activision's Call of Duty series of military first-person shooters, long rumored to be set in Vietnam. The game will reportedly be set between World War II and the present day and will carry the title Call of Duty: Black Ops, with some missions played from the side of Britain's SAS. Metro.co.uk (thanks Joker961) has a story about this saying: "The Treyarch-developed shooter is rumoured to take gamers across the planet, including missions set in Cuba and South America, according to Call of Duty website experts Tek9, who have talked to 'undisclosed sources at Activision'," though we can't actually find this on TEK9, and Computer and Video Games has a similar report attributed to "undisclosed sources at Activision" via mapmodnews.com, which is down at the moment. Computer and Video Games also says these reports indicate the game is to have dedicated server support, which was absent from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, much to the unhappiness of PC gamers.
Joystiq caught up with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 producer Gordon Van Dyke at PAX East, to discuss support for the military shooter sequel. He tells them DICE will continue to release patches for the game, but that one thing they will not be patching is the tendency to accidentally pick up packs from dead players while trying to activate M-COM stations in rush mode. He does tip them off to a workaround, however, saying that the M-COM button can be held down before the prompt display, and the M-COM station will be activated (or deactivated) once you are in range. Thanks Joker961.
Matrix Games now offers a new patch for Distant Worlds, updating the 4x science fiction game to version 1.02, fine-tuning the economy and improving stability. Word is: "This new v1.0.2 update resolves all critical and a few serious issues that were discovered after last week’s release, including a resource distribution issue that could cause negative cash flow in the economy as well as several different bugs that could cause crashes on some system configurations. For the best play experience, Matrix Games strongly recommends that all owners of Distant Worlds upgrade to v1.0.2, which works fine with previous saved games."
A new version of Commander Genius is now available, offering an updated way to play levels from Commander Keen, the old-school side-scroller developed by id Software. Their "Genius Interpreter" offers improved graphics, even though it uses the original data files (which means you must own an original version of Commander Keen to play, including episode one, which is Shareware). Thanks Ant via LinuxGames.
The Imperial College London Website has details on new technology developed by a group of students that allows games to be controlled via eye movement. Word is: "To play the game, the user wears special glasses containing an infrared light and a webcam that records the movement of one eye. The webcam is linked to a laptop where a computer program syncs the player’s eye movements to the game." They describe how this holds promise for gamers with disabilities, and obviously there are other game-related implications as well. Thanks Ant via Slashdot.
Hooked Gamers - Why we will accept Ubisoft’s DRM.
Over five years later, how many PC gamers don't have a permanent internet connection? World of Warcraft has over 10 million subscribers. Steam now boasts over 25 million users; and while the service doesn't require a constant connection, it's severely hampered without one, thanks to large game downloads and Steam Friends. With the addition of instant messaging programs - AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, ICQ, Skype - and the increasing prevalence of streaming television shows, movies, and sports events, it's hard to imagine any PC user without a perpetual internet connection, much less a gamer.
DAMNLAG - Why are video games playing themselves? Thanks Ant via Digg.
Then my worries continued into the Splinter Cell: Conviction demo. This game seems pretty damn cool. It’s pretty much Taken: The Video Game, so there’s tons to love about it. Then I learn about the marking system. You can mark up to three enemies, then simply press a button to kill them all. Yeah, it does look cool when Sam pops up and spins around shooting guys before they can strike back, but I just feel a little disappointed that the game doesn’t seem to think I’m capable of doing this on my own.
PC Authority - NVIDIA's Fermi- So much potential, so little software support. Thanks Mike Martinez.
Nowadays the situation is even more extreme. The past few years have been a dark era for PC gaming. Concerns over piracy had driven the PC to become an afterthought for game developers and publishers, who have focused upon the Xbox 360 and (to a lesser degree) the PlayStation 3 as development platforms. This has led to all sorts of side effects in the PC versions of the games, like poorly thought out controls and long delays with game releases.
Here are the 10 bestselling titles currently reported by the Steam top sellers list:
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Just Cause 2
- Torchlight
- Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom - Gold Edition
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II Chaos Rising
- Dragon Age: Origins Awakening
- Mount & Blade: Warband
I had a triumph over the weekend in my long-standing quest to find Coca-Cola sweetened by sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup. We were shopping in Costco when I recalled that there is supposed to be Coke available around this time of year that's made with sugar to be kosher for Passover. We took a look for this in the soda section, and instead finally found the Mexican-manufactured coke that first sent us to Costco in the first place about 10 months ago. As a bonus it comes in 12 oz. long-neck glass bottles, old-style green tint and all. It's almost a buck a bottle, and worth every penny. Belated thanks to all of you who alerted me to the availability of this treat.
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