Archived News:
A post titled We Are Going to Be Prettttty Busy on the Telltale Games Website recaps their recently unveiled plans for The Walking Dead & Fables games and an Episodic King's Quest Reboot, and also reveals plans for Puzzle Agent 2. They offer a Puzzle Agent 2 teaser trailer that concludes saying: "Coming to PC, Mac, iPhone, and iPad." The Puzzle Agent 2 product section says to expect the game in spring/summer of this year. Also, their The Walking Dead product page is online, offering a wallpaper and promising a fall 2011 release and their Fables product section is up, though there's not much there. Finally, their Jurassic Park: The Game product section offers a Jurassic Park teaser trailer concluding with an April 2011 release date.
A new Corporal Ryan Balletto biography trailer (NSFW) from Operation Flashpoint: Red River introduces another of the characters in Codemasters' upcoming military shooter. The corporal gives his perspective on the conflict and his qualities as a Marine, though he admits he's "no Einstein." The embedded version of the clip follows. Continue here to read the full story.
A new "The Untold Story" behind-the-scenes trailer from The Lord of the Rings: War in the North features the developers of the upcoming Tolkien-inspired action/RPG hanging around in Middle-earth talking about the game. Word is: "Fans are well-versed in the war to the South, but as told by Gandalf himself, Middle-earth would have fallen without the bravery of a few heroes in the North. The Lord of the Rings: War in the North development team, including game designers, engineers, art directors and more, have committed to visualizing the unknown tale of the war in the North for fans who have only dreamed of it. Lesser-known areas and environments in literature have been fully realized in-game in stunning form, such as the ominous citadel known as Carn Dûm. Prepare to take a very long road into darkness, uncovering the quest to save Middle-earth on a brand new battle-front."
Games By Design, the blog of Arcen Games' Christopher M. Park, offers a new update on A Valley Without Wind, Arcen's upcoming procedurally generated action/adventure game. The new post details the latest additions to the project, including shadows, Skelebots, a HUD spell targeting, the first part of an inventory system, traps, and more. There are also new screenshots on this page showing off these new features, which are also depicted in this new gameplay trailer.
"Games are not the right medium to tell stories. Video games are more about story possibilities" -- Sims creator Will Wright.
Direct2Drive offers 20% off all titles with the code "hailtothechief" on checkout.
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Still on sale (previously reported). Continue here to read the full story.
Telltale Games reveals plans to make an episodic reboot of King's Quest, Sierra's classic adventure series. Joystiq quotes Telltale's senior vice president of marketing, Steve Allison, saying: "Much like we did with Tales of Monkey Island, we're rebooting King's Quest with all new episodic games and multiple series." No other details are being offered for now, but Telltale plans to reveal more at this year's E3.
Activision announces a pair of maps are now unlocked in Call of Duty: Black Ops on all platforms in honor of the Presidents Day weekend. The maps are DOA and Five, and here's word: DOA, or Dead Ops Arcade puts you and up to three other soldiers in a pursuit of the Cosmic Silverback; tracking him through a gauntlet of arenas filled with traps, treasure and waves of flesh-hungry zombies.
Five features four significant real-life figures from the Cold War era: John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Fidel Castrol and Richard Nixon. They are all meeting in the Pentagon when zombies break in and start attacking.
The Dragon Age II Demo Page offers a "call to arms" for the release of the Dragon Age II demo planned for next week. They are offering an unlock if the action/RPG sequel achieves one million downloads by March 1st, saying: "We are actively recruiting an army of Champions, and if we get over 1 million demo downloads and logins on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 combined before March 1st, we will unlock two in-game items for the entire community to use in Dragon Age II. Demo download progress will be tracked on this page, so check back often!" The two in-game items are a pair of books, one of which offers money when read, while reading the other provides an XP boost.
A new Blizzard Entertainment Career Opportunity seeks a "Senior Producer, Console" for Diablo III, a pretty strong confirmation that the action/RPG series is heading to consoles. In November 2009 Blizzard posted help wanted ads for three console-related Diablo III, but stated "this is not an announcement of a console title." The new listing calls for "a highly organized individual with outstanding communications and project management skills for the Diablo team." Thanks Joao via Computer and Video Games.
The Silver Lining Website now offers My Only Love Sprung from My Only Hate, the promised third episode in this episodic freeware game based on King's Quest. Word is: "This newest installment in Phoenix Online Studios’ King’s Quest-inspired fan game is bigger, darker, and more exciting than anything that’s come before it. Graham’s quest grows more mysterious due to strange visions of old foes and unexplained oddities in the Land of the Green Isles. And Queen Valanice seems to have reached her breaking point…"
The PC Gaming Alliance announces the launch of a speaker series "designed to inform and enlighten everyone in the PC gaming ecosystem who will be impacted by the evolution of PC Gaming." Word is: "The first PCGA Speaker Series event features Rika Nakazawa, VP Business Development and Account Management at Live Gamer who will present the “State of the Virtual Goods Industry” on March 1, 2011 from 4:00 to 5:30 PM at Capcom’s US headquarters in San Mateo, California." On a semi-related note, Big Download notes the Members section on the PCGA Website no longer includes logos for Microsoft or NVIDIA, while founding member AMD is now listed as a "contributor," rather than a "promoter."
The 2K Forums now offer patch notes for an upcoming February patch for Civilization V. In addition to details about the patch, they offer an introduction from Firaxis' producer on the turn-based strategy sequel explaining their goals for the update. Here's a bit: "Working with our 'Frankenstein' gameplay test group, we have been looking closely at the tradeoffs between building a Wide empire (one with lots of smaller cities sprawling across the map) and a Tall empire (one with just a few highly populous, highly productive cities). With this patch you’ll see a number of changes to the economic side of the game to bring these two play styles in closer balance with each other. City spacing, building effects and the Liberty and Tradition policy trees are where the most extensive changes have occurred. We’re now seeing games where a Tall empire can match or even exceed a Wide one in production and science output even deep into the game." Thanks Gamer's Hell.
The EGOSOFT Website now offers a new patch for X³: Terran Conflict to update the space combat sequel to version 3.1. The update includes a number of fixes and improvements, and adds a warning not to attempt to manually patch the Steam version of the game, which will automatically patch itself. The download is mirrored on Gamer's Hell and The Patches Scrolls, and there are further details in their forums. The change list follows. Continue here to read the full story.
The Cross Fire Website announces the launch of a new "hero mode" for this military-themed online first-person shooter. Their patch content page has a complete outline of what this includes, and their community forums have further details on the surrounding festivities. Here's a bit: "In Hero Mode, players can turn into a Hero; a powerful player with a modified machine gun and grenade launcher. Players can use their new weapon to defeat the mutant threat, and increase their team's attack damage by destroying their enemies until one side is victorious. Included with this patch is an all new exclusive Hero Mode Map called Merida, a new Assassin mutant who wields powerful grenades and new weapons including; a new M4A1-e variant, Dual Uzi's and for a limited time a Golden Gatling gun! In addition, players can earn up to five new Ribbon achievements for their player profile and starting today can participate in live daily challenges for four days during the Hero Mode Patch Event!"
The Diablo III interview on GameStar.de is an English-language version of this German site's conversation with Blizzard's Christian Leitner and Jason Bender, who are respective the art director and a senior game designer on Diablo III, the upcoming action/RPG sequel. They ask (unsuccessfully) about the recent screenshot purported to be from a 2005 build of the game, the less realistic art style of the game compared to its predecessors, the game's grittier feel, specific questions about the Barbarian and the newly revealed male Demon Hunter, skills, rune effects, and more.
A new patch is now available for SunAge to update Vertex 4's real-time strategy game to version 1.09.9. The new version improves squad grouping and combat AI. The download is available on AtomicGamer, Gamer's Hell, The Patches Scrolls, and WorthPlaying.
The Din's Curse Website now offers a new beta patch for Soldak's action/RPG bringing the game to beta version 1.022. This page offers a complete list of changes.
Bitmob - Kill the messenger: Why Fox News is the enemy, not its sources.
These questions alone make it obvious how Fox continuously manages to convince unqualified people to comment on games. Not only does it provide all the context they want interviewees to know, it puts words in their mouths by asking questions that assume they're already against the game. It also provides some insight into Brandon's interview style. He apparently shot four questions to numerous pundits to gather as many quotes as possible without the intention of having an actual discussion with any of these people.
GameFront - Bulletstorm, Rape and the Power of Childishness.
Gamers are insecure, and we’re obsessed with “proving” ourselves to some mystery arbitrator of maturity and value. We talk about games being “taken seriously,” but we never stop and think about who it is that we need to convince. Videogames are a huge part of modern culture, they make billions of dollars a year — I’d say that everybody has pretty much decided which side of the fence they’re on by now, and those who still think games are terrible, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, are not going to suddenly have a change of heart because somebody looked in a Thesaurus and sent them a nice little email. Nobody’s going to take you seriously at this point, so you might as well just fire back and damn the non-existent consequences.
It is positively beautiful out there today. It's currently 53 °F, and they say it will bet above 60 °F later. Incongruously there's still snow on the ground, but it may all be gone by the end of today, which would be excellent.
R.I.P.: Len Lesser, Seinfeld 's Beloved Uncle Leo, Dies at 88. "What kind of idiot throws away a perfectly good watch?"
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