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Archived News:
Steam News announces a
sale on Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, saying the melee combat game is 66%
off this weekend. Oddly, they don't mention that this is also a free weekend for
the game, and it can be played for free by anyone with a Steam account between
now and Sunday afternoon. Here's the pitch for the game: "Chivalry: Medieval
Warfare is a first-person slasher with a focus on multi-player. Featuring
competitive online combat that seeks to capture the experience of truly being on
a medieval battlefield. Inspired from the intensity and epicness of
swordfighting movies such as 300, Gladiator and Braveheart, Chivalry: Medieval
Warfare aims to bring that experience to the hands of a gamer."
EA
announces that FIFA 14 will
be released on September 24th in North America and on September 27th in Europe
for Windows, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. They detail a preorder bonus, though
this seems to apply to the console editions: "Fans who pre-order FIFA 14 will
receive FIFA Ultimate Team gold packs to help build their ultimate team. Each
gold pack is a mix of 12 items, including players, contracts, stadiums,
managers, staff, fitness, healing, balls, kits, and badges. Gold packs consist
mostly of players rated 75+ in-game, and include one rare item, such as enhanced
player attributes, longer contracts, and the most coveted players."
The Final
Fantasy XIV Twitter feed has word that Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
will be released on August 27th for Windows and PlayStation 3. The new version
of the MMORPG that hopes to overcome fan disappointment with its initial release
is already available for preorder on
Green Man Gaming, and
Dealzon has a
coupon code to get a 20% discount on that or the
Digital Collector's Edition.
Rocket City Studios announces
Second Chance Heroes, a co-op action/RPG coming this summer to Windows
and OS X this summer. This will offer the chance to take on apocalyptic
disasters with a team of cloned historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Joan
of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Queen Elizabeth I. A beta gets underway next
month, and those interested can sign up
on this page. They are also
running a
Steam
Greenlight campaign. Here's word: HUNTSVILLE, AL (USA) / ST. JOHN’S,
NL (CANADA) – MAY 23, 2013 – Independent developer Rocket City Studios, Inc.
today announced their debut video game Second Chance Heroes, a cooperative
action RPG slated to release this summer on both PC and Mac.
Second Chance Heroes focuses on fast-paced, action-oriented gameplay set in a
colorful, humorous world populated by a wide array of monsters and opponents.
Players collect up to twelve unique playable characters based on famous
historical figures – from Joan of Arc to Abraham Lincoln - that can be used
cooperatively in groups of one to four players.
“We at Rocket City Studios set out to create a fast playing, highly accessible
game that will excite every kind of RPG gamer,” said Matthew Newhook, President
of Rocket City Studios Canada. “Second Chance Heroes is that game.”
Steam has the release of
Skyward Collapse, offering a 10% discount for the next week on this new
strategy game from Arcen Games. Word is this is a god game where you play as a
less-than omnipotent deity: How do you balance -- and indeed encourage --
a war between factions without letting either side obliterate the other? How do
you rule over gods, creatures, and men who refuse to obey you? How do you build
a landscape of villages when bandits and mythology are conspiring to tear it
down? Skyward Collapse places you into the role of The Creator, and frees you to
tackle these problems your own way. Brought to you by the developer of the
modern strategy classic AI War: Fleet Command, Arcen's second full strategy
title is equally unique (but far easier to learn): a turn-based 4x strategic
god-game.
Your task is to build and populate the floating continent of Luminith. You
create -- but cannot control -- gods, creatures, and artifacts from both Greek
and Norse mythology. The power you wield with these is immense: Heimdall's horn
causes everyone outdoors to drop dead, for crying out loud. Your task is to keep
both factions alive and fighting until The Master calls you home -- but this is
harder than it sounds. Bandit Keeps pop up periodically, as do Woes such as
floods, serial killers, guild strikes, and vegetarian uprisings. Every game
plays out differently, and you'll need even the craziest of your powers in order
to survive what lies in store for you.
The Creative Assembly announces a second chance is underway to score a beta key
for the unsupported multiplayer mode they are creating for Empire: Total War.
Those who own the game and are interested can register
on this page.
Here's word: Shortly after Empire: Total War was released, we added in an
unsupported multiplayer campaign beta. Not everyone was able to get hold of a
key for this and the application process was eventually discontinued. In
response to fan requests we are, for a limited time, offering the opportunity to
apply for a key once more.
Empire: Total War’s multiplayer campaign beta is an unsupported release, and as
such should not be considered a final released product. As such, we are unable
to assist with technical support enquires related to the multiplayer
beta.
- Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 on
Steam. Save 66%.
- Retro Game Music Bundle on
Bundle Dragon. Starting at
$1.00. Thanks nin.
EA announces Need for Speed
Rivals, a new installment in their motorsports series that will race
onto Windows PCs and last-gen consoles on November 19th and onto next-gen
consoles (not so fast, WiiU) at some point after that. The
Need For Speed website has a
teaser trailer, more
details on the game, and where to preorder. Here's the
announcement: REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – May 23, 2013 – Electronic Arts Inc.
(NASDAQ: EA), today announced Need for Speed™ Rivals, an action/racing game
created by an inspired new development team, using a powerful engine and
delivering next-generation gameplay. Need for Speed Rivals is being developed by
EA’s newest studio Ghost Games, who bring new thinking and innovation to the
Need for Speed franchise in partnership with the expert racing team at Criterion
Games. Built on the Frostbite™ 3 game engine, Need for Speed Rivals captures the
adrenaline and intensity of the street’s ultimate rivalry between cops and
racers, in a stunning open road environment. Need for Speed Rivals is coming to
Xbox 360® game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PlayStation®3
computer entertainment system and PC on November 19, 2013 and will also be
released on Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from
Microsoft, and PlayStation 4 later this year.
In Need for Speed Rivals, gamers play as either a cop or racer, where each side
of the law has its own set of high stakes challenges, rewards and consequences.
As a racer, the goal is to become infamous for taking risks behind the wheel and
capturing your most intense escapes on video for the world to see. The more cops
players evade, the more Speed Points they collect, enabling them to unlock new
cars and items. Keep raising the stakes race after race to become an ever-more
valuable target to the cops – but risk losing it all if busted. As a cop,
players work together as part of a team in pursuit of racers, earning prominence
and rising in the ranks of the Police Force with every bust. Achieving higher
ranks unlocks new police only cars and more powerful pursuit tech.
Continue here to read the full story.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announces Dying Light, a
first-person, action survival/horror video game in development at and Techland
for release next year for Windows and consoles (both last- and next-gen). We
have some
screenshots and artwork, and here's the announcement: BURBANK, Calif.
- May 23, 2013 - Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment today announces Dying
Light, a first-person, action survival horror video game with a portentous
day-night cycle set in a vast open world. Currently under development by
Techland, the game will be available in 2014 for Xbox One, the all-in-one games
and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation(R)4, plus Xbox 360,
PlayStation(R)3 system, and PC.
During the day, players will traverse an expansive urban environment overrun by
a vicious outbreak, scavenging the world for supplies and crafting weapons to
defend against the growing infected population. At night, the hunter becomes the
hunted, as the infected become aggressive and more dangerous. Most frightening
are the predators which only appear after sundown. Players must use everything
in their power to survive until the morning's first light.
"We are excited to partner with Techland on Dying Light, which is an original
gaming experience for next-generation consoles," said Kevin Kebodeaux, Senior
Vice President, Sales and Operations, Americas, Warner Bros. Interactive
Entertainment. "The partnership with Techland allows us to combine their
successful development capabilities with Warner Bros. Interactive
Entertainment's one-of-a-kind publishing expertise to deliver on this title."
"The next-gen technology allows us to create a truly dynamic open world that
features a game-changing day-night cycle," said Paweł Marchewka, CEO of
Techland. "Inventive free running mechanics also allow for nearly unrestricted
exploration and weapon-crafting to further enhance the action survival
experience."
For the latest news and updates on Dying Light, please visit
http://www.Facebook.com/DyingLightGame.
The
SimCity Blog has details on a new patch Maxis has released for SimCity
to update the urban-planning game to version 4.0. This re-enables some of
the features shut down when the game was put on life-support after launch woes
along with new features and new content. Here are
the
patch notes:
- New: SimCity Launch Park, an exclusive new
park just for our dedicated fans who were early adopters.
- New: Region: Edgewater Bay. Seven city
sites in one cluster around a beautiful bay with one great work site.
- New: Your current server will now be shown
in the options menu.
- New: More detailed rollover information on
buildings telling player’s if their Sims received happiness from a park or
from shopping. Previous to this fix, this information was generic.
- Re-Enabled Feature: Global Market prices
now dynamically change during gameplay.
- Re-Enabled Feature: Leaderboards will be
active on EU West 3, Pacific 1 and Pacific 2 at the release. We will enable
them on additional servers throughout the day.
- Re-Enabled Feature: Region filters are now
enabled on all SimCity servers. Players will be able to search for open
games by Map Name, Sandbox Mode, and Abandoned Cities.
- Rain Clouds: Fixed an issue where some
cities would not have rain clouds to replenish their water table. If you had
a city with this issue, you will start seeing clouds again within a game
day.
- Fire: Improved response time of fire trucks
to fires. Improved the time it takes for a fire signal to reach a fire
station.
- Mission updates: Tuned Metals HQ and
Community College missions. These were appearing too early, making them
difficult to complete. They now appear later in a city’s development.
- Solar Farm Great Work: Reduced fire risk at
the Solar Farm Great work. Local fire engines were spending too much time at
the Solar Farm.
- Messaging: Improved pre-requisite messaging
for Trade Port, Casinos, Smelting Factory and Oil Refinery. It should be
clearer on how to unlock these buildings.
- Graphics: Fix for flickering low wealth
buildings on NVIDIA graphics cards.
- Education: Fix for an issue some cities
experienced where commuting students did not return from a neighbor’s city.
This was causing a problem where students would disappear from a city in
some cases.
- Tuning: Sims will lose a small amount of
happiness if they don’t have a place to shop. Cities without places to shop
will see complaints and feel the effect of unhappy Sims. This will emphasize
the importance of commercial zones.
Here's a new trailer
teasing an upcoming web-series that will promote Payday 2, the upcoming
sequel to PAYDAY: The Heist, the crime-themed first-person shooter. We
haven't heard much about this game since it was
announced in March, but the live action clip is
the precursor to a series that will launch in just two weeks, and it concludes
saying that preorders for the game are now underway and that it will be released
in August of this year. Continue here to read the full story.
Polygon reports that Mike Fischer has parted ways with Square Enix America,
where he had served as president and CEO for almost three years, saying he has taken a
new post as vice president of digital Music and Video for Amazon in Japan.
Square Enix recently reported
"extraordinary" losses, but Fisher did not share details of his departure,
"noting only that he left on good terms."
The
GeForce Website now offers new version 320.18 WHQL-certified drivers for
NVIDIA graphics cards, offering performance improvements as well as support for
newly-released GeForce GTX 780 video cards, which are covered in a story below
(thanks Eric) Here's word: The new
GeForce 320.18 WHQL driver is now
available to download. An essential update for gamers jumping into the
latest releases, today’s Microsoft-certified driver increases performance by up
to 20% in Tomb Raider, 20% in DiRT Showdown, 10% Metro: Last Light, 8% in
Assassin’s Creed III, 6% in Far Cry 3, and 5% in BioShock Infinite. Furthermore,
compatibility and stability improvements offered at or before the day of release
of Dead Island: Riptide, Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter, Metro: Last Light, and
Star Trek: The Videogame, are included in today’s WHQL, too, to ensure that
gamers who did not download our recent betas have the best experience possible.
In addition to all of the above, 320.18 WHQL also includes SLI profiles for Call
of Juarez: Gunslinger, Dead Island: Riptide, Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter,
Euro Truck Simulator 2, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, GRID 2, and Remember Me, as
well as updated profiles for Natural Selection 2, Resident Evil 6, and
TrackMania² Canyon.
And finally, GeForce 320.18 WHQL is the recommended day-of-launch driver for
gamers upgrading to the newly-released GeForce GTX 780 video card, which you can
learn about in detail in our
GeForce GTX 780 launch article.
NVIDIA
announces the launch of the GeForce GTX 780 GPU, promising "pure
performance." To help overwhelm you with reviews, a carefully coordinated
embargo has expired, so here are reviews of the new hardware:
- ASUS GeForce GTX 780 on
ocaholic.
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 WindForce 3x OC on
Guru3D.
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 on
AnandTech,
Benchmark Reviews,
eTeknix,
Guru3D,
HARDOCP,
Hardware Canucks,
Kotaku,
LanOC,
Overclockers Club,
PC Perspective,
Techgage,
techPowerUp,
TechSpot,
The Tech Report,
TweakTown, and
Vortez.
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 SLI on
Guru3D and
techPowerUp.
- ZOTAC GeForce GTX 780 Graphics Card on
Hardware Heaven (text) and
Hardware Heaven (video).
This trailer from
Saints Row IV appears to be a 30 second TV spot for Volition's upcoming open
world action sequel. Here we see the president pulling off this game's version
of a drone strike, where (like in Yakov Smirnoff's Soviet Russia) you hit plane! Thanks nin. Continue here to read the full story.
Develop reports by way of
WSJ.com that Atari U.S. is planning to auction off some assets in July in an
attempt to raise an oddly specific sum of $22.2 million as part of the
publisher's struggles under the bankruptcy reorganization they
filed for in January. This follows
apparently unsuccessful efforts to sell the company in its entirety, and is said
to hold the best prospects for getting some return for Atari's investors. Word
is this plan still requires the approval of the bankruptcy court, and if
approved they will be putting up assets with set minimum bids, including the
RollerCoaster Tycoon IP for $3.5 million, the Test Drive IP for $1.5 million,
the Total Annihilation franchise for $250,000, and more. The Atari brand itself
will also be offered, starting at $15 million, not that this iconic name has prevented previous entities using it from also going under.
Ubisoft UK
tweets about the release of the
Far Cry 3 Map Editor Pack – MARK IV Style for Xbox 360, offering the chance
to create custom content for Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, the retro-styled
installment in first-person shooter series. They say: "We've just released the
Mark IV Style Map Editor Pack for #FarCry3 for FREE! Make your own Blood Dragon
themed maps."
Joystiq notes that this is also available for the PlayStation 3, but there's
no indication yet that there is a version of this for Windows PCs yet, and it's
not clear if one is in the works. Thanks nin.
The Dungeons and Dragons Online
website is now accepting preorders for the Shadowfell Conspiracy
expansion that's coming to Turbine's D&D MMORPG on August 19th. They have two
pre-purchase deals, one for the Standard Edition and the other for the
Collector's Edition. They also promise guaranteed beta access to those who act
on either of these offers before June 5th. "We’re excited to share our launch
date with the world and introduce the new Iconic Classes system that will be
available immediately to anyone that pre-purchases Shadowfell Conspiracy," said
Erik Boyer, Senior Producer of DDO. "We’re also making new Forgotten Realms
content that will enable players to create a level 15 character in the Forgotten
Realms and play all the way to level cap."
Developer/publisher Wargaming announces
their plans to provide financial support to three open-source development
foundations: the Linux Software Foundation, the Django Software Foundation, and
the Wikimedia Foundation. Here's the deal: 23rd May, 2013 - Wargaming, the
leading free-to-play developer and publisher, today announced that the company
will be financially supporting three key open-source development foundations,
including the Linux Software Foundation, the Django Software Foundation and the
Wikimedia Foundation.
While primarily known as a video game publisher and developer, Wargaming
utilizes a wide array of open-source technologies to power their successful
gaming titles. Corporately, Wargaming strives to support those technologies that
the company regularly leverages, not only to support existing development, but
also to help grow and evolve those technologies for future use.
"Wargaming relies heavily on a number of different open-source technologies to
help us create our legendary MMO universe, whether it's using Linux to power our
servers, Django to build our web project frameworks or Wikimedia to help us in
our research efforts," said Maksim Melnikau, Solution Architect at Wargaming.
"As a company, we'd like to say thank you to all the developers, testers and
users who've helped create these awesome tools and that we're extremely honored
to hopefully help them continue their great work moving into the
future."
- Antec Mobile Products A.M.P. dBs Headphone on
eTeknix.
- ECS A970M-A Deluxe Motherboard on
Pure Overclock.
- Netgear XWNB5201 500Mbps Powerline WiFi Access Point on
eTeknix.
- PQI Air Drive External Wireless Storage Device Product and Video
on
Technology X.
- SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB SSD on
eTeknix.
- Shuttle OMNINAS KD20 on
techPowerUp.
- Sparkle Calibre X660 on
Technic3D. In German.
- ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 AMP! Edition Graphics Card on
Hardware Heaven.
I got my new glasses yesterday, and am very happy with the outcome. They have an
anti-glare coating that my old pair did not have, and thus offer an even clearer
view than my previous glasses before they got all scratched. They also are
supposedly more scratch resistant, so it may be that when I'm ready for a new
pair I'll need to sandpaper them or something to get the same dramatic
improvement.
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