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Archived News:
Apogee Software announces a July 31st release date for Rise of the Triad,
which will be released worldwide via digital distribution for USD $14.99. They
are offering the chance to pass the month remaining before the release of
Interceptor Entertainment's first-person shooter remake with a preorder program
that gives customers four old-school Apogee games to play in the
meantime: In one fell swoop, Apogee and Interceptor have simultaneously
dropped a ludicrous nostalgia bomb and one helluva pre-order incentive for the
upcoming Rise of the Triad™ remake:
Beginning July 1st, pre-order Rise of the Triad™ and get the Apogee Throwback
Pack™ for FREE, and available for immediate download. The Apogee Throwback
Pack™, a collection that includes the original classic Rise of the Triad: Dark
War™ and Extreme Rise of the Triad™ expansion pack, as well as Blake Stone:
Aliens of Gold™ and Blake Stone: Planet Strike™, is available NOW for $9.99, but
is FREE with your Rise of the Triad™ pre-order.
Pre-orders are available on all your favorite sites, including Apogee (www.apogeesoftware.com),
Steam (www.steampowered.com), GOG.com
(www.gog.com), and Green Man Gaming (www.greenmangaming.com).
The Call of Duty
website has details on a newly announced preorder bonus for Call of Duty:
Ghosts, saying those who buy the military shooter before it's released will
receive Free Fall, a bonus map to offer a multiplayer battlefield exclusively
populated by preorder customers. Here's word on how this will show off the
game's dynamic environments: Fans around the world that pre-order the game
at participating retailers will receive the Free Fall downloadable bonus map
that features the new dynamic map event mechanic, included with their copy of
the game at launch. Free Fall ushers in the first details on how players will
encounter the changing environments in the leading multiplayer experience on
consoles.
As an example of just one of Call of Duty: Ghosts' new dynamic map events, Free
Fall drops players into a shattered skyscraper on the brink of collapse.
Sideways staircases climb into the night sky, elevator shafts run along the
ground, and what were once windows now form a terrifying glass floor, hundreds
of feet above the city streets. Free Fall's close-quarters combat and frenetic
action are then thrown into overdrive as the ruined skyscraper continues to fall
throughout the match. With every drop, the accompanying shockwaves cause further
destruction, disrupting sightlines and constantly evolving paths and chokepoints
as the map changes in real-time.
"Dynamic map events change the way players approach the game, and Free Fall does
a great job illustrating this new mechanic," said Mark Rubin, executive producer
at Infinity Ward. "As the match progresses, the geometry of the world continues
to change and players need to adjust on the fly or else. It's a really fun new
feature that adds layers of strategy and constantly evolving gameplay options
for players. And this is just one of the many new approaches we're putting into
Ghosts' multiplayer across the board. There's so much more that we look forward
to sharing in the weeks to come."
Paradox Interactive offers
a brand new video developer diary from Europa Universalis IV, focused
on the power of religion in the upcoming empire-building sequel. Here's word on
the trailer, a livestream planned for tomorrow, and following the theme of a
number of items this evening, a new preorder bonus: Project Lead Thomas
Johansson details the intricacies of religion in countries throughout the world,
and how differences between sects can both benefit and hinder your progress to
historical greatness. Will you allow reformation when it rears its head in
Europe or stand your ground for Catholicism? Will you forego Christianity
entirely and become a champion of the Muslim or Buddhist faiths?
On Wednesday, July 3rd, emperors and empresses should make themselves
comfortable in their screen-facing thrones for an epic Europa Universalis IV
live stream. The broadcast starts at 6 pm GMT/ 7 pm BST/ 8 pm CEST / 11 am PDT,
head to the official Paradox Interactive Twitch TV channel to see religion in
action:
twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive
Strategy fans can fulfill their quest for global domination by pre-ordering
Europa Universalis IV. The pre-order bonus for the month of July has been
revealed today—The Purple Phoenix DLC—and the details of its contents can be
found here: www.europauniversalis4.com/buy. Anybody who pre-orders Europa
Universalis IV, regardless of when they pre-order, will receive all DLC included
in the pre-order campaign including secret, yet-to-be-revealed pre-order
bonuses.
Indie developer Lumenox now offers an
alpha demo for Aaru's Awakening, a 2D action/platformer with hand-drawn
graphics planned for release this fall for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Here's
a trailer showing off
gameplay, this page has some
screenshots, and the alpha demo is available
on this page. Here's word
on the game: "You are the champion of Dawn, Aaru. Complete missions and explore
the world of Lumenox using Aaru's highly mobile skills, teleportation and
charging. The balance between Dawn, Day, Dusk and Night is being destroyed by
Night. As a last hope Dawn sends out his champion, Aaru, to travel all the way
to Night’s domain and restore balance. Can you save the world of Lumenox?"
The GeForce website now offers the
WHQL-certified editions of the version 320.49 GeForce reference drivers, using
the same version number as the last beta drivers. As with the beta, this is the
launch driver for new GeForce GTX 760 accelerators. and word is it "Increases
performance by up to 20% for GeForce 400/500/600 series GPUs in several PC games
vs. GeForce 314.22 WHQL-certified drivers (thanks
HARDOCP). It also bears noting that the process for avoiding installing the
GeForce Experience
software has changed, as it is no longer a separate prompt during installation,
users must select a custom installation and uncheck this or it will be installed
by default.
Though the game has not returned
to
Steam, the greeting on the Darkspore
Forums has changed since this
morning's message that Darkspore "is for almost all intents & purposes an
abandoned title." That is gone entirely, and replaced by the
following statement
which reverses course and says they will continue to support the action/RPG: 7/1/13: Welcome to the Darkspore forums. Thanks for supporting the game. We
recently resolved an issue that was causing some players to not be able to
connect to the game. If you any encounter any other issues, please contact
help.ea.com for customer support. We will continue to support Darkspore, so feel
free to continue to discuss the game here. Thanks – Maxis.
AllThingsD reports that Don Mattrick is leaving Microsoft where he had
served as Xbox boss as president of their Interactive Entertainment unit to join
Zynga, possibly to serve as CEO at the social game developer. This is
unconfirmed at this point, and they attribute the report to "multiple sources
close to the situation" and say an announcement could follow today's close of
the financial markets. Thanks
GamesIndustry International.
Speaking with Team17 designer Gavin Hood at the Rezzed conference,
Strategy Informer learned that rather than create post-release DLC for
Worms: Clan Wars, they are concentrating on mod tool and Steam Workshop
support to allow the community to create any such content for themselves. Here's
the excerpt they've posted from a larger interview they will publish soon: Gavin
Hood: We’ve got no plans for DLC for the game at all, we’re not hiding
anything away. Instead we’ve got full Steam Workshop support out of the box
planned for the game so people can make their own items, make their own speech
banks, make Clan outfits and share all these. Post launch but within the launch
window we’re going to release a Mission Toolkit, so we give all players access
to the contraptions and the machinery…
Strategy Informer: So they can make single-player stuff too?
Gavin Hood: Yes, single-player missions as well. It seemed kind of the
obvious thing to do!
Darkspore is no longer being sold on Steam, reports
GameTrailers based on a comment on
NeoGAF, and sure enough, a
Steam Search for the title comes up with listings for the demo and a
trailer, but following either link just redirects to the Steam support page
(thanks nin via
Kotaku). They say since its launch, Maxis' sci-fi action/RPG has suffered
intermittently from Error 73003 from being unable to connect to EA's servers,
and more recently a new Error 3 popped up, preventing players from saving
changes to their characters. Darkspore is still being sold by EA's
Origin, so the game may be temporarily off Steam to work this
out, as pulling the game after 26 months following the Error 73003 issues would
be a strong indictment of the game's reviled always-on DRM scheme. And although
EA may yet be addressing this, according to a statement on the
Darkspore Forums, developer support
for the game seems to be at an end, oddly, referring inquiries to EA Customer
Support, even though it's an EA site: Darkspore is no longer developed.
It is for almost all intents & purposes an abandoned title. If you cannot play
the game & have flicked through technical issues for any fixes, then contact EA
Customer Support; especially if it regards CD-Keys or refunds.
Error 73003 has gone unfixed & remains an issue.
Error Code 3 has arisen for the majority/all & remains an issue.
I will however keep the forums here as clean & tidy as possible in my spare
time. Why? Well why not. If it helps anyone with minor problems, or find their
way somewhere, then that's great.
I wish you all luck, no matter what path you choose with Darkspore.
GfK Chart Track offers their weekly analysis of game sales in the U.K. There's a
new sheriff in town on
the PC full-price chart, as The Sims 3: Island Paradise lands
(islands?) at number one and Company of Heroes 2 debuts at number two,
while World of Warcraft: Battle Chest holds onto the top spot on the
budget PC chart. And on the
all platforms/all prices chart, The Last of Us is still first, while
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is the new number two, Island Paradise is
number five, Deadpool joins at number six, and Company of Heroes 2
debuts at number 10. Here's the write-up: Sony and Naughty Dog’s PS3
exclusive ‘The Last Of Us’ (-35%) remains at No1 for a third consecutive week.
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 edition of ‘Minecraft’ debuts at No2 and Nintendo’s 3DS
‘Animal Crossing: New Leaf’ drops down 1 place to No3 after 2 weeks at No2
(-25%). EA’s ‘FIFA 13’ also drops down 1 place to No4 although sales rocket +43%
over last week thanks to the keenly priced 360/PS3 versions. There are a further
3 new entries within the Top 10 this week: debuting at No5 is EA’s ‘The Sims 3:
Island Paradise’, the 10th PC Expansion Pack in the series and the second this
year, after ‘The Sims 3: University Life’ back in week 10. Right behind and new
at No6 is Activision/Blizzard’s Marvel Comics ‘Deadpool’ for 360/PS3. Completing
the new releases is Sega’s ‘Company of Heroes 2’ on PC, new at No10 and which
becomes the 7th game to be released on a Tuesday this year (the last being
‘Defiance’ back in early April).
The original ‘Company of Heroes’ debuted back in September 2006 and was
developed in Canada by Relic, at that time a THQ studio (also known for
‘Homeworld’/‘Warhammer 40K’ games). The follow-up is still a Relic-developed
title, but they are of course now a Sega studio
Mark Kern at MMORPG.com - Have MMOs Become Too Easy? Thanks
Develop.
But even that wasn’t enough. As WoW grew in population, reaching ever
more casual gamers, new expansions introduced even more refinements. Quest
trackers were added, and xp was increased so that it was easier to level
through all the old content to get to the “new stuff” of the expansion. Gear
from the a new expansions first quests made raid gear from previous
expansions a joke. And the level curve became faster and faster until we
reached a point where everyone is just in a race to get to max level, and
damn everything else in between. Why care about level 20 gear when you would
blow by levels so fast it was obsolete before you even logged off for the
night?
And it worked. Players came in droves, millions of them. But at what cost?
Sometimes I look at WoW and think “what have we done?” I think I know. I
think we killed a genre. There are many reasons I feel this way, but I’d
like to discuss one in particular, the difficulty curve.
Happy July to all and Happy Canada Day to all you Canucks. Seems like Independence Day is near here in the U.S., though
I can never remember the date (checks calendar) oh yeah, July 4th! That falling
on Thursday will surely impact news this week, but who knows... you never know
when the gaming scene will produce fireworks (see what I did there?).
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