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Archived News:
Frictional Games announces SOMA is indeed the title of the new project
they teased this week and
last, saying this is a
survival/horror game coming to Windows and PlayStation 4 in 2015. A new
gameplay teaser trailer
is live on the SOMA website, and here's
the announcement: Strange occurrences are disrupting the routines of the
PATHOS-2 research facility. The radio is silent. Behavioral anomalies of the
machines are increasingly dangerous, if not... malevolent. The facility is
devolving into chaos. No weapons, and the only escape is practically
unthinkable.
From Frictional Games, creators of the groundbreaking Amnesia and Penumbra
series, SOMA is an aberrant tale of scientific inquiry and survival; an entropic
exploration of synapse and circuit that wades through the delusions of human
consciousness.
Three years in the making, SOMA is a unique continuation of Frictional Games'
signature style of explorative horror, provocative storytelling, and
unfathomable tension, free of distractive cut-scenes and combat. SOMA is coming
to PC and PlayStation 4 in 2015.
The Dark Mod website is now accessible again, offering the release of TDM
2.0, a standalone version of this Thief homage that's caused enough traffic to
break the site for a couple of days. Here's word: The Dark Mod is now
completely standalone, which means you no longer need to own Doom3 to play it!
We have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy replacing all the sounds,
textures, particle effects, and models that we had been using. Hopefully this
will open up a whole new audience of people who didn’t want to have to purchase
a different game in order to try The Dark Mod.
The Total War
Wiki has the details on a new Patch 4 that's now available for Total War:
ROME II, Creative Assembly's historical strategy sequel. The notes are
pretty short, in that way that War and Peace is, so here's a useful summary:
"This update includes major AI improvements related to the constructions of new
buildings, food supply management, creation of armies, technology researches and
tactics used during battles, making the AI more organised and challenging.
Further tweaks and improvements have been made to the diplomacy, missiles, melee
units and much more." They are not through yet, as they say Patch 5 will enter
public beta testing next week, offering "further technical optimisations and
improvements to gameplay, balance and usability."
Steam News announces the
release of Viscera Cleanup Detail, a crossover mini-game offered for free
to purchasers of Shadow
Warrior, Flying Wild Hog's FPS remake. Sure slicing apart enemies with a
katana is fun, but that does not compare with the joy of cleaning up afterwards,
right? Here's word: Budding viscera janitors will be able to use their
custom mop, commercial grade plastic gloves, high tech viscera finder, and an
industrial incinerator to clean up blood, guts, and the occasional dismembered
arm. Plan your strategy wisely or risk tracking bloody footprints around your
clean floors or knocking over a bucket of guts on what was previously a pristine
flight of stairs! Perform your job skillfully and find yourself rewarded with
two handsome achievements to hang in your locker.
- Aspyr Mac/PC Games NewEgg Sale deal on
Dealzon.
Save 70%.
GamesIndustry International - Valve is the champion PC gaming deserves.
Valve's intention with these moves is not modest, nor is it in any way
disguised. Valve wants to own PC gaming - to the same extent that Sony owns
PlayStation gaming or Microsoft owns Xbox gaming, if not in the same manner.
Valve wants Steam to be a third pole of the core gaming market (fourth, if
you count Nintendo, although they're really playing a different sport
entirely) - one which appeals to a somewhat different market and operates on
very different principles to the traditional consoles, but which is focused
around the Steam platform for distribution and functionality just as much as
consoles are focused on PlayStation Network or Xbox Live.
The Tech Report - Are Valve and AMD about to ruin PC gaming?
This could all make PC gaming somewhat daunting to newcomers. Today,
buying a decently powerful PC opens up access to a huge library of games,
from point-and-click adventure titles to the latest cross-platform shooters.
Next year, things will be different. Because of SteamOS, not all gaming PCs
will be able to run all PC games, unless one is prepared to install a second
operating system. And because of Mantle, buying a machine with a GPU from
the wrong vendor could mean missing out on critical optimizations.
An update to the
Steam Universe Steam Community Group offers
this trailer showing
off how Valve's new prototype
controller fares playing games. The clip shows a variety of genres, and makes
the case for how their new touch D pads overcome the inherent horribleness of
console controllers for shooters. Word is this is the same controller that will
be shipped with the 300 prototype Steam boxes they plan on shipping to testers.
Continue here to read the full story.
The
Roberts Space Industries website offers
the video of the
CitizenCon 2013 live show, a broadcast celebrating yesterday's first anniversary
of the announcement of Star Citizen, RSI's crowd-funded space game. One
of the revelations along the way is their "Next Great Starship" design
competition that will kick off at the end of this month. This will offer a grand
prize of US$30,000 and high-end workstations for the team that creates a
starship model to be included in the game based on voting from the community and
their judging panel. Entries begin on October 31st and a YouTube reality series
will begin in January and culminate with a winner in June, though this probably
won't feature the chills and thrills of watching competition computer modeling
they imply when they say the two finalists "will compete live in front of the
judging panel and the community during the final episode that takes place June 8
in Los Angeles." Here's word: Teams can register for The Next Great
Starship October 31 through December 31. A preliminary challenge involves the
making of a fully designed wave particle cannon, submitted via a YouTube video
to a nine member judging panel including Chris Roberts and other members of the
CIG design and art team, Crytek and even some to-be-named celebrity judges.
Those initial entries will be narrowed down to a final 16 and one of the 16 will
be voted on by Star Citizen backers. Then those 16 teams will embark on making
their Starship entries. Beginning January 31, 2014, episodes of The Next Great
Starship will air once a week on the Roberts Space Industries™ (RSI) YouTube
channel with each team providing a work in progress update to the judging panel.
Judges will eliminate teams down to a final two which will compete live in front
of the judging panel and the community during the final episode that takes place
June 8 in Los Angeles.
Continue here to read the full story.
Full Control follows the release
of a new free campaign for Space Hulk with a
short-term roadmap for 2013 laying out plans for the Warhammer 40K TBS game
(thanks Strategy Informer). This
makes a general reference to further updates, and they follow with
the revelation of plans for a Space Wolves campaign this year, offering
this image and the following tease: We love the Wolf Guard for many
reasons. Part of that being from Scandinavia, we have some common background
there.
Also the Wolf Guard are not often seen in games, so instead of running with the
possibly more obvious Dark Angels or Ultramarines as the first one, we wanted to
give fans something a little new. Not that we dont want to add DA and
Ultramarines later.
In addition the chapter is going to have the good old "Fangs of Fenris" campaign
included in the same pack as the "chapter only" campaign.
ETA is "this year". We want to do it right, so do not have a public date yet.
Michael who models the terminators has been hard at work already, and we got the
first developer preview model in the game.
Expect lots of pelts, wolf claws, frost axes and so on :-)
Kalypso Media announces The Dark Eye - Demonicon is gold for Windows PCs,
and the completion of the action/RPG puts it on track for release on October
25th, with the console editions of the game to follow next year. Here are
some
screenshots and here's the announcement: Kalypso Media is pleased to
announce that the Windows PC version of The Dark Eye - Demonicon, its dark
fantasy action-RPG, has gone gold. Check out the brand new screens released
today for a further look into the deep combat system, rich environments and
gruesome monsters. Versions of The Dark Eye – Demonicon for the Xbox 360® video
game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PlayStation®3 computer
entertainment system will follow in 2014.
Demonicon returns players to the fantastical but twisted world of Aventuria, the
setting of the classic pen & paper RPG ‘The Dark Eye’. In the game, you witness
the fate of a young man named Cairon and his sister Calandra, as they struggle
with destiny, demonic forces and the harsh wastes of the Shadowlands.
The news here is good for all the patients I mentioned recently, our grandma has
been breathing without a respirator since yesterday and Hudson the wonder dog is
eating more every day and is starting to get her strength back. Probably not
coincidentally, my back has been steadily improving as well, though that's the
least of my concerns.
R.I.P.:
Kumar Pallana, star of several Wes Anderson movies.
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