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Archived News:
We still don't know if Twentieth Century Fox's
recent trademark for Alien:
Isolation will actually result in a game, but we do know what the cover will
look like. At least that's the case if
this post on NeoGAF is correct about the image it includes being leaked the
cover art for a new game from SEGA based on the sci-fi series. There is also
another piece of concept art proving the old adage that in space no one can hear
you scream "why is everything so green?" Thanks
Polygon.
Ubisoft announces the Blackbeard's Wrath DLC for Assassin's Creed IV:
Black Flag will be released tomorrow for the Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox 360
editions of the stealth sequel, while the patches for the PS3 and PS4 editions
are expected Wednesday. Here's word on the DLC, which is included in season
passes: Three new characters join the hunt, Blackbeard, the Jaguar and The
Orchid, each character bringing their unique skill set to battle for the title
of best assassin.
Blackbeard, wielding a sword and a short temper is not to be trifled with. His
reputation as a feared pirate is justly received and his preferred kill moves
include using his tremendous strength to throw his targets off balance and then
quickly finishing them with one clean strike.
The Orchid, a Templar-friendly deadly assassin grew up in China, serving as a
military advisor in the Quing dynasty where she honed her murderous skills. She
executes opponents swiftly and gracefully with her katana, an extension of her
mind and body.
The Jaguar, Cuali, an Aztec warrior from Mexico, took to the sea to fight
against the Spanish conquest of Central America. A fighter, he survived the
destruction of his community and joined forces with a growing contingency of
native Templars who sought renewed peace and order. Driven by a mystical force,
The Jaguar fights like his namesake, striking swiftly and quietly with his
preferred weapon, a discreet axe.
All three characters are available in Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag multiplayer
starting Tuesday, where they will join the hunt for survival.
The
Battlefield Battlelog has details on a new patch that's now live for the
Windows PC edition of Battlefield 4, DICE's military shooter sequel
(thanks Michael). Word is this fixes bounding box lag when changing stance among
other things: Dec 9 PC Game Update Notes
Shot behind cover when changing stance
Sometimes the character stance could get into a multiple frame desync and be
part of the problem where you got shot even though your character was actually
behind cover. This would mostly affect players doing transitions into crouch and
prone as well as moving when crouched. The impact was smaller in a standing
stance. This bug fix eliminates this particular desync issue.
We have also increased the camera height when crouching and moving to more
accurately reflect the actual height of your soldier in that stance (the first
person camera was too low when crouching and moving, resulting in that you had a
poor representation of how much of your soldier that was actually out of cover.)
- Fixed one of the most frequently occurring client
crashes
- Fixed broken collision on containers with open
doors. The bug previously made grenades bounce back even though the doors
were open.
- Fixed a bug in Defuse mode where defenders could
win the round by killing all the attackers without disarming the bomb, if
the bomb was disarmed in the previous round.
- Miscellaneous stability fixes further reducing the
number of client crashes
- Fixed side gunner jitter when aiming in attack
boats & transport helicopters
- Fixed some instances of frame rate drops when
shooting at large Levolution objects after they have been destroyed (like
the radar dish on Rogue Transmission)
- Fixed broken aiming for passengers on the China
Rising dirt bike
- Fixed a bug where the sound when capturing a flag
was not playing correctly
- Removed a bug that would double save during MP
round transition and SP level transition. This fix will reduce the
occurrence of corrupted save files.
BattleGoat Studios has commenced Early Access for
Supreme Ruler 1936 on
Steam, offering the chance for those interested in the game to get access to
the beta test by preordering the strategy sequel. They remind us the beta "is
missing some features, content, and graphical updates, and other elements are
in-progress or 'under construction'," while offering this description of the
game: Supreme Ruler 1936 is Real Time Geo-Political Strategy Game for PC
and Mac. Take control of a nation in the World War II era and guide it through a
significant Military Campaign, or attempt one of many Set-Piece Historical
Scenarios. Players can also customize their play experience with the Sandbox
Mode and play as any Nation with their own preferred Victory Condition.
The Dota 2
blog announces the Frostivus festival is coming (for the lost of us?). There
are details on the Frostivus page,
but things are still pretty vague for now. They do mention this is connected to
the "longest night of the year," so this is likely to surround the winter
solstice, which is December 21st. Unless it's
cancelled like last year.
- Conquest: Frontier Wars on
GOG.com. Save
60%.
- The Darkness II on
Steam. Save 75%.
Thanks Acleacius and j.c.f.
The
NYTimes.com,
theguardian.com, and
ProPublica report that the U.S. National Security Agency's spying on
citizens extends to participation in online games. This is according to
documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, which say U.S. and British
spies have infiltrated various games in toon form to keep tabs on the goings-on
since at least 2007. They have a specific statement on World of Warcraft: "We
are unaware of any surveillance taking place," said a spokesman for Blizzard
Entertainment. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or
permission." Word is this surveillance extended to Xbox LIVE, but their big
focus seems to be Second Life, and they were apparently so many CIA, FBI and
Pentagon spies caught up in Linden Labs' metaverse a "deconfliction" group was
required to keep them out of each other's virtual hair (we always wondered how
that "game" reported such high user counts). Apparently they fell for some
signature Second Life hype: "Second Life has proven that virtual worlds of
social networking are a reality: come hear Cory tell you why!" Linden Labs solicited
the NSA in an invitation to discuss the game's espionage potential with Linden
CTO (and former Navy officer with NSA contacts) Cory Ondrejka, promising virtual
worlds gave the government the opportunity "to understand the motivation,
context and consequent behaviors of non-Americans through observation, without
leaving U.S. soil." Current Linden Labs execs declined the opportunity to
comment on this, and these days Ondrejka is helping safeguard our privacy at
Facebook. They offer details on another such operation which may have resulted
in a lucrative deal for another contractor to monitor activity within games. And
while the Brits did bust up a credit card crime ring in Second Life, for the
most part, this initiative has been about as productive towards national
security as one might imagine a bunch of spooks playing MMOGs would
be: The documents do not cite any counterterrorism successes from the
effort, and former American intelligence officials, current and former gaming
company employees and outside experts said in interviews that they knew of
little evidence that terrorist groups viewed the games as havens to communicate
and plot operations.
Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the
players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the
Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone
Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret,
there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll
avatar.”
GOG.com
announces a new money-back guarantee policy for games purchased through their
digital marketplace with irretractable problems. This is now in effect, and also
applies retroactively to games purchased within the past 30 days: So, you
bought a game on GOG.com and you've run into some trouble launching and playing
it on your system, despite the fact it meets the specs we've put on the game's
catalog page? This happens rarely, as our test lab does its best to assure your
experience with our titles is as smooth as possible. But it does happen. And
when it does, we want to give you the best support you'll ever get from an
on-line store. Just navigate to our Support section--it's quite possible that
the solution to your problem is already posted there. If not, just fill in a
ticket describing your troubles and our top men will do their best to fix it all
for you, so you can enjoy your purchase.
But what if they cannot find a solution? If such a rare event should occur,
we'll give you your money back. Simple as that. If you buy a game on GOG.com and
find that it doesn't work properly on your system, and our support cannot fix
the problem, you get a full refund. It's a worldwide guarantee, and you have
whole 30 days after the purchase date, to contact us about the refund.
There's even more! If you bought a game by mistake, or simply changed your mind
about a purchase, you can get a full refund within 14 days, as long as the game
wasn't downloaded. If in any doubt about our refund policies, please consult our
FAQ.
We hope our Worldwide Money Back Guarantee will make you feel secure while you
expand your DRM-free catalog on GOG.com. Having that said, we're confident that
our titles won't give you any trouble in 99.9% cases!
NOTICE:
Even though this policy is introduced today, its effect goes back 30 days. If
you bought a game within the last 30 days and have any of the trouble described
here, contact us! We have you covered.
The new GfK Chart-track charts are online showing the bestselling games for the
past week in the U.K. It's basically just a re-shuffle of the deck on the
full-price PC chart, where Football Manager 2014 remains at number
one. There's a little more movement on
the all-platforms/all prices chart, as Gran Turismo 6 races in at
number eight. Here's this week's dense data dump: With both new consoles
off and running it's no change for the Top 3 with Activision Blizzard at No1
with 'Call of Duty: Ghosts' (+2%), EA at No2 with 'FIFA 14' (-15%) and EA at No3
with 'Battlefield 4' (-35%).
Ubisoft climb 1 place to No4 with 'Assassin's Creed IV' (-15%) and Rockstar/Take
2 climb 2 places to No5 with 'Grand Theft Auto V' (+19%). There's no change at
No6 with Warner's 'Lego Marvel Superheroes' (-13%) and Ubisoft climb 2 places
with 'Just Dance 2014' at No7 (+70%). The lone new entry at No8 within the All
Formats Top 40 is Sony's 'Gran Turismo 6' for PS3. It's been 3 years since 'Gran
Turismo 5' on PS3 and that title marked the highpoint for the series in terms of
week 1 sales (selling close to 5 times the amount shown for GT6). But of course,
consumers have a new Sony console under the TV right now, or are considering a
PS4 purchase right now, which will affect GT 6's sales. Plenty of titles within
the Top 40 have moved up a few places thanks to retailer promotions this week,
for example Take 2's 'WWE 2K14' up 8 places to No14 (+191%) and Sony's
'LittleBigPlanet PS Vita', re-entering at No38 (+116%).
The heavy snowstorms that rocked the midwest last week were supposed to bury the
east coast by now, but the closer the storms came, the more conservative the
forecasts became, and we ended up with a pretty uneventful rainstorm here,
rather than a blizzard. The effect on yesterday's football games was fantastic,
though, as every snow game turned out to be pretty memorable. If I had my way,
every NFL team would play in a dome that had snowmakers on the roof so we could
have such conditions for every game of the season.
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