|
|
 |
Archived News:
Former Epic designer Cliff Bleszinski tells the
Pointless podcast he's
planning a return to PC games, and apparently hates his hyper-scripted Gears
of War third-person shooter series, saying he is making a first-person
shooter because "it's in my DNA," and that he doesn't "ever want to make a game
that has a cutscene or a scripted sequence in it ever again." Here's his take on
the game: "I have a slide deck, I have a pitch, I have concept art, I know
pretty much what I want to do," Bleszinski said. "It will be a PC experience
that will hearken back to a certain type of game that we cut our teeth on." So
there it is, Jazz Jackrabbit 3! Thanks
Eurogamer.
The
Steam Universe Steam Community page announces Steam Machines and the Steam
Controller should begin shipping on Friday to those selected to test the new
systems (thanks Ant). That will also mark the debut of SteamOS, which will be
released to the public, though they seem to feel it would be best to leave this
alone for now unless you are a true Linux ninja. Here's word: The 300
selected beta testers are being notified today (at about 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time)
that they’ll soon receive Steam hardware and SteamOS for testing. Each selected
user is also being awarded a special badge on their Steam Community profile,
indicating that they’re a beta participant. In addition, a number of games that
run natively on SteamOS are being added to each selected user’s library.
We’ve had to make the difficult decision to limit our beta to the U.S. only,
because of regulatory hurdles. This was not our original plan, and it means we
can’t collect beta feedback from Steam customers world-wide, which is pretty
unfortunate. All things considered, we’re sure it was the right decision,
because the alternative was to delay the whole beta beyond the point when we’d
be able to incorporate any feedback into the 2014 products. This decision only
affects Valve’s 300 prototype units; the commercial versions of Steam Machines
that are for sale in 2014 won’t be affected by this. More information on those
will be announced at CES on January 6.
SteamOS will be made available when the prototype hardware ships. It will be
downloadable by individual users and commercial OEMs. (But unless you’re an
intrepid Linux hacker already, we’re going to recommend that you wait until
later in 2014 to try it out.) We’ll post info soon about that. Oh, and stay
tuned for the in-home streaming beta to begin soon, too!
Brian Fargo of inXile entertainment
tweets
that the beta of Wasteland 2 is now available to backers of their RPG
sequel. He points the way to
the Kickstarter update on the topic which helpfully warns: "PLEASE DO READ
THIS UPDATE BEFORE YOU START TESTING." The update notes that no restrictions are
being made on sharing impressions of this, so expect previews and gameplay
videos to follow.
Gearbox Software announces How Marcus Saved Mercenary Day will be available
this coming Tuesday as the next Headhunter pack for Borderlands 2, Gearbox's
role-playing shooter sequel. Here's a bit: Hi! I’m Drew Mobley, one of the
Gearbox designers working on the Headhunter add-ons for Borderlands 2. Today,
I’m happy to announce that the third add-on in the Headhunter series, How Marcus
Saved Mercenary Day, will be available beginning December 17 for just USD $2.99
/ GBP £2.39 / EUR 2,99 € on PC and Mac via Steam, Xbox 360 via Xbox Live
Marketplace and PlayStation 3* via PlayStation Network!
In How Marcus Saved Mercenary Day, snowmen, holiday jingles and an ugly holiday
sweater await in the snowy village of Gingerton all while a train full of
Marcus’s guns goes missing. This forces Marcus to enlist the Vault Hunters to
search the town for the lost shipment – leading to a showdown against the
terrifying Abominable Mister Tinder Snowflake. This fight took a lot of extra
effort from our animators and visual effect artists to get his movements just
right, so we’re really excited for you guys to finally experience it!
A playable demo of Battle Worlds: Kronos is now available
on Steam, offering the
chance to sample this recently released turn-based strategy game. Here's how the
developers describe their game: "Battle World: Kronos is a classic turn-based
strategy game in the tradition of Battle Isle, Advance Wars and Panzer General.
Have you ever wondered what games like that would look like today? Well, we did.
As a result, we decided to develop Battle Worlds: Kronos." Thanks Frans.
Update: There is also a standalone version of the demo that can be
downloaded from the German Battle
Worlds: Kronos website (thanks The Patches Scrolls). Also, apologies for listing the wrong
genre at first, this is now corrected.
Kotaku reports being in possession of casting documents for Fallout 4,
which they say they've been able to confirm these are real, which seems to go
without saying, because nobody would go to
a lot of effort to make a Fallout 4
hoax. Head over if you are interested in some concrete facts about the game,
its setting in Boston, and a character described as "a cross between Buddy
Holly and Vin Diesel."
The
Pinkerton Road forums reveal that the upcoming Gabriel Knight: Sins of the
Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition will not be released for Linux as originally
planned (thanks Xil via
[Phoronix].
This is the doing of rights-holder Activision, but even the developers at
Phoenix Online Studios are at a loss as to why: Figured this deserved its
own thread. I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but my previous statement
that GK would be available on Linux turns out to be incorrect. I can't even
begin to imagine why, but Activision isn't allowing the game to be made for that
platform. Just PC, Mac, Android, and iOS devices.
The Elder Scrolls Online website has the news that April 4, 2014 will be the
Windows and OS X launch date for The Elder Scrolls Online, saying the MMO
installment in Bethesda's role-playing series will follow on PlayStation 4 and
Xbox One will follow in June. The update includes a
"War in Cyrodiil" trailer
and a message from Game Director Matt Firor and here's a bit from that: Game
development is coming along very well. We completed major systems development,
and are focusing on making this the Elder Scrolls game you expect: polishing the
hundreds and hundreds of hours of content, making combat even more fun and
responsive, fixing quest issues, and much, much more. In fact, we plan on
spending the next few months before launch reacting to the latest feedback from
internal and external testers and gameplay data we have collected.
As some of you know, we’ve been in beta testing for about a year now, leading up
to our most recent test in late November where we had over 300,000 people in the
game over a 48 hour period. We’ve had approximately 4 million people sign up for
beta and that number continues to grow. We hope that just about every one of you
who have signed up for beta will get an invitation to play sometime between now
and the weeks before launch. These tests are very important, not only for
gameplay feedback, but also to test our infrastructure. Beta tests can sometimes
be a little rough when we are testing some systems for the first time with large
numbers of players. So thank you to all who have participated for your
understanding and support. It is very much appreciated.
Worldwide demand for The Elder Scrolls Online is extraordinarily high. This
means we need to do a staggered rollout of the different versions of the game to
spread out the initial service load and ensure an enjoyable, smooth gameplay
experience. It is not only a game we are launching – it is a large online
service as well, and our number one priority is to ensure a trouble-free, stable
rollout for everyone.
Continue here to read the full story.
EA's Battlelog now offers the "Battlefield 4 Top Issues Tracker," which will
can show players suffering with bugs and other issues in Battlefield 4
that DICE is aware of their problems, and helps keep track of when they will be
solved (thanks
GameSpot). They note this is the first time they've made their bug-tracking
public, adding that this is not a comprehensive list, and that they are working
on smaller fixes as well. Here's the list of problems that are still awaiting
fixes or that list the confusing "Fix live/in next patch" status:
- EMP blur effect
- One-hit kill bug where players sometimes take
damage twice from the same bullet
- Loss of SP progress that can happen after quit and
restart on PS4
- Game Mode ribbons are counted twice
- 4X damage from miniguns when using Defensive
specialization
- Players sometimes get stuck in kill cam after
revive
- Bug accounting for a majority of crashes on
next-gen/PC
- Players sometimes become spectators while still
alive in Defuse mode
- Players sometimes get stuck in revive screen
- Desynchronized game world where objects have
different states for different players
- Join queue disabled on consoles
- Bug accounting for a large amount of crashes on
X360
- Squad spawn sometimes positions you under the
terrain
- Hit markers and crosshairs sometimes disappear
- Rubber banding issues for some players with solid
Internet connections
- Some instances of no hit effects and no damage to
opponent in your sights
- Damage received is sometimes delayed by a few
frames
- Incorrect matchmaking on Xbox One
- Server browser filters are not fully functioning
- Sudden frame rate drops during certain in-game
events
- The "Sound Loop Crash"
A
Kickstarter campaign is underway hoping to raise $20,000 to develop
Jumpman Forever, an authorized sequel to the classic platformer from back in
the Commodore 64 days. The plan is for a multiplatform release, with Windows, OS
X, Ouya (first), and mobile support planned, and possibly other systems. Word
is: "Ready for some real retro action? We’re not talking a game that just
happens to use the trend of “chunky pixels” to take a modern game style into the
past, we’re talking about a true retro experience from a game that hasn’t seen a
true sequel since the 80’s - Jumpman for the C64 / Atari / Apple ][ era." They
offer a work-in-progress trailer to show the state of the project as of two days
ago.
The Bedlam: The Game website has
details on Bedlam, a first-person shooter coming in August 2014 to
Windows, OS X, and Linux from U.K. developer RedBedlam. The game is based on
the
novel of the same name by iconoclastic Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre.
Here are some
screenshots and other images, and here's word: Developed in
association with Standfast Interactive, the generation-spanning FPS takes
players into a unique world of action and intrigue, visiting a range of genres
old and new, from arcade platformer classics to modern RTS and shooter
environments, all from a first person perspective and with a smattering of
Brookmyre’s trademark dark humour.
Christopher Brookmyre has written 18 critically acclaimed novels and won
numerous awards for his works, also appearing regularly on primetime radio and
TV. His love of videogames has manifested in countless references and now, for
the first time, in a fully-formed first person shooter that itself pays tribute
to a wealth of iconic titles.
The videogame Bedlam mirrors the events from the book, which will be published
in paperback on January 21st 2014. The plot sees the player, a regular man with
a regular job, subjected to a variety of tests only to wake in a videogame world
in which he is not in fact the mythical hero so often seen in gaming, but a
grunt designed purely to be cannon fodder for someone else. In attempting to
find out how this has happened and what strange space he is in, the player
progresses through a variety of familiar gaming worlds, relentlessly pursued by
an enigmatic predator, an organisation known as Integrity that will be rid of
him at all costs...
Developer GameArt Studio is now conducting open beta testing of Quantum Rush,
their upcoming futuristic online racing game. Word is: "The beta testers are a
wild mix of gaming journalists, racing game experts and gamers from all over the
world and they have the unique opportunity to enter the action-packed world of
the brand new 3D racer, put every feature to the test and get their first
impression of the game." Those interested in participating should head over to
the Quantum Rush website and
register for their newsletter, which will provide a chance of being accepted
into the beta.
This new trailer
offers a look at Kill the Bad Guy, the recently announced game that involves
tracking down the villainous types that are hiding all around us in plain site
(ever wonder about that quiet guy in the cubicle near the break room?). The
game's first trailer was live action, but this one uses gameplay, showing
real-time strategic puzzle gameplay and an unusual art style. Here's word: "Exkee
invites you to practise the art of assassination in an original game from its
'divine' gameplay and its bloody monochromic artistic direction. KTBG will allow
you to organize discreetly the removal of former gangsters, old mafiosos, war
criminals, skillfully hidden among us." Continue here to read the full story.
Here's a launch trailer
for Teslagrad, paving the way for Friday's release of Rain Games'
upcoming puzzle platformer. Here's an explanation: "The Rain Games team is going
full Steam ahead with Teslagrad release! To accompany our first release we
invite you to discover the launch trailer of the game, which immerses you in the
heart of the Tesla Tower, taking the role of a young Teslamancer and guiding him
in his quest to reveal the great injustice that caused him to be the last of his
kind. Join this adventure and let your creativity take you into the forbidden
depths of the gloomy tower, and defeat all challenges that stand in your way."
Continue here to read the full story.
- CM Storm Ceres 300 & 500 on
Vortez.
- Cooler Master CM Storm Reaper Gaming Mouse on
Mad Shrimps.
- Cooler Master Nepton 280L Liquid CPU Cooler on
Benchmark Reviews.
- Corsair H75 on
ocaholic.
- Feenix Nascita 2014 Laser Gaming Mouse on
TweakTown.
- Gigabyte G1.Sniper A88X Mainboard on
Technic3D. German.
- HIS Radeon R9 280X iPower IceQ X2 Turbo Graphics Card on
pcGameware.
- Lian Li PC-Q28 on
Computing on
Demand.
- Sony Xperia Z Ultra 6.4-Inch Android Smartphone on
MEGATechNews.
- MSI GeForce GTX 780 Ti Gaming on
Guru3D.
- Netgear ProSAFE XS712T L2+ 10GbE Switch on
TweakTown.
- NZXT Kraken G10 AIO Graphics Card Adapter on
Pure Overclock.
- NZXT Kraken G10 GPU Water Cooler Review on an AMD Radeon R9 290X
on
Legit Reviews.
- Protostack ATmega32A Development Kit on
TweakTown.
- Sony Xperia Z Ultra 6.4-Inch Android Smartphone on
MEGATechNews.
- Synology DiskStation DS214 & DS214play on
Legion Hardware.
- Thermaltake Commander F5 Multi-Fan Controller on
Neoseeker.
- Toshiba MQ01ACF050 500GB SATA III HDD on
Nikk Tech.
- Turtle Beach PS4, PS3 & Mobile Ear Force PX4 Wireless Gaming Headset
on
eTeknix.
- Blade Hunter is now
accepting alpha testers for this browser-based free-to-play MMO brawler…
The snow we were expecting earlier this week showed up yesterday, but it was pretty
uneventful; the snowfall was light, and the temperatures were just on the border
of freezing, so it melted pretty readily. This in a nutshell is the mixed bag of
winter for me: I hate the cold, but even if it has to be shoveled, I love the
snow. Who's up for a hot toddy?
Oh yeah, and happy 11/12/13 to those using European notation. I told you your time would come! :)
|
Twitter 
