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Archived News:
Ubisoft announces that South Park: The Stick of Truth is gold, and
Obsidian Entertainment's now-complete action/RPG is set for
its
scheduled release in North America on March 4th. Here's a
behind-the-scenes trailer
(NSFW) revealing the game's origins, and here's the pitch on the game:
Written and voiced by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, South
Park: The Stick of Truth is the definitive South Park experience. Arm
yourself with weapons of legend to defeat underpants gnomes, hippies and
other forces of evil. Discover the lost Stick of Truth and earn your place
at the side of Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny as their new friend. Succeed
and you shall be South Park’s savior, cementing your social status in South
Park Elementary. Fail, and you will forever be known… as a douchebag.
Continue here to read the full story.
Microsoft partner creative director Ken Lobb
spoke with Rock, Paper, Shotgun at the D.I.C.E. Summit, unequivocally
confirming Microsoft's commitment to PC gaming, something they have done
repeatedly in the past, though their track record at delivering on that
commitment is not very compelling. He explains that in the restructured
Microsoft things are different, saying they "have more support internally to
support PC more," asking our patience: "please let us continue to do that over a
five-year period so we can have real impact." However, when asked about
exclusives or upcoming PC game, he had to defer, saying "I can’t make any
announcements. But we are very dedicated to that space." He says they are
"absolutely" committed to PC even if this new resolve of theirs runs into
setbacks, and says they understand the bottom line: "The only way we can build
trust in our community is by making great games." Oddly, one of RPS's questions
invokes MS hiring former Valve employee Jason Holtman as their PC gaming honcho,
but today
Neowin reports Holtman has already parted ways with Microsoft after around
six months with the company (thanks nin via
Joystiq). This comes by way of his
LinkedIn profile, so no other details about his departure are known at this
time.
An undetermined number of layoffs hit today at Turbine, the Warner Bros.
Interactive Entertainment-owned developer of
Lord of the Rings Online. This was reported on
Gamasutra, where they have the official statement from WBIE on the matter:
"As part of our normal business process, we’re routinely looking at the
strategic alignment of our company. Unfortunately, in order for us to invest
in growth areas at Turbine, we have to eliminate some positions."
"These are always tough decisions, which we don’t approach lightly, but it’s
crucial that Turbine is structured in a way that reflects the current and
coming marketplace."
Steam News announces the
addition of user-defined tags to Steam game listings, adding another way to
discover games on the service as they continue to expand their listings. "As the
catalog of products available on Steam continues to grow, we want to ensure that
it is easy for customers to find the particular types of games or software they
are looking for," says Al Farnsworth of Valve. "With this new feature, we are
providing another powerful tool to help organize and browse products on Steam."
Here's word on the new feature, which is still in beta:
Now available in beta, Tagging gives Steam customers the ability to "Tag"
any title with genres, themes, attributes, or any other term or phrase. The
most popular tags on any given product will be surfaced on said product's
Steam page and allow users to easily find other products associated with
that same tag.
The
Lord of Ultima forums announce this browser-based, free-to-play
MMORTS is being "retired" as of May 12th after under four years of operation.
"It is always hard when we are met with such choices and the decision to retire
older games is never an easy one," EA explains. "We cannot thank those who have
supported us enough, and throughout the years of Lord of Ultima’s existence it
has been the pleasure of both past and present developers to have been on this
journey with you." Those still playing are not being offered refunds for any
purchased Funds, and all players are being provided with a code to get all four
ministers for 90 days on every single world. They also say they are looking into
how to speed progression on more recently launched worlds so they may be
completed before the end date. Thanks
The Escapist.
Dejobaan announces that Drunken
Robot Pornography will be officially released on Steam on February 19th,
which they will celebrate with an all-day twitchcast. The game is already
available on Steam as an
Early Access release, so those who plan on buying this have a week to get it for
33% off its full $14.99 price. Here's word on the game:
30-story tall giant robots. Jetpacks. Guns. It all started so innocently.
Your robot bartender, Tim, used to make the best drinks at your nightclub.
But you gave him sentience so that he could better empathize with the
customers. Struck by the world's problems, he went crazy, burned your club
to the ground, and fled with your twelve exotic robot dancers.
Weeks later, giant robots started attacking the City of Boston -- not a
coincidence! Drunken Robot Pornography (DRP) is a bullet-hell first-person
shooter for Windows. Battle giant robots -- called Titans -- as they try to
slice you apart with their lasers. Pick off their missile launchers, fry
away their carbon fiber armor, and tear off their claws, leaving them
writhing.
Steam News announces the
release of Love at First
Bite DLC for The
Typing of The Dead: Overkill. Here's word, faster than you can type the
quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog:
Roses are red, violets are blue, mutants are ugly, so what do we do? Well,
this time players will need to type increasingly more overblown and
contrived sweet nothings in order to repel hordes of amorous mutants queuing
up to give them a love bite they’ll never forget.
Irrational Games now offers
a new video pulls back
the soggy curtain for a look at Burial at Sea – Episode Two, their
just-released DLC for BioShock Infinite. Word is: "Go behind-the-scenes
of BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea -- Episode Two with creative director Ken
Levine and the voice cast behind some of the major characters from both BioShock
and BioShock Infinite."
Continue here to read the full story.
CVG has posted a new
version of the Lords of the Fallen gameplay video they already
posted, with a brand-new voiceover where Executive Producer Tomasz Gop narrates
the gameplay footage to help us better understand what's going on in the
upcoming action/RPG.
Continue here to read the full story.
- The Meteorite Bundle on
Indie Royale.
- PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+ on
Steam. Save 50%.
- Pid + Shelter on
GOG.com. Save 75-85%.
Sorry about the extended downtime today. The good news is that a concrete
problem was identified, as a fan on a power supply had failed, so we're hopeful
that this clears up the unexplained mini-outages we've recently suffered that
lead to this point. We should be able to tell soon enough, in the meantime I'll
keep my fingers crossed. The bad news is that searching for things on the site
is currently wonky, and I'm not sure when to expect that to be fixed.
Link of the Day:
So a
GoPro gets dropped out of a plane..... Thanks Ant.
R.I.P.:
Sid Caesar Dead, Iconic Comedian was 91.
Konami is now offering playable demos for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2
in North and South America, offering the chance to sample MercurySteam's
imminent action/adventure sequel that puts the player in the role of Dracula,
everyone's favorite public domain vampire. The Windows PC demo can be found
on Steam, while the
previous-generation console editions are on their respective marketplaces, and
word is: "The demo allows users to become familiar with the many new advances
including the game's all-new controllable camera, vast locations, and intuitive
combat elements." Here's more:
The specially-tailored demo gives players control over Dracula as his castle
comes under siege from the Brotherhood of Light and their armies. The demo
acts as a prelude to the full game, allowing the player to become familiar
with wielding the assortment of weapons such as the energy-replenishing Void
Sword and the armor-destroying Chaos Claws. It also showcases a huge Titan
combat sequence, wherein a gigantic enemy creation forms a moving location
during the game, with Dracula scaling the moving behemoth as it assails his
castle.
NAMCO BANDAI, the artist soon to soon to be known as BANDAI
NAMCO, announces an early unlock perk as a bonus with the Black Armor Edition
and Collector's Editions of Dark Souls II, their action/RPG
sequel: NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. today announced that fans who
purchase the DARK SOULS™ II Black Armor Edition or the DARK SOULS II Collector’s
Edition will receive an exclusive voucher* allowing players to unlock early use
of weapons contained in the Black Armor Weapons Pack. These items will help
players as they begin their journey through the sequel of what critics and
gamers call one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences in video game
history. Fans will want to secure their early access to the Black Armor Weapons
Pack by preordering the Dark Souls II Black Armor or Collector’s Editions. DARK
SOULS II will be available in the Americas on March 11, 2014 for the
PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and the Xbox 360 games and
entertainment system from Microsoft. Dark Souls II for PC will launch in the
Americas shortly after the console version becomes available to consumers.
Hellacious enemies and unforgiving traps plague the dark and foreboding path set
forth for DARK SOULS II players. A helping hand is rare and much appreciated for
battle-weary adventurers in this lost land. Players who purchase the DARK SOULS
II Black Armor Edition or the DARK SOULS II Collector’s Edition will receive
early access to five special weapons and shields in addition to the normal array
of starter weapons on offer at the beginning of their journey.
A tweet
from Kurt Sutter has word from the Sons of Anarchy showrunner that there
will "definitely" be a Sons of Anarchy video game, though it's not clear how
this relates to the Sons of Anarchy game project that was declared
"dead" well over a year ago. What he says is: "i cannot give you anymore
details, but i will tell you that -- there will definitely be an SOA GAME. and
it's pretty f*cking awesome" (thanks
GameSpot). One
subsequent
tweet has more information on the TV tie-in as well as TMI: no, it's
not a board game. :) 1st person, action adventure. HD graphics. it represents
the evolution of gaming. i'm hard just typing this.
Titanfall closed beta testing will commence on Friday for Windows and
Xbox One, even though the Titanfall beta signups that
began last night note that those accepted will be notified by February 17th.
Here's a new "sizzle"
trailer for the beta of the mech shooter, and here's word: The future
of first person multiplayer action is upon us, and now’s your chance to be among
the first to fall for Titanfall. Starting today, Respawn Entertainment and EA
are inviting gamers to sign up and register for a chance to be a part of the
upcoming Titanfall closed beta, a large-scale event coming February 14 to Xbox
One and PC. For complete details on the beta and to register, please visit
www.Titanfall.com/beta.
Already the winner of more than 80 awards from critics around the world,
Titanfall is one of the most anticipated games of the year. Fans around the
world from Tokyo to Seattle to London and beyond have been impressed with its
thrilling and dynamic multiplayer gameplay featuring elite assault pilots and
agile, heavily armored 24-foot tall titans.
The Titanfall beta will include three game modes – Attrition, Hardpoint
Domination and Last Titan Standing. In Attrition, teams win by eliminating
anyone or anything on the opposing side – pilots, titans and AI soldiers. In
Hardpoint Domination, teams will capture and hold three hardpoints throughout
the map to earn points and secure victory. And in Last Titan Standing, everyone
on both teams starts with a titan in a round-based mode that ends when one team
has lost all of their titans. There’s no respawning and no replacement titans
can be called down.
Continue here to read the full story.
Undead Labs
announces Lifeline is the name of the second expansion for State of
Decay, their entropic open world survival/horror game in a concession to
those who figure this out already (thanks
GameSpot). The title is about all they are prepared to reveal right now,
though they do confirm the add-on will also include one new map: No, there
is no final release date. We are just now digging into the internal playtest
process (which is how our favorite stalkers players on Steam found out about the
title a couple of days ago – with PC testing, we are playing using Steam, so we
can experience it the way you do). We’re not yet ready to discuss features or
make promises. All we can tell you is that it will offer you a new way to play
your favorite survival game, that we intend to launch on PC and the Xbox 360 at
the same time, and that yes, it will broaden your horizons by a few kilometers.
Fine, I’ll say it straight up: There’s a new map, okay? ;)
Steam now offers the
Headhunter 4: Wedding Day Massacre pack for Borderlands 2, planned as
the penultimate release for the role-laying shooter sequel (thanks Neutronbeam).
Here's word: Love is a battlefield at Mad Moxxi’s request in the Wedding
Day Massacre. Help bring two star-crossed lovers together in the hopes of
unifying the rival Zaford and Hodunk clans, and find yourself running into some
luck (not to mention new heads and skins) along the way in this new Headhunter
add-on.
A
Steam Community announcement reveals the release of the
7th Legion DLC for
Defiance, Trion's MMORPG. Word is: "Get the Defiance® 7th Legion DLC to join the
elite forces of Yoshida Hiro. The New Frontier is at war: Empires grow, and
displaced evils look for new victims. As a member of the 7th Legion, you’ll
fight to liberate Paradise with new weapons, armor, and more!"
Kalypso Media's Kasedo Games announces that Early Access to the beta of Hegemony
Rome: The Rise of Caesar is now available
on Steam. A
new video
features the developers from Longbow Games explaining their project, and they
are also planning a couple of livestream developer walkthroughs on the
Kalypso Media twitch channel,
the first today at 2:00 pm EST, and the second tomorrow at 8:00 pm EST.
The Games in 2014 BAFTA Award
nominees are now revealed, showing what games are up for these British
Academy awards. Here are their best game nominees (with some placeholders for
the developers), where BioShock Infinite is somewhat conspicuously absent
after being nominated in that category for the D.I.C.E. and Golden Joystick
awards: Tearaway
Development Team
The Last of Us
Development Team
Grand Theft Auto V
Development Team
Super Mario 3D World
Development Team
Papers, Please
Lucas Pope
An
interview with Rich Hilleman on Rock, Paper, Shotgun that was conducted with
the EA chief creative officer at the D.I.C.E. Summit. They try to hold his feet
to the fire over customer dissatisfaction with Battlefield 4, but he will
have none of it, saying the game is "exceedingly successful" from both sales and
gameplay perspectives, and that the amount of "noise" about problems is a
function of how many players the game has attracted: RPS: SimCity and
BF4 both had terrible launches. SimCity didn’t work for more than a month, and
BF4 still has issues. Surely you’re overhauling how you approach launches
internally from now on?
Hilleman: I’m not sure I accept your premise. Battlefield 4 has been an
exceedingly successful product on both consoles and PC. From a sales
perspective, from a gameplay perspective.
RPS: Sure, BF4 is fundamentally a good game, but you can’t just write off
months of glitches and server issues. Some people straight up could not play for
the first couple weeks.
Hilleman: I think there was a lot of noise about the game, but some of that is a
function of your surface area. The more customers you have, the more noise
becomes available. We did things wrong. We know that. We’re gonna fix those
things. We’re gonna try to be smart about what customers want in the
future.
The Rust website has
details on a new "CheatPunch" an admittedly "stopgap" measure to address the
rampant cheating in the Early Access version of the survival game (thanks
The Escapist). Here's how this works: We made our own anti cheat
called CheatPunch last week. We ran it over the weekend. 4,621 people have been
detected and banned.
We don’t know how stable it’s going to be, so we’re testing it out on our
official servers to make sure it all works before forcing it on everyone else.
If you get kicked from the official servers with the message that you’ve been
banned then you have been caught. You’re a naughty boy. You know what you have
done. You won’t get unbanned. We know it was your 9 year old cousin. We know
your computer got hijacked. We know that the CIA is getting you banned from all
your games on Steam so you will join them in the hunt for aliens. We’re aiming
to get a site set up for people that have been banned so they can go and see
proof that they’ve been caught.
CheatPunch isn’t the answer to all of our prayers. It’s a stop gap solution.
It’s going to get rid of a bunch of cheaters, but it’s not hard to get around
(by design). We fully expect cheats to be touted as ‘CheatPunch proof’ quite
soon. That’s cool. We’re never going to be finished fighting.
If server owners want to run it on their servers they can do by updating to the
latest version and running with “-cheatpunch” on the command line.
A recent trailer on IGN
from Lords of the Fallen runs over 11 minutes, including about seven
minutes of gameplay from the upcoming action/RPG (thanks PHJF). IGN describes
the experience like so: "It's a Zelda/Dark Souls/Darksiders mash-up. Yes, it
looks as cool as it sounds." Continue here to read the full story.
Well the good news is that
the chili I made over the weekend turned out pretty great: I would say the
addition of the lamb made this my best batch of "red" (mine is actually brown)
ever. My concern about the bones from the cut up lamb were valid, however, as I
found a bone chip to spit out along the way. There didn't seem any danger of
swallowing it, but I don't want to count on that in the future, so I guess I
need to comb through the chili even more carefully before serving it, and going
forward, work out a better way to work around the bones if I use similar hunks
of lamb in the future.
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