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Archived News:
A new Superpower For Hire
trailer is now available to help set the tone for the next installment in
the Call of Duty series of military shooters. The clip looks at the rise of
private military corporations, or PMCs, asking the ominous question: "What
happens when the highest bidder becomes the world's next superpower?" The answer
may not be far off, as they say to watch out for the world reveal of the next
CoD (Call of Dollars?) on May 4th. Continue here to read the full story.
The
Defiance website announces Trion's TV tie-in MMOFPS is going
free-to-play as of June 4th. They outline what they are giving to owners of
boxed copies of the game to compensate for the purchase, and the following F2P
plans: Today we’re excited to announce that Trion Worlds’ post-apocalyptic
massively co-op online cyberwestern shooter will be adding a new descriptor to
its already meaty description: Defiance is going to become free-to-play.
Starting June 4 on PC and mid-July on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, players will
be able to download the Defiance client and experience the entire Bay Area
storyline, original end-game content, and future missions completely for free.
This may be cause for some concern from our current ark hunters, and that’s
understandable as we haven’t detailed how we’re going to treat you, our frontier
pioneers, like the wasteland kings and queens you are.
You’ll be glad to hear that all Defiance owners (existing badland adventurers
such as yourselves) will enjoy more of everything than the greenhorns emerging
from dropships and taking their first shaky footsteps in the Bay Area. You’ll
continue to enjoy more character slots, loadouts, ark keycode capacity, and
inventory slots than free-to-play accounts. For those looking to expand what
they already have, we’ll even be offering increases to these limits.
The
Bohemia Interactive website lays out a roadmap for Arma III through
the end of next year, discussing plans to update the base version of the
military shooter sequel, release DLC, and also to issue a full expansion. Here's
how they sum things up: Overall, we're excited about Arma 3's 2014/15
roadmap and the great new content, gameplay and refinements it offers. Although
things can change, we've tried to reveal the parts we're most sure about and, of
course, there's more in the works! Often overlapping with our own wishes and
desires, we're investigating a range of features based on public feedback, which
we're trying to prioritise appropriately. Alongside our goal to keep the A3
platform stable, we've got to take time and resource limitations into
consideration; however, where we can implement innovative and valuable ideas, we
will!
Above, we've identified several areas that we'd like to expand upon in future.
Short term, that means sharing details about Steam Workshop support and our Game
Launcher, introducing our strategy to keep the player-base contiguous, and
presenting the key features of the free Bootcamp Update. Longer term, we'll go
into more depth about the DLCs themselves and sketch out our intentions for the
expansion. Until then, we'd like to thank our players for supporting Arma 3, and
wish you all the best on the battlefield!
Trademarks for No One Lives Forever and the other titles in the NOLF series were
filed last week by Night Dive Studios,
a company that republishes PC classics such as System Shock 2,
reports Siliconera. The filings are dated April 26th, and also cover The
Operative, Contract J.A.C.K., and A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way.
Just over a year ago Activision
admitted it probably no longer owned the rights to Monolith's spy shooter
franchise, and did not know who did. Siliconera contacted Night Dive Studios to
ask if this meant they were republishing the series, and the company's response
is somewhat cryptic: "At this time we are unable to comment on future plans. I
would like to add that our team has a great fondness for these games and our
hope is that they will one day be re-released."
Though it's been available for some time via Early Access, Sir, You Are Being
Hunted is now out of beta and the stealth survival game is now officially
released. A new version
1.0 release trailer is online to celebrate the news, and you can find where
to buy the game through its
official
website. Here's a description: Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a
procedurally-generated first-person game of stealth and survival set in a very
British world where robots hunt humans for sport. You must use your wits and
possibly a flask of tea to stay alive.
Sir is a sandbox experience, where each playthrough is completely different,
thanks to our British Countryside Generator. Choose how you escape from the
islands: using violence, or using trickery and stealth. This brutal and
unforgiving test of your mettle is now available for Windows, OSX, and
Linux.
Continue here to read the full story.
Jet Car Stunts is now available
on Steam, offering a
TrackMania-style stunt racer featuring three different game modes. Word is:
"Feel the rush of adrenaline on 36 tracks with lots of challenges, huge jumps
and moving platforms and spirals. JET CAR STUNTS has three different game modes
tasking players to finish the race using boost, sheer skill and ability." It's
not noted on the Steam page, but they tell us: "As a very special gift
bitComposer Games will give away a free copy of the Arcade Space Shooter ION
ASSAULT HD to all those who purchase JET CAR STUNTS until the 8th of May." A
new gameplay trailer
is also now online. Continue here to read the full story.
A
Kickstarter update for
Infinite Space 3: Sea of Stars has the latest from
Digital Eel on their upcoming roguelike-like. This includes the
recently launched Early Access,
word that the game now has a
Steam Community
forum, and a new
gameplay trailer. Continue here to read the full story.
Engadget has details from a
WSJ.com
article describing a formal notification sent to Oculus VR by ZeniMax
declaring ZeniMax's belief that Oculus is using technology that belongs to them,
saying it was developed by John Carmack before he left ZeniMax to join the
virtual reality startup. ZeniMax gave them a statement saying: ""It's
unfortunate, but when there's this type of transaction, people come out of the
woodwork with ridiculous and absurd claims. We intend to vigorously defend
Oculus and its investors to the fullest extent," and Carmack
also
replied via twitter, saying: "No work I have ever done has been patented.
Zenimax owns the code that I wrote, but they don't own VR." They also have a
statement from ZeniMax: ZeniMax confirms it recently sent formal
notice of its legal rights to Oculus concerning its ownership of key technology
used by Oculus to develop and market the Oculus Rift. ZeniMax's technology may
not be licensed, transferred or sold without ZeniMax Media's approval. ZeniMax's
intellectual property rights arise by reason of extensive VR research and
development works done over a number of years by John Carmack while a ZeniMax
employee, and others. ZeniMax provided necessary VR technology and other
valuable assistance to Palmer Luckey and other Oculus employees in 2012 and 2013
to make the Oculus Rift a viable VR product, superior to other VR market
offerings.
The proprietary technology and know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a
ZeniMax employee, and used by Oculus, are owned by ZeniMax. Well before the
Facebook transaction was announced, Mr. Luckey acknowledged in writing ZeniMax's
legal ownership of this intellectual property. It was further agreed that Mr.
Luckey would not disclose this technology to third persons without approval.
Oculus has used and exploited ZeniMax's technology and intellectual property
without authorization, compensation or credit to ZeniMax. ZeniMax and Oculus
previously attempted to reach an agreement whereby ZeniMax would be compensated
for its intellectual property through equity ownership in Oculus but were unable
to reach a satisfactory resolution. ZeniMax believes it is necessary to address
these matters now and will take the necessary action to protect its
interests.
SOE's Matthew
Higby tweets the news that, as planned,
PlanetSide 1 is now full-on free-to-play: "PlanetSide has gone free to
play, completely!" Deferring to the community, he points the way to
this reddit thread on the topic where there's
a direct link to the
installer for the MMOFPS, as well as some wisdom from PlanetSide veterans on
how to get the most out of the experience. Thanks Blahman.
The Elder Scrolls Online website has a roadmap for the future of
Bethesda's MMORPG on the one-month anniversary of the game going live, offering
details on the imminent first update for the game, plans for subsequent patches,
and a response to the reviews that skewed negative amid the mixed response it
met with. On that last topic, producer Matt Firor says: "While I obviously don’t
agree with the more negative articles, the reviews are out there, and we read
them to determine if there are legitimate complaints that we should address."
There's also word that players who suffered through the game's launch issues
will be compensated with an additional five days of playing time. Here's the
general plan going forward: Along with fixing bugs, combatting black
market gold farmers, and balance tweaks, we have a long list of features and
updates we’re working on that will be coming throughout 2014 and beyond. Here’s
a sneak peek at what’s coming up. For most of these, we don’t know yet which
update they’ll be in, but they’re under active development right now:
- A system that allows grouped players to see each
other even when they’re in different phases
- A justice system—steal from and kill NPCs and deal
with the consequences if you are caught
- Migration of European Megaserver to our European
datacenter.
- Field of View (FOV) adjustment
- Armor dyeing and tinting
- Two new Veteran Dungeons: Crypt of Hearts and City
of Ash
- New region of Craglorn with a new Trial (the
Serpent)
- Increased ability to pick up items in the world
- Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood storyline and
quests.
- Spellcrafting
- Horse Racing
- Dragonstar Arena—similar to Trials, but built for
a group of four
- Improvements to fishing
- Crafting system improvements
- Improved Looking for Group system
- Better NPC facial animations
- Guild functionality updates: guild store interface
updates, customizable guild insignias, tabards, and guild ranks, and Guild
Kiosks—guild stores open to everyone that are available to the
highest-bidding guild.
- Auto-leveling dungeons that level to your group
leader
- Awards when you repeat dungeons
- Imperial City PvP dungeon
Snowbird Games now offers Sacred Gift, a free DLC pack for Eador: Masters of
the Broken World, celebrating the first anniversary of the release of their
fantasy-themed strategy game (thanks
Strategy Informer). The Sacred Gift includes shard multiplayer and 17 units
with new abilities. Word is: "Looking back at our experience, it's quite risky
to state that the game is completely bug free. But we hope that today's Eador
can be considered beatable, playable and stable." To help kick this off, the
game is currently on sale on
Steam for 75% off.
The
ManiaPlanet Blog announces that "Maniaplanet 3 is available to everyone,"
though they note that this is still considered an early release, so this will be
available to even more everyone when it is officially released "by the end of
June" (thanks Frans). The new version includes an enhanced user interface, a new
central store, and new custom content creation options. Here's word on the
changes this brings to TrackMania and ShootMania, their racing and
shooting games:
- TrackMania upgrades
- Multi-environments possible and a TrackMania 2
title with all modes (Canyon + Stadium + Valley)
- Car-mixing possible in multi-environments
title: select any TM² car in Canyon or Valley
- Scripted mode all redone to open to even more
custom modes
- Solo: add ghost & medals to custom campaigns
- Shootmania upgrades
- Netcode: major improvement thanks to an
innovative netvision layer
- Gameplay: new freelook key (space key),
progressive walljumps, more stamina, etc…
- Many more gameplay blocks: teleport, force
field & gates, slides, sound blocker, etc…
- Addonics RAID Tower III External Storage Device on
TweakTown.
- be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 CPU Cooler on
eTeknix.
- BitFenix FLO headset on
Guru3D.
- Cooler Master Elite 130 on
LAN OC.
- Corsair Graphite 760T Full Tower Case on
HARDOCP.
- Corsair Raptor K40 Gaming Keyboard on
TweakTown.
- Kingston 64GB DataTraveler Locker+G3 USB Drive on
Pure Overclock.
- MSI Primo 81 Tablet on
Hardware Secrets.
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti vs. Radeon R9 280X CrossFire on
ocaholic.
- Sentey Phoenix Gaming Keyboard on
Neoseeker.
- Steelseries Sensei Wireless Gaming Mouse on
AnandTech.
- Tt eSPORTS Poseidon Z Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on
Nikk Tech.
Ooops, I got myself in Dutch with those of you from the Netherlands by failing
to update the notation about Queen's Day here. Since the ex-Queen's son
Willem-Alexander has ascended to the throne, this makes the celebration
Koningsdag, or King's Day, and changes the date from April 30th to April 27th.
And just to complicate things, noting it on the 27th would have still been
wrong, since this occasion is not to fall on a Sunday, so this year it was
actually the 26th. So there... long live the king, and thanks to those who set
me straight on this.
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