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Archived News:
Steam announces a
Discovery Update to make it easier to find the games you want in Valve's
ever more inclusive marketplace. Here's word on how they are trying to help
separate the wheat from the chaff, something individual users will also be able
to do: Valve today launched the Steam Discovery Update, which introduces
new functionality and features designed to optimize the Steam shopping
experience as the number of new titles on Steam increases.
In the past nine months, Steam has added over 1,300 new titles and grown to over
100 million active accounts. Designed to meet the demands of this growth, the
Steam Discovery Update delivers a smarter Home page, offering recommendations
based on past purchases, recent playtime, and recommendations by friends.
Steam Search has also been updated with extremely detailed filters. And a new
feature called Curators allows anyone to become a taste maker and build a
following.
"We have made great efforts to increase the number of titles we can publish on
Steam, which means more choices for customers," said Alden Kroll of Valve. "This
update introduces multiple features and functionality to help customers explore
Steam's growing catalog and find the games they are most interested in
playing."
Steam News announces a
free week and sale are underway for
PAC-MAN Championship Edition
DX+, so if you like sampling the game, you could wokka way with a cheap
copy. Word is: "Play PAC-MAN™ Championship Edition DX+ for FREE starting now
through Monday September 29th at 10AM Pacific Time. You can also pickup PAC-MAN™
Championship Edition DX+ at 66% off the regular price!"
Ubisoft
takes the wraps off a season pass for Assassin's Creed Unity,
unveiling a collection of eventual content you can buy in advance for the
stealth/action sequel, which is not out yet either. Besides additional content
for the game, this will also include a 2.5D parkour game based on the AC series.
Here's a trailer and
here's word: The Assassin’s Creed Unity Season Pass contains:
- Assassin’s Creed® Unity Dead Kings- a new
story campaign that takes place after the events of Assassin’s Creed Unity.
Arno leaves Paris for Saint Denis, a troubled city with a mysterious and
extensive underground that holds the crypts of deceased French kings.
In this self-contained set of missions, players will explore the murky
depths of the Basilica and fight merciless adversaries to uncover the
darkest secrets of the city. Arno will equip the new Guillotine gun, a
deadly explosive weapon for short and long range combat. In addition to the
main missions, players will discover new open-world activities including
treasure hunts, murder mysteries and contracts, as well as new co-op
missions. Additional weapons, gear, skills and outfits can be unlocked and
carried over to the main game.
- Extend Arno’s journey in Paris with more
missions, weapons and customization options for players looking to further
explore Assassin’s Creed Unity and the French Revolution. Players can
upgrade their customized Master Assassin and take on three added missions.
Additionally, players will get over 30 new weapons, equipment, and outfits,
including the exclusive Fleur de Lys sword on launch day.
- Assassin’s Creed® Chronicles: China- a new
stand-alone Assassin’s Creed experience delivering a new story, setting, and
gameplay type. In this 2.5D reimagining of the celebrated franchise
developed by Climax Studios, players will perform parkour on the Great Wall
of China, kill from the shadows and take the leap of faith. For the first
time ever, players will be transported to the Middle Kingdom in the 16th
century, where the last remaining Assassin of the Chinese Brotherhood has
returned to her homeland. Players will be immersed in a vibrant setting,
inspired by traditional brush paintings and Chinese architecture from a
pivotal, historic time period in one of the greatest civilizations in
history. Hell-bent on revenge, Shao Jun will use the skills she learned
under legendary Assassin Ezio Auditore to exact vengeance. Players will be
able to rely on stealth to accomplish their mission, as well as Shao Jun’s
martial arts training and all-new Assassin gear.
Assassin’s Creed Unity Season Pass grants access to all of the aforementioned
content, which will all be released by early 2015. Customers who pre-order the
Season Pass from participating partners will also receive the exclusive
double-handed war axe. The Assassin’s Creed Unity Season Pass is now available
for pre-order here:
Assassinscreed.com/seasonpass.
Continue here to read the full story.
BattleGoat Studios announces the launch of early access to Supreme Ruler
Ultimate on Steam,
offering access to the beta version of their upcoming geopolitical real-time
strategy sequel. "We've been working towards this for fourteen years," explains
Battlegoat lead designer and cofounder David Thompson. "Supreme Ruler Ultimate
is the culmination of all the design revisions and content we've created since
forming the studio in 2000. And it's now time to involve our players in the
final stage of development through Steam's Early Access which will help provide
the player testing and the feedback necessary to make sure Supreme Ruler
Ultimate is everything that strategy gaming fans expect." Here's word on the
game: The pinnacle of fourteen years of development on the Supreme Ruler
series of Real Time Geo-Political Military Strategy Games for PC and Mac.
Supreme Ruler Ultimate incorporates the stories, campaigns, scenarios, and
features from our previous releases and expands on them in our improved game
engine. Take control of any nation in the world from World War II through the
Cold War and into the near future as our world lurches from one crisis to the
next! Play historical or modern campaigns with specific objectives, attempt one
of the many Set-Piece Scenarios for a shorter game, or customize your gaming
experience by picking any nation in the various era sandboxes and choosing your
own preferred Victory Condition. With so many options to choose from, Supreme
Ruler Ultimate provides virtually unlimited replayability!
Cliffski's Blog announces Big Pharma, a pharmaceutical strategy game to be
published by Positech. This includes a couple of screenshots, but they are still
getting the game's online presence worked out. In the meantime, here's a bit on
the game and plans to show it off: I LOVE the design and idea behind big
pharma. I want to play it right now. It scratches that itch you get from games
like Anno 2070 about laying out production lines, without having to use uplay or
wait 40 minutes for the game to load. It’s also a proper biz/management game,
which is obviously right up my street. It *is* quite early to be announcing this
game, by positech standards. We normally wait much later, but the reason to
announce now is that YOU CAN PLAY IT if you come down to the Eurogamer expo in
London this coming weekend. Big Pharma will be there, alongside Gratuitous Space
Battles 2.
In addition to their Summer Sale encore also mentioned below,
The Humble Store is offering a
free copy of Tropico 3 for a limited time. All that's required for a copy of the
island dictator sequel is your email address.
A post on the
GTA Forums claims a confirmation of first-person support in next-gen editions
of Grand Theft Auto V, discussing improvements to first-person driving
and the addition of an on-foot first-person mode for the upcoming Windows, Xbox
One, and PlayStation 4 editions of the open-world action game. They say the original posts were deleted, and link
to
a cached version, but that's blank as of this writing as well. They also
have a screen capture of the page, though that obviously carries less weight,
since it could be faked. The purported post also mentions an included video
editor for "for advanced movie-making." Thanks nin.
Bandai Namco Games announces a six-day delay to Crown of the Ivory King,
the culmination of the DLC trilogy for Dark Souls II, the action/RPG
sequel. This is now due on September 30th, instead of Wednesday. Here's
word: Last chapter of Lost Crown’s Trilogy has been pushed back
Bandai Namco Games Europe and FromSoftware have announced that the release date
for Crown of the Ivory King, the third chapter in its The Lost Crowns DLC
trilogy for DARK SOULS II has been pushed back from September 24th to September
30th on STEAM® and Xbox Live Marketplace and on October 1st on the
PlayStation®Network.
Each individual chapter of The Lost Crowns trilogy will be available for
purchase in Europe and Australasia via the PlayStation®Network, Xbox Live
Marketplace, and STEAM®. The STEAM® and PlayStation®Network. season passes
encompassing all three chapters of The Lost Crowns trilogy are already available
for purchase.
Here's a new trailer
for Dragon Ball Xenoverse with an extended version of a trailer released
at the Tokyo Games Show. The Dragon Ball series has been a console standby, but
it turns out there are plans to bring this installments to Windows via Steam.
Here's word on the clip: "Today, BANDAI NAMCO Games America released a special,
extended cut version of last week's DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE Tokyo Games Show
trailer revealing 4 all-new characters joining the game's cast." There's not
much to go by on the official
website, so you may want to hit
Wikipedia for
details on the game. Continue here to read the full story.
The Sims 4 holds off a challenge to the number one spot, as Pro Rugby
Manager 2 debuts at number two on the
GfK Chart-Track chart of the bestselling PC games in the U.K. for the week
ending September 20th. Wasteland 2 joins the chart at number five while
Rail Simulator 2015 pulls into the station in the 10 spot. On the
all platforms chart Destiny is destined to retain the top spot as
Disney Infinity 2.0 launches at number two and Hyrule Warriors debuts
at number three. Here's the deal: Several new releases make their debuts
this week but it's Activision Blizzard’s ‘Destiny’ (-78%) that comfortably holds
on to top spot for a second week.
The Bungie developed title also continues to give a strong boost to PS4 hardware
sales with over 72% of the hardware format being the Destiny hard bundle. It
means that ‘Disney Infinity 2.0’ has to settle for No2 in its first week
although it's one place higher than the debut of its predecessor. The new
Interactive Toys title is also 32% up on the week 1 performance of the original
‘Disney Infinity', which arrived just over a year ago. Wii U exclusive ‘Hyrule
Warriors’ developed by Omega Force also arrives at No3.
The new arrivals push last week’s No3 ‘Watch Dogs’ (-23%) down a place to No4,
while ‘The Sims 4’ (-41%) drops 3 places to No5. Familiar face ‘Minecraft: Xbox
360 Edition’ (+12%) holds its position at No6 while ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’
(-17%) drops from No4 to No7. ‘Minecraft: PS3 Edition’ (+7%) sees a slight boost
in sales that pushes it up a place to No8. ‘The Last of US: Remastered’ (-27%)
and ‘Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare’ (-16%) both slip down the chart to No9
and No10. Another platform exclusive arrives from Square Enix this week as
sequel ‘Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call’ makes its debut on 3DS at
No17.
A post by Tim
Schafer follows up on
the angry
response to release plans for
Spacebase DF-9,
Double-Fine's space strategy game. Supporters are unhappy at what they consider
broken promises, and Tim looks to address this discontent by explaining what
happened, including the admission that they "finally had to change gears" when
they realized the game was not selling as they hoped. Here are three of the five
questions he addresses: “What happened to the devplan? What happened to
the beta stage? How can ANY game go from Alpha 6 to a “finished” 1.0?”
In traditional development, “Beta” refers to a time when no new features are
added but bugs are fixed. Things are different in early access where the game is
in players’ hands at an earlier state, so the team has been fixing bugs all
along as features are added. In the remaining dev time, there will be both bug
fixes and new features so it’s true—calling it “beta” is a little inaccurate.
But the amount of time fixing bugs is comparable to that of a
traditionally-developed game.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to silently pull the plug?”
We are not silently pulling the plug. We are announcing our finishing features
and v1.0 plan. I know it’s not a lot of advance notice, but we’re still here
telling you our plan instead of vanishing quietly in the night.
“If you were going to end development, why didn’t you tell us sooner?”
One of the biggest lessons we have learned in this, our first early access
title, is about communication. There should have been more communication to the
players about the state of the game, and we apologize for that. But for us, it
was never clear whether development was going to end because we always hoped
that the next update would turn it around and allow us to extend development. So
I suppose, ultimately, the answer was we always had hope we weren’t going to end
it, until the end.
Saw a funny reference to those fake female Twitter accounts that are out there
for some presumably nefarious purpose: Fem-bots. Pretty perfect.
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