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Archived News:
Frontier Developments announces development of Coaster Park Tycoon, a
second franchise they plan to support concurrently with Elite: Dangerous,
their space combat game, saying this "marks the next stage in Frontier’s
transition towards increasing its proportion of self-published revenue." Coaster
Park Tycoon is coming to Windows PCs next year, and they say this will combine
"accessible creative features with a sophisticated simulation," building on
their experience with the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise. Though this
sounds like they are adding work, they also announce they are cutting staff, as
development positions are being moved from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Cambridge,
and 15 employees in "content creation roles" are being cut as a result. On that
topic,
Gamasutra reports an anonymous source tells them Frontier's Halifax studio
is being closed altogether. Here's word on the new game and the
layoffs: Frontier Developments plc (AIM: FDEV, “Frontier”, the “Group”), a
leading developer of video games, announces the start of development of a
self-published game called Coaster Park Tycoon. This will run as a second
franchise alongside continued development of its existing self-published Elite:
Dangerous title, and marks the next stage in Frontier’s transition towards
increasing its proportion of self-published revenue.
Coaster Park Tycoon
Frontier became the acknowledged leading developer of Tycoon games for its work
on the RollerCoaster Tycoon® franchise, particularly its development of 2004’s
c.10M unit-selling PC game RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 which is still considered the
benchmark of the Tycoon genre, more than ten years after its release in 2004.
Coaster Park Tycoon, scheduled for 2016 release on PC, is intended to raise that
benchmark for ‘Tycoon’ gameplay even further by combining accessible creative
features with a sophisticated simulation.
Continue here to read the full story.
The Scott Games website has another
teaser image following the recent
tease presumed to be for Five Nights at Freddy's 3 (along with warnings not
to be scammed by Scottgames impersonators). Sure enough, there's now a
Steam
Greenlight campaign and a
new teaser trailer
confirming plans for a new installment in the survival/horror series, and
offering the following description: Thirty years after Freddy Fazbear's
Pizza closed it's doors, the events that took place there have become nothing
more than a rumor and a childhood memory, but the owners of "Fazbear's Fright:
The Horror Attraction" are determined to revive the legend and make the
experience as authentic as possible for patrons, going to great lengths to find
anything that might have survived decades of neglect and ruin.
At first there were only empty shells, a hand, a hook, an old paper-plate doll,
but then a remarkable discovery was made...
The attraction now has one animatronic.
Continue here to read the full story.
As noted on The Witcher website,
today GOG.com had a livestream session showing off gameplay from The Witcher
III: Wild Hunt, the upcoming RPG sequel. The
recording of that
session is now available, running a little under 15 minutes. Word is this
shows off segments from the game prologue and Skellige islands. This was
accompanied by a fan Q&A, and the answers from this are summarized
on GameInformer.com. CD Projekt RED also recently held a global hands-on
preview event for the game, and
this video explains
more about that. This resulted in a delicate smattering of hands-on previews
that can be found on
ComingSoon.net,
The Escapist,
Flickering Myth,
GameSpot,
God
is a Geek,
The Independent,
Kotaku,
Metro News,
NZGamer.com,
Only Single
Player,
Paste,
PCWorld,
PlayStation Life,
PlayStation Universe,
Pocket-lint,
Shacknews, and
XboxAchievements.com. Continue here to read the full story.
Here's a launch trailer
for Dying Light, Techland's zombie game that will be released worldwide
tomorrow via digital distribution. Here's the slightly premature word from the
description: "Dying Light is finally here! Experience an all-new story of
survival set in a city devastated by a mysterious infection. Play as Kyle Crane,
an undercover operative sent to the quarantine zone with the mission to locate a
high-ranking military officer gone missing. As you mission goes sour almost
instantly, you soon find yourself caught in the midst of a desperate fight for
survival." Continue here to read the full story.
The
Dragon Age website now offers the Tavern Songs from Dragon Age:
Inquisition as a free download, a temporary offer, as beginning on February
9th this will cease being free and will go on sale on various digital
distributors. Additionally, they are offering downloads of the sheet music from
these tunes so they can be included in their
Fan Celebration
Contest. Here's word: "We've received many inquiries from our fans asking
where they can get these songs, and we're thrilled that you're enjoying them as
much as we do. As our way of saying thank you for being the awesome community
that you are, we're excited to announce that for the next two weeks, you can
download these songs from a desktop computer free of charge!"
- FEZ on Steam.
Save 75%.
- Painkiller Hell & Damnation on
Steam. Save 80%.
Link of the Day:
Wake No More.
Thanks nin. "Am I sleeping? Have I slept at all?"
An
Open Letter on the Ubisoft forums has complaints from gamers who have had
their copies of Far Cry 4 removed from their UPlay game libraries,
apparently because they were unlocked with game keys from unauthorized sellers,
with a number of posts identifying G2A as where they purchased the game. Since
the keys themselves are legitimate, this leaves impacted gamers wondering why
they are being punished, but apparently this clawback was executed before all
the facts have been gathered, as
Eurogamer has the following vague statement from Ubisoft: We
regularly deactivate keys that were fraudulently obtained and resold. In this
case, we are currently investigating the origin of the fraud, and will update
customers as soon as we have more information to share. In the meantime,
customers should contact the vendor from whom they purchased the key.
Sony Online Entertainment announces
PlanetSide 2 has set a new record for most players online in a single
first-person shooter battle. This record was previously held by browser-based
shooter Man vs. Machine, which fell one player short of a 1000 player
goal in 2012, and word is that
PlanetSide 2 has now surpassed that by a good margin after 1,158 players
participated in a single battle on one server instance over the weekend. This
record is official, as it is fully sanctioned by the people who make the stout
and the record books: "This amazing achievement shows not only how truly massive
the PlanetSide 2 universe is, but also how inclusive its online community is,"
said Annie Nguyen, Video Games Records Manager at Guinness World Records. "This
title truly embodies the international, record-breaking spirit of Guinness World
Records."
The
Bethesda Blog has word that DOOM will be the subject of this coming
weekend's episode of Mythbusters, as apparently they have run out of real myths
to bust, and are now testing the limits of reality in virtual reality. They say
id Software's Tim Willits will help answer questions about
ideas presented in the first-person shooter series, such as: "Is it really
possible for someone to carry all those health packs, guns, and even a chainsaw?
Using the DOOM universe and DOOM 3 BFG Edition for reference, Tim helps the team
recreate a DOOM level in real life." Here are some further questions from the
series we can suggest: How long can a monster stay in a closet before it fills
with monster poop? Why was it so hard to duct tape a flashlight to a gun? And
how do you find the red key in DOOM II level two? Here's a
teaser video, and word
is: "Catch the episode on Discovery on Saturday, January 31st at 9/8c. For more
details, visit the show’s page on
Discovery.com." Continue here to read the full story.
The WRC website
announces WRC 5, saying the fifth installment in the FIA World Rally
Championship series will be released this fall for Windows and
current-generation consoles (thanks Gamer's Hell). A
reveal trailer shows
off some environments, and here's word (for the record, Kylotonn is the correct
spelling out of the two): After 4 episodes on the previous
generation of consoles, WRC reaches a new step toward history. This year, Bigben
Interactive and Kylotton Games are proud to announce that WRC 5 will also be
available on new generation consoles !
The WRC game series is taking a new shift with the introduction of Kylotonn and
will benefit from new development tools and experienced European developers and
many surprises are planned for fans in the game.“We are very proud and excited
to work on a title dedicated to one of the most challenging and spectacular
forms of motor sport,” says Diego Sartori, Creative Director at Kylotonn Games.
Bigben Interactive is also proud to introduce Sébastien Chardonnet as one of the
game’s Ambassadors. Sébastien is the 2013 FIA WRC 3 champion who is graduating
to the top level of WRC in 2015 in Monte Carlo – after a first attempt in 2012
in France. He has been involved with the concept and planning for WRC 5 since
early on in the project.
“It’s exciting to help Kylotonn to make the best WRC game ever seen. Combining
my driver and gamer experience with their technical point of view is something
interesting when you are trying to do the most realistic game possible,”
declares Chardonnet.
Moutains, valleys, snow, rain… That is a long and winding road to get to the WRC
title. Will you have what it takes to unleash the driver that lies in you
?
Continue here to read the full story.
The Homeworld Remastered Collection will launch on February 25th,
announces
Gearbox Software, though development of the space strategy relaunch will
evidently not be fully complete at that time, as they say saying that all
customers "will also receive free access to the Homeworld Remastered Steam
Multiplayer Beta when the collection releases." They offer
a 90 second teaser trailer
to celebrate the news, and the collection is available for
pre-purchase
on Steam with a 15% discount. Here's word on the new trailer and the
multiplayer beta: The first-ever gameplay footage – shown this weekend to
a packed room at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio and
available here on YouTube – highlights the extensive effort that has gone into
updating the games for modern audiences. Homeworld Remastered Collection
refreshes these tremendous games with new, high-resolution textures and models,
the latest graphics-rendering technology, as well as a fully remastered score
and new voice recordings from the original cast.
Gamers who purchase Homeworld Remastered Collection will also receive access to
the Homeworld Remastered Steam Multiplayer Beta, which kicks off alongside
Homeworld Remastered Collection on February 25, 2015. Competitive multiplayer
modes for Homeworld and Homeworld 2 have been joined to offer players access to
races, maps and game modes from both games in one integrated multiplayer
experience. This beta combines code from over 15 years ago with newly-written
changes, and will be shaped by fan feedback as development
progresses.
Continue here to read the full story.
Gearbox Software announces they will release the Lady Hammerlock Pack
tomorrow, a new DLC pack which adds Lady Hammerlock as a playable character to
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, offering the chance to play as Sir
Hammerlock's older sister. There's a
trailer on IGN (thanks
nin) showing off some gameplay, and confirming that all of the good lady's
appendages seem to be present, unlike her refurbished brother. Here's word on
the pack, which is part of the season pass, but will also be available
separately: Like every playable character in Borderlands, Aurelia has an
action skill and three different skill trees. Her action skill is Cold As Ice,
which lets her throw out a Frost Diadem Shard that seeks out enemies and
attaches to them, dealing constant damage. If that target dies, the shard will
move onto a new enemy, and so on.
Her three skills trees are Huntress, Cold Money, and Contractual Aristocracy.
Her Huntress skill tree focuses on sniping, including a skill that offers a
massive critical hit bonus for each consecutive hit she lands without missing.
Her other skill tree, Cold Money, focuses on ice damage and includes a skill
that can add Cryo damage to any gun. Her third skill tree is Contractual
Aristocracy, which allows her to turn a co-op teammate into a servant, earning
her bonuses for their kills in addition to her own. We’ll have much more info on
just how badass Aurelia is in the weeks ahead, so keep an eye out for a deep
dive on her skills.
Continue here to read the full story.
A tweet
yesterday from Randy Pitchford pitches for recruits to make the next
Borderlands game, presumably Borderlands 3: "We are recruiting for next
Borderlands. This is the big one. Industry badass? E-mail me:
heyrandy@gearboxsoftware.com." This is followed by
this tweet:
"We want to meet great artists, designers, coders, producers and other
developers to help with next Borderlands!
http://www.gearboxsoftware.com."
Thanks
CVG.
Apparently the sky is falling, or something, as the weather forecasts around
here call for a serious blizzard today, which could leave up to a couple of feet
of snow by the end of the day tomorrow. I'm guessing this won't be as dramatic
as all that, as when I paid close attention to one forecast, what they said was
this could leave 12"-24" inches, but that this could turn out to be lower if the
storm forms further east than they are anticipating. This sounds to me like the
low number of their estimate is intentionally too high, which meshes with
expectations that news organizations are drawn to weather hyperbole, and an
explanation of how you can end up with 6" of snow when they are saying it could
be as much as two feet.
R.I.P.:
Joe Franklin dead at 88. Non-New Yorkers may still know him thanks to Billy
Crystal's SNL impression.
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