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Archived News:
A
post to the Hellraid blog announces that Techland has put development of
Hellraid "on hold," which often, though not always, marks the death of such
a project (thanks
Eurogamer). Here's word: We would like to officially announce that our
dark fantasy FPP game Hellraid will not be released this year as previously
planned, and the development of the game has been put on hold.
In the recent months we conducted an internal analysis and came to the
conclusion that Hellraid, in its current shape and form, is not meeting our own
expectations for this project. Therefore, we decided the best course of action
would be to send it back to the drawing board and invent our dark fantasy title
anew.
In the meantime, we will consolidate our development resources and focus on
further expansion of our Dying Light franchise.
We wish to thank all our fans for your support – you’re the best!
A new teaser trailer
from Shadowrun: Hong Kong, the new Shadowrun RPG coming to Windows, Linux, and
OS X this summer. This comes as the celebrate the third anniversary of the
Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter with a sale on all Shadowrun games
on Steam.
They also announce
they've opened pre-purchases of
Shadowrun: Hong Kong,
and say that all who take advantage of this will receive the Shadowrun: Hong
Kong - Deluxe Edition for the price of the base game in addition to a 33%
discount. Continue here to read the full story.
Ubisoft announces a two week closed beta testing session for Might & Magic
Heroes VII, saying this will run from May 25th through June 8th. Those
interested in getting this early crack at Limbic Entertainment's installment in
the turn-based strategy series can get in by preordering. Here's the deal:
Today, Ubisoft announced that the Might and Magic® Heroes® VII closed
beta will start on May 25th at 9am PDT and last until June 8th at 9am PDT.
Access to the closed beta is only available to players who pre-order the game
and participants can explore it at their own pace against the computer or
challenge other players online. Might & Magic Heroes VII closed beta can be
played with up to 4 players simultaneously in both team and free for all modes.
The closed beta will give players the opportunity to discover the unique units
and gameplay of Haven and Academy and to explore two Skirmish maps: The Dried
Lands and the Bad Neighbors, harvest resources, expand their town, recruit
armies and develop their heroes in an effort to besiege their opponent’s empire.
There is no maximum level set for the closed beta and players will have
unlimited access to the content until June 8th.
Technobabylon is now available, offering a cyberpunk point-and-click
adventure developed by Wadjet Eye Games for Windows PCs. The game is available
through GOG.com and
Steam, and as you may
recall, a playable demo
was released last week.
Here's word: Technobabylon has three playable characters: CEL agents
Charlie Regis and Max Lao, investigating a serial Mindjacker who's tapping into
people's neural wiring and leaving them dead, and agoraphobic net addict Latha
Sesame, who might be the Mindjacker's next target. When Charlie's past comes
back to haunt him, he and his partner find themselves on opposite sides of the
law with Latha's fate in the crossfire. Set in 2087 but evocative of a game made
in 1987, Technobabylon mixes future and past with its immersive cyberpunk world,
traditional point & click gameplay, old-school pixel art graphics by Ben
Chandler (The Blackwell Epiphany, Charnel House Trilogy), professional voice
acting, and atmospheric soundtrack by Nathan Allen Pinard (Gemini Rue, Oxhorn
Brand Movies).
Bunker - The Underground Game is now available
on Steam, offering a
throwback point-and-click adventure set in a throwback secret Soviet bunker
(much to the regret of those hoping for an Archie Bunker simulator). The
soundtrack plays a role in the game, and those interested can purchase it
separately
on Band Camp. Here's word on
launch day fixes and here's word on the game: 2tainment and nightly
studios proudly announce the release of Bunker - The Underground Game. The Indie
Point & Click adventure is now live on Steam and can be purchased for $
14.99/14,99 €. For the release 20% discount will be offered!
Take a stumble down the stairs of adventure and hit your head with the puzzles
that'll blast your brains into the past. A spontaneous rap-battle in middle of
Moscow is insufficient to explain how awesome Bunker is, you'll need to
experience it yourself. Good news everybody: it's out now.
Follow the story to unravel as Otto Thompson ventures deeper and deeper into the
mysterious Bunker in this hilarious point and click adventure puzzle
spectacle!
Tale of Tales announces the release of Sunset, with their new available
for Windows, OS X, and Linux through the
Humble Store,
Steam, and
the official website. Here's word on the
game: About Sunset
Video games are no stranger to conflict. But what would it look like if a game
cast you not as a war hero, but as a bystander – a civilian caught up in the
chaos?
In Sunset, the player is cast as Angela Burnes, a housekeeper working in a
fictional South American city. Taking place in a single apartment, through
weekly visits over the course of year in the early 1970s, the game simply asks
you to go about your duties for your employer, the wealthy Gabriel Ortega. But
it also lets you feed your curiosity by exploring Ortega's home and, ultimately,
discovering his role, and your own, in the revolution that takes hold of the
country.
Features
- A first-person narrative-focused game that allows
players to experience a story of war and revolution from a civilian's
perspective
- Like all civilians amidst war, players do not
directly influence the outcome of the story, instead, their actions affect
how they experience what unfolds and how their relationship evolves with
Señor Ortega
- No fail state - this isn't a game you can win or
lose, only influence
- Anywhere from 2 to 8 hours of gameplay, depending
on your approach
- Soundtrack by the award-winning Austin Wintory
(Journey, The Banner Saga, Monaco)
- Achieved a whopping 270% of its funding goal on
Kickstarter!
Stainless Games announces availability of
Carmageddon: Reincarnation as a
full release on
Steam, following a run on Early Access. Admitting they will not be able to
stir up the kind of controversy generated by the original Carmageddon, they are
still trying to live up to its legacy, as you can see in
this launch trailer
and this quote from the announcement: So what have we done to update the
game that was not only one of the most controversial titles of its day, but also
the most innovative and technically advanced of its generation? Well controversy
is pretty hard to whip up these days, but we are still proudly offering you the
chance to turn PEDESTRIANS into POINTS (which continues to get certain sections
of society hot under the collar) using your car or a whole host of hilarious ped
pulping POWERUPS! And we continue to be boldly innovative and technically bloody
clever – our CAR CRUSHING CODE continues to be the envy of anything else out
there. Plus it’s all more HILARIOUS than ever!
All this means that what you get is a Carmageddon fit for the 21st Century,
tuned for today’s fun-seeking bloodthirsty adrenaline junkie game fans…
Play an adrenaline pumping bunch of game modes against the new improved AI
opponents, or online against the rest of the Carmafan masses! Progress your
Career through the Carma ranks or have a MultiPlayer romp in a Car Crusher, Fox
'n' Hounds (always been Stainless MP game session favourite!), Death Race or
Checkpoint Stampede event, frenetic fun filled with Carmageddon’s trademark
over-the-top violence, crazy PowerUps and non-stop laughs…
Continue here to read the full story.
Following another bout of
controversy about NVIDIA's Gameworks program, AMD is promising improved beta
drivers for the games in question, and have posted
Important Information about AMD Catalyst Driver Support for Project CARS and The
Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (thanks
HARDOCP). Here's word: AMD is committed to improving performance for
the recently-released Project CARS and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. To that end, we
are creating AMD Catalyst™ 15.5 Beta to optimize performance for these titles,
and we will continue to work closely with their developers to improve quality
and performance. We will release AMD Catalyst™ 15.5 Beta on our website as soon
as it is available.
In the meantime, users experiencing performance issues with the "HairWorks"
feature in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt are encouraged to enable the below settings
in AMD Catalyst™.
EA announces the return of the Need for Speed series, saying they will
deliver a new installment to Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 this fall to
completely reboot the automotive action franchise. Here's
a teaser trailer,
which they say will be followed by a fuller trailer on June 15th. Here's the
announcement: Ghost Games™, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) studio,
announced today the return of Need for Speed™ in a full reboot of this storied
franchise. The game delivers on what the fans want, and what Need for Speed
stands for - deep customization, authentic urban car culture, a nocturnal open
world, and an immersive narrative that pulls you through the game.
“Need for Speed is one of the most iconic names in gaming, and we're returning
it to greatness in this reboot,” said Marcus Nilsson, Executive Producer at
Ghost Games. “Pulling on our 20 years of history, and then taking a year out
from releasing a game, we are making the game we’ve always wanted to. We're
listening to the fans and delivering an experience that will capture their
imagination and unleash their passion for cars and speed.”
Fuelled by EA's own car culture community, Speedhunters (www.speedhunters.com),
Need for Speed will deliver an experience that's grounded in authentic car
culture by diving into the rich world of past, present and emergent trends of
the urban car scene. This collaboration with Speedhunters in the research and
development of the game means the level of detail and real-world authenticity
will envelop gamers in an exciting world to discover and enjoy in a way that
only Need for Speed can deliver.
Continue here to read the full story.
The Witcher website announces
the release of the version 1.03 patch for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This
comes shortly after CD Projekt RED
addressed graphics
"downgrades" in the RPG sequel, and the new version offers some of the
improvements they promised. Here are the patch notes: The patch 1.03 has
just been released and is now available for all PC version of The Witcher 3:
Wild Hunt. The update introduces a range of stability and performances
ehancements as well as allows users to take advantage of some additional
graphics settings. Please find the detailed list of fixes below:
Improves stability in gameplay and the UI
Improves performance especially in cutscenes and gameplay
Fixes grass and foliage popping that could occur after density parameters were
changed
Improves Nvidia Hairworks performance
Boosted texture anisotropy sampling to 16x on Ultra preset
Sharpen Post-process settings extended from Off/On to Off/Low/High
Blood particles will now properly appear after killing enemies on the water
Corrects a bug where player was able to shoot bolts at friendly NPCs
Improves menu handling
Corrects an issue with Stamina regeneration while sprinting
Fixes a cursor lock issue that sometimes occcured when scrolling the map
Generally improves world map focus
Improves input responsiveness when using keyboard
Corrects some missing translations in the UI
Corrects an issue in dialogue selections
Rostan Muggs is back
Minor SFX improvements
The console version of the patch is coming and will be available very
soon.
Slitherine announces the release of the Glory of Macrag expansion for
Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon, offering an Ultramarines campaign to the
turn-based strategy game. Here's what this involves: At the climactic
moment of the 2nd War for Armageddon, three Space Marine chapters descend from
the skies above to aid the beleaguered defenders of Hiveworld Armageddon. Now
take control of the Ultramarines and re-live their contribution to this epic
confrontation in a brand new campaign for Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon.
This campaign features 11 all new missions organized into three Acts that follow
the exploits and heroic deeds of the Ultramarines during the 2nd War for
Armageddon. Earn the favour of your fellow Space Marine Chapters or dare to go
it alone as you battle once again to drive the Ork invaders from Hiveworld
Armageddon!
Take-Two Interactive is suing the BBC to halt production of the
movie they are planning to chronicle conflicts over the Grand Theft Auto
series. Though this was likely to be more unkind to Jack Thompson than GTA
developer Rockstar Games, apparently they are not interested in seeing whatever
dirty laundry this might have aired. The BBC has declined comment, but here's
Take-Two's statement: Take-Two Interactive has filed suit against the BBC
for trademark infringement based on their movie currently titled ‘Game Changer’
as it relates to Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto video game series.
While holders of the trademarks referenced in the film title and its promotion,
Rockstar Games has had no involvement with this project. Our goal is to ensure
that our trademarks are not misused in the BBC's pursuit of an unofficial
depiction of purported events related to Rockstar Games. We have attempted
multiple times to resolve this matter with the BBC without any meaningful
resolution. It is our obligation to protect our intellectual property and
unfortunately in this case litigation was necessary.
CD Projekt RED address the graphics in The Witcher 3 in
a conversation with Eurogamer where they acknowledge that some effects shown
in previews were cut from the release version of the game, particularly features
shown in a 2013 gameplay
trailer. Discussion of this apparently needed to be face-to-face, as CDPR
flew someone out to Poland to confess about the changes. They include a bunch of
details on an upcoming patch to improve visuals, as well as details on plans to
allow further PC tweaking. They do admit that the console versions did cause
some design compromises, but note that without the console editions, the game
wouldn't exist at all. Here's the part where they address the graphics
"downgrade": Why did the graphics change?
"If you're looking at the development process," Iwinski begins, "we do a certain
build for a tradeshow and you pack it, it works, it looks amazing. And you are
extremely far away from completing the game. Then you put it in the open-world,
regardless of the platform, and it's like 'oh shit, it doesn't really work'.
We've already showed it, now we have to make it work. And then we try to make it
work on a huge scale. This is the nature of games development."
It was captured PC footage, not pre-rendered, Badowski confirms, but a lot had
to change. "I cannot argue - if people see changes, we cannot argue," Adam
Badowski says, "but there are complex technical reasons behind it.
"Maybe it was our bad decision to change the rendering system," he mulls,
"because the rendering system after VGX was changed." There were two possible
rendering systems but one won out because it looked nicer across the whole
world, in daytime and at night. The other would have required lots of dynamic
lighting "and with such a huge world simply didn't work".
It's a similar story for environments, and their texture sizes and incidental
objects. It was a trade-off between keeping that aspect of them or their unique,
handmade design. And the team chose the latter. The data-streaming system
couldn't handle everything while Geralt galloped around.
The billowing smoke and roaring fire from the trailer? "It's a global system and
it will kill PC because transparencies - without DirectX 12 it does't work good
in every game." So he killed it for the greater good, and he focused on making
sure the 5000 doors in Novigrad worked instead.
"People are saying that 2013 was better but actually there's plenty of things
that improved since 2013," Michal Platkow-Gilewski points out. "Size of the
world, frames-per-second..."
"Yes!" realises Adam Badowski. "The game's performance: people say the game is
well optimised. This is the first time for this company!" It's the first smile
I've seen from him all interview.
Marcin Iwinski picks it up: "Maybe we shouldn't have shown that [trailer], I
don't know, but we didn't know that it wasn't going to work, so it's not a lie
or a bad will - that's why we didn't comment actively. We don't agree there is a
downgrade but it's our opinion, and gamers' feeling can be different. If they
made their purchasing decision based on the 2013 materials, I'm deeply sorry for
that, and we are discussing how we can make it up to them because that's not
fair.
"It's very important to stress: we are continuously working on the PC version,
and we will be adding a lot of stuff, and there is more to come. We've proven it
in the past that we support our games and we will be looking at the feedback and
trying to make it better."
War Thunder publisher Gaijin Entertainment announces Crossout, a
vehicle-combat MMORPG in the works at Targem Games for release on Windows as a
free-to-play title. Beta testing is set to begin this summer, and those
interested in participating can sign up on the
official website. Here's part of the announcement describing the game's
emphasis on customization and destruction: No two vehicles in Crossout
are the same, as players can create any kind of combat vehicle from the
speediest buggy to the heaviest of off-road vehicles to reflect their warrior
sense of gameplay. Offering complete customisation, Crossout gives players
thousands of possibilities to design their vehicle, including shape, armor,
weapons, support systems and, of course, cosmetic enhancements. Visit your own
garage to build new advanced mechanisms and sell them via the in-game auction
system.
Players also have multiple options when it comes to mass destruction - combat
vehicles can be equipped with an explosive range of weapons from chainsaws,
power drills and machine guns, to rocket launchers, flying drones and stealth
generators. Featuring an advanced damage model, destroy any part of an enemy
machine and it will affect that vehicle's performance.
A new behind-the-scenes
trailer shows off more of King's Quest, highlighting the hand-painted art
style of the upcoming RPG remake. The description of the clip offers the
details: "King’s Quest: "A Hand Painted Game” is the third installment of a
four-part series taking you behind the scenes of King’s Quest with Art Director
Evan Cagle and Producer Lindsey Rostal of The Odd Gentlemen to see how the
artwork is born on page before coming to life on screen. Creating a fantastic
but compelling world true to the spirit of King’s Quest required going back to
the lessons of old. Beginning with 1990’s King’s Quest V, Sierra devised a way
for its artists to draw out their ideas in vivid color and detail before
scanning them into the game for further polishing. Now, 25 years later, the team
is employing a similar technique to give this incredible reimagining of a
classic tale the truly stunning storybook look it deserves. For more
information, please visit www.sierra.com." Continue here to read the full story.
A new trailer from
Torment: Tides of Numenera
shows off "A World Unlike Any Other," one of the "pillars" of inXile's upcoming
role-playing game for Windows, OS X., and Linux. Here's a refresher on the
project: "Thanks to its more than 90,000 backers, Torment: Tides of Numenera
continues the thematic legacy of the critically acclaimed Planescape: Torment.
Set in Monte Cook's tabletop role-playing world, Numenera, the newest Torment
asks: What does one life matter? With this #1 most funded Kickstarter video
game, inXile is creating a rich RPG experience that explores deep, personal
themes." Continue here to read the full story.
Here's a salute to David Letterman on the occasion of his retirement. I'm sorry
for him that he never got to live his dream of hosting The Tonight Show, but
I'll always feel he was the real successor to Johnny Carson, and he'll always be
my favorite television host. Hats off to Dave and all his cohorts over the
years, from the early days of Larry "Bud" Melman and Hal Gurtner
through last night. Thanks for all the laughs over the years, Dave, you will be
missed.
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