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Archived News:
Blizzard announces the commencement of
The Grand Tournament for Hearthstone with the release of a second
expansion adding over 130 virtual cards to the strategy game. Here's a
previously released
cinematic trailer and here's the news: The Grand Tournament™, the
second expansion for Blizzard Entertainment’s award-winning online strategy card
game, Hearthstone®: Heroes of Warcraft™, is now live, and players around the
world are invited to join in on the fun. This expansion brings over 130 knightly
cards to the (round) table, along with exciting new game mechanics that will
delight duelists and inspire creative new deck strategies.
The Grand Tournament takes players to the frost-covered continent of
Northrend, where the heroes of the Argent Crusade once held a prestigious
tournament to select the bravest and mightiest champions in all the land. Though
the evil that once held this realm captive has been vanquished and order
restored, the jousting continues in the spirit of fun and friendly competition!
This expansion presents duelists with powerful new tools for their arsenals,
allowing them to motivate their brave champions through the Inspire mechanic or
challenge an opponent to single combat in its most honorable form—the joust.
Inspired minions, which are triggered by using a Hero Power, can grow in
strength, restore health, and even call for reinforcements. Jousts are
one-on-one contests between random minions drawn from each player’s deck. The
stakes are high—if the initiating player wins a joust, they’ll earn a
substantial bonus.
“With the new Inspire and Joust mechanics, and over 130 new cards to play
with, The Grand Tournament brings a fun medieval-tournament vibe to
Hearthstone,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment.
“We can’t wait to see what players come up with now that they have their hands
full with tons of new deck and strategy options.”
The Grand Tournament is available now for Windows® and Mac® PCs, iOS and
Android™ tablets, and mobile phones. Card packs can be purchased individually or
in discounted bundles from the in-game Shop for gold or real-world currency
(same pricing as all other Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft card packs). Players
now also have the chance to win The Grand Tournament card packs as rewards in
Arena Mode, or craft cards from the expansion by using Arcane Dust, which is
collected from disenchanting unwanted cards.
Continue here to read the full story.
Daedalic Entertainment is now offering the promised Early Access
on Steam to Valhalla
Hills, Funatics Software's Viking-themed civilization-building strategy
game. This carries a first-week 20% discount for the standard, Premium, and
Contributor editions of the game, and while Linux and OS X editions are part of
the eventual plan, for now only the Windows version is offered. The game is
expected for full release by the end of this year, and in the meantime they
offer a new video diary
and the following explanation for why they are going the Early Access route: "We
decided to share "Valhalla Hills" with our players in an early stage of
development, so we can get feedback and suggestions right away and continuously
improve the game with their help. Eventually, we want the game to be as
enjoyable as possible, for as long as possible. So, we encourage players to get
in touch with us and tell us their ideas and also - or rather, especially- what
they don't like. We're looking forward to that!" Here's a bit on the game: Valhalla
Hills is about a Viking Clan struggling to survive in a harsh mountain region as
they attempt to build a "Valhalla on Earth." Valhalla Hills challenges players
to build a new Viking civilization worthy of Odin himself, while surviving
near-daily peril.
The Early Access release of Valhalla Hills is fully playable (and great fun!),
but will be continuously optimized and enhanced until final release in the
fourth quarter of 2015.Currently, only a Windows PC versions is available, with
Mac and Linux coming later.
“This is a very good day for strategy fans," says Carsten Fichtelmann, CEO and
Founder of Daedalic. “We are very proud to present a very high profile and
cleverly crafted game to players worldwide. We, as well as the talented
developers at Funatics, will use the early access phase to garner player
feedback as we continually improve the game before release.”
Continue here to read the full story.
Frictional Games is now offering preorders of SOMA, the upcoming
submerged sci-fi horror game for Windows, OS X, and Linux. The game is expected
on September 22nd, and in the meantime, pre-purchases are now up on
GOG.com and
Steam where they list the
game's system requirements (thanks MajorD).
Here's a new video
about composer Mikko Tarmia's score for the game, and here's the pitch: Enter
the world of SOMA and face horrors buried deep beneath the ocean waves. Delve
through locked terminals and secret documents to uncover the truth behind the
chaos. Seek out the last remaining inhabitants and take part in the events that
will ultimately shape the fate of the station. But be careful, danger lurks in
every corner: corrupted humans, twisted creatures, insane robots, and even an
inscrutable omnipresent A.I.
You will need to figure out how to deal with each one of them. Just remember
there’s no fighting back, either you outsmart your enemies or you get ready to
run.
- Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces on
PC Invasion.
Interstellar
Breach on Smart Speak is a new article from Derek Smart continuing his
crusade against Star Citizen, as the outspoken developer speaks of legal
action over the game's crowdfunding, in spite of his pledge
having been refunded. Derek says: "Finally, in this legal action that I have
now initiated, note that I haven’t asked for anything that benefits me in any,
way, shape or form. This is not, and never was, about me nor my game." As usual,
Derek is more passionate than concise, so 9,347 words later we're hard pressed
to provide a TL;DR for this, but in short, this seems to be a call for
accountability, collecting information from those desiring refunds, backed by
the threat that this could escalate into a class-action lawsuit depending on the
response. Here's a bit that covers that: As all previous calls for
accountability have failed, we don’t expect RSI to co-operate (hence the need to
contact the Federal authorities), with us. Which means that the next steps,
depending on how they respond to the letter, would be for a class-action lawsuit
(already in various stages of preparation), to move forward and be immediately
filed. And through that, we’re going to subpoena and depose every single key
person, while asking for specific documents during discovery which will
hopefully shed a light on what is going on. They will ask for protective orders,
try to delay and drag things out etc. We will fight it every step of the way and
my guess is that with the Federal authorities involved, it may get resolved even
before it gets to trial; and then we’ll have answers either way.
And if they do fight this, they’re going to do it with your money, simply
because they don’t believe that you – the backers – are entitled to
accountability. If they had nothing to hide, resolving this matter should be
very straightforward.
The Forward Operating Base PvP multiplayer mode in Metal Gear Solid V: The
Phantom Pain will be locked behind a paywall, reports
GameSpot. They say Konami doesn't have all the details on how this will work
yet, a week out from the release of the stealth/action sequel, but this will be
separate from Metal Gear Online, a free mode to launch about six weeks from now
on consoles, and in early January for PCs. Here's word: In The Phantom
Pain, players use various resources acquired within the game to facilitate the
construction of an off-shore base, but in order to participate in the online
multiplayer mode, where players attack each other's bases, they must first use
real-world money to purchase MB Coins.
MB Coins are then used to purchase open water in the game to make space for a
PVP-dedicated base. This was discovered during GameSpot's review process for The
Phantom Pain, but without online functionality, we couldn't determine the cost
of MB Coins, or fully evaluate F.O.B. mode.
When reached for comment, Konami's public relations team responded:
"...unfortunately we don’t have any official details to share at the moment
regarding the microtransaction model for F.O.B.. We should have more information
for you next week though as those details are still being solidified."
The new GfK Chart-Track charts are online to outline the bestselling games in
the U.K. for the week ending August 22nd. LEGO Jurassic World remains number one
on the
all platforms top 40 and The Sims 4 returns to the top spot on the
PC top 30. Without further ado, here's the write-up: Warner Bros lead
the pack again as ‘Lego Jurassic World’ (-14%) takes a second successive week at
No1 and its 4th in total since launch.
For the publisher it marks an impressive total of 11 weeks at the top for Warner
titles (Dying Light, Mortal Kombat X, Lego Jurassic World and Batman: Arkham
Knight) over 34 weeks. ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ (-8%) remains at No2 while ‘Batman:
Arkham Knight’ (-9%) climbs a spot to make it two Warner titles in the Top 3.
EA’s ‘Battlefield Hardline’ (-3%) moves up three places to No4. ‘Minecraft: Xbox
Edition’ (+1%) at No5 & ‘Minecraft: PlayStation Edition’ (+1%) at No7 both
deliver a slight increase in sales, sandwiching ‘FIFA 15’ (-16%), which is down
a place to No6. ‘Dying Light’ (+5%) continues to move up the chart climbing
another two places to No8 and delivering increased sales for the 4th consecutive
week. ‘The Elder Scrolls Online’ (-36%) slides from No3 to No9 but stays ahead
of a resurgent ‘Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’ (+5%), which rounds of this
week’s Top 10 at No10.
This video is a new
television commercial for the upcoming Mad Max game, so feel free to skip
through it if you feel like it. Those who chose to watch will see some in-game
footage from the hard-driving action game. Here's an accompanying description of
the game: "Mad Maxis an open world, third-person action game where players
become Mad Max, a lone warrior in a savage post-apocalyptic world where cars are
the key to survival. In The Wasteland, it's every man for himself. Playing as
the reluctant warrior, players must embark on a treacherous journey to build the
ultimate war vehicle and leave the madness behind." Continue here to read the full story.
- Metal Gear Solid V- The Phantom Pain on
Kotaku. "I've Played 30 Hours...And It's Friggin' Great." Thanks nin.
- Rise of the Tomb Raider on
myGamer.
- ASUS GeForce GTX 950 STRIX Graphics Card on
Techgage.
- BitFenix Prodigy M Micro-ATX Cube Cabinet on
ThinkComputers.org.
- Das Keyboard 4 Professional on
Nikk Tech.
- ECS LIVA x2 on
AnandTech.
- EVGA Z170 FTW Motherboard on
Modders-Inc.
- Intel Core i5 6600K Skylake Linux CPU Benchmarks on
Phoronix.
- Kingston DataTraveler 4000 G2 64GB USB Flash Drive on
Futurelooks.
- Netis WF2150 N600 Wireless Dual Band USB Adapter on
eTeknix.
- Super Flower Leadex 750W Power Supply on
pcGameware.
Happy 20th birthday to Windows 95. On a related note, you probably wouldn't be
reading these words if it weren't for the OS, because it was an interest in
playing with the FrontPage HTML editor in Win95 that lead to the website that
ultimately became Blue's News. Not exactly the butterfly effect, but there it
is.
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