Sandbox Interactive announces the launch of closed beta testing of
Albion
Online for those who own founder's packs for this fantasy-themed MMORPG.
There are more details on the
Albion
Online website, and here's a short description of the game: "Albion Online
has players explore an open game world and stake their claim on it by sieging,
claiming and defending territories. The game offers an extensive player-driven
economy, challenging guild-versus-guild activities, the ability to develop and
customize real estate, a unique classless customization system, and much, much
more - all in a fully connected, truly cross-platform persistent game world."
This video offers the
final developer diary for
Just Cause 3, showing off the game engine in
the next installment in Avalanche's action series. The clip is accompanied by
the following explanation: "The final video in the JUST CAUSE 3 Developer Diary
series takes a look at the technology behind the game: the Avalanche Engine.
Talking about the combination of mechanics the engine allows for, procedural
destruction models and enemy AI behaviours, the final video is a fantastic
insight into how the Avalanche Studios team has brought JUST CAUSE 3 to life."
GMG & Playfire Community Blog kicks off a new weekly feature where they will
report the bestselling games on Green Man Gaming for the week. This top five
list will consume a minute of your time in its original
video form, but we're
going to help this be more efficient by spoiling things:
- Fallout 4
- Rocket League
- Star Wars Battlefront
- Assassin's Creed: Syndicate
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Continue here to read the full story.
An
open letter on the Steam Forums from OVERKILL Software apologizes to
PAYDAY 2 players for a series of
missteps involving the implementation of
microtransactions in PAYDAY 2 after initially promising they wouldn't be part of
the heist sequel (thanks
VG247). They offer
this
video interview hashing things out with a couple of the community moderators
who
went "on strike" over the situation, though the
clip runs a couple of hours.
They don't outline any concrete plans on setting things right, but they provide this summary
on where the situation stands right now:
Meeting with volunteer
moderators Ashley and Jones
Today we had a meeting with Ashley and Jones, two of our volunteer moderators.
Ashley and Jones has been collecting questions from the community that we
discussed during the meeting. Two of the topics were stat boosts and the latest
COP reward. We're currently looking into what we can do to make up for the final
COP-reward. Ashley and Jones gave several suggestions from the community that we
are currently discussing internally. Our main goal is to try to find a way to
reduce or remove the random elements of the final reward, whatever that reward
will be. Regarding stat boosts, Ashley and Jones suggested that we introduce
something similar to StatTrak as part of future safes, a feature used in CS:GO
in their cases. This is something we've been thinking about as well, and
something that we will discuss going forward. I must stress however that we
cannot currently make any promises but these are things we will be discussing as
we move forward.
Continue here to read the full story.
A
new post on the
Natural Selection 2 website titled "Let's try something new," announces
"Unknown Worlds is getting back in to Natural Selection development," which
doesn't sound new (thanks
Ant). The post is a little vague, saying: "There’s
not an easy way to describe what all this means," but there's a link to
this Q&A
talking about whether it's possible the action/strategy sequel can be "revived,"
showing the focus seems to be on rebuilding the its player base. This seems to
involve hiring some of the volunteers who have worked on this project to form an
in-house development team, something
not
everyone is pleased about. As we say, there's a vagueness to it all, as
shown in this excerpt:
I put ‘leaked’ in quotation marks, because there’s
no secrets here. There’s nothing Unknown Worlds knows that we don’t want the NS2
community to know. The decision to return to NS2 is a big, complex, nuanced one.
It is hard to describe it all in a single email, blog post, or phone call. It’s
even harder to convey the idea that Unknown Worlds doesn’t have all the answers,
and that not having an answer is ok.
Star Wars Battlefront debuts at number two on the
GFK Chart-Track U.K. PC top 30 chart for the week ending November 21st.
Football Manager 2016 slips back into the top spot, while
Assassin's
Creed Syndicate enters the chart at number seven. Battlefront is number one
on the
all platforms top 40, knocking
Fallout 4 into the number three
position.
Here's word:
‘Star
Wars Battlefront’ shoots straight to No1 with the biggest ever launch for a
title based on the Star Wars franchise, selling 117% more units in its launch
week than previous best ‘Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’.
Released on Thursday, it is the 4th biggest launch of any game in 2015. As it is
more of a reboot than a sequel, it becomes the fastest selling non-sequel PS4
title ever, selling more at launch on Sony’s format than another online-only
title, ‘Destiny’. ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops III’ remains at No2 despite a 50%
drop in sales, while last week’s top seller ‘Fallout 4’ (-80%) slips to No3.
Sales of ‘FIFA 16’ continue to pick up this week with Christmas in sight, rising
by 14%, but down one place to No4. At No5, ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ has a
credible second week with only a 37% decline in sales, keeping it ahead of ‘Lego
Dimensions’ (+0%) which climbs 2 places to No6. ‘Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate’
(+7%) also jumps 2 places, up to No7 with the PC version new this week. The Top
10 is rounded off with ‘Minecraft Story Mode’ (-32%) at No8, ‘WWE 2K16’ (-4%) at
No9 and ‘Need for Speed’ (-39%) at No10. No other new titles are able to force
their way in to the Top 40 this week.
The Gunnar-man ran into one of his girlfriends yesterday, as Elvis the woodle
(Wheaton/poodle) was out in her yard. We also got to meet Elvis' grandparents,
as her owner's mom and dad were visiting. They were enchanted by Gunnar because
they had previously owned a Standard Poodle, and by the end of our visit, they
declared they now planned on getting another one. I often joke he's a floor
model poodle, because he makes people want to get one of their own, but this is
the first time I recall him sealing the deal like this. As Blake once said,
"always be closing."
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