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Archived News:
GameTrust is a new game publishing
division launched by GameStop, who say this will break from the traditional
model by allowing developers to retain creative control. They launch with a
roster of four developers: Frozenbyte ( Trine), Ready at Dawn Studios ( The
Order: 1886), Tequila Works ( Deadlight), and Insomniac Games ( Ratchet
& Clank). The
Associated Press has word from Mark Stanely, vice president of internal
development at GameStop, on how this is not meant to compete with the
heavyweights. "This is a largely ignored space. Honestly, we're not going to be
looking at big $15 million-plus franchises right now," he said. "We're looking
at smaller games and launching them at times of the year where we stay away from
that massive fourth quarter craziness."
Steam News announces the
release of Battlezone 98
Redux, the return to this action/strategy hybrid. The game is on sale
for 20% off for the coming week, and here's word on the release: One of
the greatest sci-fi strategy games of all time returns with remastered visuals,
online multiplayer and near unlimited mod content from Steam Workshop.
Experience thrilling first person action and acclaimed RTS in this explosive
alternate vision of the 1960s space race.
Blizzard announces
the closed beta for Overwatch will draw to a close on April 25th, offering their
thanks to all the participants. On a related note,
Battle.net offers
details on the open beta for the upcoming multiplayer shooter, outlining what it
will include and how it will differ from the closed beta, accompanied by
a Road to Launch trailer
featuring game director Jeff Kaplan. Word is progress from the betas will not
carry over into the game's launch and that they do not plan on any downtime for
the duration of the open beta. Here's the schedule: The Overwatch Open
Beta will be available May 5–9 on PC, PlayStation® 4, and Xbox One! Players who
have pre-purchased or pre-ordered Overwatch by April 29 will be eligible for
early access starting May 3.
- EARLY ACCESS: The early access portion of
the Open Beta will begin on all supported platforms May 2 at 4:00 p.m. PDT
(11:00 p.m. UTC). An early access key will be required to play—click
here for details.
- ALL ACCESS: The all access portion of the
Open Beta will begin on all supported platforms May 4 at 4:00 p.m. PDT
(11:00 p.m.UTC). All players will be able to play for FREE during this
period; no sign-up or code required.
The Open Beta will conclude in all regions for all players on Monday, May 9
at 10:00 a.m. PDT (5:00 p.m. UTC).
Continue here to read the full story.
Blizzard announces an August 30th launch date for Legion, the new
expansion for World of Warcraft. They offer preorder details on the
various versions, along with some details on what this will add to the MMORPG:
Defenders of the Alliance and the Horde can steel themselves for the
return of the demonic armies of the Burning Legion by pre-purchasing World of
Warcraft: Legion digitally at
www.wowlegion.com. Players who pre-purchase will unlock an instant level-100
character boost, as well as early access to the Demon Hunter—Legion’s dexterous
and deadly new hero class—prior to the expansion’s release.†
“Legion opens a dark and thrilling new chapter in one of the Warcraft series’
greatest conflicts, and things will never be the same for some of Azeroth’s most
iconic heroes and villains,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard
Entertainment. “This expansion is loaded with features and content that give
players whole new ways to explore the world and customize their heroes. We’re
looking forward to sending everyone into battle against the Burning Legion this
August.”
In this expansion chronicling the events following Warlords of Draenor, all
hellfire breaks loose when the warlock Gul’dan, betrayer of the orcs and twisted
servant of the Burning Legion, unleashes a demonic invasion force upon Azeroth
unlike any the Horde and the Alliance have ever faced. To save their world from
annihilation, heroes must unlock the mysteries of the mythic Broken Isles,
master powerful Artifact weapons, and strike a forbidden pact with the Demon
Hunters of the Illidari—vengeful disciples of the dreaded Illidan
Stormrage.
Update: The headline for this story originally said the expansion is coming this month, apologies for the error.
A new trailer from
Call of Duty: Black Ops III shows off multiplayer action from the Eclipse
expansion coming to the PlayStation 4 edition of the shooter sequel tomorrow,
and to Windows and Xbox One next month. Here's word: "Battle through four new MP
environments that take full advantage of the Black Ops III movement system,
including a martial arts tournament arena, a post-apocalyptic tribal compound, a
future civilian sub-orbital airport, and a military rail system suspended high
above an active volcano." Continue here to read the full story.
The
Roberts Space Industries website has word that another free-fly week is
underway for Star Citizen, Cloud Imperium's upcoming open world space
game (thanks
Rock, Paper, Shotgun). Here's the deal: From time to time we like to
open Star Citizen up to our fans, and provide access to ships they might not
otherwise own. This is not only a great chance for players to try new ships out,
but it helps provide additional testing for those ships, too!
In addition, it can be a great way to introduce new players to the growing
universe of Star Citizen as well. For the next week until April 25th, we’ve
enabled Free Fly access to all accounts in celebration of PAX East. While we
won’t be there this year in person, any chance to celebrate Star Citizen sounds
like a good idea to us! For the next week, anyone with a Star Citizen account
will have access to the Aurora LN, the F7C Hornet, and the Mustang Delta. This
Free Fly event gives new players access to three unique parts of the Star
Citizen experience:
- Star Citizen Alpha 2.3.1 – Also known as
Crusader or the “mini-PU,” this is the nucleus of the world we’re building!
Featuring multiple space stations and environments, scripted missions,
places to explore and more, Alpha 2.3.1 is your first look at a much larger
universe!
- Arena Commander – Arena Commander is a
‘game within a game’ that we’ve used to develop our flight mechanics and
ship combat balance. Take on human opponents or an AI swarm in single seat
fighter.
- Social Module – Interact with other players
while you explore our first landing zone, ArcCorp! The Social Module is
intended as a starting point for our world building,
You can register for an
account here to get started. If you already have an account from a previous
Free Fly, you’re all set! Just log in via the Star Citizen launcher and we’ll
see you in the ‘Verse!
The
Ubisoft forums have word that the developer is aware that some Tom
Clancy's The Division players are exploiting a way to receive Falcon Lost
rewards repeatedly, in spite of how they are only intended to be available once
a week. Word is those who are taking advantage of this will receive their day of
reckoning: "We are working on fixing the exploit. Obviously it is against our
Code of Conduct and the team is looking into what can be done in terms of
punishment for those who have exploited. If you want to review our Code of
Conduct:
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php...ode-of-Conduct." Thanks
Eurogamer.
BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America says the recently launch of Dark Souls III
was the most successful first day for a new game in company history. They do not
state how many copies of the action/RPG sequel they sold to set this new highwater mark, saying simply: "DARK SOULS™ III, one of the most anticipated
games of 2016, has released to rave reviews and incredibly strong first week
sales, breaking records for the most successful day-one launch and fastest
selling title in BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America Inc.’s history." They have
released a new "Kingdom
Fall" trailer to celebrate the news. Continue here to read the full story.
Mogila Games announces
Clinically Dead, a game set during the dying moments of a critically injured
protagonist. This does not yet carry a release date, but
this trailer offers a
look this unusual concept, and here's a bit on the plan: It will happen
eventually to all of us, but Mr. Samson is the guy who has no luck today – he’s
dying. He is falling into his own mind and each next second is taking longer and
longer. At the beginning, the first second felt like three seconds. The normal
time was slower for him than for others. The next second one was like five
minutes. He had very much time to rethink his life. For everyone else this is
the matter of seconds, but for him this was taking forever. Finally the last
second of his life on earth was stretched to the infinite time… and this is when
we are starting our adventure. The adventure where you are moving through
4-dimensional system. The space and the time are connected here and you are free
to move not only in three directions (width, height and depth) but also in the
fourth one – time.
Continue here to read the full story.
Dark Souls III lands at number one on the
GFK Chart-Track PC sales chart of the bestselling games in the U.K. for the
week ending April 16th. FromSoftware's action/RPG sequel is also number one on
the
all platforms chart.
Here's the summary of all the action: Bandai Namco claim No1 this
week with new entry ‘Dark Souls III’ (PS4/Xbox One/PC) by From Software.
This is the fourth outing for the main ‘Souls’ series, starting out on PS3-only
as ‘Demon’s Souls’ and debuting at No6 back in week 25, 2010. The series took
off in terms of sales with the launch of ‘Dark Souls’ (PS3/360) debuting at No3
in week 40, 2011. ‘Dark Souls II’ (PS3/360) was the previous high in terms of
sales and chart position, debuting at No2 behind ‘Titanfall’ in week 11, 2014.
And now the series claims a first No1with sales up a massive 61% over the ‘Dark
Souls II’ previous high. Ubisoft climb 1 place to No2 with ‘Tom Clancy’s The
Division’ (-40%), EA climb 5 places with ‘EA Sports UFC 2’ at No3 (+64%), whilst
Microsoft drop from No1 to No4 with ‘Quantum Break’ (-64%). The other big new
release from last week, Codemasters’ ‘Dirt Rally’ drops from No2 to No5 (-66%).
Nintendo break in to the Top 20 with one of the 5 new Nintendo Selects launches
from this week - ‘New Super Mario Bros. U + Super Luigi’ debuting at
No18.
- BIOSTAR RACING H170GT3 (LGA1151) Motherboard on
eTeknix.
- Cherry MX Board 6.0 Keyboard on
pcGameware.
- Corsair RM1000x 1000 Watt 80 PLUS Gold Fully Modular Power Supply
on
eTeknix.
- Creative Sound Blaster Roar Pro on
Vortez.
- G.Skill's Ripjaws MX780 RGB gaming mouse on
The Tech Report.
- GIGABYTE Z170-Gaming K3 Motherboard on
Play3r.net.
- iRULU Walknbook 3 Hybrid Tablet PC with Windows 10.1 on
ThinkComputers.org.
- Kingston DataTraveler Micro 3.1 128GB USB 3.1 Gen 1 Flash Drive
on
Nikk Tech.
- Logitech G933 Artemis Spectrum Headset on
Gaming Nexus.
- Raijintek Styx Gehäuse on
Technic3D. German.
- Synology DiskStation DS216+ NAS on
Modders-Inc.
- TP-LINK AC2600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router on
Mad Shrimps.
The weather has finally settled into a consistent spring-like state, which is
more than welcome. This facilitated the first real backyard work of the season
here, and we got a lot accomplished. That's at least in part because I finally
gave up on one of my manual gardening affectations and got an electric hedge
clipper. We have a few giant Forsythia plants out there to contend with, and for
the first time I was able to trim them back to a reasonable level... normally I
hack at them with the big hedge scissors and eventually run out of reach and
steam and quit when it looks half-way decent, leaving them that much more
overgrown the next time, so I've finally gotten a handle on what was literally a
growing problem.
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