I hate how glib this sounds, but there’s really no other way to put it: playing Rome II feels like playing a beta. It’s as if someone sent me an early build, but forgot the caveat sheet.
Okay, this is a work in progress, so you’re going to see some bugs. Also, we need to give it another optimization pass to speed up loading times and to improve performance. We don’t have a manual yet, but the ingame encyclopedia has some broad explanations (it should load more quickly after the optimization pass). We’ll be adding more feedback to improve the player experience before we release. Finally, not all the systems are working as intended yet. So again, just keep in mind this is a work in progress and is in no way indicative of the state of the final release.
After the jump, the state of the final release Continue reading →
Brandon Cackowski-Schnell and Tom Chick have been posting daily updates, which started here, on Diablo III for the Xbox 360. This is their final entry.
Brandon: Okay Tom, let’s take this thing home. It’s been a great week and I’ve learned a lot about Diablo, about you, and about how much you have a crush on Leah. Maybe Deckard can give her away at your wedding. Wait, scratch that.
Tom: Too soon. Don’t you feel like a jerk now?
Brandon: I don’t think my first week with Diablo III would have gone as smoothly or been as enjoyable had you not been there to tell me all of the things that the game didn’t feel the need to. I still think the weapon thing is silly but at the same time, seeing my wizard lady running around with an electric broadsword like she’s Barbarella is something else.
After the jump, taking this thing home indeed Continue reading →
BattleForge, developed by EA Phenomic, is closing down at the end of October. The “Play 4 Free” branded hybrid card-collecting real-time strategy game will be shut down on October 31st by publisher EA. According to the notice on the official forums, players are encouraged to spend any remaining in-game currency before the lights go out.
The decision to retire older games is never easy. We hope you’ve enjoyed playing BattleForge as much as we enjoyed making it and we wish to extend our sincerest thanks to all of our passionate and dedicated players for supporting BattleForge over the past 4 years.
EA Phenomic was closed by EA in July.
Scammers will exploit any weakness. Games with a tie to your bank account always get their fair share of scams. “Your World of Warcraft account has been closed due to illegal activity. Please click here to give some guy in Singapore all your credit card information!” According to Respawn Entertainment, these digital con-artists will even use gamers’ anticipation of Titanfall to grab data.
To help keep our fans safe from scammers, please note that all sites advertising Beta access are 100% scams.
A quick Google search does bring up a few obvious Titanfall scam sites, which we won’t link to for obvious reasons. In related news, if Tom Chick sends me his credit card information, I will totally get him into the secret beta for Diablo IV.
Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 2 is coming. Rebellion announced the sequel to their WWII-themed horde-mode zombie shooter through Eurogamer. Rebellion’s Jason Kingsley described the creative process behind making the first zombie sniping shooting gallery.
“Nazi Zombie Army was a gamble, really. We didn’t know whether it would work. We hoped people would like it. We hoped people would take it in the slightly tongue in cheek way it was meant with the title. And we obviously didn’t have much money to market it.
“So we just put it out there and it’s been very very good business and we’ve created a lot of fans who just like a straightforward gory shooter against zombies. It pretty much made its money back on the day of release. That was awesome.”
Zombies. Nazis. Slo-mo bullet camera. If you haven’t had your fill of zombies yet, you can look forward to Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 2 on PC later this year. Rebellion hopes to get the game on next-gen consoles as well, but must wait for publishing details from Sony and Microsoft.
Hotline Miami 2 used to contain a rape scene. Well, a “rape” scene. As with many things Hotline Miami, you can’t take it at face value. But now it doesn’t have that scene. It’s been cut from the demo and the developers at Dennaton have said in an interview they’re going to try to “fix it”.
Unless “fix it” means put it back and continue making the game as they intended, Dennaton is letting the wrong person shape their game. That person is writer Cara Ellison, whose PC Gamer preview presumably caused Dennaton to cut the scene.
After the jump, how not to make a videogame Continue reading →
DICE plans to add a “test range” to Battlefield 4 to allow aspiring flight-jockeys to practice flying without endangering the team during an online match. The often-requested feature was revealed by Lars Gustavsson, the Creative Director of DICE, during an interview with IGN.
“We’ve definitely heard that people are afraid of getting in there [and using vehicles like helicopters] and that’s not our intent, so what we’ve done is, we’ve added a test range, which allows you to try out all the hardware ahead of time so that if you want to learn to fly a helicopter you can get in there and you can find the settings that work best for you. And then start doing some stunt flights just to feel safe before you go out and get the responsibility of a bunch of other people sitting in your helicopter, so I truly hope that this will help people feel more safe about trying out the whole battlefield.
Smashing your plane into the side of a building won’t have the same quality in Battlefield 4 as it does in Battlefield 3 if no one is around to laugh at your incompetence.
Brandon Cackowski-Schnell and Tom Chick will be posting daily updates on Diablo III for the Xbox 360 over the coming week. This is their sixth and penultimate entry.
Brandon: Tom poked fun at me for not knowing King Leon’s name, but let’s deal with the elephant in the room here, namely the writing in this game.
Tom: Oooh, this should be good. Take it away, Mr. “I’m In It For The Story”!
After the jump, once upon a time in Tristram Continue reading →
The latest update for Marvel Heroes has just gone live. This is arguably the greatest shift in basic gameplay since Marvel Heroes’ release and it’s yet another sign that Gazillion is admirably committed to figuring out how to make this thing the best it can be. And to think I’d written it off as a free-to-play boondoggle that I wouldn’t give a second glance while I played Diablo III or Guild Wars 2! Here’s the overview for the update:
This patch represents a major step forward in the combat and item system for Marvel Heroes. With a complete retuning of survivability and defense across the board.
As our design philosophy suggests, we concentrated on identifying the most effective powers and buffing the rest of the powers and heroes to that top-damage range.
Heroes and powers have received significant upgrades as well as items. You now have more incentive and payoff for using loot close to your level and will receive greatly increased survivability from items with defense.
The update has a few hitches, but so far it hasn’t blown up or melted down, which is a first for developer Gazillion, who still owes me for eating my Punisher in a rollback. The update is technically called version 1.2, but it’s been informally known as the “August patch”. Checking the calendar, I see that Gazillion meant the adjective and we just assumed they meant the month.
Read the full notes here.
In the aftermath of PAX, which only one of us attended, we talk about the pros, cons, and cons of conventions. What makes a good convention good? Are there any conventions so bad that they caused McMaster to hurl into a garbage can? And which costumes will we be cosplaying at next year’s PAX? Games of the week features talk of Rome II, Outlast, Occult Chronicles, Saints Row IV, and The Incredible [sic] Adventures of Van Helsing.
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Bioshock Infinite’s floating city of Columbia will be coming to Disney Infinity. Five pieces of user-generated content picked by developer Avalanche Software will be released as free DLC for the game’s toy box mode. The add-ons include the floating islands of Columbia, a Tron trench run, and a level based on Disneyland’s jungle cruise.
The crossover makes perfect sense despite the wholesome all-ages nature of Disney Infinity and the violent conflict in Columbia. Disneyland and Bioshock Infinite were both influenced by the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, otherwise known as The World’s Columbian Exposition.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is having issues. The game’s re-launch on August 27th, meant to be a second chance for the troubled MMO, has instead been nothing short of a disaster. Square Enix did not adequately prepare for the server traffic which has resulted in errors and downtimes. The team has implemented login and character creation restrictions, which has proven to be an extremely unpopular hotfix while more servers are brought online. Players have expressed their displeasure in the official forums. Noaki Yoshida, the game’s producer, reached out directly to players.
“The fact that we had to implement these restrictions is a direct result of my inaccurate sales and login estimates, and as producer, I must accept complete responsibility for this misstep. Each and every player who has been affected has my deepest apologies.”
Yoshida said an extension to customers’ free play period will be offered, but players have thus far been unimpressed. Sony confirmed that it is offering full refunds to customers.
Brandon Cackowski-Schnell and Tom Chick will be posting daily updates on Diablo III for the Xbox 360 over the coming week. This is their fifth entry.
Today, Brandon hits level 10 and Tom discovers the situation with legendary items is radically different from the PC version of Diablo III.
After the jump, Leoric is dead and guess who got his ring Continue reading →
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is being designed with cosplayer’s needs in mind. Hideo Kojima, outspoken game director and videogame industry personality, took to Twitter to explain his character design strategy for the upcoming game.
“I’ve been ordering to Yoji to make the character more erotic, and he did it well.”
“Recently I’ve been making characters this way. I create the setting thoroughly, how he/she spent early life, name, style, favorite phrase, fashion, action, to stand the character out.”
“The initial target is to make want to do cosplay or its figurine to sell well.”
Kojima was referring to Yoji Shinkawa, MGS5’s art director, in the first tweet. He also expressed concern that Quiet, the bikini-wearing sniper in the E3 trailer, might be too difficult to cosplay in her new “more erotic” outfit. He supplied this possibly not-safe-for-work image as a sample.
We finally have an official release date for the Xbox One! Analysts had predicted dates ranging from the beginning of October to the end of November and it looks like the people that bet on the traditionally standard pre-Thanksgiving date are the winners. The Xbox One will be available for purchase in the 13 launch territories on November 22nd. This is the same date used for the Xbox 360 launch in 2005.
Yusef Mehdi, Microsoft’s VP of Marketing, Strategy and Business, and Xbox, announced the release date and relayed some good news regarding the chip speed increase.
Finally, in the spirit of continuing to bring value to and excitement to Xbox, I am also pleased to confirm that the development team has increased the CPU from 1.6GHz to 1.75GHz, roughly a 10 percent increase in GPU performance. This is on top of the 6% increase we previously announced for the GPU. What does this mean to you the gamer? It means that the Xbox One will have that much more power for developers to make their games and entertainment really shine. We’re going to keep bringing more value to the Xbox One as we head towards launch building on some of the advancements we have already shared such as the 40 plus improvements to the Xbox One controller, advancements to help you find the perfect opponent and make the most of our online community, to the power of the cloud.
The PlayStation 4 launches on November 15th in the US, and November 29th in most other markets.
