The Arma series was once explained to me as games that try to simulate every aspect of being a soldier on deployment, including the confusion, boredom, and plain unfairness of being a low-level grunt surrounded by machines and men trying to kill you. This is no Call of Duty or Battlefield. This is a series that takes great pride in the fact that you can be killed by a sniper a kilometer away and there’s nothing you can do about it because sometimes the other guys just have better toys.
Bohemia Interactive’s combined arms military simulator Arma 3 Alpha has been available on Steam Early Access since March, but the developer announced that the Beta will officially begin on June 25th. The Beta adds a Green faction to the game’s current Red and Blue forces, as well as new vehicles, weapons, and missions. Owners of the Alpha can get the Beta now by participating in the development branch. Just set your Steam game properties to opt in the Beta.
Having just showed off the Beta for Arma 3 at E3 2013, we are keen to get it into gamers’ hands quickly. Bringing some heavy firepower and additional transport options will allow for more diverse scenarios in both singleplayer and multiplayer. We also can’t wait to open up the Steam Workshop scenario publication, which will make content-sharing with other players much more convenient.
One of the ten new vehicles being added is the Ghosthawk, based on the highly classified officially-does-not-exist stealthy helicopter made famous by the US military’s raid on the Bin Laden compound. You can see some in-game video of it in action here during a pre-E3 event.
When the Beta goes live, the early access price will increase from $32.99 to $44.99, so get it while you can if you want to take advantage of the discount. If you’re one of those people that wants to give more money to the developer, there is a Supporter Edition available at the developer’s store.
A mod for The Witcher 2 wouldn’t normally be notable, but the Full Combat Rebalance 2 Mod was made by Andrzej Kwiatkowski, who works at CD Projekt RED as a game designer. The game may be more than two years old, but Kwiatkowski apparently just couldn’t stop working on the gameplay. The mod completely overhauls the combat in The Witcher 2 to make the main character more mobile and responsive.
– Up to 80% increase in responsiveness per Geralt’s animations.
– Up to 50% increase in responsiveness per NPCs animations.
– Added strafing while being locked on an enemy and walking.
– Geralt can block while moving.
– Geralt automatically parries enemy sword attacks and deflects incoming arrows.
– Geralt and his attackers are no longer bouncing off parry.
– Monster attacks still cannot be parried with a sword.
– While using Guard Stance Geralt channels an active Quen shield.
– Decreased importance of rolling in combat.
There are a lot of other balance tweaks which are listed in the notes.
Now that Microsoft has announced the reversal of its DRM policies for the Xbox One, their next-gen console is in a more competitive position. The Xbox One still costs more than other consoles, but price objections are something that can be overcome with value propositions. Unfortunately, one of the things that the Xbox One could lack is a strong indie game catalog. Why? Because Microsoft has stated that their indie game approval process will remain similar to how it works now.
This week we talk with Vic Davis about his new game, Occult Chronicles, in which Nick Diamon’s nemesis is a baby grand. Vic also reveals his favorite character in Injustice: Gods Among Us, what he wished he’d named his company instead of Cryptic Comet, and what Microsoft and Saturday Night Live have in common. Stick around for some talk about kicking doors in Door Kickers, shooting up a dynamic galaxy in Drox Operative, and gunning for your chance to get on TV in Defiance.
You won internet! Congratulations! Microsoft is reversing their DRM and online verification policies for the Xbox One. There will be no required 24-hour online check. Singleplayer games can be played offline. Your disc-based games can be sold, lent, traded, or gifted with no restrictions.
We appreciate your passion, support and willingness to challenge the assumptions of digital licensing and connectivity. While we believe that the majority of people will play games online and access the cloud for both games and entertainment, we will give consumers the choice of both physical and digital content. We have listened and we have heard loud and clear from your feedback that you want the best of both worlds.
Enjoy your victory internet! The race for console supremacy just got heated.
EA Sports’ FIFA and Ultimate Team trading card feature has had some ugly issues with security. One of the more popular techniques involved unscrupulous folks accessing other players’ Xbox Live accounts and using the saved credit card information to buy hundreds of dollars worth of points. The thieves would then transfer the points to another Live account to buy Ultimate Team trading card packs. We had a few forum members of Quarter to Three that were hit with variations this exploit.
With the next-gen consoles’ emphasis on a cloud-based future, one can imagine that the bad guys are already thinking up ways to foil the system. EA told Eurogamer that they are thinking very seriously about this issue.
Wilson told us that Microsoft and Sony are re-architecturing their networks to increase security, adding double authentication among other things. As for EA, Wilson said the company has started investing in a brand new ID system to be built on top of the first-party networks that will be rolled out this year. “That should make gamers feel better,” Wilson said.
“We haven’t had any major or serious attacks. You never say never, but we understand the value of information and privacy and the value of maintaining the integrity of the data. We are investing heavily – I mean heavily – in that and I believe first parties also are.”
Both Microsoft and EA maintain that none of the Live account breaches involving FIFA were the direct result of hacking. They point to phishing and user error as culprits. EA hopes that its next-gen approach to security will help solve the issues.
2K Marin and Take-Two Interactive announced that buyers of the Xbox 360 version of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified will get access to an exclusive chunk of DLC. This as-yet unnamed DLC pack will be narrative-driven. Morgan Gray, development director at 2K Marin, says that the XCOM setting provides ample material for many stories.
“The alternate 1962 universe that we’ve created for The Bureau is vast and there are many more stories to tell about the early days of XCOM. We’re excited that our stories will provide a new perspective on the war effort, much like how our critically acclaimed Minvera’s Den DLC for BioShock 2 allowed us to present a unique perspective of Rapture.”
If you PC or PS3 players are jealous of the exclusive content your Xbox friends get to pay for, you can always one-up those guys by preordering from one of the retail chains offering the Codebreakers pre-order DLC. That will show them!
Devolver Digital’s Hotline Miami got players’ blood pumping with frenetic pig-masked killing action tuned to a pulsing soundtrack. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number promises more violence and mystery.
Step into the murderous mind of several distinct characters – each with their own motivations and methods of execution – as storylines intersect and reality slips away into a haze of neon and carnage. Blistering combat, an unmistakable visual style, and a powerfully intense soundtrack will once again push you to the limit and questioning your own thirst for blood.
Devolver Digital is aiming for a late 2013 release.
Michael J. Bassett might be the new Paul W.S. Anderson when it comes to translating videogaming absurdity into cinematic silliness. So if you’re willing to sit through a Resident Evil movie, there’s no reason not to sit through the latest Silent Hill movie. Bassett is an ideal man for the job, considering his Solomon Kane is another one of the best worst things you can see all week. Say what you will about the guy’s movies, but he’s got style and he knows how to gather watchable actors. This Silent Hill features Carrie-Anne Moss as Edgar Winters, Malcolm McDowell as a really lame boss fight, Sean Bean sitting out most of the action, Martin Donovan as a detective you’ll forget was in the movie before it’s over, and Michelle Williams look-a-like Adelaide Clemens showing the sort of commitment that will serve her better in her small role in The Great Gatsby and in her kick-ass turn in Versus director Ryuhei Kitamura’s surprisingly good No One Lives.
Of course, you don’t come to Silent Hill for the human players. Revelation does an admirable job collecting a bunch of cool sets and weird creatures, all loosely connected by what might be a story. Pyramid Head moonlights variously as a carny, a prison warden with an effective solution for grabby inmates, and even a Big Daddy. The nurses are disturbingly erotic in a way that I’m not sure I noticed playing the videogames. And the movie’s counterpart to Silent Hill 2’s disturbing mannequin rape is a wonderfully creepy introduction to a new creature as memorable as anything from the games. What sense does it make? What story does it tell? What do we find out about the town itself? What motivates the characters? Forget it, Tom. It’s Silent Hill.
Silent Hill: Revelation is on VOD, Blu-Ray, DVD, and Netflix.
The stealthy 2D side-scrolling cat burglar indie game Gunpoint recouped its development costs in one minute and four seconds according to Suspicious Developments. Tom Francis, lead designer of Gunpoint, posted some results of his indie game launch.
So, I quit my job.
In fact, I think I have quit jobs, as a concept. I started Gunpoint as an audition piece to get myself a position at a developer, but designing it has been so creatively satisfying that I no longer want one, and so commercially successful that I’ll never need one.
I haven’t been retweeting praise or flaunting any actual sales figures, but if it’s not going to sound too horribly braggy, I’ll share the one part of Gunpoint’s success that you might actually care about:
I can now make games full-time for the foreseeable future
Francis did specify that he was only counting the purchase price of the development software in his calculations. It’s likely that the cost of labor would’ve extended his time to profitability by at least a few more minutes. Either way, Francis says he’s pleased with the success of Gunpoint and plans to continue working on it.
The quick tease of Mad Max at the Sony pre-E3 presentation had tongues wagging, especially when it was revealed that Avalanche Studios would be developing it. They know explosions. They made the Just Cause games, and if there’s one thing those games do well it’s making things explode in satisfying ways. They also know accents. Tom’s favorite Just Cause 2 character sports an alluring speech pattern that makes a man weak in the knees.
But where is Max’s Aussie accent? He just has a generic American videogame voice in the trailer. Avalanche’s Christofer Sundberg told IGN that this game is about more than just a location.
“We treated this as a completely new property and that was really the only way for us to take on a licensed game. It’s the first licensed game we’ve ever taken on. And we wanted to treat it like an original IP. The setting – where it is in the world – has really nothing to do with the Mad Max video game. It’s really a game to do with the relationships between different people in this world.”
The game was originally going to be a direct tie-in with the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road movie, but it’s been confirmed that this is now a separate story in the Mad Max canon.
Vince Zampella, General Manager of Respawn Entertainment must’ve had a good time at E3. Respawn’s Titanfall had a well-received showing at Microsoft’s pre-E3 stage presentation and everyone seems suitably impressed by the game’s mechs versus humans premise. Speaking to IGN, Zampella discussed the relief of finally showing off his project and how Microsoft’s cloud computing effort drove Respawn forward.
It wasn’t until the cloud functionality that Respawn realized what it could do with Windows 8 and what would become Xbox One. “It allowed us to think of the game a little differently,” Zampella explains. “That was the perfect solution.” Offloading artificial intelligence and dedicated servers to the cloud guarantee a smoother experience with smarter enemies in a game that blurs the line between single-player campaign and competitive multiplayer.
Vince Zampella didn’t rule out the possibility of the game coming to other platforms, noting that it was a “solvable problem.”
Now that everyone’s presumably done with E3 — all that’s left is to watch how deep a hole Microsoft digs themselves — let’s get back to a far more important topic: games we can actually play right now. I’m not surprised that publishers try to drive the conversation to upcoming games. That’s their job. But I am surprised at how well it works. Why are so many of you peering so intently through carefully jiggered binoculars handed to you by various marketing departments? Had enough yet? Are you ready to come back to the amazing stuff already at your fingertips?
Because here are ten games you should still be playingContinue reading →
State of Decay developer Undead Labs has some good news and some bad news. I know you like your dessert first, so there’s this tidbit in today’s blog update announcing that they’ve passed a half million copies downloaded.
We’re working on a pure sandbox mode for State of Decay, in large part because you asked for it.
State of Decay is already an open-world game with scads of freedom, but it’s got particular story beats that might get old after, say, a second play-through. But it’s also got more than enough gameplay to sustain a completely wide-open unscripted sandbox experience, and I’m delighted Undead Labs will see it through. I just hope we can name our own characters, because I already have my share of baggage with the existing characters.
Now I’m going to give you the damn veggies. It looks like the first patch will download but it won’t install. There’s some confusion about how and even whether this actually happened. But if you were like me and holding off for that handful of fixes before continuing your game, you might want to hold off a little longer. Which will get you that much closer to the sandbox mode.
Since all of your Xbox One game licenses are tied to your account, what happens if you get banned from your account as part of a disciplinary action? Losing multiplayer access is punishment enough, but losing access to all the games tied to your account would be a bit much. It’s no surprise that Microsoft doesn’t seem to know what happens any more than the average gamer yet. Recently, the official Xbox Support on Twitter gave an alarming reply to someone that asked about the effects of an account ban.
If your account is banned, you also forfeit the licenses to any games that have licenses tied to it as listed in the ToU.
It’s not the answer we wanted to see, but at least it’s a clear answer. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Major Nelson, answered the same question quite differently when asked during E3 in this Reddit interview.
Chloe Dykstra: “If someone is banned, whether their fault or not, will they lose access to the games they purchased?”
Major Nelson: “Absolutely not. You will always have access to the games you’ve purchased. Absolutely not.”
Chloe Dykstra: “Yay!”
Major Nelson: “Yay? Really? Come on! You had to expect that.”
Major Nelson is right. You should expect that, but as we’ve seen in the past with other companies, account bans with game licenses tied to them can sometimes lead to all sorts of unintended consequences.
