Drive on Moscow (pronounced “Moss-COW”, right?) is the follow-up to Shenandoah Studio’s Battle of the Bulge, which put the strategy game back in wargaming. It’s out tonight, but don’t expect much help from the folks who made the game if you want to talk out loud about the places where you’ll be fighting. Prepare for the battles of bat urine and fatties!
Developer Funcom wisely put Solomon Island at the beginning of The Secret World. This area is the most accessible, familiar, and varied. As Chris wrote in the previous entry, it’s arguably the strongest part of the game. It certainly affords ample hooks from which to hang the usual horror tropes. HP Lovecraft’s New England by way of Stephen King’s Maine with room for zombies, ghosts, Native American graveyards, re-animators, and more bigfoots than you can shake a dowsing rod at.
But, after the jump, there’s more to horror than King, Lovecraft, and Coombs. Continue reading →
Paradox, a company that does things with strategy games no other developer would even dream of doing, has apparently put some classic 70s horror into the Sons of Abraham add-on for Crusader Kings II. According to an after-action report from Galloglasses on the Paradox forums, certain children might attract certain mysterious caretakers who put on certain dramatic shows of devotion:
Out for a picnic, my king looked up, saw the nun on top of an old watchtower in her habit (or some other black robes)…she shouted down to my daughter Sebdan, proclaiming her love for her. And then jumped. My daughter clapping all the way to her bloody smushy death.
That bit was probably just a text event, but the real cleverness comes from how Paradox codes the narrative arc of The Omen into Crusader Kings II’s gameplay system. And how it further escalates into a uniquely Medieval version of the story. Read the rest here.
(Thanks Fenris!)
Galactic Civilizations III will feature hex-based movement. Lead designer, Paul Boyer, explained to PC Gamer that he changed the series’ use of quadrilateral movement to better balance the game.
“It was a decision I made because I was always bothered by the fact that if you move diagonally, you’re technically getting two tiles. We moved to hexes so everything could be equidistant, and it just looks sexier – more science fiction. But gameplay wise, it should help balancing substantially.”
Hear that? It’s the panicked clickety-clack of fans typing up furious posts explaining that hexes are too much like Civilization V and worse than square grids for strategy games. As a wise man once wrote, “Hexes do not make a game Civ V.”
Thanks, Adam!
The Horrible Hunger of the Ravenous Wattle Gobbler, the second of the Headhunter DLC packs, is coming to Borderlands 2 next week – just in time for Thanksgiving! Players will have to kill a giant mutated turkey and take the head as their trophy. That’s what you do in Pandora. Kill things and collect stuff.
Gearbox also announced that the third Headhunter DLC will be called How Marcus Saved Mercenary Day and will be available to purchase in December.
Paradox Interactive has released update 2.0 for Crusader Kings II. The content update, which is free for everyone, adds Ironman Mode, a slew of bug fixes, drops dependance on the Paradox-hosted metaserver, and includes Steam achievements. The new achievements include ones that celebrate the sanctity of medieval marriage.
Until Death Do Us Part – Have your spouse assassinated
Black Widow – As a woman, have three different husbands killed
Keeping it in the Family – Sire a child that has the Inbred trait
The 2.0 patch comes hand-in-hand with the new Sons of Abraham DLC, which focuses on adding more options for the Abrahamic religions like Judaism and Christianity.
The Playstation 4 sold one million copies in 24 hours. It not only shattered the previous day one sales record, but torched the one week record in a single day. Sony had some last minute bad luck with the delay of Drive Club and Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs. They were left holding the bag with only two AAA launch exclusives: Killzone Shadow Fall and Knack, both of which suffered from subpar reviews. But the Playstation 4 did benefit from a number of cross platform (and cross gen) titles including Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Need for Speed: Rivals, Battlefield 4, LEGO Marvel Superheroes, and all the usual sports games. But really, the system came out of the gate with a weak lineup. I guess most people didn’t notice.
After the jump, the games that launched a million consoles. Continue reading →
In college, I spent many hours in the Ellis Library at the University of Missouri. The gigantic old building is a huge and somewhat forbidding place. The farther up you go, the less light you encounter. Shelves of books press together against narrow aisles, with study desk cubbyholes squeezed in wherever they fit. I’m guessing it’s fairly typical for big universities. But whoever designed the top of the Innsmouth Academy knows places like the Ellis Library.
After the jump, shhhh! Continue reading →
Gran Turismo 6 will feature options to purchase in-game credits with real money. The announcement on the EU PlayStation Blog explains that the credits can be used in the game to add more expensive cars to your garage and to buy parts for your new rides.
In-game credits will be purchasable through the PS Store or your friendly local retailer in the following denominations: 500K, 1 million, 2.5 million or 7 million credits which you’ll be able to apply in-game for cars and parts.
The addition of real-world money being used to buy in-game credits is a first for the series.
If you’re like me then you spend a large portion of your day reading articles, watching replays and keeping up with all the minutia surrounding League of Legends. Odds are, however, that you are not like me at all and don’t read and re-read the latest posts on Surrender at 20 or frantically refresh the League of Legends Reddit for any new activity or Riot developer posts. No, you probably have a life. I don’t, so here’s a recap of what you missed while you were out living and stuff.
After the jump, welcome to the jungle Continue reading →
Unlike the PlayStation 4, which already has a healthy group of folks streaming their next-gen gaming, Twitch broadcast streaming will not work on the Xbox One until sometime in 2014. In the announcement, Microsoft did not explain the reason for the delay, but did want gamers to know that using the Twitch app on Xbox One could net them some achievements.
We know the ability to instantly broadcast gameplay is something the gaming community is excited about, and we are too. We are working to ensure the initial Twitch on Xbox One broadcasting experience meets the expectations of the Twitch community, so while this feature won’t be available right away, we’ll let you know as soon as it is ready.
I’m sure people are excited to use the Xbox One Twitch app to watch PlayStation 4 gamers play their console exclusives.
After fans spied a PS4 devkit in the Roberts Space Industries studios, they speculated that a console version of Star Citizen would be forthcoming. Chris Roberts posted in the official forums to assure backers that the game would be “primarily a PC game” and not be “dumbed down” for “lesser” platforms. Roberts listed various advantages of the PC as a gaming platform, including open standards and access to the latest technology. He then went on to clarify that Star Citizen would not be appearing on the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, but he did not rule out the possibility of the game being ported to the Xbox One or the PlayStation 4.
“IF the platform holders (Sony & Microsoft) allow us to update the code and data without restrictions and odious time consuming QC procedures, IF they allow our community to openly interact with each other across platforms then I would CONSIDER supporting them.”
Star Citizen has raised over $27 million in crowd-funded pledges so far.
That’s not a live-action commercial for an upcoming videogame. That’s the full trailer for DreamWorks’ Need for Speed movie starring Aaron Paul and Scott ‘Kid Cudi’ Mescudi. It also has Michael Keaton spitting poetry into a microphone for some reason.
Who doesn’t like variety in character skins, clothes, and weapons? There’s no reason every sword and helmet should look the same. But I can’t help but wince every time my character, who relies on pistol skills in combat, fires her “pistols”, which are the nicest ones I’ve found. It sounds as ridiculous as it looks.
2 stars
PC
Up next: the wisdom of Solomon Island
Click here for the previous entry.
How much of an achievement hunter are you? Do you really need to see a neat row of 100% progress on your achievement page? Does the addition of DLC with new achievements cause you pain because the increase in possible points sets your stats back to only 75% or 80% complete? The Xbox One may kill you. The Console has an all-new achievement system that gives publishers and developers greater freedom for achievement creation, along with a new interface to track your progress.
The new achievement page is a thing of horrible beauty. Large screenshots of the moment you achieved something sit on a grid showing the total progress. Looking at that image almost makes me twitch with greed. I want to get them all and fill the ring to 100%. I don’t want to even play Ryse, but that image is awfully compelling.
Insidiously, administrators can set achievements on anything. Play a demo? Have an achievement! Look at an advertisement? Achievement! Achievements for non-game apps don’t come with points – for now. Heck, the just-announced Machinma app will have achievements for watching videos.
The Machinima experience on Xbox One will also offer gamers the opportunity to earn unique media achievements created by gamers, for gamers, taking inspiration from the original game achievements on the Xbox platform. Remember, media achievements will not affect gamerscore. Can’t get enough of the videos on the Machinima App? Watch 1,000 videos and get the “TV Rots Your Brain” achievement!
How appropriate.
