Command & Conquer is redefining RTS gaming for the next generation, amplifying classic gameplay elements for a new era of PC gaming and introducing all new ways to play in the genre. Or so EA tells me in a press release. You’d never know from their press conference, which successfully kept the upcoming RTS a secret.
Microsoft’s E3 kickoff presentation aired live today and it was filled with hyperbole, buzzwords, and CG trailers. Presenters assured the audience that the games shown were only possible using the “unique Xbox One architecture” regardless of whether the product was multiplatform or not. Everything was anchored with the Power of the Cloud ™ which seemed to be the most popular phrase.
True to their word, there was no TV talk. Instead, everyone got a snootful of next-gen trailers. Games shown included a new Killer Instinct, Ryse, Quantum Break, Forza 5, Spark, Dead Rising 3, and Battlefield 4. Almost everything shown was tied to the cloud somehow, used Smartglass, Kinect, and had protaganists with grim and determined faces.
The obligatory E3 Halo trailer was shown. Master Chief had a snazzy torn cloak and I imagine his face looked grim and determined as he looked at something appropriately alien-looking.
Some gameplay from Respawn’s Xbox exclusive, Titanfall, was shown. It had mechs and parkour. And explosions, of course. Imagine Call of Duty with giant robots.
We did get one solid detail that we needed to know. Xbox One will launch for $499 in November.
My favorite part of Microsoft’s Xbox 1 presentation was game studio VP Phil Spencer coming out in a State of Decay T-shirt. He must be pretty happy about the sales of Undead Labs’ open-world zombie game (it’s second only to Minecraft for the numbers of copies sold in two days). And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer game. State of Decay is a fascinating contrast to Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, which has considerably greater production values, meticulously engineered and calculatingly effective emotional beats, and the same vivid characterization that made Uncharted so successful. But for all the raw manipulative power of The Last of Us, I can’t stop thinking about State of Decay while I play. Undead Labs knows well something too many larger studios forget as they chase their larger ideas: good game design will lead to good storytelling, but good storytelling in no way guarantees good game design.
Unfortunately, Spencer’s tastefully informal blazer covered the edges of the game’s name. Puzzled viewers must have wondered what Ate of Dec was. Furthermore, Spencer faithlessly changed into another T-shirt later in the presentation, shilling for something called Apy while showing off the new game from Superbrothers’ developer Capybara Games.
The one thing I can say with no reservations about Techland is that I want to play the games depicted in their trailers. The latest CG ad is for Dying Light, their parkour flavored zombie apocalypse action game set to arrive sometime in 2014.
The Guardian and The Washington Post published heavyweight stories yesterday about PRISM, a United States information-gathering intelligence effort that’s been operating since 2007. The simple explanation is that if you’ve ever done anything through Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Verizon, Facebook, Apple, and a host of other companies, that data has been available to various US intelligence agencies for them to sift through. This should be a concern for gamers.
Let’s get serious after the break. Continue reading →
In the vanilla version of Sins of a Solar Empire, Hypatia would be just another comfortable terran planet. I would settle it, upgrade its civilian infrastructure, and let its population grow for a while. It would eventually be a high-population world, useful mainly for the taxes it pays and whatever strategic place it occupies in the galaxy. Since it’s a fair distance from my capital, I’d of course build a temple to raise its allegiance, which is a base modifier to income. I might search it for artifacts. Of course, I wouldn’t find any. But you can’t very well not spend the money to check each planet for artifacts.
Hypatia would eventually turn into a blue marble that spits out credits. Basically, a cash cow. I would know this from the moment my scout warped into its gravity well for the first time. Terran planets equal credits. Next world.
But this isn’t the vanilla version of Sins of a Solar Empire. This isn’t your father’s Hypatia.
After the jump, what you’ll find on Forbidden Worlds Continue reading →
The Xbox One will require a connection to Microsoft’s verification servers at least every 24 hours despite what PR had said after the recent Xbox reveal event in Redmond. The newly published details explain the online requirements.
While a persistent connection is not required, Xbox One is designed to verify if system, application or game updates are needed and to see if you have acquired new games, or resold, traded in, or given your game to a friend. Games that are designed to take advantage of the cloud may require a connection.
With Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection, but you can still watch live TV and enjoy Blu-ray and DVD movies.
This matches some of the rumors and leaked specs that we had seen earlier. It also matches some of the comments that Microsoft executives had made during the press event before the PR folks rounded them up and shut off the information tap.
Microsoft also published a page about games licensing, but details are scarce. They do specify that “up to ten members of your family” will be able to share access to the games on your home console and any one family member can access the shared library from the cloud at a time. As far as reselling and sharing, they say both actions will be allowed, but there are some new rules.
Trade-in and resell your disc-based games: Today, some gamers choose to sell their old disc-based games back for cash and credit. We designed Xbox One so game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers. Microsoft does not charge a platform fee to retailers, publishers, or consumers for enabling transfer of these games.
Give your games to friends: Xbox One is designed so game publishers can enable you to give your disc-based games to your friends. There are no fees charged as part of these transfers. There are two requirements: you can only give them to people who have been on your friends list for at least 30 days and each game can only be given once.
To many gamers, these details mean only one thing. Your move Sony.
For the Horde! The quaintly odd Blood Bowl games have quite the following on Quarter to Three. Is it the concept? Orcs, elves, and humans playing a weird British boardgame version of American football turned into a computer game? Is it the bloodthirsty cheerleaders? Personally, I’ve always liked the way the game seems so arbitrary when you start out, but once you get used to the idea that it’s not really about football and more about minimizing risk while forcing your opponent to roll the dice more, things can really fall into place. Focus Home Interactive and Cyanide Studio think it may be the announcers.
They teased the fact that they were working on Blood Bowl 2 back in February, but they waited until today to officially anounce the game. Jim Johnson the Vampire, and Bob Bifford the Ogre, will be with players “throughout the game” as their Cabalvision studio set will be the main interface. Oh joy!
The whole game will be presented in a Cabalvision theme – the official Blood Bowl TV! – where Jim & Bob will guide players, comment their decisions and will even interview key star players appearing in the huge campaign mode. Of course, they will also grace us with their wild commentaries during the matches!
Uh, okay. I’m not sure that fans were clamoring for that feature, but I guess they have to talk about something since they’re not showing much else about the game. Waaaaagh!
In his introductary post as the new Diablo III game director, Josh Mosqueira outlined some of the goals he has for Blizzard’s action roleplaying game. Adjusting loot drops and quality, reducing the impact of the Auction House, and creating new foes to fight are on the agenda.
While some Diablo players out there are just looking for a fun single playthrough of the game, for many others, part of the appeal of the game is coming back again and again to test their mettle against challenging foes in an ongoing search for rare treasures, with the goal of making their heroes more and more powerful. We want to give those players, and really everyone, even more reasons to keep coming back to Sanctuary, and we have some great ideas brewing for ways to address randomization, what our endgame should offer, and how to make playing online with friends truly fulfilling.
Josh Mosqueira was originally hired by Blizzard to lead the drive to get Diablo III onto consoles. That side of the project seems to be going well as they just confirmed that the game will be coming to the Xbox 360 as well as the previously announced PS3 version on September 3rd. They are offering an “Infernal Helm” preorder item that gives starting in-game characters an experience bonus.
For all the complaints about violence in videogames, there sure are a lot more of them coming out in which the player has no weapon at all. Of course, there’s still violence being done to the player in a lot of those titles, but a game design with no player weapons must by necessity go outside normal conventions to make things interesting.
That trailer is for INFRA by loisteinteractive. They describe it as a “gun free exploration game.” You play a structural analyst that gets into trouble while surveying some structural damage. First person exploration and puzzle-solving will be the meat of the gameplay.
Nothing more than a quiet desk jockey assigned to survey some routine structural damage. Quickly though, your mission turns from a mundane trek to a fight for survival. Your tools are simple: the camera around your neck and the wits to navigate a virtual labyrinth of debris. How you tell your story is your choice, will you have the commitment to finish your duty, or will you ignore all else but the preservation of your own life?
As you travel through the infrastructure of a city you will find that your actions and thorough observations ultimately determine if others will survive.
INFRA is on Steam Greenlight looking for more votes. The developers are shooting for a 2014 launch. There’s a longer alpha gameplay video here.
This week Jamie Fristrom, the designer of Spiderman 2, joins us to talk about getting around in open-world games. Which games do it well? Which games do it poorly? How do we feel about repeatedly mashing a button to run in Rockstar’s games? And will Fristrom’s upcoming Energy Hook replace the Spiderman 2 shaped hole in our hearts? We also talk about the latest Red Orchestra, we don’t talk about Save the Date because that would ruin it, and we wonder what the heck the designers of State of Decay were thinking.
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Frictional Games posted in their official forums that Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs will be delayed again to the end of summer. Frictional explained that co-developer thechineseroom is optimizing the horror game and language translations are being worked on for its release. They also mentioned ports of the game in their statement.
The porting guys are porting away. Deals are being made. Things are prepared for launching the game through more online stores than any other FG game before. In general occupied with all things related.
Console versions of A Machine for Pigs would be a new development, but it’s unclear what Frictional may have meant. The game was orginally supposed to launch on Halloween of 2012, but that release date was changed to Q2 2013 when it was missed.
Yesterday, Square Enix got fans excited by teasing a little bit of something related to Deus Ex. A new standalone game? Some DLC to the 2011 action hit? Perhaps another tie-in book? SE ended all that speculation this morning by revealing that Deus Ex: The Fall would be an iOS exclusive game. Developed by N-Fusion in collaboration with Eidos Montreal, Deus Ex: The Fall will put players into the cyber-shoes of mercenary Ben Saxon as he investigates a drug conspiracy. SE promises that the game will have controls for intuitive touchscreen gameplay and will give players a “full Deus Ex experience.”
Despite that promise, fans of the series are already predicting the worst for Deus Ex: The Fall. Gamers used to shoddy ports, limited gameplay, and nickel & dime in-app purchases are wary of the game being just another cash grab.
SE spoke to MCV to allay those fears and to explain the strategy of releasing this for mobile devices. SE Europe’s marketing director Jon Brooke says it’s all a part of the overall plan to shake things up in the mobile gaming market.
“This isn’t about tablets vs next gen,” he said. “We’re a big publisher, so you know we’ll be showing next gen gaming at E3 next week.
“We’re as serious about next gen as we are about tablet gaming.”
SE outlined plans to seriously expand into the mobile market following their last quarterly statement. Deus Ex: the Fall will launch later this summer for $6.99.
The news out of Zynga the past few days has been pretty grim. Their strategy to turn the company towards gambling hasn’t paid off. They just laid off 18% of their workforce. They wound up closing down OMGPOP, the company they paid $180 million for barely a year ago largely based on the success of Draw Something.
On June 3rd, OMGPOP employees were called into a suprise mid-day meeting with HR and given the bad news. According to ex-employees speaking to Business Insider, the closure was cause for celebration.
“Most layoffs are sad. You imagine big corporate settings where security is there to lead people out of the office so they don’t make a scene. This was the opposite,” says the former employee. “Music was being played loudly, and people were ripping up Zynga hoodies and T-shirts. Anything that was Zynga was completely left there. The sentiment felt positive.”
Few of the ex-OMGPOP staff had any regrets. Meanwhile, Zynga is now projecting quarterly net losses of between $39 million and $28.5 million.
State of Decay, a supposedly open-world zombie survival sandbox, doesn’t seem very sandboxy at first. Two buddies are coming back from a camping trip only to discover the zombie apocalypse happened while they were out of range of cell phone service. Don’t you hate it when that happens? So they throw in with a handful of survivors at the ranger’s station to play a sort of third-person sneaker with some headshotting, meleeing, resource management, and even driving. Some scripted stuff happens. So far, all this could have happened in Dead Island: Rip Tide.
But I hadn’t met Ondrej yet.
After the jump, things that absolutely couldn’t happen in Dead Island: Rip Tide Continue reading →
