Egosoft’s X series of space sandbox games occupy a niche between old-fashioned space action games like Wing Commander and trucking games like Euro Truck Simulator 2. The comparison I see being used most often is Privateer, but while that comes close, it fails to encompass the spreadsheet management sim that the X games can become once you begin operating a fleet of mining ships or a company of cargo haulers. The X series also has a reputation for being a bit obtuse and complicated. They’re a lot like Stalker in that you’re given some basic equipment and told to have at it, but unlike Stalker’s rifles and food, it’s doubtful you know how to use a Boron Orca or a Meatsteak Cahoona.
Egosoft is taking that issue head on with X Rebirth. It’s not just a rebirth for the lore, it’s a chance to start over with the UI and the general learning curve of the games. Check out the video. If the finished project is anywhere near as slick looking, then space truckers will finally get the game they’ve wanted since Elite.
Guncraft combines the world-building of Minecraft with the combat of Call of Duty, complete with classes, perks, vehicles, and a horde mode. It’s an admirable hybrid in many ways, assuming you can find other people playing, because it’s got no bots except the literal ones that run at you in horde mode.
But for all its admirable hybridization, I can’t help but feel crushing disappointment — or not crushing, as the case may be — when I blow away all the walls of a building and the roof just hovers there. Pictured, of course. Gravity is a crucial part of destructibility. Breaking things is only half the fun. The other half is watching them fall.
And to dash even more water on your hopes for grand destruction — or to not dash water on them, as the case may be — check out what also won’t happen after the link.Continue reading →
The $20 three-part season’s pass you bought for Bioshock Infinite before knowing what DLC it included begins today with a horde mode called Clash in the Clouds. I like a good horde mode as much as the next guy. Heck, probably more than the next guy! But the disappointingly vanilla gunplay, aptly portrayed on the horrible “Booker Dewitt and his trusty shotgun” box art, is one of the last reasons I’d want to go back to Columbia. Frankly, I’d just as soon go back into the Protector Trials for Bioshock 2.
Fortunately, the rest of the season’s pass consists of single-player story stuff, which is probably why you were into Bioshock Infinite. Parts one and two of Burial at Sea will be available at dates yet to be determined. Each part is its own installment in the three-part season’s pass you bought before knowing what it included. It’s hard to believe this is from the same publisher whose Borderlands 2 season’s pass was such a great deal.
By the way, I’m selling a pair of 1988 Jeep Wranglers on Craig’s list. It’s a package deal. You get two cars for one price: the front half of a 1988 Jeep Wrangler and the back half of a 1988 Jeep Wrangler. Email me if interested.
S2 Games, creators of Heroes of Newerth, want to tackle rudeness and jerky behavior with Strife, their “second-generation” MOBA game. S2 chief executive officer Marc DeForest told Polygon that Strife is being built from the ground up to proactively work against the toxic players that drive off other customers.
Simple design decisions are used to head off harassment. For example, team communication is an opt-in choice rather than being automatically enabled as in their own Heroes of Newerth. Instead of hundreds of heroes, there will be about 25 at launch with greater flexibility so that role specialization isn’t a requirement. Players choose their heroes before the match, lessening the chance of team imbalances. Power cooldowns aren’t visible to other players which means the pro next to you can’t blame you for screwing up the timing on your ability.
Deeper design elements of Strife are intended to encourage good behavior through the reward system. Positive Karma is gained for good behavior as rated by other players and directly influences the end-of-match loot.
“If you’re an outlier and we can identify you as being problematic, you may earn coal for playing Strife,” DeForest said. “Literally.”
“You’re going to realize that there’s a tangible, binary impact to you by making the decision to be a detriment to the community.”
It’s a tall order to take on the MOBA community’s rough and tumble reputation, but S2 Games expects Strife to have less hostile player interactions based on their experience managing Heroes of Newerth since 2006. S2 estimates Strife will launch in 2014.
Competition is a great thing. Microsoft’s Major Nelson just posted an unboxing video and revealed that a mono headset will come in the box with every new Xbox One console. This includes the regular version and not just the limited Day One edition.
Previously, Microsoft had said that the headset would only be sold separately and that gamers should use the included Kinect device to chat if they didn’t want to purchase the headset. This was un unpopular move to many console gamers since the Xbox 360 came with a pack-in headset and Sony said their PS4 would come with a hadset as well.
An optional adapter will still need to be purchased should someone wish to use an older 360 model headset with their Xbox One because the proprietary connectors have been changed on the new console.
Cubemen 2 is the first game announced for the Wii U to support cross-platform play with non-Nintendo devices. The blocky game coming to Nintendo’s console in Q4 2013 features a mish-mash of real-time strategy and tower defense. According to the publisher, Nnooo, the strategy title will support cross-platform play between the Wii U, iOS, Mac, Linux, and PC. Players will also be able to share their user-created levels between platforms.
John Carmack, legendary programmer and technology gadabout, is joining the Oculus Rift team. Oculus Rift announced that Carmack will be taking a position as their new Chief Technology Officer. He will be working from their new Dallas office as soon as it opens. Carmack issued a statement to the Rift community.
“I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming – the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer’s early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It’s certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don’t even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It’s going to be awesome!”
In separate statements, Bethesda and id Software confirmed that Carmack will still hold his leadership position at id.
Carmack put his other technology-related project, Armadillo Aereospace, into “hibernation” following a failed rocket launch in January.
MOBA! MOBA! MOBA! Go to any game industry tradeshow like E3 or PAX and check out the PC offerings. You’ll see a lot of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games because the most successful of them make a ton of money. Deep Silver wants to bust into this highly competitive scene with Dead Island: Epidemic, what they’re calling a “ZOMBA” – a Zombie Online Multiplayer Battle Arena. Besides a groaningly cute acronym, Deep Silver says the upcoming free-to-play PC title will have “all the trademark elements that are part of a Dead Island experience.” I guess this means there will be a lot of janky combat, weapons that break after five uses, and quest-givers that insist on getting paid during a zombie apocalypse.
Check out Jason McMaster’s primer for League of Legends to see how deep the MOBA rabbit hole can go.
In Dragon Commander, you don’t command dragons. That would be silly. Instead you are a dragon. Who commands stuff, since this is a real time strategy game. But when you’re not commanding, you have to make political decisions as part of the turn-based strategy front end. For instance, what do you do when your vegetarian elf princess wife (pictured) is invited to a dwarven banquet where they’re serving meat?
But if you thought that was a tough decision, wait till you see what issue Dragon Commander tackles after the jump.
In the new Rise of the Triad, cheesing the powerups in multiplayer is pretty easy. That’s great news if you want to memorize the map layouts and cycle through the powerups to befuddle your opponents. It’s not so great if you’re one of the guys spawning in with a pistol and a confused look on your face as a glowing god blows you apart with a hand wave.
Interceptor Entertainment has heard the complaints. Frederik Schreiber, the game’s director and CEO of the company, has posted a state of the game update in which he acknowledges that issue and details the ways they may fix it.
First of all, we are going to nerf God Mode.
In the next update, God Mode will only spawn once every 5 minutes, and only last for 10 seconds.
We are also thinking about having it spawn in 1 of 5 hidden areas, at a random spot, in every match, to avoid God mode campers.
Making the powerup spawn in random spots will probably help, but the fix Apogee offered in the old game was more basic and complete. The 1994 version just allowed the host to customize whether or not powerups would spawn at all. That was back in the day when multiplayer was something people did for fun rather than permanent leaderboard stats.
Schreiber also admitted that the sub-par performance some users are experiencing may be due to the way the game was built to accomodate easier modding. He says Interceptor is committed to working on various methods to mitigating the framerate issues.
The developer of Tribes: Ascend and Smite, Hi-Rez Studios, announced that they are closing down the official forums for their games. The Georgia-based studio explained that player interaction on the message boards has decreased while social media has become the tool of preference for exchanging information.
More and more players use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, and Reddit to connect and discuss their entertainment of choice. Consequently, fewer players visit official forums long enough to even create an account. In keeping with this observed tendency, Hi-Rez has shifted focus to those social media platforms increasingly over the course of the year.
Hi-Rez had recently used their own forums to disclose that substantial updates to Tribes: Ascend would cease while the studio moved on to other projects like Smite and the planned sequel to Tribes. The thread became contentious enough that an official statement had to be released to clarify that while major development would end, support for the game would be ongoing.
Arma 3’s main campaign will be released as free DLC in three episodes after the game’s official launch. Bohemia Interactive has announced that the first episode, Survive, will be released “within the first 4 weeks” of launch. The other two modules titled Adapt and Win will follow in the months after the first episode.
One of the reasons given for the campaign’s episodic release schedule is that Bohemia feels that a focus on smaller deliverables allows them to react to player feedback and implement changes as needed before moving on to other stages of the project. The lengthy Alpha and Beta periods have already resulted in positive changes to the game such as a stance indicator and 3D scopes. Unfortunately, another reason for the delay of the campaign is that members of the development team were apprehended and held by the Greek government on accusations of spying in September 2012.
This is not to say that the project has been without issue. Arma 3 started life with a very different team and a very different scope and direction. Since 2012, we’ve seen the number of developers working on the game double, absorbing the Mnisek studio and bringing in a bunch of talented new hires in key positions across all 3 studios. And, later on in the year, we found ourselves in a position to conduct a thorough project review, which fundamentally re-evaluated the direction that the project was taking.
This turnaround was made no easier by some of the unpredictable events of last year. The uncertainty that was produced and the impact it’s had – on both a professional and personal level – cannot be emphasised enough. It made a tough time exponentially more difficult. In the end, this process culminated in the successful release of the Arma 3 Alpha, and, despite some tough, pragmatic choices, we believe that it’s put us in a much better long-term position.
Bohemia has posted a summary of launch content when the game releases in September.
The Russian distributor for Company of Heroes 2 has stopped selling the game. Relic Entertainment’s real-time strategy sequel set in the World War II Eastern Front has drawn criticism from Russian players for perpetuating stereotypes of Red Army cruelty and incompetence. Polygon notes that 1C-SoftClub has ceased all sales of the game and is analyzing the complaints. The game’s publisher Sega responded by issuing this statement:
“Sega and Relic are aware of the press stories circulating concerning Company of Heroes 2 and the historical context of the game from a Russian perspective. At this time we cannot offer any further comment, however we are taking this issue very seriously and are investigating these concerns thoroughly with all relevant partners.”
The objections to Company of Heroes 2 center on the exaggerated depiction of brutal Red Army generals, the negative portrayal of the soldiers, and “Hollywood” myths that discredit Russian and former-Soviet countrys’ national heroes. Relic has stated that while the game is based on historical research, they had to “choose specific battles and incidences to deliver the breadth of the narrative.”
That’s Willemus. He’s from Creative Assembly’s upcoming strategy game Total War: Rome II. He’s now in the PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed thanks to a little franchise-hopping within Sega. The free addition to Sonic Racing brings the PC version’s character count up to 29, making it officially awesome.
Serendipitously, Sonic Racing is on sale at Green Man Gaming as a 4-pack for $14.99. Grab three of your buddies, share the price, and get karting with some on-track violence. If I see you online, I’ll throw some bees at you.
Sorry, Australians. Even though we had good news about Saints Row IV finally being approved for release Down Under, you won’t be playing Saints Row IV with friends outside of your region. Volition and publisher Deep Silver broke the bad news on the official Facebook page.
“Due to the changes we were forced to make, this version is different than the version rated by rating boards like the ESRB, USK, and PEGI, which is why it will be incompatible with those versions in co-op.”
The publisher’s statement also clarified that the Rectifier alien anal probe weapon is a bonus item in the Saints Row IV Season Pass and they aren’t yet sure if they can include it in Australia’s version of the DLC. The Rectifier was one of the objections mentioned in the original Classification Board’s rejection of the game.
Coincidentally, it’s been confirmed that the EU version of The Last of Us has partially censored multiplayer. In a long thread on the official PlayStation forum, perplexed European players noted differences between EU and NA versions of the game which included the EU version having notably less gore. In an email response to one person, a Naughty Dog representative acknowledged the censored material.
“The gore and violence ratings are subject to local regulatory boards in various countries, so the game must be slightly changed in order to accomodate those choices.”
Take heart! Singleplayer violence remains unchanged between the different versions of The Last of Us.
