Sony announced P.T. an “interactive teaser” at Gamescom, that is available on the PlayStation store for gamers to try out. It didn’t take long for internet sleuths to figure out the answer to the mystery by playing through the jump-scare game. It’s a sneaky announcement for Silent Hills, produced by Guillermo del Toro, Hideo Kojima, and starring Norman Reedus. Walking Dead fans and Silent Hill devotees now have a new reason for being excited.
In the mood for some fancy footwork? Sony made some announcements at Gamescom that involve a fair amount of body grooving. DayZ, the infamous open-world survival-horror game that’s as much about zombies as it is dancing with no pants on, is coming to PlayStation 4. If dancing with swords is more your thing, Ninja Theory revealed Hellblade, a Heavenly Sword meets Celtic myth mash-up. Still dancing? Check out Until Dawn, a horror title that was originally made for the Move controller. (Remember those things?) It’s now been retooled for the DualShock 4. Waggle away! Hollowpoint is a four-person co-op hybrid 2D/3D shooter that requires fancy moves on the sticks to stay alive. Fans of Tearaway on the PS Vita will be jazzed to hear that Tearaway Unfolded is coming to the console cousin. Finally, Sony pointed out that console warriors have a reason to do a jig as they confirmed that they’ve sold ten million PlayStation 4 consoles to consumers worldwide. Now that’s got a beat and you can dance to it!
The first big news out of Gamescom is from Microsoft, and it’s not good for PlayStation owners. Square Enix has partnered with Microsoft and is making Rise of the Tomb Raider an exclusive to Xbox One and Xbox 360. According to Xbox UK’s Dom Carey, this is not just a timed exclusive. Darrell Gallagher, head of Crystal Dynamics, posted an apologetic message to fans of the franchise shortly after the disappointing news broke. The developer explained that they chose to partner with Microsoft for the support they could give.
This doesn’t mean that we’re walking away from our fans who only play on PlayStation or on PC. Those are great systems, with great partners, and amazing communities. We have Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris coming to those platforms this December, and Tomb Raider: The Definitive Edition is available on PS4.
Rise of the Tomb Raider will launch for the holiday season in 2015.
Update: Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has admitted to Eurogamer that the Xbox exclusivity is for an unspecified duration.
This is Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s multiplayer. It’s got guns to shoot, levels to grind, and jetpacks. Swoosh! Jump up and fly gruff military guy! Fly away to safety!
Activision held a global media event (which can be watched here) to talk about all the special features of the new Call of Duty multiplayer. Sledgehammer Games has the reins of this installment and the major change is verticality. Exosuits and jetpacks allow players to traverse the arenas in all new ways, which means a reassessment of what works and what doesn’t. The class customization from Black Ops II is back and has increased from “Pick 10” to “Pick 13” allowing greater flexibility. Scorestreaks from Modern Warfare 3 are returning, but with modifiers that can change the rewards like an option to add rockets to turrets. The biggest progression change is item drops. Yes, loot has come to Call of Duty in the form of Supply Drops that can give players cosmetic skins as well as rare weapons with increased stats. You’ll have to grind for that bacon-themed Uzi now!
Hollywood and Silicon Valley converging to create the future of entertainment! What could go wrong? Plenty. Thankfully, we got over our obsession with grainy full-motion video, but not before hundreds of interactive movie games shipped in the 1990’s. While there were some standout entries like Mad Dog McCree (recently spoofed by The Gunstringer: Wavy Tube Man Chronicles) most of the genre was filled with dreck like Quantum Gate and Thunder in Paradise. King among the pile of terrible FMV games was the infamous Night Trap. It’s a perfect example of everything that was wrong about these productions. The marketing and controversy promised sexy slumber party shenanigans and scary vampire ninja attacks, but what players got was Dano Plato just before she went off the deep end and gameplay that made Pachinko seem deep.
The remains of Digital Pictures, the original developers of Night Trap, want to bring its special brand of terrible to a new generation of game systems. Night Trap ReVamped needs $330,000 of Kickstarter pledges to translate all the goofy stop and go video tomfoolery to PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
The ability of computers and gaming platforms to display richly vibrant and full-res video has finally caught up with the vision we had almost thirty years ago of what full-motion-video products ought to look like: interactive television which, despite all the promises, has never arrived.
Night Trap LLC will explore the possibility of bringing all of Digital Pictures’ library into the modern era if this Kickstarter is successful. Imagine it! Kids can enjoy Power Factory Featuring C+C Music Factory and Sewer Shark just as much as we all did when they first appeared on the Mega-CD. If we had to play this garbage, they should too.
When 4A Games and publisher Deep Silver announced the Redux versions of Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light in May, they also announced that owners of the current games would get a 50% discount on the new releases. The reaction from fans was not universal praise. Many people wondered why they’d have to pay at all for what seemed to be a fancy patch? 4A Games has responded to the outcry by pointing out that Redux required a substantial investment of resources to develop. According to them, Metro 2033 was rebuilt entirely in the new engine and they feel that a 50% discount on the new version is “more than fair” for the work they did.
Regarding the same discount on Metro: Last Light Redux, which 4A Games admits did not entail as much work, logistical and technical challenges prevented them from offering a deeper discount. In addition, they pointed out that the Redux package will include all the DLC.
But we understand that for those of you who already had the DLC, the offer is not as compelling – again, we are not pretending this is as significant an overhaul as Metro 2033. And we did consider alternatives – e.g. 50% if you only owned the base game, 75% if you owned all the DLC – but these ideas raised a number of practical / logistical challenges.
In the end, a flat 50% discount was judged to be the simplest, fairest solution. Ultimately, you are free to vote with your wallets.
Keep your ammo if you don’t want to trade, Ranger! The Underground is a harsh place!
Valve updated Dota 2 last night. Along with alpha mod support, parts of the game were apparently updated to the long-awaited Source 2 engine. People seem pretty excited by this. Rumors of Source 2’s existence have swirled around Valve for years. Obviously, they had to update the engine to keep with technology, so the fact that it actually exists isn’t stunning. What is odd is that Valve seems to have stealth launched it through a Dota 2 update.
Unfortunately, for people looking for new gee-whiz ultra awesome graphics, there’s not much to see yet. Because Dota 2 still uses the same assets as before, there isn’t anything exciting yet. You’ll have to dig through code to see what has people all excited. Mainly it’s a “2” at the end of some file names. Woohoo!
Rejoice gamers! Source 2 is here. Half-Life 3 should be right around the corner, right? Hello? Anyone?
Broforce, the blow-everything-up indie platformer on Steam early access, has always felt like a video game version of The Expendables movies. Lots of 80’s action characters destroying hundreds of enemies in over-the-top scenarios held together by the bare elements of story? Check! It’s certainly better than the official movie tie-in game released in 2012. The two worlds have come together at last with The Expendabros, a free game promoting the release of The Expendables 3.
Of course Broforce began a little while after Expendables 1, and obviously was pretty heavily influenced by the movie. Coming full circle and making a game for them was pretty surreal, and really exciting.
Contrary to how these marketing synergies normally work, Developer Free Lives says they didn’t get any money from Lionsgate to make The Expendabros. The game was created as a fun way to test out some ideas like storytelling cutscenes, mini-game events, and new enemies that may eventually make their way into Broforce. If any fans of The Expendables play Expendabros and decide to buy Broforce, Free Lives probably wouldn’t mind.
Synchronicity isn’t just a Police album. It’s a lifestyle! Here at Quarter to Three, we like to think we’re movers and shakers with the pull to influence multi-million dollar enterprises, but the truth is that we’re rambling along doing whatever we think is interesting to us at the time. In this case, the stars have aligned to create a pretty awesome example of synchronicity. Our latest pick for the Classic Game Club is Wing Commander 3, and lo and behold, it’s now free on Electronic Arts’ Origin service! Enjoy Mark Hamill, Ginger Lynn Allen, and more animatronic feline masks than anyone sane needs for free!
Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger is free on Origin until September 2nd. If you want to believe Quarter to Three did this for you, that’s cool too.
Ubisoft has unveiled Assassin’s Creed Rogue through Game Informer. While the publisher moves forward with Assassin’s Creed Unity for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, they will release Rogue on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In Rogue, players will step into the parkour hoodie of Shay Patrick Cormac, a former Templar, as he plys his skills on various targets. Unlike the previous ship-based Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Rogue takes place during the Seven Years’ War along the North Atlantic coastline of America, including visits to the Appalachian River Valley and New York. Presumably, the plot ties into Unity’s French Revolution setting. Plus, there will be ice and puzzles. And aliens.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue will be available “exclusively” on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 11th.
Tropico 5 will not be sold in Thailand. New Era, the Asian distributor for Tropico 5, has announced that Thailand’s Board of Film and Video Censors has determined that Tropico 5 contains material that could potentially “affect peace and order in the country” and has banned the sale of the game. Publisher Kalypso Media has confirmed that it will not contest the ban, but added that previous games in the series were approved and remain on sale in the territory. Kalypso’s Stefan Marcinek noted the irony of the situation.
“This does sound like it could have come from one of El Presidente’s own edicts from the game.”
Tropico 5 was released worldwide on May 23rd, a day after Thailand’s military launched their successful takeover of the country.
BioShock is coming to mobile platforms. 2K Games has announced that they have created a port of BioShock for iOS on fourth-generation iPads and later, as well as iPhone 5, 5S and 5C. If you don’t want to use on-screen touch controls to navigate the underwater environment of Rapture, the port will feature Bluetooth controller support. BioShock for iOS was created by 2K China, the same development team that ported XCOM: Enemy Unknown to mobile platforms. BioShock will launch on iOS later this year at a “premium” price.
Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar is shutting down. According to the notice, the servers for the free-to-play MMO will be shut down and service will be discontinued on August 29th. For the last month of operation, players will get increased drop rates on in-game items and boosted virtue and reputation. The store will no longer sell in-game currency for real money.
This was a very difficult decision for us to make. We’ve seen the game through ups and downs, and hope that you’ve enjoyed playing it every bit as much as we had making it! Through it all, it’s been players like you who’ve made it all worthwhile.
Ultima Forever was launched in August of 2013 and was developed by Mythic Entertainment. Owner Electronic Arts announced the closure of Mythic on May 29th.
Path of Exile is getting user-customizable hideouts. The Forsaken Masters update will add NPC mentors that will give players quests, which when completed, can unlock the Masters’ special abilities, new skills, and reveal the locations of their hideouts. These sanctuaries will be given to players who can decorate them to their satisfaction. That bookcase goes there! This rug will tie the room together! The hardest part of Path of Exile after this patch will be finding just the right ottoman to complement the armchair.
Use your Hideout as a quiet place to craft after battle, or expand it and use it as a personalised Guild Hall with hundreds of decorations.
The Forsaken Masters update will launch on August 20th.
How much does it cost to publish a game on Microsoft’s Xbox One console through the ID@Xbox program if you go as cheap as possible? Luckily for frugal game makers, Happion Laboratories, developer of Sixty Second Shooter Prime and Energy Hook, has posted a breakdown of the costs to bring a game to the Xbox One. Not counting the actual hours of his own work, indie developer Jamie Fristrom calculated the cost of the Xbox One port for Sixty Second Shooter Prime at around $5000. The largest expenses were for insurance and rating boards fees, both of which are required by Microsoft.
If you want to release in a given territory, you have to get your game rated by the official ratings boards of that territory. It’s sad but true, getting your game rated in some territories can be a lot more expensive than simply translating your game to that territory’s language! I spent about $700 on localization, all told, and spent nearly $2000 on getting my game rated by PEGI and USK. (I skipped Australia and New Zealand because they both wanted around $2K for their ratings boards…maybe I’ll launch in those territories later if the game seems to be selling particularly well.)
Fristrom noted that while the costs were much higher than publishing a game on the PC, it was worth it. He’s covered his costs and made a “living wage” as well. Sixty Second Shooter Prime is available on Xbox One. Sixty Second Shooter Deluxe is on PS Vita. There’s also a free version of the original Sixty Second Shooter available through Google Chrome.
