Forza Horizon 2 on the Xbox One and on the Xbox 360 will be “different games” according to developer Playground Games. Creative director Ralph Fulton told DigitalSpy that the version of the open-world racer being produced for the Xbox 360 by Sumo Digital will not offer the same experience as the Xbox One title. For example, the Xbox One version integrates technology from Turn 10’s Forza Motorsport 5 like the cloud-based “Drivatar” AI system, and includes a new weather feature, while the Xbox 360 version is based on the older Forza Horizon codebase and will lack both upgrades.
“It’s based in the same world, it’s based on the same themes. Rather than thinking of them as the same game on different platforms, they are different games inspired by the same ideas.”
Forza Horizon 2 will launch on September 30th.
2K Games has announced that Civilization Revolution 2 will be coming exclusively to iPhone, iPad, iPad Mini and iPod Touch in July, with an Android version coming soon after. Unlike the first Civilization Revolution, the sequel will not be coming to consoles.
Civilization Revolution 2 is the first Civilization game to be developed exclusively for mobile platforms, delivering high-impact graphics and new gameplay and controls that capitalize on the mobile technology advancements since the original Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution launched more than five years ago.
Civilization Revolution 2 will feature enhanced graphics, new units including aircraft carriers, new technologies to research, and scenario challenges to overcome. 2K Games is calling it a “premium title” so we can likely expect a premium price compared to the 99 cent apps that have flooded the iOS AppStore.
If you played the PlayStation 4 preview alpha of Destiny, you may remember an early mission that had a head-scratching bit of dialogue. Much has already been written about Peter Dinklage’s less-than-enthusiastic performance as the player’s A.I. buddy, but the line “That wizard came from the moon!” intoned by the most bored robot to ever be manufactured, has all the inadvertent hilarity of a ready-made meme. Move over “The cake is a lie.” Bungie has jumped on the train early by offering limited edition t-shirts celebrating the clumsiest exposition in a game since Kevin Spacey showed up in a trailer for Call of Duty.
Profits from sales of the Destiny shirt will go to the Bungie Foundation charity organization benefiting children in hospitals.
Nintendo is adding a Mercedes Benz GLA-class SUV to Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U in Europe and North America. The DLC kart will arrive “this summer” according to Nintendo’s official Twitter account. Nintendo has not confirmed that the Mercedes Benz DLC will be gratis in the West, but the kart was previously announced for Japan on May 28th as being a free update.
The addition of the Mercedes Benz brings Mario Kart 8 closer to the anything goes credo of Sega’s Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed.
Frank West and his zombie pals are coming to the big screen. Well, more like whatever screen you have on your phone or tablet, but you get the idea. Variety reports that Legendary Digital Media will be producing a movie based on the Capcom zombie mall survival game. The movie will premiere on Sony’s Crackle digital service, with a later release on other content delivery platforms like DVD and Blu-ray. Although executive producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura and writer Tim Carter have begun working on the script, a director has not been picked for the project.
Playing League of Legends can now get you a college scholarship. Robert Morris University Illinois has announced that they are the first accredited university to add an online video game eSport to their athletic program and to offer scholarships for playing.
“Robert Morris University has always been at the forefront of providing opportunities for a diverse student population with different interests and skills. League of Legends is a competitive, challenging game which requires significant amount of teamwork to be successful.”
Qualified gamers can earn scholarships that would give them up to 50% tuition and 50% room and board.
That’s a picture of Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto playing with the Wii U at E3. That image embodies why he isn’t a fan of projects like the Oculus Rift or Project Morpheus virtual reality headsets despite its many advocates. The famed creator and game designer told Time that although Nintendo is doing research into VR, they’re concentrating on finding ways to make it fun for the whole room and not be such a solitary activity.
“When you think about what virtual reality is, which is one person putting on some goggles and playing by themselves kind of over in a corner, or maybe they go into a separate room and they spend all their time alone playing in that virtual reality, that’s in direct contrast with what it is we’re trying to achieve with Wii U. And so I have a little bit of uneasiness with whether or not that’s the best way for people to play.”
The most cooperative gameplay the Nintendo Virtual Boy offered was when you smacked your friend in the back of the head during Mario Tennis.
Valve has announced the Love and War update for Team Fortress 2. The first day’s reveal was new co-op emotes, achievements, and the longest official Team Fortress 2 short film made called Expiration Date. It’s the touching story of boy meets girl, boy gets girl, and mutant bread. By the way, that’s Ashley Burch from Borderlands 2’s Tina Tiny voicing Miss Pauling. And just who is Miss Pauling? She’s a character that was introduced into Team Fortress 2 lore back in the comic for the This is War update. As the shadowy Administrator’s assistant, she gets to handle everything the TF2 crew cannot.
The Kickstarter for Tale of Tales’ Sunset is now live. Like parts of Call of Duty: Black Ops, this game is set during a revolution in the 70s in Africa the Third World. But unlike any Call of Duty ever, you play a housekeeper. You’re cleaning the really groovy home (pictured) of one of the guys fighting the war.
Sunset is a first person exploration game in the vein of Gone Home and Dear Esther. As in those, playing centers on the discovery of story clues. In Sunset, however, you play while the events unfold (rather than uncovering a story that happened in the past). The other inspiration for Sunset is military action games. We always wondered what life would be like for the extras in such games, the people who are not the heroes, the ones on the sidelines — like most of us. How does it feel to be one of the many victims of war, instead of the hero? How does it feel when war is the backdrop for your day-to-day life?
Even if you have no desire to play or support the game, you should at least watch the video on their Kickstarter page. Because developers Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey are about as adorable a couple as you can imagine. And I’m not just saying that because he opens with a monocle and she’s wearing a T-shirt for one of my favorite arthouse game, The Path. Where can I get one of those?
Airdrop Gaming thinks you shooter fans may want this. The HipShotDot is exactly what it looks like. It’s an LED that sticks to the center of your TV so you’ll always have an accurate sight in games like Call of Duty: Ghosts or Battlefield 4 without zooming to your crosshairs. For $29.99 you can have this light on your screen and never waste time with aiming down the sights like all the other losers.
“HIPSHOTDOT is the industry’s first powered red dot sight attachment for your television.”
I guess it beats drawing an X on the screen with magic marker.
Soren Johnson has published the rules to Offworld Trading Company. The in-development strategy title from Mohawk Games pits players against one another on Mars, but instead of guns and troops, players use market forces and underhanded mercantile practices to put each other out of business. Trade stocks, hoard commodities, and corner the Martian markets! The rules, done in the style of a traditional board game, explains the cutthroat goal.
Once one company controls all the shares of a second company, the second company’s owner is removed from the game, and all the buildings, colonies, and patents belonging to that company are given to the first company. The game ends when only one company remains.
Along with influences like Settlers of Catan and Agricola, Johnson mentions that Belter, a Game Designers’ Workshop title from 1979, is a “starting point” for Offworld Trading Company.
Before CD Projekt Red gave us The Witcher in 2007 and blew our minds with collectible sex cards and foul-mouth dwarves, there was a very different digital version of Geralt of Rivia. Adrian Chmielarz, formerly of People Can Fly, told Eurogamer that he was working on an adventure roleplaying hybrid based on the sexy monster-slaying Polish hero in 1997 that never got completed. His version, which he worked on for Metropolis Software, featured all the witchy stuff fans have come to love like grey moral choices, monsters, and combat, but the game was limited by the technology of the time. Chmielarz says they got as far as signing TopWare as a publisher and completing the first chapter of the game before the project fizzled out. I need that purple outfit for Geralt in The Witcher 3.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One both can stream gameplay footage directly to Twitch. Console streaming has proven to be popular with gamers. Twitch revealed that 20% of their bandwith was being used by PS4 streaming as early as January. Hundreds of hours of console streaming is being viewed per day. Check Twitch on the launch day of a big console release and you’ll see multiple streams from people eager to show off their new game. Communities have grown up around popular streamers, and people have started to base their purchasing decisions on positive impressions from these broadcasts.
So where’s Nintendo in all this? Games like Mario Kart 8 and Wonderful 101 get limited streaming because the Wii U doesn’t have an official way to output content to Twitch yet. Some people use capture cards to stream their Wii U games, but the expense and technical know-how needed to do so has created a barrier that most people won’t bother to overcome. Without a native solution, Twitch streaming for the Wii U is far behind the other consoles.
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime explained to Polygon that they haven’t implemented streaming because it just isn’t fun to watch.
“So for us, what we’re doing at the Nokia theater with the Smash Invitational, we loved that streamed because that’s where you are able to see how these players perform, the moves they make, you can learn something,” he said. “That has value to us. And you can expect us to do more of that type of activity, highlighting our games and providing a forum for players to learn how to play better.
“But that’s different than watching Joe Blow’s 30 minute stream, which may or may not have something that’s all that interesting.”
Nintendo says the internal conversations are centered on questions of how to make Wii U streaming meaningful and engaging and not just an exercise in capturing game footage.
Dead Island’s original announcement trailer turned heads for its touching portrayal of a family in the midst of a crisis. Dead Island: Riptide’s trailer was less lauded, but still maintained the bittersweet gravitas. Both trailers were a lie, of course. Despite odd moments of seriousness, players of the games learned they were really about hacking limbs, giggling with co-op buddies, backpedaling from boss monsters, and laughing like lunatics as things blew up. The weird times when Dead Island tried to get serious were kind of a bummer. You may have noticed the E3 reveal trailer for Dead Island 2 matches your recollection of that gameplay more than the maudlin tone of the previous trailers. Check out those guys at the end. They’re not sad. They love the zombie apocalypse. That’s intentional according to the developer, Yager. In fact, unlike Techland’s Dead Island games, Yager’s sequel is embracing the gonzo world of killing zombies, destruction, and setting up delightfully creative traps. All of quarantined California is the playground, and you’re encouraged to smile.
From sending zombies flying into the air via well-aimed sledgehammer strikes to crushing these walkers beneath a busted chandelier, Dead Island 2 is purely focused on the joys of wanton gore. If you stumble across a lawn full of zombies, you could waste precious moments dispatching each one, or you could simply shoot a propane tank, igniting the lawn, while you sit back and watch the flames gradually consume the grass and its undead occupants.
Less piano plinking and tears. More explosions and smiling. Dead Island 2 launches in Spring 2015.
Titanfall is getting new game modes and Titan customization. Respawn revealed the planned update at the start of E3. The new game modes feature wrinkles on the current 6v6 formula. Marked for Death tasks each team with protecting a randomly picked member while trying to kill the opposing team’s marked person. Wingman LTS is a variant of Last Titan Standing that pairs players up to work in partnership to eliminate the other duos.
Limited Titan customization will also be part of the free update. Players will be able to choose from three different voice packs. “Betty” is the current voice, but “Lisa” and “Jeeves” are new and should offer some variety. Completing challenges will sometimes reward players with decals that can be applied to Titans for visual flair. New Burn Cards will include Titan-specific boosts instead of just ones for pilots.
