Who says Mac gaming is comically behind the PC? Aspyr Media has announced that blockbuster shooters Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and 3 are now available for the Mac platform. Mac gamers can even purchase map packs to sit on their drives while the same two maps from the base game come up again and again in the playlists. One of the nice features these two Mac games offer is cross-platform multiplayer with the PC versions. Let’s recall what made these games chart-toppers!
“The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games are incredibly feature-rich and nothing short of amazing in their presentation,” said Aspyr Media’s Executive Vice President, Ted Staloch. “It’s incredibly rewarding for us to now offer gamers access to the Modern Warfare trilogy on the Mac.”
Remember that time there was an explosion and things went into slow motion? Classic! Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and 3 are available for Mac gamers through Steam or the Aspyr Media GameAgent site.
Soulcalibur: Lost Swords has a “pay-to-win” model. That’s straight from producer Masaaki Hoshino! Speaking to Siliconera, Hoshino explained why the free-to-play PlayStation 3 game has no multiplayer despite being the offshoot of a fighting game series with a strong versus component.
The reason that we went singleplayer…well, originally, we were thinking about having a multiplayer option, but because we’re going with a pay-to-win model, we were worried that by having online multiplayer, for all the new users that would be coming in experiencing the game for the first time, they might be immediately deterred by fighting against opponents who had superior equipment and gear – and we didn’t want to have that kind of negative impact on new players.
In the singleplayer experience, having a pay-to-win structure won’t impede the player’s experience with the game.
At least he was honest! Based on the framework of Soul Calibur V, Soulcalibur: Lost Swords was released on the PlayStation 3 in April. It was received poorly by fans of the series due to its lack of multiplayer and its focus on microtransactions to remove gameplay timers.
Soren Johnson’s next game will be Offworld Trading Company, an “economic RTS” set on Mars. The game, developed by Johnson’s newly-formed Mohawk Games, will be published by Stardock. Offworld Trading Company features no military units. Players will have to duke it out with sweet economic leverage and destroy up to seven other human or AI-controlled rivals.
Inspired by classics such as M.U.L.E. and other trading sims, Offworld Trading Company’s conflicts will have their origins in trade and money and the solutions will come from similar interactions. Players can act like the jerk CEO in Total Recall that wanted to corner the market on air!
A basic strategy in Offworld Trading Company might look something like this:
1. Drive up the price of water by buying up the world’s supplies and hoarding them in your stockpile.
2. Hit your opponent with an EMP that temporarily takes out his limited production capabilities, sending his stock price plummeting as he can’t fulfill his company’s needs.
3. Meanwhile, water has become much more expensive on the open market thanks to the reduction in supply – giving you the perfect opportunity to dump your stockpiles and buy up a big chunk of his stock before he can recover.
Pre-orders for Offworld Trading Company have already started for Steam early access granted at a later date. An $80 package is available for people that would like even earlier access to the game’s prototype this Fall.
The prize pool money for Valve’s Dota 2 2014 The International championship tournament is supplied by purchases of The Compendium, a virtual encyclopedia and dynamic record of the competition events that also supplies some in-game Dota 2 rewards for owners as well as general upgrades to the game for everyone to enjoy. Each Compendium purchased contributes $2.50 to the prize pool. Unlocked rewards include in-game boosts, new music, and a new random deathmatch game mode. The final $6 million goal will unlock a special cosmetic building option for owners of The Compendium. The Dota 2 prize pool is already over $5.8 million from just ten days of being on sale, so it’s likely the final goal will be reached in a matter of hours.
The International Dota 2 tournament will be held on July 18th to the 21st in Seattle. General admission to the event started at $99 and sold out in less than an hour. Last year’s prize pool was $2.8 million.
Killzone Shadow Fall is getting an online wave-based cooperative arena mode. The Intercept expansion, coming in June, takes four locations from the single player campaign and pits four-person squads of players against Helghast military attacks while defending a site.
To successfully fend off the enemy and transmit the intel back to HQ, teamwork is absolutely essential. Your Team Score indicates how close you are to establishing a Hacking Uplink; increase it by defending your Uplinks from Helghast capture attempts, or by “banking” the Personal Score you’ve accumulated from kills, ability uses, and recaptures. You can even earn bonuses such as artillery strikes and jetpacks!
Wait, jetpacks? Yup. Jetpacks.
The Intercept co-op expansion will be included as part of the Shadow Fall season pass. In the meanwhile, players can download the free Canyon multiplayer map, which was released yesterday.
The inevitable next installment of the Halo franchise has been announced. Microsoft has revealed Halo 5: Guardians which will launch sometime in the Fall of 2015.
In the past, “Halo” games have pushed the Xbox forward, showcasing the console and its ecosystem in entertaining and innovative ways. Making a “Halo” game that runs at 60 frames per second, on dedicated servers, with the scope, features and scale we’ve been dreaming of for more than a decade, is non-trivial. It’s a task that we, at 343 Industries, are taking very seriously to ensure we deliver the “Halo” game that fans deserve, and a game that is built from the ground up for Xbox One.
More details will come during Microsoft’s pre-E3 kickoff event.
Titanfall for the Xbox One and PC gets the Expedition map pack DLC today. (Xbox 360 players can get the Expedition DLC in June.) The map pack has three maps. War Games is set in a virtual reality training area with Tron-inspired visuals, Runoff is a map with deep trenches and high walkways that pilots can scurry across, and Swampland features a battlefield with towering trees that should offer attractive routes for parkour fans. Hilariously, there’s a background story to these maps! I’m sure this will resonate with players as much as the game’s campaign plot. It had one, right? Something about manufacturing robots and a crashed space ship?
In the wake of the Battle of Demeter, IMC Expeditionary Forces travel deep into Frontier space to recover from their recent defeat. On an uncharted world, the IMC begin construction of a new fleet operations base, using newly acquired water collection and filtration plants to support the new base. When drainage operations reveal ancient ruins and artifacts of an unknown origin in a nearby swamp, Spyglass activates an archaeological team to investigate the site. To maintain battle readiness at the new base, IMC Pilots use simulation pods to train for anticipated Militia raids, based on lessons learned in Angel City and IMC Airbase Sierra.
The Expedition map pack for Titanfall is available for $9.99, or as part of the Season Pass.
3D Realms and Interceptor Entertainment have announced Bombshell, an isometric action game for the PlayStation 4 and PC. The Unreal Engine powered title features the eponymous Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison shooting her way through alien enemies to rescue the President of the United States. Bombshell is an entirely new property, despite the wink and nudge references to Duke Nukem in her bio. She has a robot arm and fights aliens! She has nothing to do with pig cops!
The game is a result of the ongoing legal battle between 3D Realms and Gearbox Software to determine who actually owns the Duke Nukem property. 3D Realms and Interceptor had originally teased a top-down shooter called Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction on the website alloutofgum.com.
Lawsuits take time, and are often a long, drawn-out process. Meanwhile, we wanted to be productive – our creative team couldn’t wait around for the issue to be resolved. Ultimately, we saw it as the opportunity to create our own intellectual property, and Bombshell was born. So far, it’s been a blast.
It’s impossible to say what will happen in regards to our previous project. It might return, it might not. We want to make great games without sacrificing our integrity, and Bombshell allows us to do that beautifully.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s likely because Bombshell was the blonde female sidekick in the 1998 E3 reveal trailer for Duke Nukem Forever. Ultimately, that character was cut from the game.
Rockstar Games has updated Grand Theft Auto V’s online mode with the High Life patch. The update adds more clothing, cars, a bullpup rifle, the ability for players to own two properties at the same time, and a new “Mental State” stat that tracks how much of a troublemaker you are during the free roam portion of the online game and tells everyone else about it. Think of it as a jerk indicator.
If you seem to enjoy attacking pedestrians and terrorizing other players, then your blip will start to turn red on other players’ maps. The redder the blip, the more psychotic the player; the whiter the blip, the friendlier they are.
The actions you take will have varying effects on your Mental State. For example, killing another player will turn your blip red faster than blowing up a car or taking out a random pedestrian. Killing a player with a white blip will push your Mental State into the red faster than killing more psycho players, while taking out full-on psycho players won’t cause your own Mental State stat to increase at all.
Mental state also factors into matchmaking – you’ll automatically join Freemode sessions containing people more ‘compatible’ with your play style, and if a red-blipped lunatic does enter your session, you at least have fair warning!
Full patch notes are available here.
Microsoft has announced an Xbox One retail package that does not include a Kinect sensor. The new SKU will be $399 and will have all the games and apps available to the normal Xbox One except buyers of the new SKU won’t be able to use Kinect features until they purchase an optional sensor that will be sold separately. The official news post from Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s head of the Xbox division, stresses that Kinect is still an “important” part of the company’s vision for the console, but recognizes that the consumer feedback pushed for a Kinect-less Xbox One.
The $399 Xbox One without Kinect goes on sale on June 9th, the same day as Microsoft’s scheduled pre-E3 press conference.
Ars Technica is reporting that multiple sources within Microsoft have told them that streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu may soon be accessible on Xbox Live without a Gold membership. This would bring the Xbox entertainment service features more in-line with Sony and Nintendo’s console offerings which do not require a paid subscription to their respective services to access third party media apps.
“According to our sources, Xbox 360 and Xbox One users will soon no longer need a paid subscription to Xbox Live Gold to access Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming media apps.”
Some of the reports mention that the upcoming E3 conference is the probable venue for the official unveiling of the policy change. Microsoft’s pre-E3 press conference is scheduled for 9:30 AM on June 9th.
UPDATE: This has been confirmed by Microsoft.
Remember when early access games were the domain of digital outlets like Steam? Man, those were good times! Nordic Games is pioneering the drive into offering early access games through physically shipped disks. Amazon UK has the page up for the Nordic Games’ published retail package of Planetary Annihilation. For 39.99 in UK money, (I believe that’s a million Quatloos) you can get a physical disk shipped to you that will allow you to get into the exciting world of early access gaming.
GET IN EARLY on the action with this time-limited edition
FULLY UPDATED to the full version upon release via on-line updates
Developer Uber Entertainment and publisher Nordic Games announced their partnership for the retail release of Planetary Annihilation in December 2013. The retail packages are scheduled to ship after June 20th. Buyers may someday get a finished game.
Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition will launch on August 19th on the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 3. The title includes all the content from Diablo III as well as the Reaper of Souls expansion, balanced and adjusted for console controllers. The pre-order bonus is a set of “Infernal Pauldrons” that provide bonuses to vitality, life per second, and cooldown reduction, as well as supplying fodder for transmogrification with the appearance of flaming shoulderpads. They’re all the rage this season!
Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition will retail for $59.99 on the PS4 or Xbox One and $39.99 for the PS3 or Xbox 360. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear at this time that characters from the regular console version of Diablo III for the Xbox 360 and PS3 will transfer over the Ultimate Evil edition, nor does it seem that Blizzard will be offering a way to upgrade the old version to the newest.
Update: You will be able to transfer characters from the old version to the new!
Tomodachi Life, Nintendo’s 3DS life sim, will not have homosexual characters. The game, which was originally released in Japan in 2013, will launch in North America and Europe on June 6, 2014 without official support for LGBT relationships, an oversight that gay and lesbian gamers as well as GLAAD are calling a “hurtful message to many of its fans and consumers.”
Tye Marini, a Nintendo fan from Arizona, spearheaded the “Miiquality” campaign a month ago when he learned that Tomodachi Life would not allow same-sex couples. In his initial video complaint, Marini points out that The Sims, which has a similar “life-sim” premise, has allowed homosexual couplings since the series launched in 2008.
“I want to be able to marry my real-life fiance’s Mii, but I can’t do that. My only options are to marry some female Mii, to change the gender of either my Mii or my fiance’s Mii, or to completely avoid marriage altogether and miss out on the exclusive content that comes with it.”
Nintendo’s response to the controversy hasn’t placated people calling for a change.
“The ability for same-sex relationships to occur in the game was not part of the original game that launched in Japan, and that game is made up of the same code that was used to localize it for other regions outside of Japan.”
“Nintendo never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of ‘Tomodachi Life.’ The relationship options in the game represent a playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation. We hope that all of our fans will see that ‘Tomodachi Life’ was intended to be a whimsical and quirky game, and that we were absolutely not trying to provide social commentary.”
A trick used by Japanese players to simulate homosexual marriage in Tomodachi Life is to switch the gender of one of their Mii characters after the relationship is established. Gay marriage is not legal in Japan, but is legal in parts of the US and Europe.
UPDATE: Nintendo has posted an apology and a promise to feature a “more inclusive” design if they make another game for Tomodachi Life.
Zombies and survival go together like deli meat and cheese. It’s good, but you eventually crave more. Everyone seems to be making a zombie survival game. With the runaway success of DayZ, is it any wonder that even Sony Online Entertainment is having a go at it with H1Z1? What could be better than zombies? How about dinosaurs? Boom! Just like that your world is rocked.
The Stomping Land from SuperCrit moves the hardcore survival gameplay from undead infested middle-America to the dinosaur hunting grounds of dark primeval jungles. What started as a Kickstarter project last year has made it through Steam’s Greenlight process and will be launching on early access on May 30th. According to the developer’s FAQ, it will be released for $24.99 and will feature a small island environment to start with. Seven different prehistoric beasties will be ready for the alpha launch with more joining the fray as development continues.
