One of my favorite things about 28 Weeks Later (pictured) is how it turns on its head the conventional zombie movie wisdom that the military are the bad guys, ineffectual at best, and most likely downright sinister. In 28 Weeks Later, the military is part of a humanitarian mission and they’re good at what they do. When children go missing, they’re rescued in force. When things fall apart due to unforeseen events, the contingency plans are effective. The military tries everything they can before making the tough call, at which point they successfully contain the outbreak. What dooms the world in 28 Weeks Later — and this is the point of the movie — is personal compassion. The fact that people are good.
That’s what came to mind when I read State of Decay developer Undead Labs’ introduction to Lifeline, their next DLC.
On the State of Decay team, we have a different perspective (some of us firsthand) — the military is made up of many good men and women who stand on the line that divides safety and civilization from chaos and war.
At the height of the initial crisis, you still have support, but things are rapidly breaking down. You control Greyhound One — a small surviving unit that has been sent to the fallen city of Danforth to rescue scientists whose research is critical to fighting the outbreak. This is at the height of the initial crisis. You still have a chain of command and access to off-map support, but the voices over the radio are making it clear that things are rapidly breaking down.
So what you end up with is the inverse of the usual progression. Instead of starting with nothing, and slowly building yourself up into a post-apocalyptic powerhouse, you start the game as a well-equipped, well-supported military unit, and then must learn to improvise as one resource after another is depleted…and isn’t coming back.
I love where they’re going. And the perspective and intended gameplay flow reminds me of another rare great zombie game.
Undead Labs provides a few more details here, with the promise to reveal more in the coming weeks.
Care to unleash your inner Garrett in the underwater city of Rapture? The Burial at Sea Episode Two DLC for BioShock Infinite will allow players to exercise their ninja skills with 1998 Mode. Irrational Games announced that the new DLC will have a mode inspired by the sneaky gameplay in the orginal Thief. It probably doesn’t hurt that the just-released Thief by Eidos Montreal adds synergy to this announcement.
“In Burial at Sea Episode Two we put a focus on balance and stealth mechanics,” said Ken Levine, creative director of Irrational Games. “As we were developing this new style of gameplay, we started to see people self-impose non-lethal playthroughs. Given the fan reception of 1999 Mode, we thought it would be cool to give them another way to play Burial at Sea that challenged their mastery of stealth tools.”
BioShock Infinite’s Burial at Sea Episode Two will launch on March 25th.
Housemarque’s 2010 twin-stick zombie shooter is coming to the PlayStation 4 as Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition. The new version adds improved textures, a quick weapon select ability, and a full campaign in solo and co-op play in either online or local modes. The Road to Devastation expansion is included with this release of the game. According to the PlayStation blog, the new Apocalypse Edition also adds an intriguing twist on multiplayer. Viewers of streams can participate in the game by voting to mess with the players.
My favorite new feature is Broadcast+ mode. In this mode, you can stream your game to the masses interactively, and your viewers can influence the difficulty of your game. Periodically all your viewers, whether they be on PS4 or a web browser, have the option to vote between a positive and negative effect that occurs in your game. There are a total of 30 different voting effects that can occur, ranging from spawning zombie packs to giving the player ammo, or even disabling the player’s ability to sprint. But don’t worry; as a player you can get back at the masses, because voters will appear in your game as named zombies for you to exact your revenge on.
Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition will launch on the PlayStation Store for $14.99 exclusively for the PlayStation 4 on march 4th. The developers promise to release an update on the long-promised PS Vita version soon.
X Rebirth was somewhat of a mess at launch. Egosoft’s latest installment in the space trader franchise lacked a lot of features that previous X3 games boasted, and had issues with its basic game design. Tom noted in his review that X Rebirth assumed a lot of incorrect things about the player, such as the fact that someone might not want to play bug-ridden junk. Egosoft has released patch 1.25 that adds player-requested features and corrects a laundry list of bugs. The developers put out a short video highlighting some of the changes. One of the major additions is the long-requested ability to target ships in a manner similar to X3.
Along with the patch changes, Egosoft outlined some of their goals for X Rebirth. They intend to add Steam Workshop integration for modders, improvements to the in-game menus, add a 64-bit executable for more robust performance, and overhaul the highway system. Will it be enough to turn this game around? Space-jockeys can only hope.
Red Barrels has announced that they will be launching their first DLC for survival-horror game Outlast. The Whistleblower DLC will put players into the shoes of software engineer Waylon Park, working at the Mount Massive Asylum before the events of the main game. More heavy breathing and squeezing between furniture piled in hallways!
Although Whistleblower tells the story that led to Outlast, it will actually stretch past the events of the first game to show the final chapter in Mount Massive Asylum’s story.
The Whistleblower DLC will launch in April for PC and PlayStation 4.
Criterion has made the Legendary Car Collection DLC for the Xbox 360 free for today in honor of Harold Ramis. The DLC features a “Hunter Manhattan Spirit” automobile modified to look like the Ecto 1 from Ghostbusters as well as three other cars that mimic famous Hollywood creations. Harold Ramis is probably best known for his numerous writing, directing, and acting contributions to comedy including playing Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters. Ramis died on February 24th at the age of 69.
The Legendary Car Collection DLC is available from Xbox Live Marketplace.
The one thing Peter Molyneux can’t be accused of is being too soft on his past accomplishments. In this case, he’s come clean on his opinion of Fable III. Speaking to Develop, Peter Molyneux admitted that Fable III’s final form was less than what he’d hoped.
“I think Fable III was a trainwreck. It was built to be much bigger than what it was constrained to be and eventually ended up as. If I had my time again, I’d take the advances we made from Fable 1 to Fable II, I’d make the same advances from Fable II to Fable III and spend another entire year working on Fable III. But would it be that perfect gem that’s in my mind? No.”
I don’t know if I’d say it was a trainwreck, but I’ll agree that Fable III was no Fable II.
Not surprisingly, South Park: The Stick of Truth has run afoul of censorship standards in various territories. The foul-mouthed roleplaying game from Obsidian features an abortion mini-game and scenes of characters being probed anally which have been cut from the game in some countries. BT.com revealed that documentation accompanying review copies of The Stick of Truth explains the changes to the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) version of the game.
“Seven scenes of about 20 seconds each are censored in the EMEA console versions of South Park: The Stick of Truth. The decision to cut this content from the game was made by Ubisoft EMEA.”
According to Player Attack, the EMEA changes are similar to the censorship demanded by the Australian Classification Board in December of last year. South Park: The Stick of Truth launches on March 4th for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.
Blizzard has released details of their Diablo III expansion pre-order offer. Players that pre-order Reaper of Souls on or before March 31st will be able to claim a code for Valla the Demon Hunter in the upcoming free-to-play Heroes of the Storm. (Shown in the top center of the image above.) According to the blog post, players may be waiting a while to actually make use of Valla.
Note that Heroes of the Storm is still deep in development and does not have an announced release date, but you can stay tuned to the official game site for future updates. Note also that pre-purchasing Reaper of Souls does not guarantee a spot in the eventual Heroes of the Storm alpha or beta tests.
Pre-order customers will also be able to claim a nifty set of angelic wings for their Diablo III character, so they can show everyone that they gave Blizzard their money early.
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls will launch on March 25th. Patch 2.0.1 for Diablo III should go live today in preparation for the expansion.
Dean “Rocket” Hall, the outspoken creator of the DayZ mod and the standalone Early Access game says he will be leaving Bohemia Interactive by the end of the year. In an interview with Eurogamer, Hall confesses that he intends to go back to New Zealand to start his own studio to continue chasing his dream multiplayer concept.
“I feel like DayZ is a fundamentally flawed concept,” he went on, “and I’ve always recognised that. It’s not the perfect game; it’s not the multiplayer experience, and it never can be, [with] the absolute spark that I want in it.”
Bohemia Interactive says they were aware of Dean Hall’s plans and that the DayZ project will continue after his departure.
Valve’s Counter Strike: Global Offensive has kicked off another community map rotation. Operation Phoenix recalls eight of the fan-favorite community maps back to official service for the duration of the operation. By purchasing the Operation Phoenix pass for $2.99, players support the community map makers and get access to the avatar coin that will track their competitive stats. Phoenix coin owners will also get exclusive access to the in-game drops for the candy-colored hardware pictured above. Look at them! Racing stripes make cars go faster, so it follows that garish decals on guns make bullets deadlier.
Counter Strike: Global Offensive’s Operation Phoenix will be active until June 4th.
PopCap Games’ strange mash-up shooter Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will not launch with any microtransations. The shooter may eventually be supported through an in-game shop, but producer Brian Lindley told GameSpot that the developer is holding off on enabling microtransactions until they get enough player data and feedback to determine the right strategy to move forward.
PopCap was less forthcoming about the technical performance of the game on the Xbox One. When asked if the native resolution would be 1080p, a representative answered with the general line about upscaling to 1080p.
“On next-gen consoles, players can experience all EA games at 1080p. Some are rendered natively, others are up-scaled by the next-gen hardware systems. Either way, the visuals are stunning and the gameplay is impeccable, regardless of platform.”
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will launch next week for $40 on the Xbox One and $30 on the Xbox 360 and the PC.
Daylight, the upcoming procedurally generated haunted hospital game from Zombie Studios, will allow people watching streams of the game to dictate scary events through the Twitch chat interface. Viewers can type something like “boo” into chat and the game will create a sound effect or other event to scare the player. Publisher Atlus says that they will leave it to fans to discover all the special chat texts, and that the words will be on timers so viewers can’t spam them. According to the developers, the feature is meant to give a greater sense of interaction between streamers and viewers. I’m going to type “Frankenberry” and “Ke$ha” over and over while I watch a stream.
Daylight launches on PC and PlayStation 4 on April 8th.
Microsoft has rolled out the first “achievements” for the OneDrive application on the Xbox One. OneDrive, formally known as SkyDrive before UK broadcaster BSkyB took umbrage at the name, allows users to store data on Microsoft’s servers for later retrieval across shared devices. According to the Xbox Wire, 0-point achievements will be given to Xbox One users for the following triumphs:
Week one winner – Open OneDrive on Xbox One in the first week
Week one wizard – Play 20 photos in a slideshow from your camera roll in the first week
Hope those aren’t all selfies… – View 10 photos from your camera roll
Long exposure – View 100,000 photos
On a roll – Watch five hours of slideshows
Now you’re thinking with folders – Add a shared folder to OneGuide
Better hurry if you want that “Week one winner” achievement! New OneDrive accounts will get 7GB of storage to start, but Microsoft does offer ways to increase that storage, including some free programs as well as a paid service option.
Guild Wars 2’s big event for the next Living Story update is a doozy. The evil big baddie, Scarlet, and all her henchmen take on the hub city of Lion’s Arch and paint the town red. In the Escape from Lion’s Arch update, players get to help evacuate the city, fight off rampaging vandals, and witness the destruction of iconic Guild Wars 2 landmarks.
Upon logging in, players level 30 or higher will see a cinematic of the attack on Lion’s Arch. Lower level players will watch this upon entering Lion’s Arch for the first time. Players can rewatch the cinematic by talking to the refugee camp director at any of the three refugee camps located by the Vigil Keep in Gendarran Fields, by the Durmand Priory in Lornar’s Pass, and on Stormbluff Isle in Bloodtide Coast.
The Escape from Lion’s Arch full release notes have more details regarding the balance changes and features of the update.
