Rust, the open-world survival game from Garry Newman’s Facepunch Studios, no longer has undead enemies. In the latest update, developer Maurino Berry explained that the largely ineffective zombies have been replaced with red bears and wolves.
“Yep. We did it. We decided we couldn’t hold off any longer. The longer we keep zombies in – the more complaints we’d get about removing them. We are forcing ourselves to deal with it. We are no longer a zombie survival game!”
Garry Newman had intended to replace the zombies in Rust for a long time. As far back as June of last year, Newman had expressed the desire to have more diverse threats like wildlife and other enemies, and to focus on the possible antagonism between players.
Maybe I don’t follow MOBAs closely enough, but I’m surprised some designer hasn’t already filled a lane with zombies and just called it a day. Is Deep Silver really the first to bring the zombie fad to MOBAs with Dead Island: Epidemic? It looks mostly like a standard League of Legends me-too — free-to-play, of course — with a couple of exceptions. You control your character directly, with a mouse and WASD. Each match features three (3!) teams.
Although it’s branded as a Dead Island release, I don’t recall any three-mouthed zombies in Dead Island. I guess a MOBA needs visuals that are more, uh, playful (I tried to avoid the word “cartoony” and I think I was mostly successful).
Say hello to Sir Lovesword! Stardock’s pirate-themed iOS card game has been released for PC on Steam for $9.99. The game features higher resolutions, mouse-compatible controls, and all the iOS in-app purchases have been included in the basic purchase of the game. The PC version of Dead Man’s Draw also comes with a new card suit abilty that adds its own wrinkle to the gameplay.
New Mermaid suit ability – Mermaids now allow you to replay a card in the river, leading to even bigger combos and epic turns
New Sirens trait – Steal any card your opponent replays with a Mermaid
Double Helix Games, the developer supporting Microsoft’s Killer Instinct for the Xbox One, has been acquired by Amazon. Amazon has been building their in-house game development studio for their Kindle devices. Recent games made by Amazon have included Air Patriots, Simplz: Zoo, and Airport Mania HD. TechCruch reports that the acquisition was for both talent and intellectual property. Microsoft confirmed that Double Helix would no longer be working on Killer Instinct, but assured fans that they would be hiring another studio to step in.
“We have thoroughly enjoyed working with Double Helix and wish them success in their next endeavor. We want all of our loyal fans to know that the Killer Instinct team at Microsoft is not changing and that the franchise will remain with Microsoft Studios. We remain dedicated to delivering a great experience and plan to announce our new development partner soon. We’re excited about the future of this popular franchise.”
Killer Instinct for the Xbox One recently swapped the free playable character from Thunderwolf to Orchid.
Hawken, the free-to-play mech combat game from Adhesive Games, is coming to Steam. In a blog post, the developers explained that the separate launcher will no longer be available and all current player accounts must be transferred to the Steam client after today. A handy transition guide details the process.
Gamers that don’t already have Hawken accounts must wait for the public release later this month before joining in the mech battles.
Remember Borderlands 2? Gearbox is still pumping out DLC for the acclaimed shooter. Gearbox revealed to IGN that the fourth Headhunter DLC for Borderlands 2 will be Mad Moxxi and the Wedding Day Massacre, which will be released on February 11th. It will be a Valentine’s Day themed mission featuring a wedding, two love-struck Goliaths, and everyone’s favorite mime-faced entrepreneur. Like previous Headhunter packs, successfully completing the quests will net players a new cosmetic head and skin for their characters.
Gearbox also confirmed that the fifth and final Headhunter pack will be Sir Hammerlock and the Son of Crawmerax, coming in April.
10000000 is one of those games that burrows into your psyche. If you can imagine a matching game crossed with a roguelike, you’ve got the right idea. Just like the best roguelikes, 10000000 will make you question your previous performance. I could’ve! If only! Maybe next time! The only drawback to the game is that once you’ve reached 10000000 points, there’s no reason to keep playing it. Developer Luca Redwood wanted to give players a reason to come back, so he started work on a free addition, but that has grown beyond the confines of DLC.
You Must Build a Boat, the standalone sequel to 10000000, will be free to current owners of the original game. EightyEight Games explained in a blog post that You Must Build a Boat just became its own game through the development process.
I took a step back and realised I’d added and removed so much stuff. There wasn’t much that remained from 10000000. To get back on track I decided “OK, this is a new game, and this is the experience, and I’ll take it from there.” The game has become way way better for it.
Steam and Humble Bundle owners of 10000000 will automatically have You Must Build a Boat added to their accounts when the game launches. Saved data from 10000000 will unlock special bonuses in You Must Build a Boat.
Warner Bros. is canceling the story DLC for the Wii U version of Batman: Arkham Origins. In an email to Season Pass purchasers, Nintendo Customer Support explained that their money would be credited back to their eShop accounts.
Thanks so much for your support of Batman: Arkham Origins on Wii U.
We are contacting you today because you purchased the Batman: Arkham Origins Season Pass for Wii U. We hope you’ve been enjoying the content that has been delivered thus far. Based on demand for Downloadable Content on the system, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has made the decision to remove its offering of the upcoming new story campaign for Wii U. As a result, we will be crediting the entire $19.99+tax cost of the Season Pass back to your Nintendo eShop account. You will still be able to enjoy the content already released thus far.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your support of the game.
Based on posts from the official Facebook page for the game, the upcoming story DLC will likely featured Mr. Freeze.
One of the big gaming technology updates people have been anticipating is something called Mantle from AMD. According to developers that have worked with the code, it’s the bee’s knees. More polywhatzits, smoother flashy bits, and nicer looking bang-zooms.
What’s the big deal for gamers? Star Swarm is the answer. Oxide Games showed off their Nitrous Engine demo back in December to demonstrate what they could do with Mantle for a strategy game. You know how you always wanted to see a space battle in a game the way you pictured it in your mind? Now, you can check it out for yourself through Steam. The dynamic real-time demo will calculate and render up to 10,000 spaceships battling amongst the stars – provided you have the right PC hardware and drivers.
Don’t fret spaceship haters! (Weirdos.) If you play Battlefield 4 on PC, you can check out the Mantle-powered update that came out today. I’m sure it didn’t come with new crash bugs or errors.
Okay, funtime is over kiddies. It’s time to get serious. Up to now, Payday 2 has been going easy on you. No more. As of today’s update, the cloakers are back. These Sam Fisher-esque dudes were the bane of heists in the first game, but for the sequel, they’ve been on sitting this one out. Polishing their nightvision goggles. Charging their stun batons. Practicing their fancy parkour. Now they’ve clocked in.
Returning from PAYDAY: The Heist, the Cloaker has come to spoil the fun and stop the heist. Good thing Gage has some new goodies for players’ inventory to keep that from happening. The Cloaker is a free update that is added to the game for everyone. He’ll gladly beat you with his baton, free of charge.
The cloaker update coincides with the release of a $5 pack that includes a couple new weapons and masks.
The launch and subsequent weeks of Battlefield 4 multiplayer have been lessthanstellar. Glitches, connectivity issues, crashes, and weird exploits have plagued the title on all platforms. Although the most egregious issues have been addressed, the launch was something of a black eye for the franchise. It was bad enough that DICE promised to not work on anything other than fixing the problems. Meanwhile, EA is being sued by two separate firms over the damage the title may have caused to their stocks. In fact, EA’s investors are asking questions about Titanfall. There’s a lot of money riding on this next-gen game, and the money-men don’t want a repeat of Battlefield 4’s rocky performance.
In yesterday’s quarterly earnings call, EA executives tried to put investors’ fears to rest. Patrick Soderlund, EA’s executive vice president of EA Games label, took some time to address Battlefield 4’s issues, the lessons learned, and how EA and Respawn will apply that to Titanfall.
I’ll cover Battlefield 4, and I’ll quickly touch on kind of what happened, what we’ve done and how we’re learning from it? So on the first segment, the what happened part is when Battlefield 4 launched, it was a very complex game, launching on 2 entirely new console platforms, as well as current-gen and PC. We were pushing innovation heavily and we’re delivering 60 frames per second gameplay for 64 players plus the ability to connect via mobile tablet as a commander into the product, coupled those with some very innovative features in the gameplay side. Based on our prelaunch testing, our beta performance, we were confident the game was ready when it was launched. Shortly after launch, however, we began hearing about problems from our player community, and the development team quickly began to address the situation. So what have we done since we encountered the problems is we were fortunate to have an architecture in place that allows us to adjust and update the game rapidly, and that’s actually what we’ve done. We released multiple software updates across all platforms to resolve the primary issues and game stability has significantly increased. To the final point, which is how are we learning from this? The challenge that we’ve faced with Battlefield 4 were different from anything that we’ve seen before with other games. There were different issues that only manifest its scale in the post-launch live environment. We’re taking multiple steps to evaluate what occurred and incorporate those learnings into our development process for future products, so we don’t experience the same problems again. I would close on the fact that Battlefield 4 remains an amazing game with massive innovation, and we’re confident that gamers will be logging on to play for a long time to come.
They have their top men working on it now. Top. Men.
I expected my favorite part of today’s Onslaught DLC for Call of Duty: Ghosts would be the new map for extinction mode. Extinction mode is Ghost’s answer to the previous games’ zombie mode. It lets you and up to three other players run around on wide-open maps, setting up pitched defensive battles in which you have to hold out against swarms of alien bugs. Classic co-op stuff. I almost don’t even mind the lack of zombies. And the new extinction map in Onslaught adds a bad-ass boss battle against a giant alien bug. It’s impressive enough. But it’s not my favorite thing about the Onslaught DLC.
The PlayStation Blog revealed that playing The Elder Scrolls Online on the PlayStation 4 will not require a subscription to PlayStation Plus. Yay! Shortly after that news update, Bethesda confirmed to Joystiq that Microsoft will require players to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold before they can play the MMO. Boo!
So there you have it. The Elder Scrolls Online will cost $14.99 a month for players on PC and PS4. Xbox One players will need to pay that plus the Gold subscription fee. No one is playing on one of these next-gen consoles without paying the multiplayer tax anyway, right?
If you haven’t played BioShock Infinite’s Burial at Sea: Episode One DLC, you probably shouldn’t watch the preview video above. It starts with a spoiler. Heck, even if you did play the first DLC, you may want to hold off on watching the clip because the spoiler is pretty major. All you need to know is that the adventure continues in the underwater utopia of Rapture just before the events of BioShock.
No release date has been given by Irrational Games.
