I’m not much of a sports guy, but I bet folks looking forward to this Sunday’s Superbowl will be psyched about the next pinball table from Zen Studios. Super League Football is certainly different from Zen’s other tables. It has a unique gimmick that will appeal to gridiron pigskinner sportists.
Players will side with their favorite clubs including Arsenal, Liverpool FC, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid C.F., A.C. Milan, Juventus Football Club, and A.S. Roma as they square off to dominate league play in a new social pinball experience. When players download Super League Football, they will select the club they wish to support. Their table will be themed in brilliant style, including images of the clubs biggest stars, team mascots, chants and theme songs. As games are completed, scores will tally to each club’s global leaderboard, providing an overall rank for each club in the league on a global scale on each platform. As you lead your team through league play, you will earn trophies and accolades which will be placed in their own trophy room.
So are you ready for some football? Well, stand by, since there’s no release date yet. Until then, sportists will have to make do with that skateboarding table.
One of the complaints that some players of Payday 2 had was that at higher levels the game could get to be kind of a grind. There’s only so many times you can rob the same bank and vandalize the same mall before it all blurs into one monotonous crime spree. (Maybe the game was a meta-commentary on the supposed glamour of the criminal lifestyle?) Starbreeze added a few new heists since launch, but they didn’t do much to relieve the grind. Rather than try to fix the game for those that dislike it, how about catering to those that love it as it is?
The Infamy update for Payday 2 adds exactly what grind-addicted folks want. More levels! Better than that in fact! A chance to start all 100 levels over and unlock special Infamy levels! Just like the Prestige program in Call of Duty, players that max their criminals in Payday 2 can elect to go back to level 1 and grind their way through all the levels again. Players lose all their skill points and spending money, but they get to keep all their masks, guns, and equipment – although they may have to claw their way back to the appropriate level to use those items. Every time they max out, they can unlock another Infamy reward! Up to 14 times! Grind, grind, grind!
The Infamy update is free for all owners of Payday 2.
The Gears of War franchise has been a success on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 system, but there have always been rumblings about it coming to Sony’s ecosystem in one from or another. Since the intellectual property was owned by Epic Games, there was always the possibility that the studio could make Gears games on the PlayStation 3 or 4 if they wanted. In June 2012 Epic’s then-president Mike Capps expressed interest in porting the trilogy to the PS3, but that never materialized.
There is bad news for people that hoped to see Marcus Fenix “roadie-run” onto the PlayStation. Microsoft has purchased the Gears of War franchise from Epic making the chances for a port infinitely less likely to happen. On Xbox Wire, Microsoft announced that not only did they buy the IP from the North Carolina-based studio, they also nabbed Rod Fergusson, the former Director of Production at Epic, and he will be joining Black Tusk Studios to work on future Gears productions.
“Epic Games has reached an agreement to sell the ‘Gears of War’ intellectual property rights to Microsoft. We’re very proud of the franchise we built in close partnership with Microsoft over the past decade and are happy that this agreement enables Microsoft to forge ahead with the ‘Gears’ universe on their industry-leading platforms as Epic concentrates its efforts on new projects,” said Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. “Epic remains totally dedicated to supporting Xbox One and is licensing the Unreal Engine 4 technology to Microsoft in support of their future projects.”
It’s always sad when an MMO shuts down. Loot fizzles out, characters disappear, and quests go forever unanswered. How much sadder is it then that Sony Online Entertainment is shutting down four of their MMO games? Free Realms, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Wizardry Online are all being shut down this year due to low population. (Read as low revenue.) The statement posted to the Vanguard forum, is probably the most honest.
But here’s the deal…player population numbers have decreased making it difficult to justify the resources needed to support and update this game. This is an older game and we’re experiencing more and more technical challenges to continue running and updating it in a way you deserve. Simply put, these are issues that cannot be fixed in the long term and as a player, we would be doing you a disservice and going against our company commitment to provide the best gameplay experiences. So given this information, sunsetting the game later this year is the inevitable conclusion.
Don’t despair! There’s a silver lining. SOE is going bundle up premium membership to DC Universe Online (PC), PlanetSide 2 (PC), EverQuest, EverQuest II, and the upcoming games Dragon’s Prophet, EverQuest Next, and EverQuest Next Landmark into the new SOE All Access subscription for $14.99 a month.
Have you ever owned one of those cars that seemed to be in the shop constantly? Flat tire in February. Radiator leak in March. Brakes going out in June. Mysterious “check engine light” in August. After a year or so of draining your wallet, you just get fed up and trade the clunker in for another car. Remember the mechanic that smiled every time you came in? He loved you and your lemon. You helped put his kid through college. Thanks to Car Simulator 2014, you can be that happy mechanic. Sure, you’ll be mouse-pointer deep in engine oil, but you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank while the helpless car owner sits in the waiting area drinking burnt coffee and reading a four-month old magazine. Bonus points for being hard to understand as you tell them how much it’s going to cost.
– Unlimited, random orders make every gameplay different
Car Mechanic Simulator 2014 is available now for the launch special price of $14.99 on Steam.
Ultra Street Fighter IV will allow players to directly upload a record of their matches to YouTube. According to Capcom’s Street Fighter community manager David Hinds, the upcoming game will feature an integrated system to create and transmit either a high or low quality video of any recorded match in their history to the player’s YouTube account.
Whether it’s the best comeback since Daigo VS Justin Wong, or perhaps you had an encounter with a pro-player you want to share, this feature is great for those who are yet to own a direct capture device, and want to show off their favorite Ultra Street Fighter IV moments!
I expect to see lots of videos of people doing things in the game that I could never do like actually win a match. Ultra Street Fighter IV will be available either as an upgrade for owners of Super Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition for $14.99 on all platforms, or as a full standalone release for $39.99 on consoles and $29.99 on PC.
Bethesda and ZeniMax have revealed some of the actors they’ve hired to supply voices in The Elder Scrolls Online. It’s a suitably impressive cast for a big-budget MMO. John Cleese, Bill Nighy, Jim Ward, Alfred Molina, Kate Beckinsdale, Peter Stormare, Jennifer Hale, Michael Gambon, and Malcolm McDowell will be lending their distinctive voices to the game. Lynda Carter will reprise her role as Azura, the Daedric Princess, from Skyrim.
Is it enough to get me to pay for the client and then a monthly subscription? Probably not, but Peter Stormare can “un-pimp my auto” any time.
Jason Rohrer is no stranger to controversy. He made a splash when he debuted The Castle Doctrine, a pixel-art MMO built around players securing their houses while trying to break into other players’ homes to steal their belongings. Last week he made waves by posting this article explaining why sales are bad for developers and players. (Sales “screw your fans” because they’re the early adopters that paid more before the price dropped.) Now Rohrer is giving away money and prizes to celebrate the game’s January 29th release on Steam. A prize drawing wouldn’t normally be a big deal, but the rewards are themed to fit the paranoid world of The Castle Doctrine.
The Steal Real Money pre-launch contest offers cash payouts based on the amount of in-game cash players amass by 5PM on January 27th. As of the contest posting, $282 gathered in-game will convert to a dollar of real-world money when the deadline hits. Rohrer says he will pay out a maximum of $3000. Additional prizes in the contest include eight giclee-printed canvas paintings of in-game art, a Door Devil security system, $50 gift certificates to a gun store, and the telescoping billy club that played a key role in the inspiration for the game.
If you find it all a little unsettling, Jason Rohrer says the contest “matches the spirit of the game’s community.”
You can tell a lot about a movie by the company it keeps. For instance, Sony just announced that they’ve made a deal with Cinema Management Group to help sell their Ratchet & Clank movie to overseas markets. Check out this page for CMG’s previous movies to get a sense for Sony’s expectations. I haven’t heard of a single one of those we’re-not-technically-Madagascar releases. Of course, that might be because I’m not a seven year old child living in another country. Alternatively, there’s this trailer in search of an effective joke. “Never mess with the animators” is all it could come up with.
The studio who made the trailer and who is currently working on the movie is Rainmaker, known (?) for Escape from Planet Earth, a middling success that benefited from being the first family movie out of the gate last year. Rainmaker and Sony obviously hope to repeat that middling success by conceding that Ratchet & Clank will be out in “early 2015”. I’m guessing this will follow a major Playstation 4 release from the preceding holiday season to hopefully scoop a few folks into the theaters.
Fortunately, a good Ratchet & Clank movie has already come out. It was the 2009 game, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. I’d rather watch those cutscenes strung together than see what the press release for the movie describes as follows:
When the two stumble upon a dangerous weapon capable of destroying entire planets, they must join forces with a team of colorful heroes called The Galactic Rangers in order to save the galaxy. Along the way they’ll learn about heroism, friendship, and the importance of discovering one’s own identity.
I wonder if there’s room for a RYANO joke in a movie like that.
Warhorse Studios, out of the Czech Republic, has been showing off elements of their CryEngine-powered medieval RPG, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, for a couple of years. The ambitious project seemed like a sure bet to gamers, but publishers weren’t as confident. With an open-world RPG framework, sumptious Eastern European visuals, the combat of Mount & Blade, and a proven engine, it wasn’t surprising that they had trouble getting a publisher to bite. It seemed a bit too ambitious. Too expensive. Plus there aren’t going to be any fantasy monsters! Publishers balked at the idea of a swords and shields RPG without trolls and dragons.
The studio has taken their proposition to the people through Kickstarter. A little short of $500k is the asking price to self-publish the game. Seems cheap? That’s because it is. Warhorse has an investor that needs convincing. The Kickstarter is to show him that his money wouldn’t be wasted.
Our investor is strong and capable of funding the complete development of our project. But he does not follow the game industry very closely, and needs proof that publishers and marketers are wrong about our game – that you are indeed interested in a mature, medieval RPG that emphasizes freedom and authenticity. And so we stand, as a studio, at a crossroads. Either those naysayers are right, and there truly is no desire for the game we are making, or we are right.
Should the game be successful, Warhorse plans to eventually make two more games in the series to tell the full story.
StarCraft II’s 2.1 patch is rolling out to all players now and it comes with a lot of new features. Players with the free Starter Edition will no longer be limited to using the Terran race in multiplayer, and they’ll be allowed to play with any of the melee maps. Starter Edition users can also now play any of the Arcade games for free. According to the blog post, even multiplayer components that require Heart of the Swarm can be accessed by the Starter Edition. This means that StarCraft II multiplayer is pretty much free for everyone as long as you don’t care about ranking and tournaments.
If you’re a fan of the old soundtracks, patch 2.1 comes with a gift for you. You can now choose to enable classic soundtracks and rock out to music from StarCraft and the Brood War expansion. Who could forget that one track that had all the thumping and whatnot?
Of course there’s a gaggle of balance changes that came with patch 2.1. The full notes can be found here.
The developers of Monster Monpiece, a Vita strategy game intended for adults in which you rub the clothes off anime characters to make them more powerful, have decided that America can’t handle the game in its current form.
Idea Factory International, Inc. would like to inform fans and prospective users of Monster Monpiece that we have made the decision to remove several Monster Girl images from the North American and European versions of Monster Monpiece. The gameplay, game system, and storyline are fully intact and Idea Factory International strives to localize and publish Idea Factory titles with the same content as their Japanese releases. Here is the list of Monster Girls whose images have been limited to that of their level 1, 2, or 3 evolution form due to the strong sexual nature of the card images: Vampire, Kraken, Goblin, Cockatrice, Kobold, Skeleton, Titania, Bahamut, Fia, Brownie, Pegasus, Mandragora, Mau Sibau, Rafflesia, Death Scorpion, Phantom, and Tengu. We fully understand that there are needs and demands for the complete version of these games. Our intention and motivation is to offer Idea Factory titles in a form that is as close as possible to the Japanese versions. This was a tough decision, but we would greatly appreciate your understanding and support.
What a disappointing decision, even though this is probably a game I’ll never play. Not because of the sexual content. Instead, I simply have no tolerance for QTEs or screen rubbing gimmicks in my card strategy games. But it’s a shame that the weeping Graysons dictating the tone of the conversation in the videogame press have decided that sexuality and sexism are the same thing. At a time when there are more and stronger female characters in games than ever before, it’s too bad there’s also a ridiculous overreaction to harmless titillation in a dopey anime game.
I’ve already played Tomb Raider twice, even though it’s clearly not a game designed to be played more than once. As a once-and-done narrative-driven AAA release, it’s one of a dying breed. But since it was released on the cusp of a new generation of console systems, publisher Square Enix has tempted me with a third playthrough by showing off the tech upgrades in the “Definitive Edition” re-release for the Xbox One and Playstation 4. If you’re looking for an excuse to re-experience one of the best games of 2013, how about new tress technology? How about new mud, blood, and sweat? How about new equipment physics? How about new, uh, drip maps? Yeah, drip maps. Frankly, I don’t really need an excuse for another playthrough, but this upgrade helps.
The second of three promised campaign DLC installments for Arma III is now available. The Adapt episode puts players once again into the combat boots of Ken Berry as he contemplates his existence on the war-torn island of Altis. He also shoots many enemy soldiers and walks slowly through the mediterranean countryside. Bohemia Interactive says that after the largely linear missions in the first episode, this part of the story uses more of the franchise’s typical open gameplay.
“Episode One helped players get to grips with the basic skills needed to survive. Episode Two introduces a whole new set of challenges, giving players more freedom and responsibility in the wide, open terrain of Altis.”
The Adapt campaign DLC is available for free through Steam to all owners of Arma III.
It turns out that Grand Theft Auto V’s online mode is the perfect place for combat photography. Christopher Murrie, senior film editor at Laika, uses the in-game cell phone feature to take snapshots of the violent action in Grand Theft Auto Online and posts his results to Reddit. His character stays in passive mode, wears a “MEDIA” jacket, and travels around Los Santos in a news van. The results are similar to the type of images you’d see coming out of real-world conflicts.
Murrie told Polygon that he started his hobby after another player was wreaking havoc on the streets with a tank. He followed and started taking photos of the violence instead of participating in the mayhem. The idea has caught on. Players are joining Murrie’s in-game group, Media Lens, to become virtual war correspondents. A Pulitzer can’t be far off for one of these brave photojournalists.
