Diretide, last year’s Halloween event for Dota 2, begins today. It’s coming as part of the Three Spirits update. The patch adds new heroes to the game’s roster, new items in the shop, and coaching options for vets that want to spend time teaching new players how to make the most of their Dota 2 experience. Halloween comes to Dota 2 with festive pumpkin theming and spooky – wait a minute. Why is the Halloween event happening in November? Valve says it’s because they didn’t realize the fans wanted it, then they didn’t react fast enough to the protest.
Due to our poor prediction of your reaction, and the team being focused on the next update, we didn’t spend enough time thinking about talking to you about our decision. As a result, by the time we’d realized we’d made a bad decision, the pitchforks were out.
Hobos riding the rails and back alley thugs know that the broken bottle is the deadliest weapon ever made. Rockstar knows this too, because they’re adding one to Grand Theft Auto V in the Beach Bum update. The free DLC will add new weapons, including the thifty broken bottle, and new beach-themed vehicles to both the single player and online modes. The update will expand the GTA Online offerings with new jobs, races, and customization options.
The upcoming free-to-play game previously known as Blizzard All-Stars, and Blizzard DOTA before that, up-ends a few conventions of the genre. Eurogamer reports that Heroes of the Storm eschews longstanding MOBA mechanics in favor of more casual gameplay that should appeal to a wider audience. Last-hitting is gone and teams level up as a group so new players aren’t as much of a handicap as in other games. Shops and items are also out, in favor of a regular Blizzard skill tree that World of Warcraft players will be at home using. Chris Sigaty, Production Director on Heroes, explained the thinking behind the changes to the game.
“First of all, the core game de-emphasises a lot of the things that create rockstars, that we think leads to people getting into that toxic space, and reasons to be angry at people who simply don’t know things yet. We want to emphasise the team side of it – the feel that we’re all in it together. The other side that we think is going to have a big impact is game time – we’re trying to keep it around that magic 25 minutes. In a 45 minute or longer game, the frustration just builds and builds and builds.”
Heroes of the Storm is open for beta registration now.
GameInformer has announced their next cover story and chock full of Tolkien. Monolith Productions and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is bringing us Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor for current and next-gen platforms. You’ll play a ranger – no, not Aragorn – this is a prequel! You get some guy named Talion as he treks across Mordor, presumably fighting orcs and questing for some hard-to-pronounce thingamabob.
The Nemesis System assures that every enemy you fight is a named foe, and if they survive their battle with you, they continue to grow, improve, and act in the world, even as you attempt to do the same with Talion.
Sounds promising! I can’t wait to fight some orc with a lot of consonants in his name again and again.
Capcom’s Xbox One exclusive Dead Rising 3 looks like it covers all of the franchise’s tropes. Improvised weapons, insane human enemies, barricaded survivors, loads of zombies to kill in satisfying ways, and a time-limit imposed by the apocalypse. Protagonist Nick Ramos seems to have a pretty good reason to rush. It’s not as sappy as rescuing a helpless waif in Dead Rising 2, but it’s also a lot better than needing to make a news deadline in the original game.
FTL is a frantic permadeath game about managing the crew of an interstellar ship as it voyages through hostile space. Imagine being Captain Kirk, but your bridge crew is a bunch of morons. Putting out literal fires and driving off enemy boarding parties takes up the lion’s share of your time. There is a delicious tension between handling emergencies and navigating the cold depths of the galaxy. Subset Games has announced FTL: Advanced Edition and there are a few reasons for you to get this expansion.
After the jump, the ship can’t take much more of this!Continue reading →
This weekend, attendees of BlizzCon learned about Warlords of Draenor, the next World of Warcraft expansion, and more details about Diablo III’s expansion, Reaper of Souls which will allow players to choose between playing in linear Campaign Mode or Adventure Mode. The new mode will unlock all waypoints on the map from the outset. Instead of playing through the story, you’ll be able to skip around in endless battles. Randomized Bounties will give players a goal to chase. These will vary from killing a specific beastie, to clearing a dungeon, or completing an event. Nabbing a Bounty will give players the normal gold and experience, and will give them special objects that can open Nephalem Rifts. These Rifts are portals to completely randomized mini-dungeons containing greater rewards and hazards. Finally, players can officially ignore the storyline.
Marvel Heroes gets a massive update today which adds Loki as a playable character and Asgard as a new zone.
Travel to the frozen Fjords of Norway and battle Frost Giants, Dark Elves and more! Help Reed Richards uncover the mystery of how and why these enemies from another realm are invading Earth by donating items that have been exposed to the energy of the Cosmic Cube! Doing so will unlock a brand new zone! Norway can be unlocked by bring a hero who has defeated Doctor Doom on the present difficulty mode to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier and speaking with the transport S.H.I.E.L.D. agent near Nick Fury. Over the next 4 months, new areas of Asgard will become available, including a raid zone, PVP zone and Siege challenge.
Furthermore, Thor’s storm strike has been buffed. All this just as a new Thor movie is coming out. How fortuitous! You’d almost think it was planned!
Age of Empires II HD gave everyone nostalgic for a taste of the old fashioned real-time strategy game a chance to play with modern resolutions and enchanced Steam features. Now, more than ten years since The Conquerers, Age of Empires II has a new official expansion. The Forgotten, which started as a mod, has been published by Microsoft Studios. The expansion features five new civilizations, Twitch streaming integration, spectating, adds two new modes to multiplayer, and four new story campaigns. One of the campaigns finally brings Vlad Dracula to Age of Empires!
History forged an incredible legend around the man who ruled Wallachia in the mid-14th century. Holding his ground against the vast armies of the expanding Ottoman Empire, his cruel tactics made him the most feared man in all of Eastern Europe. Shall his thirst for blood and the loyalty of his soldiers hold the Turks back for good?
Microsoft has opened a hotel based on their next-gen console. The Xbox One Hotel in Paris, France has Xbox One themed decorations, cocktails, rooms, and even the restaurant menu has Microsoft-approved meals. It’s like sleeping in a green and silver explosion of marketing drivel! The hotel is only open for the month of November, so hurry! You might miss out on the upscale accomodations.
Live-action videogame theater, how I love you! Freddy Rodriguez and Tom Savini both appeared in Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror as part of the Grindhouse double feature. Thanks to Twisted Pixel’s trailer for LocoCycle, they’re back again in a cinematic masterpiece. Robert Patrick and Lisa Foiles voice the artificially intelligent motorcycles.
LocoCycle will be a launch title for the Xbox One.
Stardock has announced a new DLC pack for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. The Stellar Phenomena pack adds 11 random events to the game to change up the battlefield.
Stars launch volatile gases that shut down orbital operations, mobile storms wreak havoc across the solar system, and conquered factions sense your weakness and seek to reclaim their worlds.
Volatile gases! Mobile storms! Let’s see those dirty space pirates find me now!
Forza 5 launches on the Xbox One with over 200 cars in its roster as well as 16 tracks. Turn 10 announced that for $49.99, gamers can pick up a Season Pass that will give them six monthly DLC packs of 10 additional cars each. Even with those extra cars, the list of cars and tracks in Forza 5 is about half as long as its predecessor. Notably, Nurburgring is one of the missing venues. Forza 4 shipped with 26 tracks and over 500 cars. Eurogamer asked Dan Greenawalt of Turn 10 why the next-gen game ships with less content than the previous installment.
“We’re looking at laser scanning of everything moving forward – that’s what it comes down to. We want that to be the standard for next-generation. Our goal’s not to carry old content over – and even with all the cars, we did the same process. There were some inaccuracies, and some cars were old-spec that we’d updated from Forza 2 to 3 to 4. But they didn’t have the poly count where we wanted it – and they weren’t as easy to up-res, so we just recaptured them. Some of them, the spec was good and we could add polygons where we needed them. So it came down to this rating system – and any track or car that wasn’t an A grade got either chucked or recaptured.”
Greenawalt mentioned that additional DLC tracks may also be coming. Forza 5 launches on November 22nd.
The latest update for Secret World, dubbed Issue #8, is out tomorrow. But even if you don’t buy the $10 add-on to this ridiculously generous free-to-play MMO, you’re still getting a lot from Issue #8. First up are augments, which is a layer of customization added to the skill system. The core of Secret World is a set of skills based on your choice of two weapons. Do you want a sword and pistols? Or are you more of a shotgun and blood magic guy? Every weapon has a huge set of skills, and you can mix and match freely from whichever two weapons you equip. Last year, starting with a rocket launcher, an auxiliary weapon slot was added so you could complement your fighting style with stuff like flamethrowers or chainsaws. I’m currently leveling up my whip. Now here comes the augment system as a whole other set of skills based on crafting, upgrading, and applying tweaks to your active skills. They’re like gems in Diablo or Path of Exile. If you thought the skill system in Secret World was detailed, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This is all endgame content, so it’s not going to be dropped in your lap when you start playing. But even for us active players, the augment system is simultaneously daunting and thrilling.
So how do you get these augments? By playing scenarios. And what are scenarios? They’re randomized missions run in the Venetian Council’s virtual mission simulator. Each scenario consists of three waves of random enemies attacking clusters of survivors, with a boss and a special event between each wave. During a demo today, our group’s events were traitors (some of the survivors opened fire on the other survivors) and a supply drop of special weapons crates (one of which contained a rude surprise in the form of an unfriendly golem). Our first boss was an experimental zombie hulk. The second was a very angry undead bear (pictured).
As you fight, the monsters drop augments and the bosses will drop particularly choice augments (at this point, the scenarios are the only place you can get augments). There are three maps, each playable in a variety of difficulty levels and set for solo players, pairs, or full groups of five. One map is freely available to all players; the other two are reserved for folks who purchase Issue #8. The basic gameplay model — defending survivors from three waves of attackers — is consistent on all the maps, but Funcom has plans to add new modes and new random events. There are tentative plans for later maps based on getting across an area with a minimum threat level (I hesitate to call it stealth, but the model is the sabotage missions already in the game) and escape scenarios similar to the snowmobile sequence in the Issue #7. I haven’t played that yet. I’m too busy leveling up my whip to gad about on a snowmobile. But I’m never too busy for randomized horde modes. The scheduled time — fingers crossed — for Issue #8 to go live is tomorrow morning.
Microsoft is giving away unlock codes for Killer Instinct to select individuals. The code emails are going out to Xbox Live members based on a combination of factors such as overall Gamerscore, community involvement, and Xbox Live tenure.
“We wouldn’t be here without you, and we know you’ll do amazing things on Xbox One. Thank you from Xbox Live.”
The codes unlock all the characters for Killer Instinct on the Xbox One, which would normally cost $19.99 for the bundle. The game will be free-to-play with Jago unlocked for everyone at the start.
