America’s Army: Proving Grounds, the controversial free game and recruiting advertisement, from the United States Army launches today on Steam. It’s got all your multiplyer hoo-rah military shooting and running, but sponsored by an actual armed force. Executive Producer Randy King told Polygon that the game features a return to the basics of the project. Mainly, the game needs to be fun to play while depicting sound tactics and realistic equipment.
“One of the things that influences the teamwork is how lethal you are,” Roberts said. “Positioning is the ultimate dominant strategy. In order to do that, you need to be talking to each other because there’s not a big accuracy cone like in Call of Duty where you can circle strafe and somebody goes down. You can put a reticle on someone to take them down, but positioning matters more.”
As with previous America’s Army games, Proving Grounds is 100% free, with no microtransactions or in-app purchases. You’ll just have to put up with a few recruiting pitches to actually give up a few years of your life for military service – possibly in hostile territory. How’s that cosmetic DLC looking now?
Just like last time, Gearbox Software has released a short film that sets up a DLC to Borderlands 2. I’m not sure why they release these so long after the DLC comes out, but better late than never, I guess. This video shows how Tiny Tina started the Bunkers & Badasses scenario in her Assault on Dragon Keep DLC. It’s a story of triumph during adversity. And punching. Lots of punching.
Nintendo announced the 2DS today. It’s sort of like the hand-held 3DS except it doesn’t do the 3D part. It also doesn’t have the familiar DS hinge in the middle. The 2DS comes in what Nintendo calls a “slate” form factor. The 2DS will be compatible with all DS and 3DS games, sans the 3D of course. The system will come with a 4GB SD card for storage. Curiously, the 2DS does have the front-facing cameras like the 3DS so it can take stereoscopic pictures for eventual transfer and viewing on a 3D system. Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fils-Aime, said that the device is not aimed at the hardcore gamer.
“We definitely believe there are consumers looking for value in handheld devices. We have always thought about the entry-level consumer.”
The Nintendo 2DS will launch on October 12th in North America for $129.99.
Valve announced that they have approved 100 games for sale on Steam through their Greenlight program. This brings the total number of independent games greenlit on Steam to 260.
This latest milestone is both a celebration of the progress we’ve made behind the scenes and a stress test of our systems. Future batches are not likely to be as large, but if everything goes smoothly we should be able to continue increasing the throughput of games from Greenlight to the Steam store.
The full list of games can be found here. It includes Quarter to Three forum favorites Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, Dominions 3, and Warmachine: Tactics.
Electronic Arts’ Peter Moore wants to clarify some statements that were reported from Gamescom. Moore had said that EA won’t “deliver offline experiences anymore” and that we can expect free-to-play versions of “every major franchise.” While Moore says this is essentially true, he does clarify in a blog post that EA will continue to make games that do not require a connection.
What that does NOT mean is that every game we ship will require an online connection. Many, if not most, of our games include single-player, offline modes that you can play entirely without an Internet connection, if you so choose. We know that’s something many of our players want, and we will continue to deliver it.
Moore wrote that leaderboards, sharing stats, and achievements are examples of online features.
In other EA news, SimCity recently received Update 7 which allows manually raising and lowering of roads and comes with some traffic behavior tuning. There’s still no offline mode, so maybe it’s not something that “players want” from EA.
If you purchase Xbox One exclusive Day One edition games at launch, you’ll get more stuff. Microsoft’s Major Nelson has posted some information regarding the special Day One bonus content offered with Forza 5, Ryse: Son of Rome, and Dead Rising 3.
To commemorate the launch of Xbox One, Day One Editions are special game SKUS that include exclusive content and are available only through retail pre-order while supplies last, or via download on Xbox Live the first two weeks after launch.
Forza 5 Day One will come with three exclusive cars – the 2010 Audi TT RS Coupe, 2013 Ford Focus ST, and the 2011 Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera. (My sources tell me that’s some kind of spaceship.) Ryse: Son of Rome Day One will come with a special map for use with its co-op Gladiator Mode. Players will also get an exclusive Legionnaire’s Trust sword. Finally, Dead Rising 3 Day One will come with outfits from previous Dead Rising games to make your character dress like heroes Chuck Greene or Frank West.
Waiting too long means you’ll have to play the regular versions of these games with less cars, outfits, and swords. You don’t want your buddy to have more stuff than you, right? What if he has more digital bits? Crossing the finish line first won’t be as sweet without Lamborghini model #43 in your garage!
Super Adventure Box, the 8-bit inspired April Fool’s event for Guild Wars 2, is returning to the game in a new and improved form for a Back to School celebration. An insane genius named Moto is bringing back the blocky goofiness with Super Adventure Box World 2 featuring new challenges, a “ridiculously difficult” Tribulation Mode, new cosmetic skins, and new weapons and pets can be collected.
Permanent updates to the game include a major change to magic find. It’s no longer going to be a stat given by equipment. It will be an account-wide bonus for all characters accumulated through salvaging higher-level items.
Super Adventure Box Back to School starts on September 3rd.
Killer Instinct for the Xbox One isn’t free-to-play despite how the game is being marketed in some segments. Ken Lobb, creative director of Microsoft-published Xbox One games, told Eurogamer that the option to download the next-gen fighting game and play through it as Jago is just “the world’s most generous demo.” Additional characters are $4.99 each, or you can buy the Killer Instinct Combo Breaker pack for $19.99, which comes with all six launch characters and two post-launch DLC fighters. (There’s also a $39.99 version that comes with a load of extras.) Lobb explained that the pricing scheme is meant to encourage the growth of the fighting game community.
“What we’re trying to do is get the most people possible back into fighting games,” Lobb said. “When I worked on KI1, when the Super NES and Mega Drive were at their peak, there were millions more fighting game players. The community is super robust right now, with a lot of fans, but it’s smaller than it used to be.
“I want all the people who will be like, oh yeah, KI, I loved that! But I don’t know if I can learn it again. Play Jago. See if you like it. That’s the idea.”
Microsoft plans to release Killer Instinct in two seasons. Season 1 is the launch version with six characters and two DLC additions. Season 2 is scheduled for 2014 and will include another eight characters. Additionally, like League of Legends, Killer Instinct’s free character will be swapped with another selection after a few months.
The internet gave us BadgerBadgerBadger, Keyboard Cat, and twerking, but sometimes it gives us good stuff as well. Coming from two far-off corners of the internet is some news of industrious hackers from the homebrew scenes bringing great games to platforms they’ve never been on.
RetroCollect has the scoop on Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting. It’s Street Fighter II on the Nintendo Virtual Boy. Now you can Hadoken in red and… More red. Getting it to work depends on a specific flash cartridge, but someone calling himself “Mr.Anon” toiled to bring Street Fighter II to all the Virtual Boy owners out there.
From another part of the internet comes the news that two fellows going by the names “smealum” and “Lobo” are bringing Portal to the Nintendo DS. According to the programmers, it’s buggy and incomplete, but they have 14 levels of Portal gun goodness and there’s even a level editor! It’s based on an original story in which you play Doug Rattman, the guy that left all the cryptic graffiti on the walls of Aperture Science. The Companion Cube is even more adorable in tiny DS form.
Thanks, internet! Sometimes you can be pretty swell.
Battlefield Play4Free is the free-to-play version of Battlefield 3. It’s the Cousin Oliver of EA’s tentpole shooter franchise. It’s smaller than Battlefield 3, the shooting isn’t as satisfying, and the grind is annoying. But, hey! It’s free. I’m sure that it must attract some people just based on the initial price barrier being $0, just as there are fans of Robbie Rist’s character in The Brady Bunch. There’s always someone willing to play a free game.
Peter Moore told Engadget that we can expect free-to-play versions of every major game EA publishes. He emphasized the success of existing F2P tie-ins to Battlefield and FIFA and said that EA will not release any games without an online component.
“We don’t ship a game at EA that is offline. It just doesn’t happen. And gamers either want to be connected so their stats and achievements reflect who they are, or you want the full multiplayer experience on top of that. We don’t deliver offline experiences anymore.”
“The ability for you to be able to interact with those franchises on a free-to-play basis is going to be part-and-parcel with every major franchise we do now.”
Moore has been a major champion of shifting EA’s focus exclusively from retail disks to games as a service.
Titanfall is one of the big games being shown in conjunction with the Xbox One. Have you seen it? It’s a multiplayer blend of parkour, jetpacks, giant mechs, and adrenaline. The pilots versus mechs combat is something that shouldn’t work as well as it does. Respawn Entertainment is making a splash with their debut game, and they’re doing it with Valve’s Source engine. Wait, Source? This is the same engine used for Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. I’ve played Source games. They look good, but not this good.
Titanfall producer Drew McCoy spoke to Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry to explain how their background on Call of Duty gave them a leg up during the development process. He also gets into some technical reasons for using Source, what advantages Microsoft’s cloud gives them, and why framerate is king.
“The thing about the Source Engine when we got it is that we actually branched from Portal 2. It was DX9, very single-threaded and they used the way that engine worked to its best possible potential for Portal. It can’t render that much on-screen. The main thread just can’t push out enough jobs, so we’ve done a huge amount of work. We didn’t choose this engine because it was going to be 60, we chose this engine knowing that we’d be spending the next two years making it fast.”
Titanfall is aiming for a Spring 2014 launch on PC and Xbox One.
Deep Silver wants to publish more games in the Metro franchise, but tweak the next installment to appeal to a broader audience. Dr. Klemens Kundratitz, CEO of Deep Sliver, told Joystiq that he was pleased with the sales of Metro: Last Light and looked forward to more games in the series. While he was careful to emphasize that he wasn’t specifically announcing a sequel to the claustrophobic shooter, he did say that Deep Silver would continue to collaborate with Metro 2033 author Dmitry Glukhovsky and developer 4A Games on future endeavors.
“I’m very glad we acquired that brand. While it launched in a very dry space in the gaming calendar this year, it still got a lot of attention. Our ambition is to absolutely continue with that brand and we will also, in the next phase, look to making it more accessible for a broader gamer audience.”
Deep Silver acquired the Metro license from THQ’s bankruptcy asset auction for $5.9 million in January.
Square Enix wants to create “persistent online experiences” from its franchises. Darrell Gallagher, the newly appointed head of product development and studios, posted a statement on Gamasutra that seems to reveal the direction Square Enix may be headed with their games.
We see the opportunity for some of our games continuing beyond a traditional beginning, middle, and end. We can have them become extendable and more persistent – with an opportunity to build and grow across games. To design in a way to keep our games alive for years instead of weeks. I’m not talking about an MMORPG – although the concept is similar – I’m talking about creating persistent online experiences built on the foundations of the games we are well known for.
Gallagher calls out the fan-made Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod as one of the indicators of how much gamers want continued experiences in the worlds Square Enix has created. He says that the industry has “walked away” from some games too early and that development on tablets as well as traditional gaming devices could be a great opportunity for the company.
The Gran Turismo movie will be based on a true story. Sony’s plans to turn their flagship PlayStation racing franchise into a film was revealed at E3, but few details of the plot were available. At Gamescom, Polyphony Digital’s Kazunori Yamauchi revealed that the movie will focus on the real-life story of Lucas Ordonez and how he went from playing Gran Turismo 5 to becoming a professional race car driver.
Yamauchi says he envisions a film that starts out with a mother that is worried about a son that always plays videogames. He says it should end with this same boy turning into a full-fledged racing champ.
It’s fitting that the movie based on Gran Turismo will be based on actual events. The games are known for their attention to detail and verisimilitude. Based on my experience with GT5, the movie will have long scenes of Ordonez trying to beat all the time trials. Unlike the upcoming Need for Speed movie, the Gran Tursimso movie will likely have less car-flipping and shooutouts.
Don’t Starve has been updated with Steam Workshop integration. Klei Entertainment updated their survival crafting beard-growing game with mod support through the Steam Workshop, so you can easily find horrible new ways to run out of food and die while beset by spiders.
We’ve been nothing but amazed by the player creations that have popped up since we introduced modding to Don’t Starve. Now it’s easier than ever to create and install mods for Don’t Starve to change your game and share with the community.
What does that mean? Well, a lot of things. Add in custom characters, play with the world generation, create new creatures and items, or take your adventure in a whole new direction! Using our handy-dandy Mod Upload Machine you can put your mods directly onto Steam Workshop for everyone to download and enjoy.
The developers have also added new monsters to attack you, a new area to get lost in, and new craftable items to give you a false sense of hope. Most importantly, they’ve added a Morgue Screen that will keep track of all the wonderful ways you’ve died.
