Tom wrote about the achievement system in Europa Universalis IV because the developers decided that you get nothing unless you play with Iron Man Mode enabled. No cheesing saves. Make your moves and deal with it. Play a marathon 20-hour game as Luxembourg against the world, but didn’t have Iron Man Mode on? Congratulations, but you’ll get no achievements to show off on your Steam profile. Hardcore!
To the Moon, an indie RPG by Freebird Games, is even more discriminating about handing out achievements. It’s about two doctors that can manipulate dying people’s memories to fulfill their lifelong dreams. It’s tearjerker subject matter and the game does everything it can to get you to turn on the waterworks. Imagine lots of observations about regret and love. Playing it is either an exhausting emotional journey or an annoying exercise depending on how you deal with a game asking you to get in touch with your feelings. No matter which is true, players will have to truly earn the only achievement they can get which the developer recently added to the game.
Killzone: Shadow Fall is one of the many games Sony showed off in their Gamescom opening presentation. The multiplayer gameplay looks pretty in that next-gen shooter way. Lots of slick effects, guns go boom, and space marines die in gritty ways. They made a big deal out of the way you can set up matches by choosing between all sort of options. Want a sniper duel with slow-moving armored guys? Have at it! Do you prefer a lot of power-ups and snazzy abilities? Make it so! It all looks great which I suppose it had better since Killzone is Sony’s big first-party console shooter property.
Unfortunately, the marketers neglected the most important bits of news, tucking it away on the Killzone website.
“The game has three classes with unique abilities and 22 different weapons – all unlocked from the get-go, so you can determine for yourself how and in which order you want to specialize.
We’ve also redesigned our progression system to work with challenges rather than XP. There are over 1500 increasingly difficult challenges to complete in Killzone: Shadow Fall multiplayer, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to prove your skills and collect rewards. To increase longevity even further, we plan to continue support for the title well after launch – and yes, DLC multiplayer maps will be released free of charge to ensure everyone can play.”
Hold on! Free maps for everyone? All abilities and weapons unlocked from day one? Has Guerrilla Games not been paying attention to the trends of console shooters? You have to make players grind for their unlocks. You have to charge $15 for every map pack and segregate the players. Who do these guys think they are anyway? Only Valve gets to do this – and not even with their console releases.
Firaxis and 2K announced that the new expansion XCOM: Enemy Within, will come with more singleplayer maps for the XCOM: Enemy Unknown game. How many maps? “Nearly 50% more” is the coy way they’ve worded it.
The expansion will also add new soldier abilities, a new resource to reserach and gather, more multiplayer maps, and mechs (or “MECs”) to stomp around in. XCOM: Enemy Within will launch on November 12th. $29.99 for PC players, but consoles will have to get it as XCOM: Enemy Within – Commander Edition for $39.99 which will include the full base game as well as the previous DLC.
Blizzard has announced Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, an expansion for their controversial action-RPG. There’s nothing at the official site yet, but the few bits we know from Gamescom sound promising. The expansion will add one more act, a revised and expanded loot system, a new character class – The Crusader, a melee weapon and shield specialist – and more customization options with a “transmogrification” process that will allow players to copy the appearance of one item and place it on another without changing the stats.
The most interesting news would be that Reaper of Souls will add more activity to the endgame.
Diablo III’s Paragon progression system is also being majorly upgraded for the expansion, adding even more end-game character advancement and replayability. Two new game modes – Loot Runs and Nephalem Trials – are being added as well, providing fun and rewarding challenges for players to tackle when they’re not busy saving the world.
Loot Runs will be small, entirely randomized dungeons, that can be played for quick fixes of killing and looting. Torchlight II’s endgame offers a similar feature with its Mapworks feature and it’s something that could get me back into Diablo III. Hopefully, Blizzard copies the way Torchlight II offers modifiers to the Mapworks runs such as making all enemies have lightning auras or all players get 50% of their health. That’s the kind of variety I crave.
Among the announcements rolling out of Gamescom is Electronic Arts’ promise that the upcoming Command and Conquer, a free-to-play real time strategy game that doesn’t need a number or subtitle after its name, is totally going to tell a story. Eventually. Like, next year. Several months after it’s out.
Electronic Arts announced that episodic, story-driven Campaign Missions are in development for Command & Conquer and will be available early next year. The next installment of the award-winning real-time strategy franchise from Victory Games will launch in 2013 as a free live service, with an emphasis on continually adding new content to the game, such as Campaign Missions, based on fan feedback.
In the quote written for him in the press release, veteran developer and EA general manager Jon Van Caneghem says the number one feature requested by the fans is new story content. Really, fans? You guys couldn’t come up with anything else? Really? Thanks.
Real time strategy games are horrible at telling stories, unless the story is about how you told these dudes to go over there to fight those dudes. Although some real time strategy games also tell the story about how your dudes built up defense against those dudes who came over here to fight your dudes. Command & Conquer was a pioneer in telling the story about how one super-powerful dude (or chick named Tanya) moved through a maze populated with weaker dudes that obligingly hung fire until they were killed. I love the genre, and I’m excited to see where EA is taking the Command and Conquer franchise. But the potential for meaningful narrative in RTS gameplay is effectively zero, which is why the stories are always shoehorned into cutscenes between the actual game parts, or yammering heads in a tiny box shoved to one corner of the screen. These are toyboxes, not story delivery devices.
Let’s get the big Sony Playstation news out of the way. Minecraft will be a launch title for the PS4! Whew. That’s done, so that leaves us with the ho-hum stuff.
Sony presented a lot of games at Gamescom. Killzone Shadow Fall, Watch Dogs, Rime, a reimagined Shadow of the Beast, Hotline Miami 2, Rogue Legacy, Gran Turismo 6, and a host of other promising looking titles either had trailers or quick snippets of gameplay. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was used to show off the PS4 to Vita feature.
Speaking of the Playstation handheld, Sony announced a price drop. The new price of the Vita in the US will be $199. (That’s 199 Euros as well thanks to wacky pricing math.) Sony Europe’s CEO, Jim Ryan, said there would be a price drop for the Vita memory cards as well.
Free Twitch streaming support for the PS4 sharing feature was announced. Only Ustream support had been announced at E3 for the console, so that’s welcome news for gamers with a streaming preference.
SCEA president Andrew House revealed that Sony will offer a discount plan for gamers that purchase titles on PS3 and then later wish to upgrade to PS4 versions of the same games. While he didn’t have any specifics, he did say that Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Warner Bros are participating.
Finally, despite rumors of an earlier than expected October release date, Sony fizzled by confirming a November launch for the PS4. The US launch will be November 15th, while the date for Europe will be November 29th.
Microsoft’s Major Nelson confirmed that FIFA 14 would be free to all pre-orders of the Xbox One in Europe. As an additional incentive, FIFA 14’s Ultimate Team Legends feature will only be available on the Microsoft console. For those interested, EA will reveal the full roster of legends later.
In other Gamescom news, Microsoft made a number of announcements to entice gamers (and developers) to their console. They published the full list of launch titles that will be available for the Xbox One, which has 23 entries. Fable Legends, a four-person co-op game with heavy use of SmartGlass was revealed. Microsoft and Ubisoft announced that Tom Clancy’s The Division would have exclusive content, although there wasn’t much specific to say about it. For all the Call of Duty fans, Infinity Ward said that Call of Duty: Ghosts on Xbox One would use the Xbox Live Cloud service to host dedicated multiplayer servers.
Finally, Microsoft issued some details of their indie games program, called ID@Xbox. It will offer free Xbox One development kits to developers and an easier path to publication. Unlike the current Indie Games Marketplace on the Xbox 360, the ID@XBox program will offer many of the bells and whistles that big-money blockbuster titles get.
Games that come through this program will be able to access the exact same features as any other large game company on Xbox One: Achievements, Gamerscore, Kinect, Xbox SmartGlass, Xbox cloud services and more. What’s also exciting is that these games will be available in the exact same marketplace (Xbox One Store) as every other game on Xbox One, making discovery for players easier by using all the curation and discovery tools that Xbox One will offer, including Spotlight, Trending, Recommendations and great social discovery with features like Game DVR and Upload.
Unfortunately, a launch date for the Xbox One was not announced despite heavy speculation that Microsoft should have a firm date set by now.
A few days ago, we reported that the Xbox.com PC Marketplace would be shut down, so new PC game purchases would not be possible through that service. At the time, Microsoft said that everything previously purchased could “continue to be enjoyed” through the normal Games for Windows Live client. Bzzzzt!
According to the newly posted support page, Age of Empires Online will not be playable after the service shuts down. From the text, it seems as if the whole of the GFWL service will also be going the way of the dodo.
Games for Windows Live will be discontinued on July 1, 2014. Although it is available through Steam, Age of Empires Online requires features of the Games for Windows Live service. You can continue to enjoy all the features of Age of Empires Online as the service will remain 100% operational until July 1, 2014 when the server will shut down. Please visit the Age of Empires Online forums for additional details.
That first bit seems to directly contradict the earlier statement about the PC Marketplace closure which raises a few questions. What’s going to happen to the PC versions of Dark Souls, Super Street Fighter Arcade Edition, or Viva Pinata? I can probably live without ever completing the Achievements for Halo 2 on PC, but what about Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War?
Update: The text regarding the GFWL service being shut down has been removed from the Age of Empires Online page. Perhaps we weren’t supposed to know yet? We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment.
Update 2: Here is the official response from Microsoft:
“Yesterday, an Age of Empires support web page communicated that the free to play Age of Empires Online will be discontinued on July 1, 2014. We believe in Windows/PC gaming and have long-term plans to grow our support. We expect there to be transitions as we build out new investments, but we remain committed to bringing first party gaming services and games to Windows for years to come. We will share more details in the future.”
Answering precisely nothing other than confirming the shutdown date.
GOG.com has announced its new Indie Games Portal. The submission portal allows indie game developers to apply for self-publishing through GOG.com with an “industry standard” 70/30 split. Unlike most other digital self-publishing arrangements, GOG.com will offer an advance on royalties. The developer will get a 60/40 arrangement until the advance is paid back. The split will then revert to the standard deal.
In addition to offering advances, GOG.com also promises to help market indie games submitted and approved through their program.
Every release becomes our website’s main feature and gets a campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social channels.
While the 70% split may be the “standard” for the industry, many indie developers have been attracted to the Humble Bundle site because it can offer up to 95% of the of revenue split. For cash-strapped independent studios, the possibility of an advance may sway them towards the GOG.com offer over the competitors.
Happion Laboratories’ stunt-swinging Kickstarted game, Energy Hook, is now available for preorder directly from the developer’s web site. A $35 preorder will get you access to the alpha now, along with all future updates until, and after, the game’s release. The alpha even has Oculus Rift support! Jamie Fristrom, the creator of Energy Hook, was one of the driving forces behind Spider-Man 2’s wonderful web-swinging city travel, so he knows a thing or two about going Tarzan between skyscrapers.
Fristrom joined us on a Quarter to Three Games Podcast back in June. Tom and Jamie waxed nostalgiac about traversal in games.
Speaking at GDC Europe 2013 “F2P The Wrong Way,” Microsoft Studios executive producer Kevin Parry, said that a lack of content was Age of Empires Online’s biggest issue. Perry said the team’s output could not keep up with the revenue model the game needed to thrive. According to Polygon‘s summary of Perry’s presentation, the game had a broken free-to-play model at launch that capped spending at $75 which prevented the “whales,” players that spend the highest amounts of money, from supporting the game with their purchases. Once the cap was removed with the addition of consumables and cosmetics in June 2012, purchasing jumped, but the team was unable to keep up with the demand for deeper content while remaining profitable.
Part of the reason people expected so much more was the Age of Empires name. The brand is associated with expansive real-time strategy experiences, which the production team could not keep churning out at the rate needed to retain players. Perry also said the game’s poor initial reputation hindered new player acquisition.
“You don’t get a soft launch for a branded title,” Perry said. “Players come there for your brand. You only get word-of-mouth once. Whenever we got new players, they always came in with the overhead, ‘but I heard this game sucks.’
“That hill was extremely difficult to climb,” he added.
Although Age of Empires Online is still playable, content development ended in January of this year. Tom didn’t like the launch version of the game at all, but he did like it a little more after the summer update.
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs will launch on September 10th for PCs everywhere according to the developer TheChineseRoom. The first-person panic simulator is guaranteed to result in many videos of people squealing, crying, cursing, and closing their eyes in fear while trying to navigate the horror-filled butcher’s playground, if it holds up to the previous entry’s level of tension. There are lots of videos showing people in various states of terror while playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Just check out this poor guy. He sounds like how I felt during my first playthrough.
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is already up for pre-purchase on GOG.com, Desura, and Steam for $15.99.
That’s the trailer for Blizzard’s newest content and balance patch for World of Warcraft. It’s called Siege of Ogrimmar and it’s available for testing before the general rollout. The longtime leader of the orcs, Garrosh Hellscream, has gone insane and wants to create a new Horde from demonic agents. It’s a convenient excuse to set up all sorts of new shifted alliances and encounters, but the really interesting bit is the new area dubbed the Timeless Isle.
The Timeless Isle is filled with rare spawns, rare Elites, chests containing epic loot, and events that are all highly rewarding. When you find yourself in close proximity to any of these, you’ll see them pop up on your minimap, denoting their location and event type. Some won’t be simple to get to or easy to find, as many parts of the island are entangled with puzzles lost to time. Some involve more than a simple alert…but we’re not going to spoil the surprises, and we’re really looking forward to see how quickly players can unlock the island’s mysteries and hidden treasures.
Dynamic events that pop up as you get near? That sounds familiar.
News comes via Microsoft’s official Games for Windows LIVE Facebook page that the PC Marketplace will be shutting down on August 22nd.
As part of the upcoming Xbox 360 system update, Microsoft Points will be retired, and the Xbox.com PC marketplace will be closed as of August 22, 2013. We encourage you to spend your Microsoft Points balance prior to this change. Although you will not be able to purchase new games, you can continue to enjoy previously purchased content by downloading them through the Games for Windows LIVE client software as usual.
The post contains a link to a FAQ that will explain some details of the shutdown, but the link isn’t working yet.
Microsoft launched Games For Windows LIVE in 2007, but it was highly unpopular with PC gamers on release because it required an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play in multiplayer games. This requirement was quickly removed, but the service never really recovered, and it was always lacking in features and sales that competitors like Steam offered with less technical issues.
Jason Holtman, former head of Valve’s Steam service, has taken a position at Microsoft. According to GamesIndustry International, the position is one that could have a positive impact on Microsoft’s PC gaming efforts.
“Yes, I have joined Microsoft where I will be focusing on making Windows a great platform for gaming and interactive entertainment. I think there is a lot of opportunity for Microsoft to deliver the games and entertainment customers want and to work with developers to make that happen, so I’m excited to be here.”
Holtman was with Valve for eight years, during which time he was credited with growing Steam into the juggernaut it is today. He was the driving force behind the service courting first big publishers, then indies, and he provided leadership throughout his tenure. Holtman reportedly left Valve in February of his own volition during the company’s mysterious culling of employees.
