Wargame: Red Dragon, a supersexy for-serious modern military RTS that adds naval stuff to a game that really doesn’t need naval stuff, is still getting content from developer Eugen two years after its release. They’ve been adding armies, units, and maps all along. But today they announced upcoming Nation Packs for countries that still aren’t in the game. For instance, the Netherlands. The first Nation Pack will add their hardware, such as the Apache helicopter in the picture. Okay, so the Apache isn’t technically a Dutch helicopter. But since they bought some from us, a Dutch faction wouldn’t be complete without one. Eugene promises the Dutch have their own unique hardware as well, which will be included.
What sets the Nation Packs apart from the other add content for Red Dragon is that you have to buy them. As you know, going Dutch isn’t free.
Warcraft, the live-action cartoon based on Blizzard’s long-running MMO, begins on June 10th. If you’re one of the dozen or so people on Earth that have never tried World of Warcraft, then you can snag a free copy of the game by consenting to watch approximately two hours of computer graphics over-emote and punch each other. Theaters will give away promotional keys for the game that can be redeemed here starting on the 26th of May when you buy a ticket to see the movie. Duncan Jones, the director, gave us Moon and Source Code so how bad can Warcraft be? It certainly can’t be worse than an Assassin’s Creed movie that mostly takes place in the present-day Abstergo setting.
NASCAR has come to Forza. Turn 10 Studios and Microsoft have announced the NASCAR Expansion for Forza Motorsport 6. The DLC adds Homestead-Miami Speedway, twenty-four of the 2016 season cars, and an all-new NASCAR World Tour career. Get your NASCAR on with Joe Gibbs Racing, Chip Ganassi Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, Hendrick Motorsports, and Team Penske. It’s available now on Xbox One for $20.
Besides the NASCAR Expansion, Forza Motorsport 6 is getting an update that adds “significant” features to the game. Proximity arrows for your HUD, rolling start options, and multiplayer being enabled for the Le Mans race route are some of the big changes that are free to all owners of the game.
Listen up gamers! Microsoft is going to release close to a million defunct gamertags and make them available for Xbox Live members’ use. That means you’ll be able to get away from the horrid nickname you chose in a fit of annoyance while trying to blast through the account creation process back when you got your first Xbox. I’m looking at you JoosyFroot911. You too, xXxPWN_DOGxXx. You’re not kids now. It’s time to grow up and grab one of these gamertags recycled from the original Xbox era. Hang it up, KirbyLuvsMario. No one’s buying what you’re selling. Although Microsoft won’t release a list ahead of the May 18th release date, the names come from categories like “Types of Food” and “Some of the greatest inventions of all time.” Time to see if LordSpeculum or Corndog_Millionaire are up for grabs.
Star Trek Online is coming to consoles. The six year old PC free-to-play MMO is being ported to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this year. Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios are reworking the user interface and interactions to work better with controllers, adjusting player progression and episodic story flow, and implementing a new lighting engine for the console platforms. The game will remain free-to-play.
Over our storied history we’ve seen a new faction, two level cap increases, more episodes than any 5 seasons of any Star Trek series, the creation of over 100,000 player generated missions, and celebrity voice work from every era of Star Trek.
That’s a lot of red shirts getting killed. The console version of Star Trek Online will launch simultaneously on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in the fall.
Firaxis and 2K Games have announced Civilization VI. It’s coming out for PCs on October 21st. One of the issues with Civilization V that the game never overcame was that the AI didn’t know how to play the game. Throughout all the patching and expansions, the computer players never got any better at actually using the units it made against you. It routinely got hung up on shuffling units into ineffective positions because it just couldn’t figure out the one unit per hex tactical gameplay. It appears that Civilization VI may have a partial solution.
Expanding on the “one unit per tile” design, support units can now be embedded with other units, like anti-tank support with infantry, or a warrior with settlers. Similar units can also be combined to form powerful “Corps” units.
As long as the AI knows how to combine units effectively, this should cut the impact of choke points and ranges on individual units. It’s not the full unit stacking from previous Civilization games, but it’s a half-step back. Of course, the human player will also be able to use this feature to great effect. If there’s one thing people seem really good at is figuring out ways to break rules.
If your game doesn’t do well, that’s obviously because you made it wrong. So just make it correctly. Then people will like it and therefore buy it. That seems to be the thinking behind drastic gameplay overhauls in titles like Skyshine’s Bedlam, an egregious multi-staged effort at a do-over that fastidiously wrings out the Bedlam in favor of more XCOM. If people on forums complain loudly enough, they’re obviously better at making games than people who actually make games. Hence, Skyshine’s Bedlam Redux. And now Act of Aggression Reboot. Act of Aggression, a Command & Conquer General clone that never quite caught on, has had the Eugen wrung so it can be fortified with 100% more Command & Conquer: Generals. Here are the bullet points.
* Streamlined Economy: Manage only one resource as oil is automatically converted to cash, allowing you to focus on the action. Unit expenditure is up-front, meaning no more micromanaging production lines.
* New Base Building System: Like a traditional RTS, base building units are selectable. Build directly from the builder (or destroy your opponent’s builder!)
* New Airstrikes: You no longer control the planes mid-flight. They go directly to their target and strike, much faster than previously.
* Huge balancing update and unit model improvements as well as UI tweaks and changes: for example, all units now accelerate and decelerate faster, guaranteeing more streamlined and action-packed RTS gameplay.
The problem with Act of Aggression wasn’t any of the stuff changed in this update. The problem was a lack of personality. It had all the character of unpainted furniture. This is the kiss of death for any RTS, a genre where one of the prime design directives is to make players care about the little dudes on the map. Although Eugen cut their teeth making a better Command & Conquer: Generals, their latest work has been supersexy realworld military hardware porn. Big surprise that fan base isn’t interested in a Command & Conquers: General clone, rebooted or otherwise.
Age of Aggression: The Reboot Edition (their name) is available now as a free update for Age of Aggression.
The Walt Disney Company is ending Disney Infinity. During an investor relations update for the second quarter of 2016, Disney slipped this terse note into the statement ending the toy-to-video game franchise.
Items affecting comparability during the quarter ended April 2, 2016 included a $147 million charge in connection with the discontinuation of our self-published console games business, principally Infinity
Utah-based Avalanche Software (not the Avalanche Studios that created Just Cause) will also be shut down as a result of Disney’s decision to leave behind self-published games. Infinity manager John Blackburn thanked the fans for their support and assured them that three new characters from Alice Through the Looking Glass and a Finding Dory Play Set will still be released as planned.
Disney Infinity 3.0 was released on August 30th, 2015. You can check out Tom’s review of the game here.
The Blood and Wine expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is coming at the end of this month. You wanted to see some movies, enjoy some camping or sports, read a good book, and maybe even play some new games, but CD Projekt Red has other plans for your time. You’re going to be investigating murders and learning the ins and outs of the vintner trade. The Blood and Wine expansion is releasing on May 31st and it’s huge. It’s over 30 hours of monster-hunting set in the chivalric idyll of Toussaint which is less muddy and grim than previous Witcher settings, but no less deadly.
Along with a bunch of new quests and enemies, Blood and Wine features new loot, a new mutation system that adds high-level abilities to character customization, a new Grandmaster class of armor, dyes to color armor, and two hours of new music. One of the big additions is a home and vineyard that players can buy and upgrade. Geralt seems to have the temperament of a good sommelier.
Players that don’t purchase the expansion will still benefit from an extensive update to the game that will be free for everyone. The developers have revamped the inventory screen, improved performance, added options to disable the fish-eye effect from Witcher vision and automatic sword drawing when enemies are near, and increased the maximum character level to 100 in new game plus.
Blood and Wine is available as part of The Witcher 3 season pass, or separately for $19.99.
It’s been three months since the release of Political Machine 2016, Stardock’s serious-gameplay-but-not-serious-presentation Presidential election strategy game, which builds on the rock-solid territory control gameplay concepts they introduced in their Corporate Machine (nee Entrepreneur) series. In those three months, Political Machine 2016 has been incomplete to the point of being literally* unplayable. Today, that has been fixed. Because today Stardock released an update that adds playable Sarah Palin.
Operation Dust Line, the newest DLC and update for Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege, releases today for owners of the season pass. Two new combatants join the shooty fun. Blackbeard, who is not a pirate, has a transparent shield attached to his rifle. Valkyrie, a female ex-Olympian SEAL, comes with quick-deployment sticky cameras.
On the free update side of the release, everyone gets a new map set in militarized Border checkpoint which is likely not on the border between Canada and the United States. A new victory screen allows the winning side to gloat a bit more, which is good because everyone has new cosmetic headgear to show off. Players can now change loadouts between match rounds to make their kit as fashion-forward as possible. Finally, gun charms come to Rainbow Six Siege because everyone knows a kewpie-doll version of a SWAT trooper hanging off your rifle makes you shoot more accurately.
If you’re missing Iron Man or Captain America from your stable of Marvel Heroes characters, you can get one — not both! — of them for free by entering TEAMCAP or TEAMIRONMAN on the redeem code page. While the offer is entirely neutral in this weekend’s civil war, the game itself is not. Marvel Heroes is clearly biased towards Iron Man. I have evidence after the jump.
Electronic Arts and DICE have lifted the lid on Battlefield 1. That’s the numeral “1” and not the word – as in The Great War, World War I. Drat. That’s the Roman numeral. Just take a look at the announcement trailer. Battlefield 1 eschews the modern whiz-bang gadgetry of recent big-budget shooters for wooden clubs, canvas masks, and bolt-action rifles. That’s how you separate yourself from Call of Duty’s increasingly bizarre setting. The pre-order page for Battlefield 1 has a list of tantalizing details. Hellfighter, Red Baron, and Lawrence of Arabia DLC? Yes, please, especially if we’re talking about The Harlem Hellfighters.
Experience the origins of modern warfare where the old world was destroyed, giving way to the new one. Use the innovative, modern weaponry and vehicles of World War I as you battle across the land, air and sea.
Battlefield 1 will be available October 21st, on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
There are more aliens coming to XCOM 2. Firaxis has announced that Alien Hunters is the next DLC for their turn-based strategy game. Alien Hunters will feature a new, more powerful variety of alien enemy for XCOM soldiers to fight. The Ruler class (including the Viper King pictured above) will show up in your game after you’ve completed a new story mission. Beyond offering the satisfaction of victory, killing Rulers will give players access to new equipment like the Icarus Suit which allows the wearer to fly around the tactical map, or the Bolt Caster one-shot weapon.
Alien Hunters will launch on May 12th. It will be available as part of the Season Pass, or can be purchased separately for $9.99.
Cel-shaded Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is a reality. So is monochrome, ASCII art, rainbow hues, and a host of other possibilities thanks to the graphics filters the PlayStation 4 game offers players.
Uncharted 4 launches on May 10th, unless you happen to know a couple of shady characters from the United Kingdom that made off with a few thousand copies of the game. A Thief’s End indeed.
