Relic Entertainment and Sega have announced Dawn of War 3. Relic says Dawn of War 3 is a combination of the original game’s scale and the sequel’s customizable heroes. According to the developer, the studio is bringing back mechanics that may make real-time strategy vets happy like base-building while adding new features like “super-walkers” that will tower over the battlefield. With the good there is the bad, and in this case the bad is grim. At launch the game will only have Space Marines, Orks, and Eldar races in the campaign. It’s unclear if there will be more races available in multiplayer, but you can bet there will be some offered as DLC eventually.
Relic talked about Dawn of War 3 in 2011, but that was when they were part of THQ. New ownership and five years has likely changed their original plans for the game.
Battlefleet: Gothic Armada shipped with a lot of stuff in it. Four factions, character progression for online and offline games, a dynamic campaign. It also shipped with a lot of stuff not in it. Developer Tindalos is promising two new factions, ship customization, and asymmetry among the faction’s skills. Okay, so those things needed some more development time, but they wanted to get the game out the door, so those things could wait.
But I’m flabbergasted at what else they thought could wait. From the latest roadmap of stuff coming up “in the next few weeks”:
Online custom games will allow you to invite your friends to matches, competing with or against them in 1vs1 and 2vs2 battles.
And among the stuff coming up “in the next couple of months”:
You’ll be able to invite a friend to play 2 vs 2 against the AI – the progression system will be available in this mode for both you and your friend.
I had no idea those things weren’t in there until I tried to set up a game against a friend. It’s not possible. Okay, so let’s play against the AI. It’s also not possible. The only way to play with my friend is in a 2v2 game against random players. In a game with wide-open custom battle options against the AI, complete with long-term character progression, Battlefleet: Gothic Armada says you can only progress an online character by playing “fair and square” against random players. Tindalos seems to be of the mindset that if I level up by playing with a friend or — gasp! — by playing a comp stomp, I shouldn’t be allowed to use that progression online against other players.
It’s an inane idea that needs to go away. What do they care how I level up? Why this absurd need to expect everyone to grind away at the same millstone to pay their game tax? And while I’m glad Tindalos is changing their mind, it’s a shame that it’s taking them months to do something about it.
The Norse are coming Blood Bowl 2 tomorrow. As part of the next update for the Warhammer Fantasy football game, Focus Home Interactive and Cyanide Studio is adding the Norse team for free on PC and console. As long as you own the game before the release of the DLC, you’ll get it for free. Pants are apparently optional for the Norse, which fits their rough and tumble reputation.
Cyanide plans to add three more free team races to the game. In December, the developer announced that they were working on putting the Undead, Nurgle and Necromantic teams into the game as well as the Norse. At the time of the announcement, Cyanide wasn’t sure how they would add the free teams to the console version of the game, but they’ve apparently worked that out.
Another year, another Call of Duty. This time in space. Which looks an awful like like Halo, which has come to look an awful lot like Call of Duty, which Gears of War now more closely resembles, and so on. They’re all starting to run together for me. Over the weekend, me and a friend couldn’t recall, for the life of us, which Call of Duty had the dog. Ghost? Black Ops II? The one with the exoskeletons? If there’s one thing Activision knows, it’s how to give the people what they want. Which is apparently more of what they’ve already had.
Also, what an awful cover of Space Oddity. Couldn’t they at least have waited until Bowie was dead a little longer?
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will be out on November 4th.
Grim Dawn now has official mod tools. Beat that Diablo III! The latest update for Crate Entertainment’s slick action-roleplaying game comes with a few important fixes and adds the tools the developer used to create content for the game. Want more loot? Go for it! Want new levels? Make them! Want tweaked mechanics? Get tweaking! Despite the fixed nature of the world map, Grim Dawn wasn’t lacking content, but should you feel you have something to add, you now have what you need to do exactly that.
“The potential here is tremendous and we here at Crate are excited to see what the community comes up with.”
Owners of Grim Dawn can find the development tools in their installation folder after updating the game. Crate even posted a helpful guide for adventurous gamers that want to get started on their own creations.
You’re not supposed to know that Nintendo’s next home console is the NX. You’re definitely not supposed to know that it will launch worldwide in March 2017. Nintendo’s not exactly keeping the NX a secret, but unless you’re a fan of digging through a company’s quarterly financial results, you wouldn’t know that the launch date was ignominiously plopped onto page 3 of this public filing.
For our dedicated video game platform business, Nintendo is currently developing a gaming platform codenamed “NX” with a brand-new concept. NX will be launched in March 2017 globally.
And that’s all there is to it. We have a name and a month. When asked about it directly, Nintendo declined to give more detail saying only that everything was still provisional. When Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima spoke to Time last year, he assured them that the company was “not building the next version of Wii or Wii U” but that leaves a lot to the imagination. Last month, some enterprising hoaxers made some convincing fakes of the supposed NX development controller that got some notice among fans, but no one outside of Nintendo really knows what the system will be. Oddly, it doesn’t seem like Nintendo cares whether or not you care. They’re not even planning on talking about the NX much at this year’s upcoming E3. They are instead focusing on the next The Legend of Zelda which will be playable at the convention.
You might not know Christopher Tin’s name. But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts you know Baba Yetu, an original piece of music he wrote for Civilization IV. The Lord’s Prayer translated into Swahili and set to a joyous African tribal beat says everything you need to know about civilization. The game and the actual thing.
But Tin was just getting warmed up. Take a moment to listen to Red Planet Nocturne, which he wrote for Offworld Trading Company. It begins with a raindrop patter that reminds me of the soundtrack by David Wingo for a movie called Take Shelter. But it then goes to its own places. What an evocative and poignant piece of music. Although I don’t quite feel how it connects to the game yet — I’ve been playing a music-less Offworld Trading Company for so long now — it assures I won’t be moving down the slider for music on the audio tab. On the contrary, I’m running the game in the background right now to hear the rest of Tin’s music. Would it be too hasty to put it alongside other iconic and haunting sci-fi soundtracks? Clint Mansell for Moon, John Murphy for Sunshine, Vangelis for Blade Runner, Hans Zimmer for Interstellar, Steven Price for Gravity, and Christopher Tin for Offworld Trading Company. Yeah, that list looks about right.
You can read Tin’s comments about the soundtrack here. Offworld Trading Company will be released on Thursday.
You don’t have to take my word for it that Garden Warfare 2 is the best thing to happen to shooters since Epic let us play Unreal with bots instead of other people. Now you can find out for yourself for the price of whatever bandwidth is takes to download a 20GB install. From EA’s announcement:
To get started for free now, download the game from Xbox Marketplace, PlayStation Store, or Origin.com. Players who wish to continue the epic battle after their trial can purchase the full game and keep all of their progress, unlocks, and achievements.
It’s a pretty insidious trick. They’re confident — and I’m inclined to agree — that once you invest ten hours in this thing and see what it has to offer, you’ll be willing to pay the $60 (!) for hours eleven plus.
This is something Electronic Arts obviously won’t do when a game is brand new. I suspect they’re watching the data closely for a carefully calculated point where the sales taper off. That’s when they swoop in with the ol’ “first taste is free” trick. Could this be a reaction to Steam’s refund policy, which many folks interpret as a tacit try-before-you-buy offer? Whatever the case, it’s encouraging to see consumer-friendly trends like this taking hold.
That’s the new “America Has Fallen” trailer for Homefront: the Revolution. It’s not just an opportunity to remind people that this game is coming out in the middle of a crowded May release schedule. It’s clarification that Dambuster Studios’ open-world game isn’t just a sequel. It’s a reframing of the property. Like finding out that Peter Parker’s uncle was actually killed by Sandman, we’re getting new insight into the origin story. It turns out that North Korea was able to conquer the United States thanks to some good old capitalist warmongering.
Homefront: The Revolution is a complete reboot of the franchise, and features a brand new backstory based on an alternate history in which Korea won the technological arms race thanks to the rise of the sinister APEX corporation.
Homefront: The Revolution will launch on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on May 17th.
If you live in the North American part of the world, then lucky you! Steam just got a whole bunch of new movies for your area. Valve’s gaming service has had movies since March 2015, but unless you wanted to watch a lot of ultra indie films like Coffee, Kill Boss or Steve Chong Finds Out That Suicide is a Bad Idea, then there wasn’t much to recommend. (The Mad Max movies were added a little later, but that was a promotional deal that coincided with the release of the game from Avalanche.) Steam just took a big step into the space carved out by other media streaming services by signing a deal with Lionsgate. Check it out! These are legitimate movies that you’ve probably heard of and may have paid to see in a theater. Leprechaun 4: Lost in Space. Return of the Living Dead 3. Cyborg 2. Even Gamer, starring Gerard Butler, is available. Synergy! Variety notes that Lionsgate will push more titles to Steam as the deal expands to other territories.
“With over 125 million users, Steam represents a unique, exciting and disruptive opportunity to expand our global distribution business.”
The movies from Lionsgate are only available as 48-hour rentals for now. It is unknown if the deal will later make “permanent” digital ownership possible.
Ubisoft has announced Champions of Anteria, a story-heavy real-time strategy game using small hero squads. If you’re wondering where The Settlers reference comes from, this game apparently started out as The Settlers: Kingdoms of Anteria, but based on player feedback from a closed beta period, Ubisoft Blue Byte decided to drop the association with the city-builder series and branch off into a new direction. The economic gameplay is separated into a “homebase management” area, while the tactical action depends on players using three out of five champions with elemental powers.
The core of the combat is based on magical elements. We have five magical elements in the game fire, metal, nature, lightning, and water and they work in an extended rock-paper-scissors system.
That’s certainly one way to drill the core RTS concept down to its basics. Champions of Anteria will launch on August 30th for Windows PC.
Three hardware revisions. A complete overhaul of the user interface – twice. The Red Ring of Death. Custom faceplates. Xbox Live Marketplace. Kinect. After over ten years of ups and downs, Microsoft is ceasing production of the Xbox 360 console. Remaining stock will continue to be sold, but once those units are gone, that’s it. Time to move on to something else.
Thanks to the Xbox 360, we evolved Xbox Live from the original Xbox into the thriving online gaming community it is today. And the console became a beloved gaming and entertainment hub with over 78 billion gaming hours played, nearly 486 billion Gamerscore on 27 billion achievements and over 25 billion hours spent in apps over its lifetime.
Although no new Xbox 360 machines will be manufactured, Microsoft assures gamers that their legacy hardware will still be useful. Live services will continue allowing new purchases of Xbox 360 games, multiplayer servers will stay up, and technical support will be honored during the valid warranty period.
Up until now, there have been rumblings in the development community that Sony was planning to revise the hardware in their PlayStation 4. What made the rumors intriguing was that according to the sources, Sony wasn’t just reducing the footprint and heat of the console with a “slim” version like they had in previous console generations. The information leaking out suggested that Sony was actually going to bump the specs to account for the additional power requirements that VR and 4K gaming needs. This incremental hardware upgrade would be unique in the console space, with the closest analogue being the revision of the handheld Nintendo 3DS with the New Nintendo 3DS in 2014.
Sony is now openly outlining this hardware upgrade plan with some developers. Both Giant Bomb and Eurogamer confirm that they have seen the documentation. The new Sony hardware is codenamed Neo, while the original PlayStation 4 is referred to as the Base model. The Neo version of the PlayStation offers faster memory, a better processor, and a more powerful graphics unit. Developers are being told that a Neo game’s performance must meet or exceed the Base version, and Neo-only features or gameplay is forbidden. Additionally, studios will not be allowed to produce Neo-only titles. They must continue to support the Base version. Starting in October, all PlayStation 4 games must support both specifications of the console.
The documents do not specify when the hardware is launching, but the software requirement starting in October is a good hint. It remains to be seen how gamers will react to this console hardware upgrade, and how Base model owners will feel when their Neo brethren are playing the same games at better framerates and bigger resolutions.
These three games want to dominate the first-person shooter market and they’re coming for your dollars. All three games had beta access periods over the weekend and bouncing between them has taught me one thing: May is going to be rough for shooter fans. There’s only so many hours in the day, and Doom, Overwatch, and Battleborn all want your attention. If you want a mix of old-school arena multiplayer mixed with newer Call of Duty sensibilities, then Doom from id Software and Bethesda will have you covered starting on May 13th. If you want Blizzard’s take on Team Fortress 2 before it went hat crazy, Overwatch will give you all the hero class shooting you can handle on May 24th. If you’re craving a mix of Borderlands with a beefy helping of MOBA gameplay, Gearbox’s Battleborn gets an early jump out of the gate on May 3rd. Basically, May is going to be crowded with grinding for levels while shooting at other players.
Buried in that release calendar is poor Homefront: The Revolution. On the 17th of May, Dambuster Studios’ open-world co-op sequel to Homefront squeezes out between these three juggernauts. While the other three games are focused on cartoon story setups, Homefront: The Revolution tries to hit the gritty with North Korea’s future-tech military occupying the United States. The player works to free Philadelphia from the oppressors through the judicious use of guns, a motocross bike, and exploding RC cars. Strike that. It’s just as much of a cartoon as the others.
Ever since an alleged development map for Read Dead Redemption was posted and then hastily pulled from gaming forum NeoGAF, fans of the series — which is just another way to say “people who play videogames” — have been atwitter with excitement about the possibility of a sequel in development at Rockstar. The map was a bit blurry, but it seems the lower left corner overlaps with the upper right corner of the original map, a place called West Elizabeth. The implication is that a sequel will implore us to go northeast, young man.
One of the members of our forum (you can call him Mr. Tibbs) has peered at the leaked map, deciphered the text as best as he can, peered some more, and put some hard work and borderline obsessive fandom into assembling a map brimming with detail, neatly fitting the leaked map alongside the previous game’s map. So for a lovingly intricate overview of the world of the two most recent Red Dead games, have a look at Mr. Tibbs spectacular cartography after the jump.
