Bruce Geryk’s new podcast debuts here. It’s called Wild Weasel and Paulie Shore is not involved. Instead, it’s about wargaming. And it’s the sort of podcast where the host casually rolls out the phrase “French ironic lyricism”, but then says he hates the word “synergistic”. It’s also the kind of podcast where the host isn’t shy about telling you the five best wargames of all time. Of all time!
There is a crudely-constructed goat sprinting through a cubist landscape. Dodge left or right? Does it matter in the face of terrorism? The Federal Bureau of Investigation thinks the youth of America can learn to spot the signs of extremist activity by navigating a virtual goat through a cheaply made runner. The Slippery Slope to Violent Extremism will somehow make the link between idle surfing of government-sponsored web pages and protecting freedom. Successfully hit the arrow keys at the right times, and a Zen-like lesson pops up for you to ruminate over.
Follow the distorted logic of blame that can lead a person into violent extremism.
Your tax dollars hard at work.
Star Citizen is being split in two. As of yesterday, if you want to purchase the complete package, you’ll need to buy Star Citizen, the half with the persistent multiplayer universe, and Squadron 42, the half with the single-player campaign. Each game will be $45 on its own, but if you buy one, the other title can be purchased later for $15. Anyone that pledged to Star Citizen for the basic license before the split will get both halves. New purchasers get to pay for each half separately. Roberts Space Industries noted that the two games are still part of the original vision.
The package split does not change the fact that Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are part of the same game universe, or the fact that the games are functionally connected. You will access Squadron 42 through the same game client. And your performance in Squadron 42 will still have an impact on your career in the persistent universe, whether you buy both segments together or if you choose to add one further down the line.
As for why it’s being done, the developer explained that an “a la carte” presentation was always part of the plan. The modules being purchased separately allows customers to access the persistent universe or the campaign for the original $45 price while development continues.
Battlefield Hardline’s next big update will add swords to the arsenal of killing devices. If you thought the police were too militarized, or that the criminals were unrealistically kitted in Battlefield Hardline, then the addition of clangy swords and gunfights in locations like Alcatraz and Chinatown in the Betrayal map pack probably won’t disavow you of that notion. Coming in March, the DLC will feature four new maps, seven new weapons, and two new vehicles. The DLC is part of the Premium pass for the Electronic Arts shooter. There will also be a free update to the base game that will add eleven new weapons along with an improvement to the loot tables for the Battlepacks players get as slot machine rewards.
The Chinatown map may be the rumored remake of the Grand Bazaar map from Battlefield 3, albeit with sword fights and police sirens. With a player population that is regularly lower than the older Battlefield 4, it certainly can’t hurt to mix things up with ridiculous weapons and remakes of fan-favorite maps.
There will be no main Assassin’s Creed game from Ubisoft for 2016. Via the message from the company, Ubisoft is taking the lessons learned from the panning Assassin’s Creed: Unity received, along with feedback from fans, to “re-examine” the franchise. Like fictional Abstergo Entertainment, Ubisoft is using the information they have to change the way they delight their customers.
We’re taking this year to evolve the game mechanics and to make sure we’re delivering on the promise of Assassin’s Creed offering unique and memorable gameplay experiences that make history everyone’s playground.
Instead of a new Assassin’s Creed game, the publisher reminds everyone that they’ll be able to watch Michael Fassbender play assassin Callum Lynch in the movie based on the license. Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
Flowers are good. Expensive chocolates are nice. Dinner and a movie will work. If you really want to blow your Valentine’s mind, invite her into a three-way with a Hun, a Russian general, and a space marine. (I guess technically that would be a five-way, but let’s not get all judgy.) Starting on February 14th, the annual Make War Not Love 3 event is beginning. This year, gamers can play Total War: Attila, Company of Hereoes 2, or Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II and contribute to the war effort. The game that garners the most matches played by the 25th will win a prize. Dawn of War players could get the Tau Commander for Dawn of War II: Retribution. Company of Heroes players could snag the British Forces expansion. Total War fans could win the Slavic Nations Culture Pack. Only one game will win, so get playing!
If you’re wondering what the Slavic Nations Culture Pack could be, it’s brand new DLC for Total War: Attila. It features the Anteans, Sclavenians and Venedians for use in single or multiplayer modes. The Slavic factions have poison arrows and build wonders on the strategic map to win the campaign game.
When I spoke with Julian Gollop shortly after the release of Chaos Reborn, I politely but insistently asked him not to add more spells. The game is a wonderfully self-contained gem in an era of cloying post-release support that piles on avalanches of DLC. Chucking new stuff into the mix would mess up Chaos Reborn’s fundamental concept of fewer more meaningful pieces. Do you think the original Chaos got any add-ons, new units, DLC, or update packs?
Gollop didn’t listen to me. Today’s update adds four new spells.
Two of them, bolt tower and paralyze, seem awfully shy. I ran through several games and didn’t see hide nor hair of them. I suspect one shoots bolts and the other paralyzes things. I did, however, see the Icarus tower. It’s a mechanical horse-bird with a stone tower on its back that will automatically try to shoot down incoming flying units. Now those pesky eagles aren’t so pesky.
As for the fourth spell, zombies… Well, let’s just say if I’d known Gollop was going to add zombies to Chaos Reborn, I would have asked him to hurry up and get to it. Every game needs zombies and Chaos Reborn is no exception. The zombies come in hordes, of course. When you cast the spell, you get two of them. And when one of them kills another creature, that creature becomes an undead version of itself under your control. Given that Chaos Reborn makes undead immune to nonmagical attacks — think of it as a way of having to put one in the brain — zombies that build up a little momentum are a serious threat.
The full notes for the 1.5 update are here.
American Truck Simulator launched with two drivable vehicles. Two. You got the Kenworth T680 and Peterbilt 579. I’m not a semi-truck expert, but there has to be at least four or five different kinds of trucks that kick up gravel into my windshield during my daily commute. SCS Software explained that they had licensing issues that prevented them from launching with a fuller stable of long-haul options. It turns out that truck manufacturers aren’t hip to the world of video games and the cross-marketing opportunities they represent. The developers vowed to work on the licensing and get more trucking goodness into the game.
SCS has announced that a third truck is on the way. The Kenworth W900 was one of the first trucks the developers made for the game, but the manufacturer had a different plan.
Truck manufacturers tend to be very careful about their image, and Kenworth, as the pioneer in aerodynamics in cabin design with their T680, had a rather different idea of the ideal truck to have in our game at the moment of release. So it was back to work for us to finish the other truck first before we could hope for the licensing deal to be successfully signed.
A quick trip to Kenworth’s site for the T680 confirms that they do indeed consider it the “most aerodynamic truck ever” whereas the W900 site just says that truck has “traditional” styling. Which is better? Jerry Reed drove the W900 in Smokey and the Bandit. That’s settled.
Remember Titanfall’s campaign story? Me neither. There’s was something about blowing up a grounded spaceship, and then something else about blowing up a robot factory. It was a bad story told in the most annoying way possible. Between the 30-second pre-round cinematics and the mid-match HUD transmissions, no one paid any attention to the story of generic group A versus generic group B. How can any story compare with two-story tall mechsuits fighting parkour gunslingers?
Respawn’s lead writer, Jesse Stern, says Titanfall 2 will do better. In an interview with Forbes, Stern says the sequel will feature a single-player campaign. He claims that the universe of Titanfall is compelling enough to inspire a spin-off television show produced by Lionsgate.
“In Titanfall 2 there will be a lot of [scenes] where science meets magic, but keeping it grounded and dirty and human and real.”
We got robots and parkour in the first game. Why not add wizards? Titanfall 2 is rumored to be coming to PlayStation 4 as well as Xbox One and PC.
H1Z1, the open-world multiplayer zombie survival game is splitting in half. Daybreak Game Company has announced that beginning on February 17th, H1Z1 will become two separate games. H1Z1: Just Survive will retain the persistent zombie survival and crafting experience, while H1Z1: King of the Hill will focus on the player vs. player battle royale mode. Each game will be sold for $19.99 and will contain the usual assortment of in-game microtransaction offers. According to Daybreak, the split will allow the developers to give each title dedicated resources.
Gamers that own H1Z1 before February 16th will get both new games for free, and their current in-game purchases will be duplicated and carry over to each title where appropriate. Survival-specific items will only be valid in H1Z1: Just Survive.
The original plan for H1Z1 was that it would eventually become a free-to-play game. The purchase price was supposed to be only for the early access period to fund development. Daybreak has confirmed that both H1Z1: Just Survive and H1Z1: King of the Hill will retain their $19.99 price even after they leave early access.
Peter Molyneaux and 22Cans is back with another ill-advised boondoggle. Godus, the unfinished crowd-funded public relations nightmare, was an unqualified failure. Between disgruntled customers, disappointed contest winners, and scathing reviews, the real-time god game was a lost cause. Enter Godus Wars. It turns out that the real-time combat promised but never implemented in Godus needed its own program. (Luckily, this also allows the developers a chance to start over!) Peter Molyneaux himself explains it in-game via cartoon avatar.
“I always imagined Godus being two games, one tranquil, one war like. With this build we introduce the warlike element.”
Sure, Peter. The olive branch for backers of the first game is that they all got a “free” copy of Godus Wars. That’s in quotes because it turned out that Godus Wars, even in an early access state, had in-app purchases after the first island area. 22Cans has since removed those charges based on overwhelming negative feedback, but you can be sure that the developers are hard at work figuring out another way to anger their reluctant customers.
Speedruns are all about finding the optimal path in a game, even if that means making a mockery of a game’s mechanics. Spelunky in under two minutes was impressive, but Benjamin Thomas is able to take Stalingrad in Unity of Command in two turns. With the timescale used in the game, this is equivalent to Germany conquering the city by August 1942, a feat that most students of World War II would agree is impossible. The trick to this feat? Ignore history and go for it.
Petroglyph’s Grey Goo didn’t knock our socks off at launch, but the throwback real-time strategy game had a lot of moxie. It took on the traditional three-way faction setup and mixed it with Petroglyph’s unique sensibilities, leading to an in-game race made up of amorphous blobs, and a campaign animated by Weta Digital. Unfortunately, the game didn’t click with the intended audience and the player numbers have remained woefully low.
Petroglyph hasn’t given up on Grey Goo. The Descent of the Shroud DLC adds an entirely new fourth faction to the game for free. The Shroud’s units are built around disrupting the other race’s normal build orders. In fact, according to the DLC trailer, The Shroud are powerful enough to make the Goo flee! Dropping a new faction into an RTS in’t possible without some disruption, so the game is also getting a balance update to account for the newest gooey enemies. Perhaps it’s time to give this game another look?
Grey Goo is available on Steam.
Need for Speed’s newest update features community sharing of custom wraps. The Showcase Update for Ghost Games’ surprising racer has added the ability to share custom livery designs, (called “wraps” in the ultra-bro world of Need for Speed) like in more recent Forza games. Forza, of course, is the game that proved if you give people a canvas, some of them will inevitably create the most detailed offensive content imaginable. It’s like the internet itself, writ small!
If you’re tired of old-fashioned stock stickers like Red Bull and Penzoil lamely adorning your Need for Speed ride, you can now browse other people’s hand-crafted anime princesses and curse words to download and use. The update also add more customization parts and a photo mode so you can capture the epic grandeur of Sailor Moon spread-eagle on your Nissan Skyline.
I’m a sucker for Euro Truck Simulator. I’m also American, which means I’m probably going to be a sucker for American Truck Simulator, despite the fact that it was scaled down from American Truck Simulator to West Side of America Only Truck Simulator. But even I have a hard time taking the above launch trailer seriously. It’s like a beer commercial that never gets around to mentioning the beer it’s supposed to be about.
American Truck Simulator comes out February 3rd.
