The British are coming to Company of Heroes 2. Sega and Relic Games announced the latest standalone expansion, Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces. It’s a multiplayer-only affair that adds 15 units, eight maps, and six commanders to the real-time strategy game under the new British Army faction, including the Churchill Crocodile flamethrower tank and the RAF glider. Players who purchase this title without any of the other Company of Heroes 2 games will be able to play against any faction on any of the previously released maps. Along with the expansion, Relic is updating the game with a motion-captured animation system, and a “major” design upgrade to balance the existing factions.
Play as the unconquerable Britons and their motley-crew of soldiers! A force remarkable for its diversity, including Englishmen, Scotsmen, Welshmen, Irishmen – representing everyone from the working classes to the upper class elite of the United Kingdom.
Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces is available for preorder on Steam. The standalone expansion releases on September 3rd.
The Escapists, the 2D roleplaying prison escape indie hit, is getting a standalone crossover game set in the zombie apocalypse. Developer Team17 is working with Skybound Entertainment to make The Escapists: The Walking Dead. The cartoon pixel art and humor of The Escapists may not seem like a great match for the grim world of The Walking Dead, but when you consider the chaos of the prison breakout scenarios in the game and the way things go pear-shaped so quickly in Robert Kirkman’s comics, it’s not such a stretch. Rick Grimes’ clan of survivors are basically always escaping from one terrible location to another. Plus, the Meriwether County Correctional Facility from the comics is a natural fit for at least one good scenario.
The Escapists is available on Xbox One and PC. The Escapists: The Walking Dead will launch later this year for the same platforms.
In the open world of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, there are a few activities that can delay a player’s progress. The card game Gwent is one. Horse-racing is another. A flippant Witcher could waste a lot of time on these. Gathering crafting ingredients and reading books is part of a monster hunter’s job, but both have built-in checks to stop players from going crazy. CD Projekt RED wisely placed weight limits on Geralt’s inventory, so eventually even the most ardent herb-gatherer has to stop crouching at every bush in the wilderness. Thankfully, books go willy-nilly into the inventory and clutter up the space. No true bibliophile can deal with that. That’s all about to change.
Patch 1.07, coming this week, will eliminate the impact crafting materials have on the player’s weight limit, and it will add a separate tab in the character screen to organize books. These quality of life changes have the potential to ruin the delicate balance between the urge to vacuum up everything in sight and the onerous task of dealing with the inventory. Without that negative consequence, what’s to stop the obsessive gamer from pausing at every loose plant and bookcase? After the patch, this will be two more things that can easily disrupt your life of monster hunting!
The latest update for the deceptively simple but undeniably sophisticated Chaos Reborn has added single-player campaigns. You pick a campaign, move around on the map, resolve random encounters, and track down enemy wizards, with whom you fight battles. You can even go to cities to unlock rumors and buy fancy stuff. As near as I can tell, each campaign is about finding the henchmen wizards to unlock a battle with the main king wizard. Your final score, which goes onto a leaderboard, is partly determined by how long you took.
This is a great way to earn gold and experience points to equip your wizard with new staffs, armor, and talismans. It also sets up battles with unique starting conditions, such as taboos that prevent certain kinds of cards from being used or hired companions who start already in play. There’s nothing quite like beginning a battle with a dragon already by your side. I suspect in the harder campaigns, you’ll see that sort of thing flipped around to advantage the other wizard. Uh oh.
Yes, that’s Patton Oswalt as Jesse, the main character of Minecraft: Story Mode. Besides him, Telltale Games revealed at Minecon 2015 that the cast will include Brian Posehn, Ashley Johnson, Scott Porter, Martha Plimpton, Dave Fennoy, Corey Feldman, Billy West, and Paul Reubens. Ever since the game was first announced, people have wondered how Telltale would take the do-whatever gameplay of Minecraft and meld it to their signature story-heavy format. Now we know.
Jesse and his group of friends revere the legendary Order of the Stone; four adventurers who slayed an Ender Dragon. The Order are the very best at what they do: Warrior, Redstone Engineer, Griefer, and Architect. While at EnderCon, Jesse and his friends discover that something is wrong… something dreadful. Terror is unleashed, and they must set out on a journey to find The Order of the Stone if they are to save their world from oblivion.
In related news, Mojang and Microsoft previewed new features coming to the game including off-hand wielding, enchanted arrows, and an end-game makeover to beef up the experience. Microsoft also explained that while the initial Windows 10 app of Minecraft will be based on the mobile pocket edition, the various game versions will be brought in-line across all platforms.
Assassin’s Creed character toys? Call of Duty building brick playsets? Halo cat helmet? That’s no way to establish your gamer cred. For about $31.00, sculptor Kerry Dyer has official Thomas Was Alone “deluxe” action figures available for a limited time. That’s right. It’s a collection of plastic blocks from Mike Bithell’s indie platformer. Now you can settle who is the biggest indie gamer in your circle of friends.
“Thomas looked around his newly three dimensional surroundings. Had the world decided to, through waning success, swiftly build some kind of higher resolution rerelease? Was this, he shuddered, fan art? He felt heavy, plastic. He was suddenly aware of the concepts of being both heavy, and plastic. It was with crushing dread, that Thomas realised he had become merchandise.”
The Eternal Conflict updates for Heroes of the Storm is live, adding a new Diablo III-themed map into a newly stunted rotation. For the next week, the catalog of nine maps has been reduced to just four maps to make sure you see the new heaven vs. hell map more often. Be prepared to have your team run off after treasure goblins and waste their time killing fallen who are just going to be resurrected by their shaman. The Butcher is now available as the first of the three Diablo III-themed characters, to be followed shortly by the Skeleton King and then the monk. For some reason, you don’t see a lot of people cosplaying The Butcher.
Today’s update also changes a whole mess of things. For instance, if you thought you knew The Lost Vikings, Brightwing, Malfurion, or Rehgar, better check the patch notes. The healing column in the score screen, which was useless for anyone who didn’t use a healing support character, is now called the role column. It also shows how much damage your warrior soaked up.
Terraria, the 2D sideways survival builder, is getting an update today that adds Steam multiplayer integration, achievements, 800 new in-game items, an “expert” mode, and a bundle of bug fixes to the PC version of the game. It also adds a tax collector NPC. That’s what you’ve been waiting for before you scampered off to fight the giant robot skeleton or the flying pirate ship, right? Settling up with the tax collector. The 1.3 update will likely be that the last official feature patch for the game, according to developer Re-Logic.
In an age of Darkness & a time of Evil…when the world needed a Hero…they got – you. With an array of new weapons, functionality, facelifts, and features at your disposal – will you be up to the challenges posed by the new foes in your path…as well as some old enemies that have learned some new tricks?
Rather than scroll through a list of changes, you can check out the trailer for the 1.3 update here. Terraria is available on Steam.
If you followed the Batman: Arkham Knight debacle, then you know that the PC port of the game was so bad (it currently holds a “mostly negative” user review rating on Steam) that WB Games pulled the product back and vowed to not sell it again until they could fix some of the more egregious bugs. According to the publisher, Rocksteady, the primary developer of Arkham Knight, has taken the lead on fixing the game’s issues. The first patch was released on Saturday, but PC gamers shouldn’t expect the Batman tank sim to be back on sale anytime soon.
The work is significant and while we are making good progress on improving performance, it will take some time to ensure that we get the right fixes in place.
The PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight was developed by Iron Galaxy Studios. The game is available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Apple has de-listed all apps that feature the Confederate battle flag from their iOS App Store. This includes Civil War strategy games. According to reports given to TouchArcade from developers, Apple removed their games because they “include images of the Confederate flag used in offensive and mean-spirited ways.” The reasoning given to devs seems to indicate that someone at Apple just purged everything with the offending symbol. Game Labs, the developers of Ultimate General: Gettysburg, have decided not to amend their game for resubmission.
Spielbergs “Schindler’s List” did not try to amend his movie to look more comfortable. The historical “Gettysburg” movie (1993) is still on iTunes. We believe that all historical art forms: books, movies, or games such as ours, help to learn and understand history, depicting events as they were. True stories are more important to us than money.
While the debate over the meaning and appropriateness of The Southern Cross rages in the aftermath of the tragic Charleston shooting spree, it seems the iconography of the Confederacy is destined for removal from retail storefronts. Unfortunately for us, this may mean that games set in the Civil War will have to adapt or face sales without the benefit of the biggest distribution partners.
UPDATE: Representatives from Apple told TechCrunch that they are working with app makers to reinstate their products if the Confederate imagery is used for “educational or historical” reasons. How that determination is being made is unclear.
Starting [today], all PlayStation Plus members can download Driveclub PS Plus Edition and begin playing the offline mode. Also starting [today], we will be rolling out online access to the Driveclub PS Plus Edition and will steadily bring more and more players online while continuously ensuring that all game systems are running smoothly. We want to make sure we dont overload the servers as we invite millions of PS Plus members to download the game… We have to take this precaution because Driveclub connectivity is demanding for a multiplayer game, with countless ever-growing social connections across clubs, challenges, multiplayer, and hundreds of thousands of dynamic leaderboards and activity feeds.
After its rough but promising start, Driveclub became a superlative racing game and a real jewel in the Playstation 4 catalog. With an emphasis squarely on driving instead of upgrading and grinding, with fewer cars that matter more, with evocative handling and physics, with tracks brimming with personality and style, and with absolutely gorgeous graphics and sublime sound design, this is the game Forza hasn’t been for a very long time. Developer Evolution Studios even finally added weather and replays. I can’t recommend it enough.
For everyone wondering whether Looking Glass’ 1996 squad-based first-person shooter Terra Nova holds up, Good Old Games is ready to answer the question for a measly $6.
Modularity to the point of not having an actual design is a terrible idea for a game. For instance, here’s the description of an upcoming boardgame called 504, announced today by publisher Stronghold Games.
504 offers the game enthusiast 504 different games in a single box, achieving this via the use of nine game modules, which can be merged together to form 504 unique play experiences. The nine modules are Pick-up & Deliver, Race, Privileges, Military, Exploring, Roads, Majorities, Production, and Shares. Players use the spiral bound “Book of 504 Worlds”, selecting three different modules in any order from the nine available, and thereby creating a unique “World”. For example, the selection of three modules for a World may create a game that is:
A racing game that expands through exploration with technology improving the racing or exploration (World “253”).
An 18XX-style stock game with network building for income and production sites to provide workers for the road building (World “968”).
A wargame with a pick-up and deliver economy and bonus scoring from majorities (“World 417”).
Okay, maybe it’s an intriguing idea, assuming worlds 253, 968, and 417 are enough flavor for you. The fiction is something about scientists creating alternate worlds to study for something something something. The designer of 504 is Friedemann Friese, known for the classic Power Grid. I don’t like Power Grid because it locks my brain up with too much math, but I certainly respect the design. Friese knows what he’s doing. And Stronghold Games has published a few intriguing games in the last year, including Kanban, a soup-to-nuts abstraction of all elements of an automotive company, and Panamax, about managing the actual Panama Canal.
If the price tag for Destiny’s upcoming Taken King expansion seemed a little high, would you be willing to pay the ultimate price to get all the content? Would you drink a can of Red Bull? The Red Bull Quest is a “never-before-seen, multi-stage mission” that will be available to players of Destiny: The Taken King that are also dedicated enough to swig 12 ounces of Red Bull purchased from a participating 7-Eleven outlet. Besides marking a low point in your life, redeeming the code on the can will grant access to this quest and a 50% experience boost consumable. If you’re not a fan of Red Bull, you can just wait until January 1st, 2016, when the code will no longer be required to access the quest. You can buy your limited edition Destiny Red Bull beginning in July.
In related news, a 7-Eleven employee posted this image of the flyer that was given to him for this promotion. It includes some details about DLC for less savvy retail partners.
“Destiny consumers are used to paying a premium for downloadable content similar to this quest.”
Truth, friend. Destiny: The Taken King will launch on September 15th.
That’s Tanoa, the new fictional playground coming to Arma III. Bohemia Interactive presented the trailer for the new terrain during the E3 PC Gaming Show. The developers have released some more tidbits. First, the island of Tanoa is going to be a premium expansion that requires purchase unless you bought the Supporter version of Arma III that included “all” DLC. Second, the 100 square kilometer island is inspired by Fiji. It’s not an exact recreation, but certain geographic elements and the character of the location is being used as a blueprint. Third, vehicles and other equipment including a new fixed-wing aircraft and a waterscooter are coming with the terrain. Finally, Bohemia is working on improvements like better water reflections, lighting, and shoreline interactions. These engine improvements will be coming to every Arma III owner, even if they don’t buy the DLC.
Arma III’s Tanoa expansion is a work-in-progress and is scheduled for release in 2016.
