Call of Duty: Black Ops III will feature Seattle Seahawks’ running back Marshawn Lynch. ESPN has the story. Why is Marshawn Lynch in the shooter? Because it’s Call of Duty. That’s why. You don’t question the presence of John Malkovich, Kevin Spacey, Ice-T, or Freddy. Not even zombies get a raised eyebrow in this series. What’s a Skittles-eating football player compared to a hockey-mask wearing movie killer?
“Marshawn Lynch is the perfect match for Call of Duty,” says Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision. “I mean, he’s a guy who fills stadiums, crushes competitors and has a Beast Mode. What could be more COD than that?”
Going by the last Super Bowl result, perhaps Call of Duty should nab Tom Brady of The Patriots.
Paradox releases Europa Universalis IV’s Common Sense DLC today. Let’s look at their description and see if we can figure out what it has to do with the Thomas Paine tract that encouraged the American Revolution.
Central to Common Sense is the idea of Development your provinces are now more than an all powerful tax number. You can improve your regions based on tax, trade and military power specifically, giving each a focus or strength. Or, you can develop broadly to prevent crushing losses when a center of manpower falls to the enemy. Were also introducing Parliaments, allowing constitutional systems of government new ways to put the power of the peoples representatives to work on behalf of the nation for a price.
There is a host of other changes to the game, including improvements to the Protestant religion, the creation of national churches, karma for Buddhist rulers and much, much more.
I’m sure Thomas Paine would be proud of something in there. Even if you don’t get the DLC, the latest patch changes plenty of stuff. For instance, it reworks how armies move. You can no longer freely charge past forts. They’ll now interrupt the movement of armies, which is what forts should have been doing all along. Now that’s what I call common sense.
Also, fish no longer reduce unrest. They just make it cheaper to persuade people to adopt a new culture. Seafood ain’t what it used to be. The full patch notes are here.
When Valve and HTC revealed their co-developed Vive headset system, they promised all the pie-in-the-sky VR stuff that skeptical gamers have grown to expect. It’s transformative! It will put players into the games! It’s easy and fun to use! Now that some studios are getting their development kits, we can see that it’s at least fun to set up. As detailed in a 32-step instruction guide, illustrated in that iconic Portal style, prepping the system includes GLaDOS-appropriate warnings like “Do not attempt to pry open basestations.” and frighteningly neutral commands like “Enjoy VR.” If we all work together, we should be able to make “Space for eyewear can be created by extending face gasket out and re-tightening inside knob.” into the new “The cake is a lie.”
Sales of the annual Dota 2 The International Compendium have raised over $11 million in prize money for the 2015 event. This is the largest esports prize pool in history beating last year’s $10.9 million total. A quarter of the compendium sales go towards the prize pool, meaning fans have purchased at least $44 million worth of the virtual book and accessories. A number of stretch goals have already been unlocked. If the total prize pool tops out at $15 million, Valve promises to publish a comic and give participants a special item for an in-game hero. Instead, may we humbly suggest this private island getaway for a modest $11 million? Valve could just carve it up into bits like Cards Against Humanity did for their Hawaii 2 dispersal.
Dota 2 ‘s The International tournament will take place on August 3rd through the 8th in Seattle’s KeyArena.
The Witcher 3 has a serious problem – for some people. The epic fantasy roleplaying game from CD Projekt RED is suffering from an XP bug that can cause players to stop getting experience from some quests. According to the developers a fix is on the way, but the patch has been delayed to next week. In the meantime, players should enjoy the game because the issue doesn’t impact normal progression in “any significant way” and their monster-hunting characters will finish the game “within the threshold” of the character level the designers planned. Unfortunately, for many RPG players, knowing that a bug may be denying them that max level, that even a teensy bit of the XP bar will remain unfilled, is unacceptable.
After the jump, why you should or shouldn’t care about The Witcher 3’s XP bug!Continue reading →
Bethesda has officially announced Fallout 4 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The just-released teaser trailer shows us all the normal Fallout sights like power armor, bobbleheads, mutants, and kitschy 1950’s Americana that’s devolved into ruin. It’s a more colorful looking game than Fallout 3 or New Vegas, but it retains the post-apocalyptic setting that we’re familiar with.
Bethesda will have more information about Fallout 4 in their E3 presentation which begins at 7PM on Sunday, June 14th. The show will be co-hosted by Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb.
Infinite Crisis is closing up. The free-to-play MOBA from Turbine that launched in March of this year is shutting down in August. While the MOBA benefitted from a strong DC Comics license, the game failed to draw enough paying customers to make it financially viable.
This was an extremely difficult decision to make. On behalf of the entire Infinite Crisis team we want to thank all of you for your feedback, support and for joining together to create one of the best communities in gaming.
It’s a shame. With the full slate of DC Comics superhero movies coming out, Infinite Crisis would’ve been a logical vehicle for cross-promotional marketing.
There is a sequel to XCOM: Enemy Unknown coming this year. Firaxis and 2K have announced XCOM 2. It’s set twenty years after the original XCOM force lost the war against the aliens, and the Earth is a conquered planet. Apparently, all those times you lost the first game weren’t a waste of effort. It was canon! The new XCOM must conduct their operations in secret to defeat the xenos. Along with updated soldier classes, more alien types, and new tactical options, XCOM 2 will have procedurally generated levels. Hopefully, that means you won’t be seeing the same fountain courtyard layout a dozen times. IGN has the exclusive story if you need more information.
XCOM 2 is coming for Windows and Mac systems in November of this year.
WildStar is going free-to-play. The by-the-numbers MMO from Carbine Studios is changing from a traditional subscription model to one supported by an optional monthly payment plan and in-game shop purchases for everyone else. The monthly subscribers, or “signature service” players, will get perks like XP boosts and better trading privileges. Free players will get less extras, but the developers assure them that it won’t be unbalanced. Freeloaders will be able to experience everything paying customers will. The only real required payment will be time. Potential players will have to ask themselves how much of that they’re willing to spend.
FIFA 16 will feature the Women’s National teams. Players will be able to use the all-female teams from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the USA for the first time in the soccer game franchise. Electronic Arts spoke with IGN to let fans know that no effort was spared to bring female players into FIFA. New model rigging, animation, and fresh motion capture was used to translate the players’ on-field movements into their digital versions. All the important stuff was covered.
“We’ve even gone so far as to rejig the physics on our hair to make sure that the ponytails are more believable.”
FIFA 16 launches on September 22nd for PC, Playstation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
Once sci-fi and fantasy genre stars started showing up in the Call of Duty series’ multiplayer packs, it was only a matter of time before Bruce Campbell starred in one. Supremacy, the third DLC pack for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare features the actor, author, and raconteur blasting zombies and mugging for the camera in that special way that only a veteran of the Deadite Invasion can pull off. Campbell lends his likeness and voice to Carrier, the next chapter in the co-op Exo Zombies storyline. He joins the already full cast of characters voiced by John Malkovich, Bill Paxton, Rose McGowan, and Jon Bernthal. The DLC pack also comes with four new maps for multiplayer killing, but why bother with that stuff when you have the almighty Ash with his boomstick ready and waiting for you?
The Supremacy pack will be available for Xbox players on June 2nd. PlayStation and PC players of Advanced Warfare will have to wait a couple of weeks for their chance at the new DLC.
Evolve is getting a free update that adds a quicker gameplay mode than the standard 4v1 hunting matches. The Arena Mode update features deathmatches between stage 2 Hunters and a similarly leveled monster duking it out in one of 70 domed spots in the game’s maps. Players get one life per round. The winning side is declared after defeating the enemy in two out of three rounds. Turtle Rock Studios expects this mode will result in faster matches since it jumps past the tedious hunting part of the game. The free update for Evolve should be live on all platforms today.
Gauntlet, by Arrowhead Game Studios, launched on PC last September and quickly disappeared from sales lists due to a lackluster reception. Despite having a strong multiplayer component complete with seasonal events, the revamp of the classic arcade game just didn’t attract enough of an audience to build critical mass. Arrowhead will try to change that with a free update bringing improvements to include a new game mode. In a frank blog post, Arrowhead admitted that the game did not live up to their goals.
In truth, we were never fully satisfied with how Gauntlet turned out. So, rather than just fixing little things here and there, we have been working on the core of the game to turn it into what we originally envisioned.
Admit it. You’ve missed Need for Speed. The nitro-jammed neon-lit arcade drifter has been missing from the landscape since 2013’s Need for Speed: Rivals and street racing just hasn’t been the same. While everyone has been revving their engines in more serious fare like DriveClub, Assetto Corsa, Project CARS, and Forza Horizon 2, what’s a budding chop shop aficionado to do? You could play The Crew or even the decent bit of marketing fluff that was Forza Horizon Presents Fast & Furious, but neither title had the same obnoxious mix of bro-humor and faux thug earnestness that Electronic Arts perfected in the Need for Speed series. Ghost Games and EA has announced that our wait is over. Need for Speed (no subtitle) is coming this Fall to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and the developers told GameSpot that they’re really going to concentrate on delivering a good story.
“We are taking a very innovative approach to how we tell a story. That’s actually probably as much as I can say at this time. If you just go back three years with Need for Speed: The Run, there were stories in Need for Speed. Absolutely not the best executed stories. But we had stories. And I think a missing piece from the last games we had has been narrative. I think we can deliver a better game to our fans if we connect to them emotionally through story.”
If it means more quality scenes like this one, then bravo!
Expeditions: Conquistador is a fantastic variation on the X-com theme, letting you play a team of conquistadors working their way through Central and South America. The overland layer is an intriguing survival challenge and the turn-based combat is brimming with detail and variety. At the heart of the game is an intricate character development system and a unique morale model based on individual characters’ personality traits. For instance, if one of your Spaniards is a racist, she will gain morale if the party consists entirely of Spaniards, but she will lose morale if you hire natives. A pacifist character will gain morale if you make decisions that avoided combat, but he’ll lose a little morale with every battle. As a role-playing game, Expeditions: Conquistador is about making the best decisions based on the idiosyncracies of your party. Can you keep the team together long enough to find El Dorado?
The developers are a small Danish team called Logic Artists. And they’ve just announced the follow-up game will be based on Vikings, both at home and away.
…the Expeditions Sequel will have an upgradable player village, which they must return to between expeditionary raids to build and protect. Over-land travel and combat will now exist as part of the same layer, transitioning from unrestricted, exploratory movement to turn-based combat smoothly. Additionally, players will see their character manifested in the game world, not just as a role-playing character for conversations and decision making (as was in the first of the Expeditions series), but also visibly represented in travel and combat as a custom character.
Expeditions: Viking has just started development and won’t be released anytime soon. In the meantime, Logic Artists are close to releasing Clandestine, a two-player asymmetrical co-op game in which one player controls a spy and the other player controls an off-site hacker. Clandestine is currently available on Steam as an early access title.
