A little over a year ago, Lion’s Arch, the capital hub of Guild Wars 2 was destroyed in a devastating attack at the climax of the Living World season one storyline. Since then, players and NPCs have had to make do with a tent-town on the outskirts of the city’s ruins. The broken tumbledown of the Lion’s Arch district was a lonely reminder that ArenaNet wasn’t kidding about making drastic changes to their MMO world. See the fallen bricks that once made up the bank headquarters. Look yonder at the cracked statue that once stood proudly in the city center. Take heart adventurers! Lion’s Arch will be rebuilt! ArenaNet revealed that construction has started on a new version of the city that eschews the stacked boat architecture of the previous incarnation.
Construction projects are dependent on workers and weather, both of which can be unpredictable. But while we don’t have a date for the final unveiling, we can say that – due to the advantages of off-site construction – one morning in the next few months you’ll awake to a newly refreshed Lion’s Arch.
Lion’s Arch 2.0 will be a “more fortified city” to reflect the storyline, but will retain the functionality that players require.
Today’s update for Cities: Skylines finally adds tunnels, giving you yet another option to deal with traffic issues. If you can’t go around it or go over it, now you can try going under it! The update also adds a new European tileset, although the default tileset seemed pretty European to me. The new tileset only appears on specific maps, such as the three new maps included in the update.
Read more specifics here, including a word about how to avoid conflicts with any mods you may be using.
Crysis as a board game. That’s the premise of Crysis: Analogue Edition. Frame6 is taking the first-person power suit shooting of Crysis and turning it into a top-down exercise in pushing little plastic soldiers around a hex map. If their Kickstarter gets funded you could be adjusting the chairs around your gaming table instead tweaking video settings. How adorable! The developer says they have the full blessing and cooperation of Crytek.
Play with up to eight friends and score points in either Team Instant Action or Capture the Relay game modes. Defeat your enemies using advanced weaponry and the unique abilities provided by the Nanosuit in this team-based tactical game.
You can check out a breakdown of the white-knuckle board game combat here.
Enhanced editions are in. InXile Entertainment is doing it for Wasteland 2 and now Larian is giving Divinity: Original Sin a do-over as well. Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition is coming to consoles and PCs. This improved version of the fantasy RPG adds full voice performances for all characters, controller support, couch co-op, new quests and NPCs, and the obligatory revamped visuals. Rather than just being a set of enhancements to bring the game to consoles, the developers are also “heavily” rewriting the story to include a new ending. In fact, it’s so different that when the enhanced edition is released for free (yes, free) to current owners, it will be a separate game. According to Larian’s Swen Vincke, they were just going to patch the PC version of Original Sin, then translate that work to the consoles, but the project grew into something larger.
And so we started, first with small things intended to be included in the N-th patch, but soon with more drastic things that couldn’t be included that easily. Then, even more drastic things made it to our tasklist that conflicted with the “patch protocol”, a series of rules that ensure story changes don’t break savegame compatibility and would therefore only be present in new games.
When the UI, controller and split-screen experiments looked like they were going to be successful, it almost became a no-brainer that we’d apply our re-engineering skills to the entire game. And so we did.
You can watch a video about Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition here.
Remember when Windows came with the Space Cadet pinball game? Good times. Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 will come with Candy Crush Saga. Popular standards like Solitaire, Hearts, and Minesweeper will also be included for office time-wasting, but the new generation of gamers raised on mobile fare demand something a little more meaty than guessing which grey blocks out of a thousand have hidden mines buried under them. They need candy to crush. And in-app purchases to buy more lives. And social media integration.
When people think of Star Wars, they usually think of space samurai with laser swords, Rick Moranis in a giant helmet, and space battles. Pew pew! Keeping that in mind, it’s understandable that fans of the franchise were disappointed to hear that Star Wars Battlefront would not have any space battles. Electronic Arts and DICE said they wanted to focus on the planetary combat, which is logical since the game seems to be built on the framework of the Battlefield games. There wasn’t much need to protect the space above China from communist aggression after all.
DICE has revealed that Star Wars Battlefront will offer a Fighter Squadron mode that at least lets space jockeys trade fire with their airborne enemies. The game mode will allow players to engage in starfighter battles over “huge” canyons. Fighter Squadron will likely be similar to the Air Superiority mode already present in Battlefields 3 and 4. Hopefully, the X-Wings and Tie Fighters will be easier to control for new players than the jets in Battlefield which have a distressing tendency to act like lawn darts.
First, there’s a Ratchet & Clank movie based on the series of PlayStation-exclusive games. Second, it’s CG animated. Finally, the cast has been announced and it sounds surprisingly decent. Sylvester Stallone, John Goodman, and Paul Giamatti will lend their voice talent to the feature. There’s good news for purists as well. Ratchet will be voiced by James Arnold Taylor and David Kaye will supply Clank’s vocals just like they did in the video games. Armin Shimerman and Jim Ward will also return to their roles as Nefarious and Captain Qwark, respectively.
The film follows the two unlikely heroes (a foolhardy “lombax” and a pint-sized robot) as they struggle to stop a vile alien named Chairman Drek from destroying every planet in the Solana Galaxy. When the duo stumble upon a dangerous weapon capable of destroying entire planets, they must join forces with a team a group called The Galactic Rangers in order to save the galaxy.
Rainmaker Entertainment will be showing the film to distributors this week in Cannes.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will be the next chapter in the open-world alien artifact collection game. The leaks last year were correct about the game being set in Victorian England, but the project’s name is no longer ‘Victory’ which is probably a relief to the Ubisoft team working on the future Assassin’s Creed game set in World War II. And what comes with steam engines and upper-crust puffery? We’ve gone from gathering fancy French ribbons to building up a wardrobe of top hats and monocles. Instead of France’s sans-culottes fighting against the nobility, it’s the Industrial Revolution’s wage slaves against the manufacturing rich.
An age of invention and prosperity, built on the backs of working class slaves. As gangster assassin Jacob Frye, you will recruit your gang to fight for justice on behalf of the oppressed working class.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will be available on Xbox One, PS4 and PC on October 23, 2015. If you’re immune to spoilers, Ubisoft has posted a gameplay video as well.
Wasteland 2 is getting an upgrade. Developer inXile Entertainment is releasing Wasteland 2: Game of the Year Edition as a free update to all owners of the game on Windows, Mac, or Linux. The improved version of the RPG will be upgraded to the newest Unity 5 build and takes advantage of all the graphical bells and whistles that the engine offers. The desolate, post-apocalyptic nightmare will be spruced up with redone character models, better lighting, and updated textures. Along with the visual improvements, inXile is adding voices to companions, implementing a system that will let combatants target enemies’ specific body parts, and they are introducing a perk feature to character progression.
Finally, to improve on the gameplay experience and ensure the above features are fitted in seamlessly, we’re also overhauling game balance, item drops, and reworking the majority of combat encounters throughout the game. You’ll need all your training and smarts to master the new dangers of the Arizona wastes.
Wasteland 2: Game of the Year Edition is coming to PC later this year. It will also be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as the initial release on those platforms.
Star Wars Battlefront, the multiplayer shooter from DICE and Electronic Arts, will not have aiming down sights. Although the game can be played in first or third-person views, Executive Producer Patrick Bach told OXM that the game will not feature the snappy aiming found in DICE’s own Battlefield games.
“There are no ironsights in Star Wars, on the ordinary blasters. You have scopes on some rifles, but there are no ironsights.”
Without the visual and stability assistance that ironsights, or aim down sights, brings it’s no wonder that Stormtroopers can’t hit Rebels in a straight hallway shootout. Look at them. There’s not even an attempt to aim. It’s just hip-firing all the way! No wonder they lost. Star Wars Battlefront will launch on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC on November 17th.
If life hands you lemons, make pinball. That’s the conclusion many have made and Zen Studios agrees. Portal Pinball brings Valve’s physics-defying property to life in Zen’s Pinball FX2 on Steam and Zen Pinball 2 on the PlayStation Network. All your favorite test subjects like Chell, GLaDOS, and a certain cube will make their appearance.
Team up with ATLAS and P-Body for their Cooperative Testing Initiative Multiball and wreak havok on the Turret Factory by discovering Ratman’s hidden mini playfield.
It’s May 4th and because Cinco de Mayo is claimed by all the cool kids, nerds had to make up a new internet holiday centered around Star Wars. “May the fourth be with you!” Har har. In turn, that means any Star Wars licensed property is obligated to do stuff today to please the fans. Take Star Wars: The Old Republic. Disney’s new saga continuity may have retroactively negated the canon status of the MMO, but that won’t stop BioWare from promoting a new Epic Story XP Boost today. Subscribers to the MMO will get a multiplier to their experience that is designed to take them all the way through their class story quests and will remain active into this Fall. Along with the XP increase, subscribers will get additional quality of life improvements like unlocked planetary taxi destinations, quicker quick travel cooldowns, and emergency travel passes will be available earlier.
As you can see, the Epic Story XP Boost not only brings a huge boost to the experience you gain from Class Missions, it provides big improvements to how you travel around the Galaxy. With great quality of life improvements to both travel and staying geared while leveling, the Epic Story XP Boost is the best time ever to play through all of our great Class stories.
The dark side is quicker, easier, more seductive, so players that want to do things the harder way can opt out of the XP boost by purchasing a White Acute Module consumable. Star Wars: The Old Republic has been free-to-play since 2012, but does offer a subscription option.
Multiplayer games Depth and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare have teamed up for a promotional event. The Chivalry vs. Depth Update combines the two games in a cross-marketing feeding frenzy. In Chivalry, players that also own Depth will unlock a shark-themed morningstar and helmet. In Depth, owners of Chivalry will find knightly cosmetic skins for their diving knife and bangstick weapons. All players in Depth get access to the new Hillside map featuring the half-sunken ruins of an appropriately kingly looking castle. Both games are on sale in Steam for the duration of the event.
Mode 7 has updated Frozen Cortex with manager features. The indie robo-football strategy game now offers full game simulation in a top-down view, free agent bidding, salary cap adjustments, a 90-team college league, a draft tournament, and players can now be “injured” or disabled. Most importantly, for players that may have found the Frozen Cortex A.I. enemies a tad too good, the manager update adds an easy mode. On the bad news side, although Mode 7 had planned to add multiplayer leagues to the game, that feature will not be coming.
We need to be more conservative with planned features that we announce in future, so we’ll do our best to stop something like this happening again. I know it’s extremely frustrating when a feature you wanted and were expecting gets cut: I’m annoyed that this happened. We will continue to do our best to both get the spec of games right in advance and execute the spec that we announce fully.
Despite blunders like Sony’s PlayStation 3 price unveiling, Microsoft’s whole Xbox One rollout, and Nintendo’s puzzling Wii U announcement, the Electronic Entertainment Expo is good marketing for the gaming industry. The glitz! The glamor! The gifs of people waggling to bad motion controls! The one thing E3 has always lacked was a unified presentation for the PC. It’s the platform with the largest potential AAA install base, yet it gets no time on the stage. E3 2015 is fixing that oversight. For the first time ever, E3 will have a showcase for the PC. The PC Gaming Show will present this “golden age” of affordable hardware and games sold via competing digital gaming clients like Steam, Uplay, and Origin. The show, hosted by Sean “Day9” Plott, will include speakers from AMD, Blizzard, Bohemia Interactive, Cloud Imperium Games, Paradox, and others. Perhaps now, the PC will get its own embarrassing meme out of E3?
The PC Gaming E3 show will be streamed live on Twitch on June 16th from 5PM to 8PM.
