If you thought the real-time strategy game, Wargame: Red Dragon, was missing some Scandinavian flavor, you were right. Developer Eugen Systems has added another 60 units to the game with the Norse Dragons DLC. (Hey, what’s with all the Scandinavian expansions lately?) The third free expansion to the game fills in the order of battle for Sweden, Denmark & Norway and binrgs them up to “equal footing” with other nations. Get a load of these tongue twisting names.
Every type of unit is represented (planes, infantry, tanks, IFVs.) including some iconic and long-expected “Northern” units: the Saab Gripen, Fromandskorpset, NASAMS… And as a bonus, ANZAC will also get an extra unit, in the form of the Vickers Mk.11.
Wargame: Red Dragon is currently on sale on Steam. You can check out Tom’s thoughts about the game when it launched.
http://youtu.be/eUCR9uFPOTQ
There’s a normal movie trailer for Hitman: Agent 47, but this companion bit of marketing eschews the explosions and excitement and portrays our favorite barcoded killer the way most gamers have played him. As a jerk. Why would Agent 47 need to kill a bunch of YouTube stars is beyond me, but random assassinations are par for the course in the Hitman games. Did that Chinese food delivery guy deserve to die? Nope, but I needed his clothes and take-out bag to disguise myself. Sorry, buddy! I have a mission to win. Maybe in this case, Agent 47 needed to take over some channels? Who knows? He probably just wanted to get the achievement for cleaning up YouTube.
Hitman: Agent 47 from 20th Century Fox will appear in theaters this August. It stars Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, and Zachary Quinto.
Update: The video has been marked private by 20th Century Fox.
The last pinball table from Zen Studios was yet another superhero table called Venom. I don’t know why it was called that because it was about a black Spider-Man. It was fine, I guess. Certainly better than the original red Spider-Man table. This latest table even had a red Spider-Man in a little table under the main table. Who can keep track of the different colors of Spider-Men? And who cares about them anyway? I’d have almost preferred another Star Wars table. Okay, maybe not. I can’t imagine there’s anything Star Wars themed left. I suppose you could have an Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru table about moisture farming on Tatooine. Don’t think I wouldn’t play the hell out of that.
But I’m delighted to hear that Zen’s next tables, as part of a two-pack called Iron & Steel, aren’t superheroes or Star Wars themes. They are entirely unlicesed! One is a Western table called Wild West Rampage and the other is a Medieval table called Castlestorm. Granted, Castlestorm is based on Zen’s Castlestorm games, but does it count as a license if pretty much no one knows the source material?*
From the developer’s blog:
The Wild West Rampage table stars Cindy, a bold bounty hunter who arrives in the western town of Rackton Point with a bone to pick with the town’s crooked Sheriff Evans. Cindy has her sights aimed on defeating his men and ruining their crooked plans to control the town, but it definitely won’t be easy to loosen Evans’ stranglehold. Hit the trail and experience an exciting Western-inspired playfield complete with a rolling 3D steam engine, swinging saloon doors, a six-shooter ball locker, and duels with members of Sheriff Evans’ posse!
You might think Iron & Steel is an odd name for a Western and Medieval theme. The steel makes sense because swords, but iron? Shouldn’t it be lead because of bullets? Lead & Steel? Zen points out that six-shooters are made of iron. I’ll have to take their word on that. Either way, don’t think I won’t play the hell out of these.
The Iron & Steel Pack will be out February 25 and 26 for every single Zen Pinball platform except the Wii U. Zen promises news of a Wii U release later.
* By the way, Castlestorm is actually pretty good as same-couch multiplayer tower defense slash Angry Birds game.
Stop buying votes with free game keys. That’s the notice Valve has given to developers in their Steam Greenlight program. The initial idea for Greenlight was that developers would submit their projects on the service and people would vote on them. If they got enough votes, Valve would approve the game for regular sale on Steam. Simple, right? Life being what it is, things aren’t that easy in practice. First, a lot of submissions were rip-offs and copies of other games. Second, almost every game is just an early access pitch, which brings additional issues. Finally, developers have found ways to game (pun intended) the system with freebies. It turns out that voters like free stuff.
“We understand that running contests and giving away copies of your game can be seen as a form of marketing. But for the purposes of Greenlight, we don’t think that giving away copies of your game in exchange for votes accurately reflects genuine customer interest.”
Let’s have some clean voting! Get on Steam the old-fashioned way – with false advertising, over-promising features, and flat-out lies.
What’s going on with Godus? Peter Molyneaux’s Kickstarter-funded return to god games is still in early access on PC, but it seems things are not rosy on the project. New designer Konrad “FuriousMoo” Naszynski says that in his weeks at 22cans, he’s run into frustrations with the game’s development. Specifically, he noted that changes to the game must maintain the vision laid out by Molyneaux. Along with that, the mobile version of the game takes precedence since it’s the main source of revenue for project.
We compiled a long broad list of things we can do to the game (both mobile focused and pc focused) with items made up from a combination of community feedback, kickstarter obligations, publisher requests and my own ideas. We then had to score them based on difficulty of task, resources required and cost against returns. There’s a few things which are taken into consideration when deciding what the returns of any item would be; is it direct revenue (like more cosmetic items for mobile), is it something that could potentially get us a steam feature (and bring in pc revenue) or is it something that would improve the company reputation. Using this matrix we are slowly producing a plan for the year.
Quite frankly it’s been exhausting, but I’m starting to feel cautiously optimistic. If I had it my way I wouldn’t bother with mobile, not worry about cost and just work on improving the pc experience, but that’s never going to happen. What is good is that a lot of the things I want to do, things that would improve the pc game, I can make a case for them based on improving the company reputation and increased chance of a steam feature placement.
Earlier, Naszynski had confessed that 22cans would likely not be able to fulfill all the goals from the Kickstarter. What can we conclude from all this? If you want 22cans to support Godus better, buy more stuff for the mobile version. I hear that hiring a swimsuit model does wonders for growing a free-to-play game’s revenue.
Everyone knows by now that Triumph Studios is working on an expansion to Age of Wonders 3 that will add Necromancy, the icy race of Frostlings to the game, as well as leader specializations that emphasize the moral alignments already present in the game. (You did know that, right?) Let’s say you’re some kind of weirdo that doesn’t get excited by the idea of undead Halfling cooks or angelic Frostling mammoth riders. Will tiger-men riding a tiger-drawn chariot do it for you?
Tigran Cavalry consists of light chariots functioning as mounted skirmishers. Drawn by sabretooth tigers they share the race’s core abilities such as the predator and athletic abilities, with good melee abilities. Although far more fragile than the cavalry of other races, the charioteers can hurl enchanted sun spears, powerful single shot weapons that do physical and fire damage, and can set opponents on fire.
Tigers on tigers. It’s settled. Thundercats ho! The as-yet unnamed expansion for Age of Wonders 3 is shaping up to be packed with content.
In the world of Warhammer, the Skaven are a race of diseased rat-people that use swarming tactics to overrun their enemies. They boil up out of sewers and dungeons en masse digging into cereal boxes, eating garbage, and biting small pets. What better starting point for a first-person co-op horde game? Fatshark Games, developers of War of the Roses and Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West, are tackling the Left 4 Dead sub-genre and putting a dark fantasy spin on things. Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide is based on the Games Workshop license and pits human players against a never-ending stream of ratty enemies.
The time of mortals is ending, and the reign of Chaos draws ever closer. The Dark Gods are at last united in a singular purpose, loosing their madness across the world as never before. In the Empire of Sigmar, Karl Franz’s gaze is focused on the incursion of the savage northmen, but it is not the only threat. As the Chaos moon Morrslieb waxes full, shrill voices echo through tunnels gnawed far beneath the Empire’s cities, and a Skaven host swarms towards the surface. It emerges first in the city of Ubersreik, a screeching mass that consumes all before it. Soon Ubersreik is a charnel-town, drowning beneath the malevolent shadow of the Horned Rat.
Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide is coming for the PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 later this year.
Underworld is coming back. For many longtime gamers, that’s all that needs to be said. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss and the sequel, Labyrinth of Worlds, were 1990’s must-play gaming. Despite being offshoots of the Ultima series, the emergent gameplay in both games allowed players freedom that hadn’t been seen previously. That gameplay coupled with being one of the first games to show environments in a first-person perspective in texture-mapped 3D, and you have the makings of influential hits. Ken Levine, John Carmack, and many other developers have acknowledged the impact Underworld had on their creations.
Can OtherSide Entertainment capture that magic again? Underworld Ascendant is their attempt to make a successor to the earlier games. They’ve got a Kickstarter and some new tech to get their game made. Underworld Ascendant won’t just have better graphics than the original games. OtherSide intends to use something called the Improvisation Engine to bring their game to life. They claim it will give players the creative tools to overcome the challenges they’ll face in the depths. It sounds like a fancy way to say “even more emergent gameplay” which can’t be a bad thing. In the three-way fight between dark elves, dwarves, and a race of intelligent fungi, players will probably need to get creative to stay alive when they’re caught in the middle.
If you want to check out what the old-school fuss is about, the original Ultima Underworld games are available on GOG.com
That image is from Euro Truck Simulator 2’s upcoming Scandinavia DLC. Apparently, there’s more to Scandinavia than scrappy Disney ice queens and Danish pastries. SCS Software says that they worked hard to make the sights from the new routes reflect their real-life counterparts a lot more than the original game’s sometimes bland routes.
We have dedicated a lot of time and attention to recreating Scandinavian sights and landmarks in order to make the scenery more vibrant and lifelike. We tried hard to distill the looks and sights of the region to stay true to its spirit, and in the process created a lot of new assets to make driving more varied and the exploration more interesting.
In related news, the developers released a video with about an hour of gameplay from American Truck Simulator which is still in development. It’s like the sequel to Desert Bus that we’ve all been waiting for!
Sony Online Entertainment is no longer a Sony company. Investment firm Columbus Nova has purchased the MMO division of Sony’s videogame empire. Their new name is the Daybreak Game Company. Columbus Nova is a tech management firm that’s best known in gaming for, well, nothing – but you should probably know them. They bought Harmonix from Viacom in 2010. According to the newly acquired Daybreak personnel, their budding independence allows them to branch out to other platforms.
This means that effective immediately SOE will operate as an independent game development studio where we will continue to focus on creating exceptional online games for players around the world, and now as a multi-platform gaming company. Yes, that means PlayStation and Xbox, mobile and more!
Don’t worry if “Daybreak Game Company” sounds like a moniker more fit for any number of mobile game studios that had a Super Bowl ad air yesterday. I’m sure their performance on H1Z1 so far is an outlier.
Frozen Cortex (formerly called Frozen Endzone) now has a single player game just in time for the Superbowl. The early access future-sport title from Mode 7 Games had skirmish matches previously, but they were bare little things lacking context. The NFL knows fans love a big helping of drama served with their manly football antics. Check out the features being rolled out in the latest update! Knockout mode is a hardcore, lose-one-game-and-you’re-done option, teams now have unique coaches, there’s a random league feature, announcers have dialogue, and there’s even a story behind all the running and robot tackles.
Also featured for the first time is Frozen Cortex’s narrative. A scandal in the Global Cortex League threatens to undermine the entire game and might just be connected to the fate of the entire country…
The narrative develops as the player plays their matches, persisting between playthroughs and between Knockout and Global Cortex League mode. We’ve tried to tell an involving story while still allowing the player to dip in and out of whichever mode they wish.
Mode 7’s Frozen Cortex is available on Steam and the official site.
The very first course in Fire in the Deep, the new set of challenges for Trails Fusion, is a train. In case you thought there weren’t any new mechanics in a Trials game, the train hurtles past overhanging signal lights, so you have to time certain sections so you don’t smack into them, Wile E. Coyote style. Of course, the train is carrying a spinning sawblade the size of a Volkswagen that you have to ramp over. Ten tries later and I finally make it, only to be unable to jump far enough to clear the car carrying loose bombs. I call this train the pain train.
Fire in the Deep is the fourth of six add-ons, available for $5 each, or as part of the $20 season pass.
Warner Bros. Interactive has announced Lego Jurassic World and Lego Marvel’s Avengers. TT Games will be handling development on both movie toy tie-in games. Lego Jurassic World will take builders on a journey through locations and set pieces from all four movies in the franchise, including the upcoming Summer movie starring Chris Pratt. Lego Marvel Avengers will contain elements from the 2012 Avengers movie as well as The Avengers: Age of Ultron which will premiere this May. Both games are slated to appear on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.
Conspicuously absent from Warner Bros’ announcement was any mention of DLC for Lego The Hobbit that might complete the storyline from that trilogy of movies.
Offworld Trading Company is the economic real-time strategy game from Civ IV designer Soren Johnson and his new company, Mohawk Games. It has been shrouded for a while now. Not that no one’s been able to play it or talk about it. On the contrary. Early builds have been circulating and the people who’ve played them have been very vocal describing the experience. But no one has posted videos or screenshots. Why? Because they were asked not to. It was easy to imagine some sort of hideous Frankenstein monster placeholder graphics that developer Mohawk Games didn’t want us to see.
But now the shroud has been lifted, with screenshots and even a video on the official site. And I’m delighted to say that — surprise! — it’s an absolutely lovely game, clean and simple, with a shiny but quaint hard sci-fi vibe. Well played, Mohawk Games.
Offworld Trading Company will be available for early access in two weeks. Furthermore, Soren Johnson will be on the Quarter to Three Games Podcast in the near future.
If it’s good enough for folks in San Andreas, it’s good enough for citizens of Azeroth. Patch 6.1 for World of Warcraft includes the S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera reward for completing the new Field Photography quest. Complete a follow-up mission, Lens Some Hands, and players get to upgrade their camera to a version that adds simple Instagram-style filters. The MMO’s upcoming patch also includes integration with Twitter, so your duckfaced character can unleash her inner Kim Kardashian. It’s all about the social!
Patch 6.1 is available for players to check out on the public test realms.
