Sorry bat-fans. Batman: Arkham Knight, Rocksteady Studio’s current generation return to Gotham, has been pushed out to June 2nd of 2015. In June of this year, publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced a delay from the 2014 holiday period to “early 2015”, but this latest news confirms that the game has slipped to a much farther date. At least gamers can preorder the Batmobile Edition now for $199.99 that comes with a transforming Batmobile statue sculpted by Triforce.
Batman: Arkham Knight will launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
The image above is what you’ll see after a little while in The Sims 4 if you pirate the game. The pixelated mess is courtesy of hidden code in the game that turns the normal modesty censor into a full-blown storm of digital blur. As reported by Reddit user “nihwtf” once a sim uses the shower in a cracked copy of the game, the blur stays and grows until it blots out the screen. Electronic Arts says they have “no plans” to aid players with pirated copies of The Sims 4.
One of my favorite movies from the last ten years is Hanna, a dreamy, sharp, sleek putative action movie that turns out to be about parenting. In ways, it reminds me of Bioshock 2, a fantastic shooter that — wait for it — turns out to be about parenting. I love when genres unfold as expected, and as superlative examples of that genre, only to turn into a story with a powerful and relevant point about something you didn’t quite expect.
Hanna was directed by Joe Wright, who has directed various other movies, none quite like Hanna. Which makes me think screenwriter Seth Lochhead deserves much of the credit for what made Hanna special. Unfortunately, Lochhead has no other credits to his name. Hanna was his first and last movie. But that might soon change.
Sony has been fumbling around with Hollywood-izing Shadows of the Colossus for some years now, including its apperance in Reign over Me, a soggy 9/11 movie that tried to tie the game into some convoluted point about grief. Sony’s last Shadows of the Colossus project, a straight-up adaptation, was for Josh Trank, the writer and director of the found-footage superhero movie Chronicle. But now that Trank has finished his kiddie version of Fantastic Four and is moving on to work on a Star Wars thing, he’s got no time to direct adaptations of niche videogames. Shadow of the Colossus fans who saw Chronicle can breathe a sigh of relief.
Which leads us to the latest incarnation of a Shadows of the Colossus movie. Sony’s current intent is that it will be produced — and possibly directed, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves — by Andres Muschietti, a fellow who made a short movie called Mama that was developed into a disappointing feature film. The more exciting news is that Seth Lochhead is writing the script. Considering Hanna’s blend of languid fantasy with sharp stabs of action, this is great news for a movie doing justice to Team Ico’s own languid fantasy with sharp stabs of action.
Former Xbox One exclusive Ryse: Son of Rome is coming to PC and the Steam page for the game is live. The system requirements aren’t as demanding as you may have been led to believe they’d be if you went by the marketing behind the console launch. You don’t even need a Kinect unit to command the troops like the pre-launch advertising said! Beyond the 64-bit operating system, the hardware demands aren’t that bad. The most limiting factor may be that you’d have to want to play Ryse at all. At $40 with all the console DLC bundled in, it’s not a bad deal for folks that want to push their systems with all that CryEngine spark.
4K gaming is another leap in graphics quality for PC gamers and Ryse is the perfect showcase for what’s now possible in high-end PC games. Ryse: Son of Rome leverages the power of Crytek’s CRYENGINE and the latest High-End PC gaming technology to present conflict in the Roman Empire like you’ve never seen it before.
The PC version of Ryse: Son of Rome launches October 10th.
Whether you’re fighting under the Golden Gate Bridge, in Monument Valley, or inside a space elevator, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s multiplayer appears to take all the stuff you’ve seen from previous big-budget shooters and combines them into one crazy game. Jetpacks, exo-suits, cloaking, and basketball disguised as satellite retrieval. The only thing missing is the anti-chopper dog. Where’s your helicopter-killing canine, Advanced Warfare? You can customize operators all you want, but without Riley, you’re nothing!
Positech Games has taken the wrapping off Gratuitous Space Battles 2. Set for release later this year, the sequel to the hybrid tower defense fleet management game keeps the hands-off approach to setting ships on fire near the shoulder of Orion and watching c-beams glittering in the dark. What GSB2 will add is even more pretty explosions and epic exchanges of energy. There’s even a new early alpha video to show some of this kaboom off! The game will still be top-down 2D, but lots of nifty parallax effects and better lighting that weren’t possible in the old engine improve the experience. Multiple monitor setups will also be supported, for those armchair Adamas that want to command battles from as wide a view as possible.
Hunting dinosaurs while trying to survive as a native jungle-dweller? Survival crafting blended with dino taming sounded like genius. Too bad SuperCrit, the developer of The Stomping Land, seems to have dropped off the planet. The game launched on Steam’s early access program in May, after successfully raising over $114,000 in support from Kickstarter, but actual communication with the developer has been less than satisfactory. Although a patch was released on June 26th, there’s been nary a word otherwise. After a couple of months with nothing from the developer, Valve has apparently disabled the ability to purchase the game from the Steam store.
Kotaku did manage to talk with SuperCrit head Alex Fundora in early August, but he only stated that development was going strong and that the game would be retooled to use Unreal Engine 4. Unfortunately, SuperCrit’s public relations person was a freelance worker and announced back in May that his contract had run out.
You can still see the listing to marvel at the concept, but there’s no way to purchase it. We’ve reached out to Valve and SuperCrit for comments.
Eugen Systems has released a free DLC for Wargme: Red Dragon that adds twelve new units and an additional single player campaign. The Second Korean War update brings the real-time strategy game up to 1992 and plunges the world into war on the Korean peninsula as the Soviet and NATO forces square off. Hooray for alternate timeline saber-rattling!
In the all-new campaign, a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded in 1991, a year prior to the events of the narrative. The former guard succeeds Gorbachev, and restores Soviet order, bringing them closer to the communist leaders in Asia, as leaders in the West grow ever-distant from the Soviet super-power. After a year of friction, the entire Korean peninsula is at war as the Soviets and UN coalitions take their increasingly distancing ideologies onto the battlefield.
New units include the venerable Patriot missile system for the United States, the elite Spetsnaz GRU for the Soviets, and the South Korean K-9 Thunder. The full list of changes can be found here.
Volition and Deep Silver have announced the next Saints Row game. Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is a standalone expansion release that sets the rascally Third Street Saints against the forces of Satan himself. You can check out the trailer here to see how Steelport looks through a brimstone filter. In this installment, popular ne’er-do-well Johnny Gat and hacker extraordinaire Kinzie Kensington face off against the legions of Hell to rescue President of The United States of America and leader of the Zin Empire, The Boss.
Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is being developed with help from High Voltage Software. The game will be $20 on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC when it releases on January 27th of 2015.
A re-release of Saints Row IV was also announced at PAX Prime. Saints Row IV: Re-Elected will bring the greatest game of all time to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Nintendo has announced new versions of the their handheld systems. The New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS LL (known as the XL in the West) will get upgraded processors, A-B-X-Y buttons re-colored to match the traditional SNES console, ZR and LR shoulder buttons like the Wii U, and a cute little analog nub added just above the face buttons that will work like another directional control. The revised systems will also feature NFC technology to read the recently announced Amiibo figures. Nintendo claims that the improved systems will also sport reduced blur when using the 3D feature.
The New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS LL systems will launch in Japan on October 11th. No dates have been announced for other regions yet, but the company did say that they would not launch outside of Japan this year.
Quake Live, id Software’s free-to-play version of Quake III: Arena that’s focused on the competitive scene, is being changed to attract a larger, less hardcore audience. Specifically, the developers want it to appeal to the average Steam user. Bethesda announced at QuakeCon in July that Quake Live would be coming to Steam sometime later this year, but had no information about whether the game would receive an update with the Steam version. Yesterday, producer Adam Pyle revealed that there will be some significant changes. The most controversial additions are an “auto-hop” mechanic, a visible timer will be added to item respawns, and players will be able to choose a secondary weapon before they begin a match.
Quake is a masterful game of skill, often compared to Chess by its veteran players. However, with that depth has come a challenge to welcome and capture new players long enough for them to discover the joy to be found in what many consider the finest Deathmatch game ever made.
A “classic” mode will be available for old-school Quakemasters that scoff at making things easy, although some elements of the update will be global and cannot be disabled.
One part of me is bummed to see Nintendo going the route of bilking customers for post-release DLC that, arguably, should have been in the game in the first place. But another bigger part of me is elated at the promise of 16 more tracks for the irresistible Mario Kart 8.
For eight bucks, you get three new characters, who are only cosmetic (although it’s hard to argue that a Cat Peach driver isn’t far and away the best way to play any Mario Kart); four new vehicles, which will presumably have effects on your kart’s basic stats; and eight new courses, which is like a whole new game, given how varied and imaginative the existing courses already are.
The first pack, out in November, will be Legend of Zelda themed and the second pack, out next year in May, will be Animal Crossing themed. If you buy both packs up front, it only costs $12 and you get a whole mess of colors for your Yoshi. If you care about that sort of thing. Frankly, with a Cat Peach in the pack, who cares what color you make that silly little lizard guy.
Dragon Age: Inquisition will have multiplayer in the form of 4-player cooperative missions. According to IGN‘s exclusive, BioWare’s swords and sorcery sequel will get a co-op mode similar to the multiplayer offered in Mass Effect 3. Dungeon-crawling players will get to fight baddies and gather gold in quests that consist of randomly assembled parts of pre-set levels. Collected loot can then be traded for treasure chests that contain cosmetic skins, potions, upgraded gear, and sometimes rare items.
Like Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, BioWare says they are committed to keeping pay-to-win out of the economy and future multiplayer DLC like levels and new characters will be free. They will offer a way for players to purchase “time saver” currency with real money, but nothing will be required. Dragon Age: Inquisition launches on November 18th for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC.
GOGO.com now has a movie library. The famously DRM-free digital game store has just launched a movie section that offers movies about video games and internet culture. Like their games, GOG.com is offering these movies without any digital copyright protection software. Buy them. Keep them in your account and your hard drive for as long as you want, or stream them right from the site. According to GOG.com, the selection at launch is limited because studios needed to see the business model in action.
“We love your ideas, but…we do not want to be the first ones. We will gladly follow, but until somebody else does it first, we do not want to take the risk.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee wants the GOP to win the mid-term elections, and apparently the best way to get the grassroots support they need is with a video game. Mission Majority is a simple platformer that stars a pixelated elephant named “Giopi”. (Har, har! Get it? Gee-oh-pee!) It’s a free web game that’s obviously been made to collect social media participants’ information as well as educate the masses.
Hi, my name is Giopi! I’m one of the GOP’s best volunteers for the 2014 midterms, and I’m here to show you how we can win back the Senate! There is going to be a lot of red tape and regulations in our way, but we need to overcome them in order to succeed. At the end of each level, there is a link that will bring you to a site where you can support Republicans in real life. Ready to get started? Great, have fun!
The Mario-esque enemies in the game include “Taxers” sent by President Obama to catch Giopi. As of this posting, there is no video game from the Democrats’ side of the aisle for the upcoming elections.
