Rochard Impressions
Socketboy Likey?
Saints Row: The Third
Voodoo Extreme Review
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review
Voodoo Extreme Lays Down The Facts
Skyrim PC
In-House Impressions
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While on the topic of Magicka, catch a new developer Q&A; below for "The Stars Are Left" add-on.
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IGN just launched their MineCon Livestreaming if you want to go check it out. They will be covering Notch's keynote speech, as well as coverage of the big panels happening during the show. Go check it out!
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The Donner Pass: Southern Pacific add-on pack includes:
5 Free roam scenarios:
6 Standard/Career scenarios:
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Features
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Serving as the chief designer on Enemy Front is Stuart Black, whose credentials within the FPS genre include the acclaimed video game, Black. Having joined City Interactive earlier this year, Stuart Black brings an extensive understanding and creative approach to the genre heralds one of the most ambitious and gritty WWII action titles of 2012.Enemy Front is the realistic tale of a hardened soldier dropped behind Nazi lines to engage in dynamic, diversified missions ranging from quick skirmishes, espionage assignments, and sabotage activities. The epic scope of Enemy Front spans several years and key battles as it progresses from the trenches of a desolate France right on through to Berlin and a secret weapons base. Once there, the player must thwart the plans for a terrifying weapon that will all but assure a global Nazis victory.
Enemy Front also features a complex plot that explores the notable historical threads of WWII to include the events that occurred in the Wolf’s Lair and the activities that surrounded the deciphering of the Enigma code.
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Jagged Alliance Online Features
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You can use the monster sized infographic at the bottom of this post to take a look at some of the specific numbers, but here's a short list of highlights that the PR team put together for us.
Riot Games co-founders Brandon Beck, and Marc Merrill got in a word following the announcement.11.5M active players per month play the game Every day more than 4 million players enjoy League of Legends There are more than 30 million registered players for the game Peak concurrency totals over 1.3M simultaneous players worldwide
“The incredible passion and dedication of our players is positively inspiring,” said Brandon Beck, co-founder and CEO of Riot Games. “Our community’s boundless enthusiasm is why they are central to every decision we make at Riot.”“It’s staggering to think about the fact that over a billion games of League of Legends have been played since launch,” said Marc Merrill, co-founder and President of Riot Games. “In 2012, we intend to deliver even more for our growing audience.”
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Any of you looking forward to this one?
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Any guesses about what Square Enix will use Unreal 3 for? They do own Eidos, so maybe Eidos Montreal’s next title will use Unreal 3. Perhaps Squenix will do something totally unexpected like release an Unreal powered Gyromancer 2.“It is a pleasure to provide Square Enix with an exceptional game engine that will help them bring thrilling new experiences to legions of fans all over the world,” said Taka Kawasaki, territory manager of Epic Games Japan. “Many Western games have achieved great success with the Unreal Engine, and this milestone reflects the Japanese development community’s trust in our technical prowess. We can’t wait to see how Square Enix fuses the power of Unreal Engine 3 with its beautiful characters, enthralling storylines and fantastic gameplay.”
Details about the games using the Unreal Engine under this license agreement will be revealed by Square Enix.
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“Crusader Kings is my favourite of our grand strategy games,” said Fred Wester, CEO of Paradox. “It takes that addictive core of building something epic, but the building blocks of the world are real people with real lives and real emotions, so your kingdom is always this entertainingly wobbly, teetering construct. There's not enough teetering in strategy these days. Anyway, that same focus on personalities makes it perfect for a live action trailer."
“Why did the live-action trailer ever die out, anyway? Actors are classy. Especially British actors. They're the classiest and snottiest of all. We're hoping that, through exposure to British actors, our game will absorb some of that snot.” Fredrik Wester continued.
“It's a metaphor,” explained Quintin Smith, ex-Rock Paper Shotgun writer and author of the trailers. “In an ironic play on our perceptions, the King is a manifestation of all of us, while his servants represent the ruling elite. That their positions are reversed is a reflection of these modern times. The trailers are actually themed around the seven deadly sins, for reasons too scholarly to go into here, but we start with wroth. That's the old English word for wrath. That's the kind of thing we know, here at Paradox. We're very high-functioning.”
“Also, we've got some knob jokes in one of the later ones,” added Quintin.
Personally, I’m really looking forward to this one. The previous Crusader Kings (when coupled with its expansion) was great for its strategy element as well as the intrigues and personal dramas tearing apart your dynasty from within. I remember trying diligently to turn my spoiled heir into a King Arthur type, only to see him constantly siring bastard children with serving wenches before drinking himself to death. The kingdom inevitably crumbled when all of his bastards (and other, distant relatives) were too busy fighting over who was the rightful heir to unite against the Mongol hordes.
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Naturally, the trailer focuses on how pretty and tessellated everything is if you play the game on a fancy new Nvidia card.
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The Dota 2 blog update this week is pretty short, so we'll try to keep it that way too. Alchemist has been added as the latest hero, and is identified in-game as a Carry. You can scope out some more details on the original Alchemist hero at the Playdota.com Alchemist page.
On the community side, Cyber Sports Arena has announced their very own Dota 2 Star Championship, although the site seems to be down at the moment. While you wait for it to come back up, feel free to check out some trippy Dota 2 themed wallpaper by Adam C Beamish.
Valve also confirms that Dota 2 beta invites are really cranking out now. It may not seem that way to those still on the wait list, but I can tell you first hand that on a daily basis the peak users in the beta is going up by hundreds of users. A month ago there would be maybe a two or three hundred people on at a time, now there are usually thousands. According to the Steam game stats page, Dota 2 peaked at 4,000 active players yesterday.
Last but not least, the blog ends with a link to the changelog for the latest patch.
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While we don't have an Immortal spotlight for you guys to check out, there was some talk about him in a recent developer community update.
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Crytek GmbH (“Crytek”) is excited to reveal that Piranha Games’ recently announced premium free-to-play game MechWarrior® Online™ (http://www.mwomercs.com) will be powered by the all-in-one game development solution CryENGINE®3. Set in the year 3049 during the early stages of a massive interstellar war, MechWarrior Online puts you in command of the most powerful war machine to ever walk the field of battle, the mighty BattleMech™. Command your Mech™ and customize it to suit your battlefield role; upgrade systems, replace weapons, and tweak armor with endless options.“Here at Crytek we are incredibly proud that Piranha Games have selected CryENGINE®3 to power their forthcoming Mechwarrior Online game,” says Carl Jones, Director of Global Business Development CryENGINE. “2012 will see a new segment in the games industry – as free-to-play games will step up to offer true AAA quality to gamers. Both Piranha and Crytek believe in the potential of this market and we look forward to helping them achieve their vision for an amazing game experience. With our own game, Warface and more than 20 of our current CryENGINE licensees also working on AAA quality, free-to-play games, CryENGINE is becoming the technology of choice for the highest quality online games.”
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Hey! You know how when someone is "seeing things" it's considered a hallucination from a crazy person? Well, I've been seeing things lately. Not just your standard black spots out of the corner of the eye, but big stuff. Falling things, crawling things, totally uncool things. But I don't think they are hallucinations at all. I believe I have just become more in-tune with the world and my surroundings. I believe that there are big falling and crawling things everywhere and that only the chosen ones can see them. That's right bishes, I'm not crazy, I'm just special!
Did you hear that Canada is getting plastic money? Funky.
Here's a trio of "wrong" pics from spongehammer.
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That's right, if you're a hot young game, you're not going to have to show your ID or even slip the bouncer a $20 to get into GoG.com. Traditionally to get into GoG you were going to be three or older, but for 2012-2013 GoG is going to be focusing on attracting newborns. They've lifted the age requirement, and even though they will continue to add the classics, they are taking a foray into big boy town along side Steam and Origin. Their goal is to be the number 2 digital distributor on the internet, and they are looking to sign exclusive content deals to make that happen.
Normally I might scoff at a newbie coming into this market with such a goal laid out, but I think GoG has as good of a chance as you can get. They've been doing great business selling the more mature games for years, they are being realistic about it, and not claiming they are going to take the number 1 spot away from Valve, but the biggest factor in their favor is that they can offer "completely DRM-free games, flat prices everywhere in the world, and extra content and goodies for our fantastic customers."
What do you think? Is GoG going to be a major player with their DRM free games? Or are you still going to go to Steam or Direct To Drive for your downloadable pleasures?
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Torchlight II has been delayed, as detailed by a blog post from Travis Baldree. Travis cites quality and polish concerns as the reason for the delay. They also wanted to do a small beta to help ensure a smooth launch. There's nothing wrong with that, every time I hear a game is delayed for a little extra polish I can't but help think the developers are doing something right. Unless you know, it turns into DNF.In this case it should be very interesting; depending on the length of the delay, it could release even closer to Diablo III than anyone guessed. What say you? $20 Torchlight II, or $60 Diablo III?
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HEROES
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Has anyone played the demo? Sadly, I haven't gotten around to it yet. Good? Bad? Ugly?
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"With $775 million of sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in its first five days, Call of Duty has become the first entertainment property in history to set five-day launch records for three consecutive years across all forms of entertainment," said Robert Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard. "Life-to-date retail sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded $6 billion worldwide, which makes Call of Duty one of the most valuable entertainment properties in the world. We expect continued sales momentum, as reviews and audience enthusiasm suggest that this is the best Call of Duty game that we have ever made. Online play for Modern Warfare 3 is at record levels and we continue to see high online play for both Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which ranked as the #2 and #4 top-played Xbox LIVE games for the week of November 7, according to Major Nelson."
According to Microsoft:
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Console Reviews
Previews
Interviews
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Graphics
Motherboards
Storage
Cases
CPUs
Power Supplies
Cooling
Memory
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You know Splash Damage from Brink, an online multiplayer shooter that saw limited success earlier in the year. But at a time when Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 are going head-to-head, it feels like the product of another age.
After its release there was some cruel chatter that Splash Damage might go the way of Bizarre or Black Rock, split apart after an expensive failure. However, being independent, the company has managed to sign at least one unannounced project for a major entertainment brand. The online multiplayer technology is already in place, and once a collection of well-known characters are laid over the top of an even more polished Brink engine there's going to be a lot of excitement from genre fans.
The game will be based on one of the biggest American pop culture brands of the last 50 years, and there's no doubt Splash Damage can do the licence justice. However, the project's success will depend a great deal on the backing it gets from the media company that owns the IP – a company widely believed to have given up on the console publishing business.
Eurogamer's Robert Purchese postulates that Disney may be the media company "widely believed to have given up on the console publishing business." Furthermore, Disney now owns Marvel, which Purchese thinks qualifies as "one of the biggest American pop culture brands of the last 50 years." This sounds like a reasonable assumption. What else do you all think it could be?
Also, did any of you enjoy Brink? I never got around to playing it.
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A recent Wired interview with director Guillermo del Toro touched on inSane, a videogame that he is working on with THQ and Volition. He also talks a bit about his upcoming giant monster movie Pacific Rim, as well as the many other projects that he's working on. Read on for the bits about inSane and last year's teaser trailer.
Wired.com: Are you still working on inSane, the videogame?Del Toro: Oh yeah! Up until the end of pre-production on Pacific Rim, we were still going up to Chicago, to Champaign, Illinois, to work with the developer. And every week we have a conference [call] where we exchange ideas about the design, the gameplay, about the models. I’m taking it little by little. I think it’s going to be a fun, scary game. It’s a maiden voyage into the medium for me. I’m learning a lot of stuff.
Wired.com: What are you learning in this process?
Del Toro: I came to videogame development with a lot of humility because I didn’t want to come in with the attitude of, “Oh I know how to make movies, therefore I know how to make videogames,” which is a big mistake. I came in trying to learn a new medium because I think it’s going to be very useful for me as a storyteller.
With a videogame, you don’t have to solve one screenplay, you have to solve 20 screenplays, because you are giving the player the illusion of free will. If the character kills another character or destroys a building, the game goes one way; if the character doesn’t, it goes another. It keeps you very nimble.
I think that’s the biggest, and the most fun, lesson I’ve been getting. We’re being really, really nasty in the game. We’re really trying a lot of stuff that I don’t think would even fly in the movies. It’s still two-and-a-half or three years away, though, because videogame development is so long.
Thanks to Blue's News for bringing this to our attention.
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Industry Gamers posted an Interview with Warren Spector, who is probably best known as the Creator of Deus Ex. He’s worked on a lot of other great games as well. For instance, he was a producer of the original System Shock, the director of Thief: Deadly Shadows, and also acted as a producer and writer on a plethora of Ultima and Wing Commander games.
The interview mostly focuses on how the games industry has changed since 1989, when Spector worked on Ultima VI. He talks a bit about how budgets and the number of people working on a game have exploded over the years and how mainstream gaming has become.
WS:
I’m constantly amazed at our influence and cultural credibility. Games are everywhere these days. We’ve become cultural touchstones as compelling as any movie, television show, band or book. If you’d told me twenty years ago that we’d be as influential and ubiquitous as we are, I’d have said you were nuts. That’s pretty cool! As far as disappointments go, I guess I’d have to say that I really am sad that single-player story-based games have reached a level of sophistication that doesn’t embarrass me JUST in time to have MMOs, social and mobile change the game, as it were. Just as we’ve figured some stuff out, it’s become increasingly difficult to make the kinds of games I want to make. That’s a little frustrating. But you can’t argue with the realities of the marketplace, and there are plenty of cool challenges ahead.
However, despite gaming’s mainstream appeal, he doesn’t see games supplanting “television as the central entertainment medium of the 21st century in the way that television supplanted radio and movies in the last century.”
WS: There, I think, the answer is no. The internet, speaking generally, may replace television, but I don’t believe interactive entertainment will ever take the place of linear media. The fact is that games are work. You have to, you know, interact, to make things happen. And as fun and appealing as that is, most people don’t want to work for their entertainment – they want someone ELSE to do the work. It seems inevitable that some interactive elements will spill over into linear media, and it seems likely that delivery systems for linear content will change, but games as games are a different animal, complements to linear media, not replacements for them.
Do you agree with Spector, or do you think gaming will supplant television as the most popular form of entertainment in the 21st century?
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I'd like your opinion on something, you fine folks you. I have been loving Skyrim, enough so that the first weekend alone I played 25 hours of virtual Skyriminian life and got to level 20. I have gone out of my way to avoid cheats, or cheats, or "exploits" but somehow my sneaky archer character still feels like cheats/exploits a bit; I don't even have to fight the majority of the time, I generally just sneak attack from a distance and take 'em down without losing an ounce of hp. I have to admit there are some annoying glitches I've run into. Try this: own a horse, fast travel to Bards Leap Summit. It's OK though because some of the other glitches even it out for me.
So here is what I need your opinion on: I already can't wait for the next Elder Scrolls game. Do I have a sickness?
Also, I can't believe there are already over 100 mods out for Skyrim! You can be sure I'll be keeping a keen eye on what looks good, and probably do a nice mod roundup in the not too distant future. In the meantime here is a handy dandy mod that lets you get a better view of the world, Google maps style. Happy post-Wednesday. I haven't had much time to play Skyrim this week, but soon another 20 levels shall come to pass!
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