Riot rejig League of Legends champion Twitch: they've had their sights set on him "for years"
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Riot have updated a champion left untouched for five years. In that time, League of Legends has become a stadium-filling eSport - and we’ve come to expect something entirely different from a ‘Twitch update’. Today, though, we’re not talking streaming channels, but a plague rat reconfigured to define the smell of “contemporary pestilence”.
Lone Star Clash 3 wafts $35,000 prize pool for StarCraft 2 and League of Legends invitationals
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Lone Star Clash is a deeply Texan gaming event - one which crowns its winners with cowboy hats and fills its quiet moments with chicken wing eating contests.
Started up in 2011 by a group of Austin students, the Clash has since become known for its decidedly non-amateur production values and prize pool. This summer, it promises a piece of $35,000 for top players in League of Legends and StarCraft 2 - including first invitee Choi 'Polt' Hun.
Why EverQuest's dev director thinks we should want all MMOs to be free-to-play
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The imminent release of The Elder Scrolls Online - not to mention Wildstar, that other, underdog hope for the post-WoW MMO - has dredged up that argument for the ages (and ages, and ages): will free-to-play really replace the subscription?
EverQuest development director David Georgeson has helped shift his series over to the former, but won’t speak ill of the subscription model. Instead, he’ll tell us why he thinks free-to-play is better for players.
Too many mandibles: Infinity Ward preview Ghosts Devastation DLC's new Extinction map
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May Day gets a bad rap: once the pole-rappelling celebration of Springtime, it’s now associated with nautical distress and, here, the swarming of a research ship in the South Pacific ocean by angular aliens with saliva so nasty as to suggest glandular meltdown.
That’s thanks to Call of Duty: Ghosts’ Devastation DLC - and specifically Mayday, the second episode in their series of nest-bothering Extinction mode maps.
What you sow: Diablo III: Reaper of Souls sells 2.7 million copies in first week
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Blizzard took a risk with Diablo III’s first ever expansion: they separated Loot 2.0 out into a free update, and let Reaper of Souls stand by itself. And it worked: a new campaign, Crusader class and adventure mode proved enough meat to pull in current and relapsed players alike, to the tune of 1.5 million thwarted Malthaels - and 2.7 million copies in the first week.
that is a steep drop off from 12 million
Age of Wonders 3's first patch is about to be cast and Triumph promises DLC and expansions
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Age of Wonders III launched a few days ago, and I liked it quite a bit. It feeds my need for aggressive 4X games and raising armies of fundamentalist goblins. Triumph Studios are already preparing to roll out the first patch, and it’s set to be the first update of many, the developer says.
“We’ve spent 39 months developing Age of Wonders III, and we’re planning on supporting the game for a long period of time. We’ll release patches, free new features and dlc/expansion packs and we’re looking forward to implementing lots of feedback from the community.”
Hands on with Child of Light
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Child of Light is a side-scrolling RPG from a talented team of people that includes two of the men who helped create Far Cry 3. In it you play Aurora, the spirit of an Austrian princess trapped inside (something like) the memory of a dream of an afterlife of a whisper of a cloud. Child of Light is very lovely, a soothing soundscape of gentle piano tinkling and drawn out string quartets set against a hand-drawn and pastel coloured backdrop.
You're on a quest to retrieve the sun and the moon and the stars. You can fly, everybody speaks in rhyming couplets, your best friend is a teardrop and you collect forgotten wishes. The only way Child of Light could be any more ethereal is if it appeared hovering at the foot of your bed.
Divinity: Original Sin enters beta, adds witches, possibly cackling, and 400 improvements
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Divinity: Original Sin has just moved into beta. That means there’s a bounty of new things to play with, from proper character customisation to a plethora of new skills, even a brand-spanking new skill tree: witchcraft. Will players have to lug around cauldrons and practice cackling? Maybe.
Larian boasts that it’s added a not insignificant 400 improvements to the game. The studio’s put together a video to show some of them off, so direct your eyes below.
Jagged Alliance: Flashback enters alpha, with Steam Early Access hot on its heels
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It’s been almost a year since Space Hulk developer Full Control successfully Kickstarted a faithful sequel to the Jagged Alliance tactics series. Since then, Space Hulk was released, and it wasn’t great, but here’s hoping that this particular resurrection fairs betters. Backers will find out soon enough, as Jagged Alliance: Flashback enters closed alpha.
Flashback will also be hitting Steam Early Access soon, in Q2. The Danish studio wants to reset the franchise, bringing it back to its roots, unlike 2010’s uneven Back in Action reboot.
Star Conflict gets Oculus Rift support, chucking your eyeballs into space
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Star Conflict, the free-to-play space combat MMO, just got a big update. If you’ve already got your hands on an Oculus Rift, you’ll be able to flit around the stars, getting in high speed chases, all without the distractions of the real world.
Gaijin Entertainment and Star Gem Inc. have also added Linux support on top of the Oculus Rift update, which means it now supports Windows, Mac and Linux.
Anomaly Defenders turns the series on its head, with aliens protecting their home from villainous humans
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11 bit has announced the next game in the Anomaly series: Anomaly Defenders. No more will you play as the desperate human defenders of Earth, fighting off a hostile alien invasion.
In Anomaly Defenders, the tables have turned, with the humans invading the alien homeworld to put an end to the conflict once and for all. And this time, players will be commanding the alien forces. 11 bit is calling it a “reverse tower offence” game, which basically just means it’s a tower defence game instead of Anomaly’s usual brand of tower offence.
Taking sides: 2D multiplayer shooter Warside pits future-men against each other in a resource war
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At times, my spatial awareness is not on top form. Maybe I’ve had a long day, or I’ve run out of whisky, or some other very good reason. It’s at times like these that I prefer my shooting to take place in a 2D space. So Warside might be right up my alley.
It’s multiplayer 2(.5)D sci-fi shooter with little chaps - who happen to be an elite squad of soldiers - peppering the screen with brightly-coloured laser fire. There’s flying and big, glowing shields and people dying all over the place. All that good stuff.
Twitch announces Group Chat, a way for you to create secret clubs and avoid the unwashed masses
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Chatting with thousands of people can get a bit messy. Words appear and disappear in seconds; deep, thoughtful conversations on Starcraft 2 Terran strategies get interupted by memes; and there was Twitch Plays Pokemon.
Now Twitch has announced Group Chat, where broadcasters can create invite-only chat channels separate from the main chat feed.
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