Well it's been 2 days without power and we lost the part of the roof above my room (strangely enough just that bit...) but the PC news keeps coming.
Call the midwife: Chaos Reborn has been successfully Kickstarted, and then some
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About a week ago, Julian Gollop told us that Kickstarter success for the game he’d already spent a year working on “may or may not happen”.
“It’s too close to call,” he fretted, citing Chaos’ “strange” online systems as a hard sell. And we found ourselves telling gaming’s most-respected strategy designer not to worry - that the mid-campaign slump had become tradition, and would be followed by a triumphant last minute spiral upwards.
We were right: enough people were so emotionally invested in the idea of Chaos Reborn that they felt compelled to make up the difference in financial investment. More than enough, actually.
Wildstar reveals Warplots: giant battlestations to ride into 40 vs 40 PvP fights
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Wildstar's genuinely becoming one of the most interesting MMOs in play right now, adorning itself in all manner of weird and original modes and features on a regular basis. Most recently Carbine added Adventures, granting players access to a magical holodeck wonderland of limitless potential. Now they've announced Warplots, which isn't about warping lots, but huge mobile battlestations you can ride into 40 vs 40 PvP fights. Look at the video, it's certainly something.
War of the Vikings leaves Early Access and lands on our shores
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Don’t mind all of these armed, hirsute men jumping off their longships, screaming obscenities at you. They’re only vikings, and they are very friendly in a murderous, pillaging sort of way. No doubt they just want to celebrate the launch of War of the Vikings, which left Early Access yesterday.
It’s like it’s multiplayer close-quarters combat cousin, War of the Roses, but better in so many ways, and not just because of all those glorious beards. Take a look at what Rob made of the bloody battles when he, Tim and I swung our axes around at the Paradox Convention in January.
Final Fantasy XIV boasts 2 million registered accounts, causing moogle habitats to shrink
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Some people have been playing Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. 2 million of them, according to Square Enix.
This isn’t 2 million active players, instead counting every registered account worldwide. That’s still 2 million copies sold, however, since Square Enix’s MMO is one of the few subscription based MMOs left.
George, meet George: Broken Sword 5's two halves are united
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Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse is united today. The Kickstarted adventure game was unceremoniously carved in two with a rusty blade, leaving the adventure only half complete when people played last year.
But the two halves are back together, now that part two is becoming a tangible, playable thing today.
World of Tanks 9.0 throws players back in time with a Historical Battles mode
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World of Tanks’ 9.0 update, New Frontiers, kicks off the heavy metal game’s promised big changes. It’s been shot out of a turret and into the game today.
It brings with it the Historical Battles mode, reworked maps, HD tank textures and improved physics, which is rather a lot of stuff to throw into a single update.
Vlambeer is selling Nuclear Throne via Twitch and thinks you should buy it there
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Luftrausers developer, Vlambeer is selling its latest title, Nuclear Throne, through Twitch as well as through more conventional distributors. This is a first on Twitch, but it’s not a sign that the broadcaster is moving into retail territory. It’s Vlambeer that’s selling the game, not Twitch.
DRM still needs to exist, says Square Enix exec - but shouldn't "interfere" with games
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At some point in the last two or three decades, DRM became a dirty acronym - like FMV, or GCSE. Yet still the concept persists. The major publishers now tie bespoke online activation systems to their storefronts. And for good reasons, insists Square Enix business man Adam Sullivan.
What are those reasons? “Profit”, first and foremost - but also data privacy, account sharing and hacking.
The great Guild Wars 2 gear merger - or the way PvP works now
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ArenaNet have always made a thing of letting you reach the upper levels of Guild Wars your own way - whether that be through questing, World vs World, PvP, or pulling root vegetables out of the earth on the outskirts of Lion’s Arch.
But they haven’t always been so good at letting you swap paths midway through. PvP gear has been nothing but heavy junk in PvE, for instance, and vice versa.
Until now. As our Fraser mentioned in his Guild Wars 2 April Feature Pack preview, the arbitrary division of equipment has come to an end. Here’s how that’s going to work.
Get your Airfix fix: Gaijin kit out War Thunder with user-generated content toolset
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Nobody knows precisely the means by which a user generates content. Perhaps they secrete it as a fine paste through their pores; maybe it rises suddenly in their throat, and is hurled violently onto the living room carpet. But one thing’s for sure: them users can’t stop generating that content.
Gaijin Entertainment are the latest to extend a bucket beneath the user to catch the nutritious content as it falls from them - with a new plane-building toolset for wildly popular dogfighting sim War Thunder.
Anti-Centauri: let a panel of Firaxis designers explain Civilization: Beyond Earth
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Civilization: Beyond Earth is not Alpha Centuari. Sorry: it’s just not. If that’s what you’re after, you can be disappointed more cheaply with a children’s book named Alf the Centaur.
What it is, though, is worth your time - not Alpha Centauri’s ideological tussle to the death, but a space venture with the same relentlessly optimistic vibe as the very first Civ.
Here’s a panel of Firaxis types ready to explain all that.
Riot have deployed "more human-like" bots in League of Legends - but they still can't jungle
17 April 2014 • 1 day 13 hours ago •
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League of Legends players asked Riot for “more human” bots - and rather than ask the necessary questions about AI or read some alarmist fiction about the nature of sentience, the developers just went ahead and built a fleet of them.
Why Heroes of the Storm is the MOBA Blizzard always wanted to play
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Playing Heroes of the Storm at PAX, it doesn’t feel like any other MOBA I’ve ever played. For one thing, I’m actually winning.
For another, it just feels less like something derived from an RTS and more like something I’d expect to play on an arcade cabinet somewhere back in the 1980s, or on a console in a friend’s basement in the late 90s. It’s Blizzard’s Smash Brothers, their Gauntlet and it’s a fresh take on the MOBA that steps out Dota’s long, long shadow.
Swedish politicians compete in StarCraft tournament to "remind youth that votes matter"
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Swedish politicians fought last weekend in a StarCraft 2 tournament which pitted ideology against ideology. Pirate Party affiliate Jonathan Rieder Lundkvist organised the event to “show the politicians eSports is a thing, and to remind the youth that their votes matter.”
New phishing scam puts your beloved Steam trading cards at risk
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A new phishing scam has found a way around Steam Guard, Valve has admitted. Steam Guard requires a code sent to the Steam users registered email address before it lets users on unrecognised devices access the platform.
This scam bypasses the security completely and Steam have been warning people not to send their SSFN files to anyone, as this is what the cheeky perpetrators have been using to access users’ libraries.
One man and his dog: Risen 3 trailer is dark and reveals an August release date
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Risen 3: Titan Lords is doing away with pirates and tropical islands and developer Piranha Bytes is going back to its roots, apparently. No hand-holding and really big, nasty threats, like the titular Titans. They’ve chucked up the first trailer, so maybe we’ll see some of these titanic foes.
“What you see will be dark and comes straight out of a very black place,” The PR says before I clicked play on the video. Sounds ominous, but it isn’t. It literally means that the trailer is very dark and hard to see.
The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot gets a bit more free for the weekend
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The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, Ubisoft’s fort-building and loot-stealing F2P fantasy game, doesn’t sound very free. Not if it takes a special event for players to get to try out all but one of the game’s heroes. And that event kicks off today until April 22nd, unlocking all but the Runaway for every player.
At least you get to keep the first hero you try out after the event ends.
Sagas for everyone: Stoic and King settle trademark dispute
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The saga of King vs. Stoic is finally over, The Banner Saga developer announced on its website recently. The dispute kicked off over January, when Candy Crush Saga developer King filed a notice of opposition against Stoic when it tried to trademark The Banner Saga. King cited “confusion in the marketplace” as the reason.
Vrooming noises in new Grid game confirmed in teaser trailer
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Vroooom. Vroooom. What’s that sound? Could it be a car!? No, sorry, it’s just a brief teaser trailer Codemasters' just released for Grid, very possibly Grid 3.
Presumably racing will be involved. If all the engine noises weren’t a give away, the “racing is coming” tagline certainly is.
Alien: Isolation has one claw firmly stuck in 1979
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There sure have been a lot of these Alien: Isolation dev diaries. Undoubtedly a good thing though, creating transparency that Colonial Marines utterly lacked. This new one continues the theme of authenticity that’s obviously key to the approach Creative Assembly have taken - making the sci-fi elements feel like they were designed in the ‘70s.
“This isn’t a world of holograms and touchscreens; there’s no sense here that technology is going to save you,” said creative lead Alistair Hope. It certainly looks a lot like Ridley Scott’s original vision. Big ol’ CRT monitors, distortion on screens, thick analog buttons - it’s all been designed with what the original filmmakers had access to 30 odd years ago in mind.
Blocky shooter Minimum leaves purgatory after being rescued by Atari
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Blocky, minimalistic shooter, Minimum has been pulled out of Section 8 developer TimeGate’s bankruptcy proceedings, with help from Atari who have handed it over to Human Head.
TimeGate announced it just before the studio went bankrupt, and it looks like ex-Prey 2 developer Human Head has kept it pretty similar. Take a gander at the trailer below.
Cortex Command updated with Steam Workshop, squad controls, and smarter AI
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Cortex Command’s cogs don’t fit together, it’s leaking oil, and its motherboard is chipped. Data Realms, the game’s developer, knows this. When they first released the game on Steam, 18 months ago, there was no Early Access system in place, so they released the game saying it was version 1.0 and they’d just continue updating the game as they had in the years of development beforehand.
It’s taken 18 months for the first major update to be released but it should end a lot of grievances players have with the strategy game.
Attack of the Artifacts heralds a "more monstery" Card Hunter - flush with angry antiques and tournament tactics
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Card Hunter was and is an X-Commy tactics game and committed CCG that didn't quite make the dent it might've if it'd had, say, Ken Levine at its head rather than lesser-known Irrational co-founder Jon Chey.
But if anything can bring new players to the board, it's imminent expansion Attack of the Artifacts - in which scheming, sentient antiques are coupled with an intriguing tournament system.
JetGetters' Kickstarter cancelled as developer finds investor
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The games industry moves faster than a speeding bullet sometimes: tinyBuild launched JetGetters’ Kickstarter, received its needed $50,000, and cancelled it all before we wrote a post about it.*
They've decided to cancel because, despite having the necessary funding from fans, tinyBuild have decided to partner with an investor “to assist tinyBuild in expanding our development and publishing efforts.”
JetGetters is still due for release but it’s just going to take a little bit longer than first expected.
Elder Scrolls Online duping bug is wrecking game economy. Zenimax shut down guild bank
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Zenimax have been forced to shut down the Elder Scrolls Online’s guild bank after a duplication bug allowed players to flood the game’s economy with billions of ill gotten gold. The bug, which has been present in the game since beta, has resulted in players having easy access to rare materials, legendary equipment, and stacks of in-game cash.
While Zenimax have just now started to work on preventing further duplication they’ve said nothing of how they will fix the ESO’s economy which, at this point, is wholly unbalanced.
None like it hot: How heat’s your worst enemy in Elite: Dangerous
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We’ve known from early on its development that heat would play a big part in Elite: Dangerous. Sensors in Elite detect heat, it’s how you find ships in the cold vacuum of space, and everything on your ship seems to create it - weapons, engines, coffee dispenser.
Frontier are just now bringing it to the fore in Elite’s alpha, though. They’re implementing some really canny mechanics that you dogfighters will love.
Starbound updates slowed while team moved to UK
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You might have noticed that Starbound’s updates have slowed of late. The Early Access game started with daily releases adding new biomes, items, and features but in the past month that slowed to a trickle.
“The reason is two fold and it certainly has nothing to do with us taking the money and running,” explains the game’s creator, Finn Brice.
This way lies madness: Gaslamp Games and Clockwork Empires
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“I actually had a dream about Peter Molyneux while I was here,” Gaslamp Games’ Nicholas Vining told me on the last day of GDC, launching into an impression of the famed / notorious British developer. “He showed up in my dream and he’s like, ‘Nicholas, I have something for you.’ So he opened his hand and there was this apple. ‘Take this apple. Bury it deep within the fertile soil. It will reveal to you all the secrets of game development.’
“And then I woke up. I didn’t learn the secret of game development from Peter Molyneux.” Vining paused sadly. “This brings us to Clockwork Empires.”
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