id Software Employee: “We’ve been losing top-notch talent ever since the Zenimax purchase”
Polygon today revealed that Zenimax has – once again – filed a lawsuit against Oculus. Zenimax believes that Oculus is wrongfully benefiting from years and millions of dollars worth of ZeniMax research and blah blah blah. What really caught our attention, though, was a comment from a current id Software about the state of the company after Carmack’s departure and the well-known Zenimax purchase. Continue reading
Interstellar Marines – New Update Introduces New Game Mode Plus New Weapon
Zero Point Software today released the latest update to their Steam Early Access sci-fi FPS, Interstellar Marines. According to the press release, the top features for the new update are a brand new game mode called Deadlock, and the introduction of the first new weapon in Interstellar Marines. Continue reading
World of Warplanes – Gameplay Guide Episode 6 – Flight School
Wargaming today unveiled a brand new tutorial video for the flight action MMO World of Warplanes. As part of the Flight Academy video series, the guide provides players with helpful tips and strategies to effectively fly ground attack aircraft, discusses superiority in battles and concealment tactics. Continue reading
World of Speed – New Screenshots Show London Stage For Slightly Mad Studios’ Upcoming Free Racer
Slightly Mad Studios has released a new set of screenshots for its upcoming free racer, World of Speed. According to the company, World of Speed won’t rely on free-to-play mechanics, meaning that there won’t be walls into this game that require people to pay money to get over. World of Speed looks great for a F2P title, and comes real close to Project CARS’ visuals. Enjoy! Continue reading
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Gets New Screenshots + Story Trailer
Warner Bros and Monolith today released a new trailer and some new screenshots for Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Also, Warner Bros announced the acclaimed game talent and musical composer behind Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor who is no other than Garry Schyman (the man behind Bioshock: Infinite’s soundtrack). In addition, the game’s story is written by Christian Cantamessa (Red Dead Redemption), and will be set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Last but not least, many of gaming’s best actors will lend their voices, including Troy Baker and Nolan North. Enjoy! Continue reading
Evolve Releases This October, Gets New Screenshots
2K Games announced today that Evolve will be released on October 21st and in order to celebrate it, the publisher has released a new batch of screenshots. Evolve is being developed by Turtle Rock Studios – the team behind Left 4 Dead – and is powered by Crytek’s CRYENGINE. The game aims to be as addictive as L4D was, though we have to wonder whether Turtle Rock Studios will be able to offer something unique or will this new MP-only game turn into another Titanfall? Enjoy! Continue reading
Murdered: Soul Suspect – 101 Trailer
Square Enix has released a new trailer for its upcoming supernatural detective thriller, Murdered: Soul Suspect. In this game, players take the role of Ronan O’Connor, a detective with the Salem police that has been killed a masked murderer. Players will have to combine their investigative skills with powerful supernatural abilities to uncover the shocking link between their own death and a series of killings in Salem. Murdered: Soul Suspect releases on June 3rd. Enjoy! Continue reading
Metro Redux Announced – Coming This Summer On PC, PS4 & Xbox One
4A Games and Deep Silver have officially announced Metro Redux. Metro Redux features fully re-mastered and improved versions of both METRO 2033 and METRO: LAST LIGHT, creating the most compelling Metro experience ever. This package is scheduled for a Summer release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and you can view its announcement trailer below! Continue reading
SpectraGI – Advanced Real Time Global Illumination Plugin For Unity – Showcased
LIVENDA has released a video, showing its advanced real-time Global Illumination plugin for Unity Engine called SpectraGI. SpectraGI promises to offer high quality global illumination effects, as well as dynamic path tracing. According to the studio, this solution has zero performance impact at 20 bounces, and will work in all platforms (DX9, DX11 and OpenGL). It looks promising, so go ahead and take a look! Continue reading
Watch_Dogs – Launch Trailer Released
Ubisoft has released the launch trailer for Watch_Dogs. Watch_Dogs releases on May 27th and uses a new engine developed by the French company (called Disrupt). The game requires a quad-core CPU and despite its minimum requirements, it will run on systems with only 4GB RAM. Enjoy and stay tuned for more! Continue reading
The Wolf Among Us: Episode Four – ‘In Sheep’s Clothing’ Releases Next Week
Telltale Games announced today that the fourth episode of ‘The Wolf Among Us,’ ‘In Sheep’s Clothing,’ will be available starting Tuesday, May 27th on PC/Mac as part of a season pass for $24.99 USD on the Telltale Online Store, Steam and other digital distribution services. In order to celebrate it, Telltale has released a trailer for this new episode of ‘The Wolf Among Us’ that can be viewed below. Enjoy! Continue reading
Among The Sleep Releases May 29th, Gets Launch Trailer
Krillbite Studio has released the launch trailer for Among The Sleep and announced that this new first person horror adventure title will be released on May 29th. Among the Sleep explores horror through atmosphere and exploration, not with scores and combat systems. The game will come with support for Oculus Rift and is powered by the Unity engine. Enjoy! Continue reading
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II – Now Available On Steam
Neocore Games announced today that The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II is now available on Steam and in order to celebrate it, the studio has released a launch trailer for it. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II is an action RPG that features three playable classes, an extended Tower defense mini-game, resistance management, a Rage system, as well as runecrafting and MP for up to 8 players. Enjoy! Continue reading
Wolfenstein: The New Order – New Tweaks Discovered – Properly Adjust FOV, Completely Disable DOF
These past days, our reader ‘Dirty Dan’ has provided us with a number of tweaks via which PC gamers can properly adjust the game’s FOV (including arms and weapons), completely disable Depth Of Field, as well as forcing the game to use more than three or four CPU cores (though there might not be any performance gain with that tweak as you’re simply brutally forcing things). Continue reading
Here Are The Graphics Options For The PC Version Of Watch_Dogs
Our reader ‘Inhuman0′ has informed us about the graphics options that are being supported by the PC version of Watch_Dogs. While the image is from a French copy, we went ahead and translated those settings for you. So, PC gamers will have access to Overall Quality, Level of Detail, Shadows, Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, Motion Blur, Depth of Field, Water Quality and Shaders quality. Enjoy the graphics settings image after the jump. Continue reading
Back to terra with a thump: Blizzard sue "insidious and harmful" StarCraft 2 cheat devs
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Blizzard make a point of fortifying all of their games on battle.net, keeping them online even when they don’t necessarily need to be. That seems to make life tricky for would-be hackers, who for the most part are kept at bay by the developer’s server walls.
It turns out they’re the lucky ones. The hackers that do slip through, who manage to sell software that throws the competitive founding of games like StarCraft 2 into disarray - they’re the ones Blizzard take to court.
Elite: Dangerous cruises into Premium Beta as Braben shows off a gas giant
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Elite: Dangerous has now finished its run of Alpha releases, a set of four milestone early versions of the game made available to the most generous Kickstarter backers. It's about to phase into its Premium Beta stage, throwing open its doors to the next tier of backers and chucking them the keys to their first Sidewinder. Development is rocketing forwards at remarkable clip, with new ships, interstellar exploration, interplanetary supercruising and a full trade-fight-upgrade gameplay loop already implemented.
Frontier head David Braben is understandably pleased with how things are going so far. Here's his latest progress report, which includes a look at the highly sought after Anaconda ship, a big old craft that can barely squeeze its heft through a docking port. Also look out for the impressive rocky rings around Braben's gas giant, of which he's especially proud.
Zenimax sue Oculus VR over trade secrets that turned Rift from prototype to "viable product"
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Less than a month ago, Zenimax publically claimed that John Carmack took VR tech with him when he left id for the Rift manufacturers. This is the legal consequence of Oculus’ incredulous response - a full blown lawsuit, in which the VR manufacturer and founder Palmer Luckey stand accused of misappropriating trade secrets.
Before Zenimax, reads the suit, Luckey was just a “college-aged video game enthusiast” with a “crude prototype”.
Diablo III's birthday buff proved so popular that Blizzard are keeping it
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It turns out Diablo III is one of those insufferable types who insists everybody celebrate their “birthday week”. But it at least had the decency to put a buff behind the bar - double Rift Fragments for all, and an 100% boost to our chance of finding Legendary items.
Once the knees-up began last Thursday, however, it became clear there was a problem - players much preferred this version of the game, with its unending stream of lovely new gear. And so Blizzard have decided to keep it that way.
There’s going to be a Warhammer 40k FPS named Space Hulk: Deathwing
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Space Hulk is a board game about combat in cramped quarters, in which short missions are cut shorter when chitin appendages inevitably find a gap in your squad’s terminator armour.
What it’s not is an FPS. And yet here is Space Hulk: Deathwing, an Unreal Engine 4 shooter about leading a squad of bulky spacemen into battle with genestealers aboard a mangled mass of asteroids and rotting spaceships.
Introducing Hazard Ops: the third-person shooter's best shot at silly, from an ex-Epic Games studio
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TPS, PvE, PvP and WTF. Nobody enjoys a three-letter acronym better than an MMO publisher like Infernum - and the way they describe it, Hazard Ops is full of them. This third-person shooter collects together practically every mode the genre has ever known.
There’s more to it than that, though. With a little unpacking, it becomes clear why the Germans who bankrolled Dragon’s Prophet are interested in this self-consciously silly Shanghai import.
Built by a studio formerly known as Epic Games China, Hazard Ops wants to be your go-to Steam game to play with friends - a cutscene-light, intensely cooperative alternative to raid night.
Is this Wembley? Riot are bringing the European LCS to London's Olympic venue
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Usually when a major eSports event is announced, I’ll need to head to Wikipedia to find out what the venue’s normally used for. Not this time: London’s Wembley Arena hosted bits of the 2012 Olympics, which you probably watched, and the 1948 Olympics, which you probably didn’t.
In the years between it’s hosted inaudible gigs from The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones - and will now play temporary home to the League of Legends Championship Series for week five of its EU summer split.
Total Yaaar: Rome 2 gets a swashbuckling culture pack
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Total War: Rome 2 is getting smacked with some culture with the Pirates and Raiders DLC. Creative Assembly is tossing the new, Ardiaei, Odrysian Kingdom and Tylis factions, all part of the new Balkan culture group. These guys are the first playable Thracian and Dacian factions in Rome 2 and come with their own specialisations.
They’ll crop up as mercenaries, too, so you don’t need to play as one of these factions to send their warriors into battle, though you would miss out on their cultural traits. The pack is due out soon, priced at £5.99.
Splash Damage's Extraction once again renamed, becoming Dirty Bomb for the second time
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Splash Damage, developers of Brink, can’t seem to make their mind up about the name of their latest game, the F2P shooter, Dirty Bomb. It was called Dirty Bomb, but last year Splash Damage decided to rename it Extraction. This also happened to be the first thing they wanted to call it before settling on Dirty Bomb. And now it’s back to Dirty Bomb again. Yes, it's confusing.
This will ”almost definitely” be the last name change, they say. Apparently this has been done to “better fit the game’s unique personality,” says the developer.
Hearthstone World Championship prize pool will be enough to buy all the decks and then some
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Gosh, it’s a competitive world out there. We’ve got the Dota 2 International qualifiers going on right now, and soon the Hearthstone World Championship American Qualifier Tournament will be kicking off, with warriors, mages, paladins and the rest all duking it out for a spot in the finals at BlizzCon later this year. It’s all very stressful.
Blizzard has just announced the prize pool for the championship, which amounts to $250,000. That’s rather a lot of money, even if it’s not quite as gigantic as some esports pools. The winner of the competition will receive $100,000 of it. That’s enough money to buy a lot of decks.
Spiderweb's Jeff Vogel: "The indie bubble is popping"
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Jeff Vogel, creator of a mountain of indie RPGs such as Avadon and Geneforge, warns that the indie bubble is primed to burst. “I've been threatening to write about the popping of the Indie bubble for some time,” Vogel says on his blog. “Everything has finally started to come together. It's a miserable thing to have to talk about, but the conversation is long overdue.”
It’s a bit gloomy, but he’s not just spouting doom. He does reckon that the current model is unsustainable, though, and that a shakeout is due.
X Rebirth sees huge feature overhaul in 2.0 update
Troubled space sim X Rebirth is plotting a course for a star system where second chances might be possible. A buggy game at its fall launch, the latest entry in the X universe didn't impress when we reviewed it in February. But with the release of a massive, 2.0 feature update this week, Egosoft's space adventure might have found a better heading for itself.
Be a creepy robot in The Fall, first episode on Steam this month
Sentient robots really need to rethink their public relations strategy. The mainstream media will have you believe that they’re all T-800s, IG-88s, chrome skulls, and glowing red eyes, but as Metroid-inspired indie game The Fall proves, not all killer robots are evil. They’re all pretty creepy still, but some of them kill on our behalf.
Always Sometimes Monsters launch trailer teases love, loss and adult behaviour
What happened to our pixels? They used to be innocent and carefree; playing cheerfully amid the parallax landscapes of simple geometry. And yes, occasionally they'd have to fireball a reptile or bash in a robot bee, but that was a small price to pay. Now look at them, cavorting, pining, and huffing god knows what from a rudimentary bong. Always Sometimes Monsters is corrupting our pixels! Ban this sick launch trailer, etc.
Venisse: Hegemony Rome – The Rise Of Caeasar
By Adam Smith on May 22nd, 2014 at 12:00 pm.
I’ve been waiting for Hegemony Rome for a long time. Longbow’s previous Hegemony game has endured long in the memory, even if I haven’t played it for years now. Boasting an enormous map with seamless zooming from a broad imperial view to the details of the battlefield, it’s the kind of RTS that I can get behind. The grand scale means that decisions rarely have to be made quickly and you won’t need the world’s fastest fingers to succeed – expect to plan around seasons rather than split seconds. When battle is joined, however, the pace and your pulse may quicken if you’re a map-happy sort of person like myself.
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