It’s mega, man: Might No. 9 footage shows colourful boss battles
While Mega Man may be sat chained up in Capcom’s basement, running about in a hamster wheel that powers the lights in the marketing department, Koji Imaeda is hard at work on his spiritual successor to the series, Mighty No. 9.
The Kickstarter ended in October, 2013 and we’re starting to see some footage of the platformer in action.
Steam scored more than 8m concurrent users over the weekend
I don’t know about you but I didn’t have 8 million people come over to my house and play games. Valve did.
As this year’s Summer Sale drew to a close Steam broke a new milestone, having 8 million concurrent players. That’s a stupendous number.
Age of Empires designers: “We used to get letters from schools”
When Ensemble shut its doors in 2009 it largely ended the life of the studio’s biggest franchise, Age of Empires. I recently spoke to some of the series’ key developers, now making Orcs Must Die Unchained, about the series, its Extended Edition afterlife, and the love their fans had for the game.
“I had two kids come in and start crying in the interview because their whole lives was Age of Empires. They were 18,” Jerome K. Jones recalls. “They got so emotional. Everything they could remember about being young was Age of Empires, it was bizarre.
“There’s a lot of Age fans out there.”
Not least the schools.
Wildstar video details new content coming in Strain Ultradrop update
Wildstar’s not even a month old - Heck, Nick’s not even finished reviewing it yet - and Carbine are releasing it’s first big update for their MMO: the Strain Ultradrop.
We garnered a few details about the update from the original trailer but we’ve learned a lot more from the new Devspeak video.
Rust update lets you dress up other players when they aren't looking
Another update hit Rust’s experimental branch at the start of the weekend. The new HTML UI is just getting some final touches, models are starting to look and move more like humans and less like monstrous automatons with skin grafts and new biomes, caves and tools have made their way in.
None of that holds a candle to the ability to rob and dress-up other players.
GameSpy fallout: Arma 2 Steam matchmaking now live
Arma 3 might be the new hotness, but that doesn’t mean Bohemia Interactive has forgotten about Arma 2. It provides a bunch of fixes and engine optimisation, but the main focus of the patch is the migration from GameSpy to Steam.
With GameSpy closing its doors, Arma 2 was one of the titles affected, relying on the platform for multiplayer matchmaking. But Bohemia Interactive have made the shift to Steam, and it’s fixing every version of the game.
If at first you don't succeed: Mike Wilson on five years of Devolver, and a lifetime of publishing struggles
Devolver Digital just celebrated its fifth anniversary. In its short life, it’s arguably become the most famous indie game publishing label around, with smash hits like Dennaton’s Hotline Miami and Croteam’s Serious Sam: BFE to their credit, along with well-received darlings like Luftrausers, from Vlambeer.
But while Devolver is a young company, it’s actually the latest chapter in a long saga for longtime business partners and friends Mike Wilson, Harry Miller, and Rick Stults. It’s the “third time is the charm” company for the two men, who have been struggling to create a creators-first publisher since the late 1990s. With Devolver, they finally seem to have hit on something small, successful, and sustainable.
But first they had to fail. A lot. And in public.
Divinity: Original Sin launched today, and I've been talking to cocks and setting the world on fire
After a slight delay, Divinity: Original Sin has now left Early Access and has officially launched. After not touching Larian’s tongue-in-cheek fantasy RPG since the days of alpha, I dived in the moment it left the land of pre-release behind.
Since the review is a wee bit away, here’s some of what I’ve been getting up to as I take my first steps on the well-worn path of adventure.
Goat Simulator's upcoming retail edition is motivated by comedy
With PC retail coughing up its lungs, only kept alive by life support, it is rather peculiar to see Coffee Stain’s joke prototype turned commercial game, Goat Simulator, get a retail release. But it’s happening, though only in North America.
It’s being brought to stores next month after Dead Island and Metro publisher Deep Silver acquired distribution rights.
Nuclear family: manage and protect a post-apocalyptic household in Sheltered
Surviving the end of the world, in a game, usually means there’s a combat-heavy journey ahead of you across irradiated wastes. Not so in Sheltered, Unicube’s management sim. The survivors in question are a family, and they are already safe (relatively) in their underground shelter.
This is a game about keeping them that way.
Wind of Change: SOE adding weather to H1Z1 and PlanetSide 2
Auraxis, the location of PlanetSide 2’s global war, is a large, diverse globe - expanding still with the introduction of a new continent, Hossin. But it’s one where the weather never changes, unless you count drop pods raining down from above as a weather phenomenon.
Weather effects have been teased by SOE since before launch, and it’s one of the things the team’s been wanting to add for a long time. Amid all the new content, it’s still not been forgotten, as CEO John Smedley revealed on Twitter earlier this evening.
Jungling in the moonlight: Dota 2 gets weather and live rewind in post-Compendium update
When is an infinitely-large pot full? When it’s 10 million dollars deep, apparently. Valve have declared the Dota 2 International prize pool to be ‘overflowing’, and implemented some of its stretch rewards in-game.
Levine talks BioShock Infinite's violence: "I wouldn't have known how to make a Mario"
One imagines Ken Levine has had more time than usual for reflection lately - on his former company, Irrational, and career in PC games. Easing that process along are journalists, who keep asking him reflective questions: namely about the skyhook-to-the-head violence on show in BioShock Infinite.
By way of an answer, Levine makes an astute point: while Infinite isn’t especially more violent than its predecessors, the debate about violence in games has matured like good cheese since the Shock games were first conceived.
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