League of Legends patch 4.13 will improve match loading speeds by 10-30%
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While Valve take a moment to roll about in the success of the 2014 Dota 2 International, Riot Games are feverishly chopping and changing ahead of the League of Legends World Championships. Patch 4.13 cuts wide, not deep: its remit is absolutely everything.
“We’re ramping up our efforts to promote more diversity in competitive play,” write the developers. “Boy are you going to hear this a lot.”
Hitmaker: here's Homeland's Rupert Friend as Agent 47 in the new Hitman movie
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Did you hear? Carrie Matheson’s long-suffering sidekick has become Agent 47. I find it’s best to imagine the two characters as part of one continuous piece of fiction: in which CIA Agent Peter Quinn breached his moral code on so many occasions that his hair fell out and cheese wire murder became a-okay.
Yep, he’s doing the bald-and-scannable-at-Morrisons thing. Check out a couple of images from the film below.
Stay for a spell: part two of Hearthstone's Curse of Naxxramas campaign has arrived
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Hearthstone has been one of the best games of 2014 so far, but it doesn’t feel like a 2014 game at all. Its slowburn beta success and leisurely rolled-out single player mode have made its release feel like a neverending mexican wave around the BlizzCon stadium.
Here comes the Curse of Naxxramas campaign’s second part, to mark the CCG’s latest lap of honour.
Elite: Dangerous beta price halves as its playable area expands
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Earlier this year Frontier Developments updated the Elite: Dangerous alpha, as it was then, with station-docking. Players were tasked with flying spaceships through letterboxes, and lo, Elite became one of the best space games on the PC before it was finished.
But months later, it’s reasonable to ask: what precisely are we docking for? Elite’s new standard beta version answers that question with the addition of fuel, and new systems to burn through it in. The developers have also incentivised purchase with a less house-mortgagey asking price.
The Room devs were "very nervous" about porting to PC; "But we were like, fuck it."
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What reason have Fireproof Games to be nervous? Their debut game has sold like gangbusters for the last two years. It won them a bloody BAFTA. And yet the prospect of porting The Room from mobiles to the PC had them quaking in their boots.
“We don’t ever want to release something that PC gamers could accuse of taking the piss out of them, you know what I mean?,” said Fireproof co-founder Barry Meade.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has three collector's editions for you to choose from
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Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has a bit more riding on it than previous installments in the bloated franchise. Call of Duty: Ghosts was a low point for the series, and Sledgehammer has been making a point on emphasising the changes they are bringing to the shooter. There’s the script that took over two years to write, the authenticity, the new tech and even Kevin Spacey’s entire body.
But some things never change. Advanced Warfare will, of course, come with a season pass, premium DLC and not one, not two but three collectors editions. Conveniently, you won’t have to struggle to pick between them, because there’s not a huge difference other than one of them being digital only and two of them including the season pass.
Looking for love among the pigeons: Hatoful Boyfriend launches on August 21st
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Next month is going to be a good one for pigeon lovers everywhere. On August 21st pigeon dating sim Hatoful Boyfriend will finally launch, according to publisher Devolver Digital. The sim, as if you didn’t already know, puts players in the role of the only human in St. PigeoNation’s Institute, a prominent school for birds. Your goal? Find love, of course.
The Sims 4 does anger, sadness, embarrassment: all the classics
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Emotion is one of the forgotten arts of game development. No university teaches a programmer how to love. There is no John Carmack of tears.
But one publisher is making a concerted effort to push a discipline still in its infancy. After years of iteration, EA Sports have just cracked emotions in FIFA 15. And The Sims Studio reckon they’ve done the same in The Sims 4. Here are their findings.
Mastertronic lay off staff, leave boxed games behind: "PC budget games now sold online"
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Mastertronic are a UK games publisher with their roots in the ‘80s - but you’ll more recently remember them as the purveyors of budget boxed PC games.
There’s plenty of nostalgia tied the Sold Out, M.A.D. and PC Gamer Presents labels - but sadly, that business has very nearly driven Mastertronic into the ground. The publisher has made 40% of its staff redundant and will close its Cambridgeshire HQ.
“We had to change,” said founder Andy Payne. “We had to decide not to do things that were sending us towards financial ruin.”
Wildstar's 'Sabotage' update makes PvP super explosive, introduces bomb chucking fun
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Carbine has just dumped a hot load of explosive content into Wildstar's stunned lap, marking the MMO's second big update since its full launch last month. The update is called Sabotage and adds a bombload of player versus player content.
Here's a cheerful video from the lovely chaps at Carbine describing what they've done and why.
A time before Steam: an ode to the budget boxed PC game
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This morning, Mastertronic rang the death knell for the budget boxed games range that used to be their “core business”.
It is no longer a core business, let alone ours,” said MD Andy Payne. “PC budget games are now sold online digitally, as we all know.”
The Steam-centric part of me thought as most of you probably did: well, duh. But another, younger part of me - the kernel that subsisted on games sold under the banner of Sold Out, M.A.D, Mastertronic and PC Gamer Presents - felt like a lifeline had been snipped.
Pillars of Eternity preview: "This is supposed to be the dream game for people who like Infinity Engine games"
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Pillars of Eternity is a game out of time. More than a decade since the release of the last Infinity Engine game, Icewind Dale II, Obsidian’s Kickstarted RPG is simultaneously a step backwards and forwards. It’s like looking at a game from the 90s, if games in the 90s had been really, really, ridiculously good looking.
I’m not saying Pillars of Eternity is outdated. I’m saying I’ve been starved of sprawling, reactive RPGs for years. Obsidian are bringing them back to the table. At some point publishers decided I wanted more expensive cinematic and, as a result, linear stories. Pillars isn’t that.
It’s going to envelope your RPG-starved brain.
Master Path of Exile in the free expansion, Forsaken Masters
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Path of Exile is really rather great. Until Diablo 3 got its second wind around Reaper of Souls, it was my go-to action RPG. The icing on the cake was that it was free; yet for that sweet price of nothing, it did all the things you could conceivably want an ARPG to do, and did it with style. There’s a reason it’s on our list of the 10 best co-op PC games.
If you’ve wandered away from the game, or simply never played it, then now is a good time to grab a sturdy weapon and start slaughtering things throughout Wraeclast, because it’s getting a new expansion: Forsaken Masters.
Gearbox attempts to get removed from Aliens: Colonial Marines class action lawsuit
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Aliens: Colonial Marines was bad; a bad shooter and a bad Aliens game. But a class action lawsuit filed last year, against Gearbox and Sega, alleges that the game was also sold on false promises and unrepresentative gameplay at shows like E3 and PAX. While both parties looked poised to fight the lawsuit, Gearbox is now attempting to end things before a judge can decide whether the lawsuit is warranted.
The developer’s reasoning appears to be two-fold: the company poured its own money into the game and has not been reimbursed or received royalties, and the class is too broad, including people who would have never seen the early footage or people who actually liked the game, if they exist.
Evolve alpha: three days of stalking begins tomorrow
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Are you hoping to spend some quality time on an alien planet, hunting down a ferocious monster? Or perhaps stalking a group of invaders encroaching on your territory is more your cup of whatever people drink in lieu of tea in the future and across space. Good news, then, because Evolve alpha keys are being sent out to a lucky few.
The first alpha test is for us PC lot only, and will run from tomorrow until Sunday, August 3rd. Have you discovered your invite in your inbox?
IL-2 and Rise of Flight producer on making modern flight sims
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Flight sims aren’t what they used to be.
In the hobby’s infancy, flight sims were one of the major genres, and even legendary designers like Sid Meier worked on air combat games. Games like Jane’s Longbow and the mighty Flight Simulator series were mainstream hits.
The landscape has changed dramatically since those days, however, and the time when flight sim fans could look forward to a few major releases every year are long gone. The Falcon series, Jane’s, Red Baron, and most of the others have been permanently grounded.
Succeeding in flight sims today requires a new, more supple approach, according to 777 Studios’ producer Jason Williams. With a smaller market, but with potentially revolutionary technologies like Oculus Rift on the horizon, the name of the game is accessibility without compromise.
Flight sims aren’t what they used to be. They’ve changed with PC gaming. And now they’re both about to change again.
Seldon Crisis: a space sandbox MMO that isn't EVE Online
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If there’s room in the MMO-verse for countless fantasy MMOs, it’s not completely bonkers to think that there might be room for more than one space-faring sandbox MMO too. That’s probably what Chaos Interactive, developers of Seldon Crisis, are hoping.
At first glance, the similarities between Seldon Crisis and EVE Online are many: the non-linear progression, the many paths from trader to fighter pilot, the player run economy and political system. But there are big differences too, from the levelling system to the business model. It will be free-to-play, and only cosmetic items will have a cost.
Michel Ancel opens up a new studio, but will stay at Ubisoft to work on Beyond Good & Evil sequel
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Michel Ancel has opened a new studio, Wild Sheep Studio, but before you start ripping your hair out and running through the streets shrieking and howling, this doesn’t mean Beyond Good & Evil 2 is beyond hope.
Ancel will remain at Ubisoft, and he is, Ubisoft confirmed to Eurogamer, working on the sequel to the much beloved tale of photojournalist, rebel and adventurer, Jade.
Prison Architect's alpha 23 update adds remote access systems and floods prisons with contraband
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Incarceration simulator Prison Architect has received a new update, alpha 23 - that’s rather a lot of updates - and it brings with it some nifty new features along with some complicated ones involving things that I was probably taught in school but ignored because I was doodling willies on my jotter.
The four big additions that alpha 23 chucks into prison are: remote access systems, an overhaul to CCTV, logic circuits, and a continuation of the contraband smuggling feature. Lamentably, there’s no mention of putting things up bums, which is obviously the best part of smuggling.
Call of Duty: Ghosts Nemesis DLC reimagines smallest-ever CoD map: Shipment
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Nemesis is the best-known attraction at Staffordshire’s premier theme park, Alton Towers. A whirling dervish of a rollercoaster covered in garishly pink plastic tendrils, it could slot quite neatly into Call of Duty Extinction lore.
There's a sense, in this iteration, that Call of Duty is fading in the sun like the pink paint on that great ride from the '90s. But Infinity Ward would probably rather not think about that. Instead they’ll barrel through the release of this, the last map pack for Call of Duty: Ghosts.
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