Na'Vi Dota 2 squad has "lost its leader": Puppey moves on with "no regrets"
One of Dota 2’s most popular teams has lost a “great strategist” and captain, Clement ‘Puppey’ Ivanov. Puppey has led his team to the finals of Dota 2’s International on three occasions, but will now continue his career in competitive Dota elsewhere.
Watch a man and his elephant go clay human shooting in Far Cry 4
There’s a feverishness to Far Cry that seems to seep from the games into the Ubisoft staff making them. Executive producer Dan Hay has been working on the series for three and a half years, and has finally reached the Heart of Darkness. Or should that be Far Cry 4’s Shangri-La?
“You get to this point in the game where you leave the dev behind and become the player,” he intones.
“You can pick up a grapple, you can grab a piece of meat and you can basically become a hunter, and you can climb on top of an elephant, you can get on top of a mortar and you can nuke guys from above.”
There’s a little of that madness in the footage below.
Hi-Rez: Steam free-to-play games have a discovery problem
Smite seems destined for years of prosperity. A simpler, third-person take on the MOBA, it’s backed by Riot Games owners Tencent, $600,000 in Smite World Championship prize money, and the plaudits of our Fraser in his Smite review.
But it’s not on Steam. According to developers Hi-Rez, that’s because it’s harder to promote a game on Valve’s storefront if it’s free-to-play.
Minecraft Bukkit project lead quits, Mojang take over
The team lead of Minecraft mod Bukkit attempted to shut down the project this morning, over concerns with Mojang’s pay-to-win crackdown and his ability to continue distributing the mod. But within minutes, Mojang had quashed his worries about EULAs and picked up development of Bukkit themselves.
“Warren over at bukkit seems to have forgotten that the project was bought by Mojang over two years ago,” tweeted Minecraft lead Jeb, “and isn’t his to discontinue.”
Minecraft staffer and original Bukkit lead Dinnerbone will now see the mod through to its 1.8 release.
Metal Gear Solid 5's online base infiltrations look absolutely hilarious
If the worst PC news to come out of GamesCom last week was the Rise of the Tomb Raider’s Xbox deal, then the best was probably Metal Gear Solid 5’s Steam release.
Finally, we’re invited to visit Kojima’s wilfully absurd corner of the stealth genre. Finally, we get to watch videos about strapping unconscious strangers to helicopters so they can be lifted into the sky. Like this one.
Is World of Warcraft's Robin Williams tribute a genie NPC?
World of Warcraft players petitioned Blizzard last week in an effort to memorialise Robin Williams as an NPC. Williams had talked about his fondness for the MMO in interviews, and nearly 11,000 fans signed the request for an in-game character who would tell some of the actor's best-known jokes, “so that he may continue making us smile long after his passing”.
The WoW dev team said they were “taking care of it” - and now a genie character has appeared in the game’s files. Could it be?
Ancient Space: a Paradox-published RTS with a cast from Star Trek, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica
In a decade of relative drought, StarCraft II has redefined the RTS as a competitive concept - but it was once a platform for great single player stories too.
Hard West types CreativeForge Games and Paradox clearly remember that: they’ve built a solo strategy game that charges players with charting the Black Zone that lies beyond the edge of the known universe, and commanding a fleet of actors whose work has spanned decades of television sci-fi.
How To Train Your Drakken: Endless Legend's next playable race has been revealed
If you’ve not got a scaly reptilian race with a name that’s evocative of dragons, then your fantasy game isn’t ready yet. Endless Legend isn’t ready, as it’s still in Early Access, but it’s one step closer with the introduction of the Drakken.
Rob took a look at the pre-Drakken game earlier this year. He said Endless Legend shows Amplitude Studios building on lessons from Endless Space, the team’s space 4X game.
Take a gander at the scaly folk below.
Noir Syndrome is a randomly generated murder mystery game
Noir Syndrome is a randomly generated murder mystery game in which you, a snappily dressed freelance gumshoe, have two weeks in which to identify and arrest a mysterious and unidentified serial killer. The game is set in a smokey, 2D pixel-art world with a lovely jazzy brass soundtrack, in a city populated by a finite cast of police, mobsters and regular Joel Schmoels, each of whom can be found strolling around somewhere, as brazenly persistent as you like.
Each time you play, the murderer changes identity, the clues point in different directions and the crime retangles itself, ready to be solved all over again.
It launched earlier this year for £4.99, but it recently received a content update that pushed it back into my Steam library. So here are some thoughts on it.
Heat Signature: surviving in space for as long as you can
Heat Signature is a game about flitting around a big procedurally generated galaxy, boarding ships, sneaking around and sometimes beating up guards. It’s being developed by Tom Francis, who you might know from Gunpoint, a game about breaking into buildings and sometimes beating up guards. Special trousers were involved. It was great.
There’s a lot more to Heat Signature than being an intergalactic ne’er-do-well though, so I pestered Francis with questions to get the skinny on this space game.
Renowned Explorers: International Society trailer sets the scene for globetrotting and artifact theft
I once had a job where I had to collect postcodes and fill out maps. It wasn’t a very good job. Filling out maps sounds a lot more fun when you’re a Jules Verne-inspired 19th Century explorer, such as the ones found in Abbey Games’ Renowned Explorers: International Society.
It mashes together Indiana Jones with XCOM where enemies are giant scorpions and miffed indigenous people instead of aliens. And there’s a new trailer, which you can point your eyes at below.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter: the case opens in September
Gorgeous supernatural mystery, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, is due out next month. Developer The Astronauts announced a release date of September 25th today and you can grab it on Steam or through GOG.
If you want to get a head start on solving the case, there’s now a 13 minute developer walkthrough of the start of the game. It’s absent major spoilers, and is simply very pleasant to watch (despite the blood), as Red Creek Valley is a treat for the eyes.
Script Kiddies: PvP hacking with a hint of tower defence
I’m not sure if, in the darkest parts of the internet, there is a competitive hacking league, but if there is, I doubt it’s anything like developer Austin Dixon’s Script Kiddies. It’s a server hacking game with a bit of tower defence, where two of the titular script kiddies race up and down ladders, mashing buttons on terminals, all in an effort to hack the servers before their opponent.
And it looks rather charming.
Firaxicon: Firaxis is putting on its first official convention next month
I’m not saying Firaxicon sounds like some sort of virility enhancer, but I am saying that it sounds like the sort of thing you’d want in an unmarked bottle which you would immediately hide if you ever bought it in a chemists.
What it actually is, though, is the first Firaxis convention, which takes place in Maryland next month.
The Walking Dead Season 2 concludes next week, so prepare your emotions
The Walking Dead Season 2 finale, No Going Back, is due out next week, on August 26th, Telltale has announced. If playing the last episode - you can see what I thought of it in my Amid the Ruins review - hasn’t left you an emotional wreck, then you can watch the launch trailer for the finale and properly feel like shit. Hurray!
It’s a recap, really, so if you’re a bit behind, best avoid it for fear of massive spoilers.
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