Warlords of Draenor trailer tells the ugly origin story of Grommash Hellscream
Perhaps Blizzard will make us a Warcraft IV yet - but for now they’ve resolved to fill WoW’s Warlords of Draenor expansion with fan service.
You’ll remember Papa Hellscream from Warcraft II’s Beyond the Dark Portal campaign. Thanks to the intervention of his son Garrosh, he’ll now be one of Draenor’s titular warlords and, it is rumoured, one of its final raid bosses. Here’s his story.
PopCap's final founding member leaves EA to "give something back"
PopCap has lost its last remaining co-founder. John Vechey is leaving both the Peggle purveyors and EA - but made clear that he still puts faith in his publishing overlords and the deal that saw PopCap become an Electronic Arts subsidiary three years ago.
ESPN president says eSports is "not a sport": "Mostly, I'm interested in doing real sports"
Oh, ESPN - you were doing so well at internet comms. First, Valve triumphantly announced the news that the 2014 Dota 2 International would be broadcast live by the monolithic US sports network. And later, an unnamed source close to ESPN reported they were “delighted” by their inaugural Dota 2 viewing figures.
For a while there, it really looked like the MOBA had established a foothold for games in mainstream sports coverage. At least until somebody slid a dictaphone in front of ESPN president John Skipper.
Backwater Bay: Respawn talk the Titanfall DLC map where pilot moonshine is made
The third DLC pack for Titanfall is named IMC Rising, but you’re unlikely to see pilots of the great industrial conglomerate rise earlier than midday on Backwater. Based on concept art and designs that didn’t quite make it into the original game, this new map is set on the same ramshackle planet where washed-up parkour soldiers brew their brain cell-baking alcohol.
Bedlam asks ‘What if I could take Doom’s BFG into a fantasy RPG?’
Back in February, 2013, Christopher Brookmyre’s book, Bedlam, hit the shelves. A story about a scientist sucked into virtual network of interconnected video games, Bedlam saw its characters jumping from Quake-like Starfire, through WW2 shooters, sandbox games akin to GTA, and even making a brief diversion into a god game.
18 months on, developer RedBedlam’s ready to show off the game of the book. Finally we’ll be able to see what happens when you take the weapons cache from a 90s sci-fi shooter and take it into a fantasy RPG.
League of Legends lore rewrite will stay true to the "soul" of characters in the old canon
Riot Games prompted applause and alarm over the weekend with the announcement of a partial retcon of League of Legends lore. The game’s very premise, an institute where political conflicts could be resolved in orderly and relatively bloodless fashion, had proven too restrictive for LoL’s narrative designers.
They’ve resolved to push their character bios and event plotlines beyond the boundaries of the League - but have reassured concerned fans that their favourite champions will only benefit.
“We believe in a philosophy in which story should spring from the characters naturally, not from a very arbitrary plot built around them,” said Riot writer Devon Giehl. “Character drives plot.”
A man finished Dark Souls on PC using only a Rock Band controller
The Dark Souls challenge run community are a talented, bonkers bunch - and even for them, beating Dark Souls with a guitar controller was just a joke. But it was a common one, and it got Bearzly to thinking.
“So I figured why not give it a shot?,” said the Twitch streamer. All in all, the run took just 11 and a quarter hours.
World of Warships is quietly brilliant
On the first day of creation, Wargaming separated the heaven and the earth. The earth, they named World of Tanks, and unleashed small steel bungalows to shoot at each-other. They named it World of Tanks, and saw that it was good.
The heaven, they named World of Warplanes, which was like World of Tanks, but with metal buzzards. But it wasn’t quite as good as World of Tanks, and it didn’t leave beta for like a bazillion years and suddenly everyone’s making tank games and good grief, Wargaming got rich enough to hire a troop of skydivers to create their logo in the sky, because fuck it, when you’ve got this much money what else is left?
And then they created the seas, and on them, they floated ten storey steel ducks, and let them shoot at eachother.
And at GamesCom, I saw that it was also, very good.
Building gaudy ships in Gratuitous Space Battles 2
There was a great deal of fun to be had in designing ships in Gratuitous Space Battles, but the system was limited to installing various practical modules on fixed hulls. Variety came in the form of species specific ships rather than the ability to create your own from scratch.
In Gratuitous Space Battles 2, things will be different. Not unlike Galactic Civilizations II (and its upcoming sequel), countless cosmetic components can be slapped on the hulls of ships, from things that spin to things that blink. You’ll be able to create properly hideous sci-fi disasters if that’s your cup of tea.
Batman: Arkham Knight due out in June next year, complete with a tiny Batmobile for your desk
Batman is everywhere. Hanging around on gargoyles, watching you in your home. Mucking about in alleys, crying about his dead mum and dad. Sometimes he even puts on a moustache, and could be standing right next to you and you wouldn’t even know it. Batman doesn’t have a release date, because Batman is with you always.
Video game Batman, however, only appears at certain times. He’s a totally different phenomenon. Like an eclipse. His next expected appearance isn’t for a while. Almost a year! Think of all the crimes he’s missing. Clearly Rocksteady didn’t think of that when they decided to make the release date for Arkham Knight June 2nd, 2015.
Capcom will infect Steamworks with a zombie virus
As Games for Windows Live continues to be dragged to its grave - to the sound of jubilant cheering - another trio of games are making their way over to Steamworks.
Capcom’s moving Resident Evil 5, Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 2: Off the Record from Microsoft’s much hated platform - which has less life than the zombies in these games - and onto Steamworks, according to a post on the Capcom Unity Blog.
Paradigm: an adventure game that pits a mutant musician against an evil sloth
There are a fair number of video game protagonists who are also unapologetic arseholes. Uncharted’s Nathan Drake, most of the playable characters in the Grand Theft Auto series, my Commander Shepard from Mass Effect and now Paradigm, the titular “hero” in Australian developer Jacob Janerka’s upcoming dystopian adventure game.
But Paradigm has an excuse for being an arsehole: he’s a hideous mutant and he’s stuck in a post-apocalyptic crap hole. Where the future world of Fallout - one of the inspirations for the game - was based on 1950s America, Paradigm takes place in a world inspired by Eastern Europe in the ‘70s & ‘80s.
Road to Worlds documents the journeys of League of Legends pros
The final of League of Legend’s 2014 World Championships is little over a month away. It’s unlikely that - given that the arena in Seoul is expected to sell out - you’ll get to see it in person, so you’ll probably just have to enjoy the streams.
Starting today, you can also follow some of the pro players as they work to earn their spot in the championships. The first episode of the Road to Worlds documentary is available already, and you can take a gander below.
We're breaking up: Rome II's Imperator campaign map is a fractured mess of warring factions
Total War: Rome II’s free Imperator Augustus campaign offers up one of the most interesting periods of antiquity as a stage for war. While Caesar established the foundations that would allow his adopted son, Octavian, to ascend to the position of Emperor, it was after the war between Octavian and Marc Antony that he would actually become ruler of the Roman world. And in the Imperator Augustus campaign, you can try to stop him if you want.
Creative Assembly has released the campaign map, revealing the playable factions available in this war - which managed to be both a civil war and an international one. Slap your eyes on it below.
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