Epic Mickey 2 leads parade of Disney games onto Steam
You probably haven’t given much thought to Disney Interactive as a PC publisher lately. It’d be a bit odd if you had - they shut down Warren Spector’s Junction Point just after Christmas, and have since pumped out two Where’s My Water? sequels.
But that back catalogue is not to be sniffed at, and a big chunk of it just landed on Steam in one big, snow-off-the-roof thwump.
Epic Mickey 2 gets its first international PC release alongside Black Rock racer Split/Second, family-friendly MMO Disney Universe, and Steam versions of 18 other Disney games.
StarCraft II WCS Global Finals tickets go on sale today
In exactly a month, a news post with a header image quite a lot like this one will let you know that the last leg of the StarCraft II WCS finals have started, and you should already be in your computer chair with your player reference tabs and family-size bag of jelly babies open.
But today is your chance to alter that timeline a little. Buy an arena ticket this evening and you could be at the Anaheim Convention Center in California on November 7 and 8, cheering on the oblivious pros sat in their tiny, noise-cancelled booths.
Massive Chalice Steam beta open to some from October 21
Once upon a time, a game named Massive Chalice was Kickstarted to the tune of $1,229,015.
Double Fine’s community capital might have diminished a little in the wake of Spacebase DF-9’s early exit and the overscoping of Broken Age - but that second Kickstarter win remains a very compelling turn-based tactics concept in the hands of a deeply capable studio. So it’s a pleasure to know it’ll be on Steam in some form by the end of the month - even if access is fairly tightly restricted for now.
Australian consumer rights regulator sues Valve over Steam refund policy
Valve’s refund policy is easily summarised: they don’t do ‘em. And while they have been known to reach into their own pockets to recompense, for instance, Earth: Year 2066 players, the blanket ban has often rubbed consumer watchdogs the wrong way - so that all their watchdoghair stands on end.
Enter the Australian Competition and Consumer Authority, who last week began proceedings in the country’s federal court against Valve. They allege that Valve have made “false or misleading representations” to their Australian customers.
Planetary Annihilation update switches on offline LAN
LAN’s been a staple of RTS games since Warcraft. Beating your friends over the web is fine but nothing beats seeing their panic as your troops overwhelm their poorly built defenses. Till now Planetary Annihilation’s missed that joy.
However, this week sees the launch of offline LAN multiplayer.
Hints of Warcraft 3 remake spotted in Battle.Net launcher
During Blizzcon 2013, World of Warcraft production director J. Allen Brack revealed that a small team was working on updating the old Warcraft games to run on modern PCs. The first hints of these updates might have been spotted in a recent Battle.Net Launcher update.
"Every star in the night sky exists in Elite: Dangerous" — Braben on recreating a galaxy all over again
Last week Elite: Dangerous reached a milestone update, boosting the number of star systems by about a factor of ten, introducing new weapons, stations and planetary rings made of massive chunks of floating ice. With the ever expanding galaxy map comes the option to explore and scan distant frontier worlds for profit, with mapmakers now racing across the sky to be the first to log their findings with the board of stellar cartography. It's all terribly exciting.
I sat down with David Braben to discuss how Beta 2 is unfolding, what all this extra space means for players, when we can expect to start landing on planets and astronomy in general. Lovely, lovely astronomy. You can read our conversation below. And here's why Elite matters.
Broforce's Bro-ctober update gives power to the masses with Steam Workshop support
Hyper-hectic carnage and freedom simulator Broforce has just been struck with a new Early Access update, and it’s a big ‘un. New bros, more missions, a whole new region to blow up in the name of America and Steam Workshop support have been chucked into the game. Brodical.
The return of Heroes of the Storm's technical alpha will introduce custom games, observer mode and replays
Update: The technical alpha is live once more.
Heroes of the Storm’s technical alpha took a break last week, but it’s set to return soon with a whole bunch of new features that Blizzard want players to put through their paces. Today, the studio introduces three big ones: custom games, observer mode and replays.
League of Legends' Sion has been taken apart and put back together again
I like to think that there’s a retirement home for old League of Legends characters, where they are tossed when new and improved versions get added to the game. Sion’s probably in there, confusing his fellow residents by being a gigantic mage with an axe and smelling of rotting flesh. He’s in there because Riot have put together a new Sion, an unstoppable undead general.
The new version of the old champion was revealed a couple of weeks ago, and now you can take a look at him in action with the latest Champion Spotlight.
Costume Quest 2 launches today, pitting time-travelling scamps against an evil dentist from the future
The last time I checked, Double Fine’s Halloween-themed Costume Quest 2 was set to launch some time in October, but what day it would pop into existence wasn’t clear. It turns out that day is today, October 7th.
You can now reacquaint yourselves with the precocious duo of Wren and Reynold as they once again attempt to save Halloween, but this time in the future. Expect time travel, evil dentists and costumes that are more than meets the eye.
The Black Glove, ex-BioShock devs' surreal narrative game, gets a Kickstarter
After Ken Levine decided to “wind down” Irrational Games, a bunch of BioShock and BioShock Infinite devs banded together to create Day For Night Games and their first project, The Black Glove. Announced earlier this year, The Black Glove sounded like a tantalising game, where players are called on to alter the pasts of three artists in attempt to improve their works in the future.
Unsurprisingly, it’s ended up on Kickstarter. A strong pitch reveals more about the game, and I find my interest piqued even more, where experimentation, art and even arcade games have been squeezed together to create something utterly bizarre.
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