Looking for Group is a World of Warcraft documentary due to debut at BlizzCon 2014
This weekend’s BlizzCon is bound to be chock-a with announcements. Here’s something we’d rather not see drowned in the missives from Draenor: a proper flying-mount’s-view over the last ten years of World of Warcraft, one of the best MMOs on PC. Fittingly enough, it’s named Looking for Group.
Team Fortress 2 update curbs client crashes and reinstates gibs
Halo’s designers might tell cock-and-bull stories about three-minute loops or weapon feel, but the fundamental building block of every first-person shooter ever made is gibs. An FPS without gibs is no FPS at all, and for a couple of worrying days there, Team Fortress 2 looked to be in danger of losing its title.
Thankfully, Valve’s dev team have restored the bloody bits to their rightful place at the centre of one of the best first-person shooters on PC - and fixed a bunch of other stuff to crop up in the wake of Scream Fortress.
Riot on League of Legends preseason changes: we haven't forgotten about tank junglers
Expect a new kind of League of Legends jungle from the upcoming 2015 preseason. While the best Season 4 junglers honed their speed and ganking, Season 5's new monsters, buffs and items will accommodate many more ways to play the role.
The removal of one particular item has worried tank junglers, however. Without Quill Coat, won’t their relatively slow clear ability see them left behind? Riot say otherwise.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare dev wants to see the series return to World War II
Call of Duty - and Red Orchestra aside, the FPS world in general - has long since vacated the Pacific Front and fields of northern France in favour of modern and future warfare.
But given the chance, Sledgehammer’s Michael Condrey would love to go back to the sombre remembrance and single, sustained trumpet notes of the original CoD and its sequel.
War Thunder now heard over on Linux
War Thunder is one of the best World War 2 games on PC - a period flight and tank sim specialising in combat of the ground-to-air-and-back-again variety. It’s seen ginormous success on Windows, where you could find five million War Thunder players a year after its launch in open beta.
Now you can play it on a more rarified platform for PC gaming: Linux.
Nordic Games extricate Red Faction: Guerrilla from Games for Windows Live
Red Faction: Guerrilla is part of Volition’s family of dizzyingly destructive open worlds, and remembered as one of the best sandbox games on PC - not least because there hasn’t been a decent Red Faction game since.
In recognition of that status, new series owners Nordic Games have ripped the game from the decaying architecture of Games for Windows Live and reinstalled Guerrilla’s systems in Steamworks.
Be a guinea pig and play the free Talos Principle demo
It’s a bleak, damp evening up here in gloomy Scotland, so it’s fortuitous that Croteam and Devolver Digital has chucked a tech demo for The Talos Principle up on Steam.
If you take it for a spin, you’ll be faced with four puzzles of increasing complexity set inside a simulation of ancient ruins, linked by fancy technology. Nothing that an AI searching for answers to philosophical quandaries shouldn’t be able to handle.
You’ll be able to play the full game on December 11th.
No Witcher Left Behind: The Witcher 3 will receive 16 free DLCs, starting on February 25th
It’s a novelty when I’m able to take a break from grumbling about season passes and day one DLC pre-order bonuses, and today the novelty is courtesy of CD Projekt Red. Marcin Iwiński, co-founder and joint CEO of the studio, posted an open letter, revealing that everyone who buys The Witcher 3 will receive 16 “specially prepared” bits of DLC, completely for free, and not as any sort of pre-order incentive.
“Unfortunately this treatment is quite rare these days,” he wrote, preaching to the choir. “As gamers, we nowadays have to hold on tight to our wallets, as surprisingly right after release, lots of tiny pieces of tempting content materialize with a steep price tag attached. Haven’t we just paid a lot of cash for a brand new game?”
Final StarCraft II sound clip teases BlizzCon announcement, possibly Legacy of the Void
Like a siren, Blizzard is calling people to BlizzCon. Over the last week, Blizzard have been teasing cryptic StarCraft II sound clips. It started with a shrieking zerg and then the sound of weapons, then there was a strange mechanical sound, which reminded Nick of the terran warhound unit when he posted about it.
Yesterday, another audio tease appeared, which sounded like an aircraft taking off and then firing lasers. The titles of all three of these teases created a partial sentence: “See you at…”. BlizzCon was assumed to be the final word, and it is indeed, as the final tease was posted today. Take a listen below.
Ubisoft reveals Far Cry 4 system requirements, and they aren't completely bonkers
After Ubisoft announced the rather crazy system requirements for Assassin’s Creed Unity, I was expecting some equally ridiculous requirements for Far Cry 4, but colour me surprised, they are a lot tamer. Ubisoft raised the curtain on the list of things you’ll need crammed inside the shell of your PC today, and while the optimal requirements are a touch high, it should still be playable on a broad range of machines.
Out of the shadows and into the Necropolis: Hairbrained Schemes is working on a roguelike
Great big piles of treasure are never in easy to reach places. You never hear about adventurers relaxing in a nice park, then stumbling onto a mountain of gold next to the duck pond. It’s always dank crypts, dragon’s caves, and gloomy dungeons.
Shadowrun developer Hairbrained Schemes’ new project is a trap, tempting you with the promise of treasure and magical trinkets, then killing you. It’s called Necropolis, which should be a bit of a giveaway: this is not the sort of game where you’re going to find treasure on a lovely tropical beach.
Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon launches on November 26th, with hexy man-on-ork warfare
Warhammer 40K has given birth to plenty of video game spin-offs, but most of them are leagues away from the tabletop game, taking the universe and wrapping it around shooters, RTSs and even chess. Armageddon is a little closer to its source: a turn-based wargame with massive armies fighting for control of a world.
I had a chat with the devs back in May, where they said it was a “hex-based wargame that anyone can play”. That’s a bold claim, given that wargames are typically a bit obtuse and aloof, a criticism that comes from a place of love. You’ll be able to see if it manages to balance complexity and accessibility when it launches on November 26th.
Minecraft and Mojang are now officially resting in Microsoft's belly
It’s done. The i's have been dotted and the t's have been crossed, and Minecraft is now resting comfortably in the belly of Microsoft. Notch will never, ever run out of little hats. Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer confirmed the finalisation of the acquisition today on Twitter, welcoming Mojang to the Microsoft Studios family, which no doubt would look a lot like a scene from The Addams Family.
@TheVoxelman on twitter
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