Embrace the Chaos: X-Com creator Julian Gollop on independence and the trouble with Ubisoft

Julian Gollop is playing Chaos Reborn, and he’s losing. Badly.

His wizard, both player avatar and font of all spells in this turn-based game of spellcasting, is backed into a hexagonal corner of the map - a charcoal island arena interrupted by jutting rocks and dotted with leafless trees. With an impotent fizz-crackle, his would-be spider goes the same way as a potential unicorn, an intended giant, and a whole host of sentient, violent flora that never quite materialised.

As our eagle and scorpion close in on his position in a pincer movement of Gollop’s own advising, you might even be tempted to feel sorry for him - but you shouldn’t. It’s sort of his fault. 

Let us not forget: this man has been driven all his professional life to create strategy games in which every shot, swipe and grenade toss hinges not just on player intent, but on the fickle roll of the dice.

Here’s the thing: Julian Gollop cannot help but make these games. It’s this fact which has driven him to leave security at Ubisoft for unbound creativity, and to roll the dice on the goodwill of X-Com fans on Kickstarter.

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Guild Wars 2's April Feature Pack will improve the quality of life in Tyria

The first season of Guild Wars 2’s living world ended last month, with the death of the conniving Scarlet Briar. It was a narrative a year in the telling, with a plethora of updates pushing the story forward, adding new content and new challenges. But with that over, ArenaNet has moved their gaze to the game’s systems. This has lead to the April Feature Pack - an update focused entirely on balance tweaks, improving existing systems and “quality of life” changes.

The big features of the update, which will be live within the day, include the new wardrobe system, revamped traits and the megaserver. I had a chat with Guild Wars 2 game designer Isaiah Cartwright to get the skinny on what to expect when the patch is rolled out. 

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Who cares about Facebook? 25,000 second-generation Oculus Rifts sold

It’s probably better not to make any assumptions about the sales of an item based on angry, online outbursts. When Oculus VR and Facebook announced their plans to unite, with the social network giant picking the VR company up for $2 billion in cash and shares, people plastered forums, comments sections and, hilariously, Facebook pages with predictions about how this deal would ruin VR.

This doesn’t seem to have had an impact on sales of the second generation Oculus Rift dev kit, however. Oculus VR told TechCrunch that it’s sold 25,000 units since March 19th, when pre-orders started coming in. 60,000 original dev kits were sold over its entire lifetime.

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The curse is winning: physical version of Dark Souls 2 delayed for a week in the UK

If you had your eye on a physical version of Dark Souls 2, you might have to wait a little longer than you anticipated. If you’re living in the UK, that is. 

Amazon UK has been emailing customers who pre-ordered the game, informing them that the physical version would not arrive through the letterbox in time for the April 25th release date. 

Namco Bandai has now confirmed that this will affect all UK customers, not just those who ordered from Amazon. The delay is a week long, with it arrive on May 2nd. 

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Don't lose your towel: Grail to the Thief is an adventure game for the blind inspired by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Even though the games industry has expanded rapidly and by a gargantuan amount in the last two decades, there’s always room for more expansion. Inclusiveness is a word that’s dropped a lot. Often it’s in reference to the disproportionate number of female, gay or non-white protagonists, and the suggestion is that if games were more representative it would encourage a broader demographic to interact with them. 

But there are folk who already want to play games - they aren’t waiting for better writing or more realistic characters, they’re waiting for a way to play them without the things most of us probably take for granted. Things like sight. Grail to the Thief is an interactive audio adventure designed for everyone, but especially for the blind and visually impaired. It’s exceedingly simple - it needs to be - but it opens adventure gaming up to a whole new audience that can’t experience it as a visual medium. 

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Star Citizen hits $42 million in funding; Chris Roberts brings out the towels

It must be a special day, because this is the second thing I’ve written in a row that references Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the stalwart bathroom accessory, the towel. This time it’s because, and you’re probably getting sick of hearing this, Star Citizen has reached another stretch goal. 

Yep, the crowd-funded space sim that just can’t be stopped has reached a mind-boggling $42 million. Among the many things that will be added to the game thanks to this milestone is a towel for the hanger of every backer. You never know when you’ll need one.

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Spelunky world record broken once again - record breaker plans on topping it

I am very bad at Spelunky. I have tried to save many, many pugs, and failed many, many times. I’ve given up. Other’s have much more perseverance, as well as coordination and skill. Three things I lack severely. That’s why the world record for the highest possible score has been broken again. You can stare in disbelief at the impressive run from YamaYamaDingDong below. 

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Something interesting about Steam, statistics, games etc'.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games/

Basically, 781 million games sold, only 37% played, 75 million active users, DOTA 2 is the most played and owned Steam game at 25 million units shifted.

That is some interesting data, some interesting tidbits I noticed that wasn't included in the article

Skyrim with 5.94m copies on Steam is roughly 30% of it's 20m total oficial shipped number as of January

Borderlands 2 surprisingly is at roughly 38% of it's 8.5m shipped as of Feb this year

I would have thought that Skyrim would have done better relativley on PC than BL2.

More people play League of Legends daily (27m) than DOTA2 has players total.

To be fair, those Skyrim numbers are higher than the PS3 totals tallied on VGChartz. (PS3 is sitting at 5.43 mil)

Still it solidifies the fact that PC gaming can be *very* competitive to the console platforms in copies of games sold, probably helps that games are generally cheaper so people buy more.

More surprised that Borderlands 2 sold best on PC, never would have guessed. I guess FPS+Diablo does seem like a pretty perfect combo for the PC community. But I still would have thought it was more of a console franchise.

Mouse-mounted keyboard-and-joystick device hits Kickstarter goal ten times over

King’s Assembly: a very sophisticated name for a mouse. But then, this is a very sophisticated mouse.

Like any good butcher, the Assembly makes use of your whole hand. It finds the space to stuff 30 keyboard keys under your fingers, a degree of joystick-style control beneath your thumb - and leaves mouse control to your palm. And it isn’t nearly so clumsy about it as you might expect.

With every input managed by one limb, you’ll be free to occupy the other with a second Assembly, or whatever extraneous task you can think of. Not that, though. Good grief.

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Do you think I'm lion: Snoop Dogg to contribute z-speak to Call of Duty: Ghosts DLC

It might have taken Infinitizzle Ward all dem months ta release Call of Duty: Ghosts DLC yo, but they hit tha ground hustlin. Some freshly smoked up customisation packs will follow tha Devastation DLC all up in tha end of April - includin tha first-ever voice packs, featurin R. Lee Ermey n' none other than Snoop Ta Tha D-O-Double-Gizzle.

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Towering inferno: Defense Grid 2 finally has a proper trailer

Hidden Path have a way with mazes. As co-developers of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, they contributed to maps twisty enough to keep - at last count - 135,392 players entertained simultaneously. And as sole custodians of Defense Grid, they produced perhaps the most accomplished played-straight tower defense game in a decade absolutely riddled with them.

A failed Kickstarter heralded this troubled sequel - but the devs have long since managed to fend off funding woes after a (winged, glistening) angel investor contributed a couple of turrets to their cause. Here are the results.

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World of Warplanes is 10% as popular as World of Tanks - but Wargaming are "very happy"

Four years ago, Wargaming released World of Tanks - and subsequently began expanding in a fashion that positively encouraged lazy invasion metaphor. Their armour rolled across continents and set up new outposts in each. Their troops parachuted into North America - capturing Chris Taylor’s Gas Powered Games and MechAssault types Day 1.

In that time, they’ve also made another game: World of Warplanes. But tracked vehicles, not winged ones, continue to fund the overwhelming majority of the company’s enlargement.

It turns out Wargaming are fine with that.

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Wargame Red Dragon Gets A Launch Trailer

ars posted a followup article

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/steam-gauge-addressing-your-questions-and-concerns/

Since we finally unveiled our Steam Gauge project late last night, we've been overwhelmed by positive responses to the data. It's been come from all over—comment threads, Twitter, e-mail, and links from other sites. It's much appreciated.

We've also received some questions and concerns about our data, our methodology, and what we plan to do with this project going forward. Here are some responses to the most common issues that have been brought up in the last 24 hours or so.

Isn't your data off? Steam didn't always track gameplay hours in the past

Indeed. Before posting our analysis last night, I was not aware that Steam only started tracking the "number of hours played" statistics on SteamCommunity.com in March of 2009. This isn't a small oversight: games played solely before this date would show up erroneously as "unplayed" in our data, and games released before that time might show fewer total hours than they should. This helps explain why older games like Ricochet and Deathmatch Classic seem so unpopular among people who own them—because most players probably put in their hours before March of 2009.

To be clear, this issue should not affect the "ownership" data in the original piece—games bought at any time appear in the scraped Steam data correctly. For some of the other charts, it simply means that games from the pre-2009 period can't be compared completely accurately to those released after March of 2009. I've noted this in the original piece and updated a number of charts to reflect this.

How accurate are your numbers?

Since publishing, we've had a few more developers reach out either privately or publicly to offer their own Steam sales data for comparison to our estimates. With over a dozen "real world" spot checks in hand now, we have yet to see an instance where the error in our numbers is more than 10 percent off from the actual numbers developers have access to. Sometimes our error is much less than that, of course, and the error can go in either direction (though so far our numbers seem to over-estimate slightly more often than under-estimating).

While 10 percent isn't a small functional margin of error, it's also much better than a simple shot in the dark guess. If we're reporting sales of two million units for a game, you can be pretty confident the actual sales number is somewhere between 1.8 and 2.2 million.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/steam-gauge-addressing-your-questions-and-concerns/

more at the link

top hundred played games on Steam

All this talk about Beyond Earth and those ars stats showing the game made me go back and play again a bit of Civ V, but I'll play until I finish the game I started, and no more. Nope, no more...

I curse you zarx, ars and Firaxis!

Man those global offensive numbers are so impressive. Valve has to be making tons of cash off that game considering their sales of in game items. I myself have spent a total of $90.00 on the game according to steam and have about 1,400 hours clocked on it.

Well it's been 2 days without power and we lost the part of the roof above my room (strangely enough just that bit...) but the PC news keeps coming.

Call the midwife: Chaos Reborn has been successfully Kickstarted, and then some

About a week ago, Julian Gollop told us that Kickstarter success for the game he’d already spent a year working on “may or may not happen”.

“It’s too close to call,” he fretted, citing Chaos’ “strange” online systems as a hard sell. And we found ourselves telling gaming’s most-respected strategy designer not to worry - that the mid-campaign slump had become tradition, and would be followed by a triumphant last minute spiral upwards.

We were right: enough people were so emotionally invested in the idea of Chaos Reborn that they felt compelled to make up the difference in financial investment. More than enough, actually.

Wildstar reveals Warplots: giant battlestations to ride into 40 vs 40 PvP fights

Wildstar's genuinely becoming one of the most interesting MMOs in play right now, adorning itself in all manner of weird and original modes and features on a regular basis. Most recently Carbine added Adventures, granting players access to a magical holodeck wonderland of limitless potential. Now they've announced Warplots, which isn't about warping lots, but huge mobile battlestations you can ride into 40 vs 40 PvP fights. Look at the video, it's certainly something.

War of the Vikings leaves Early Access and lands on our shores

Don’t mind all of these armed, hirsute men jumping off their longships, screaming obscenities at you. They’re only vikings, and they are very friendly in a murderous, pillaging sort of way. No doubt they just want to celebrate the launch of War of the Vikings, which left Early Access yesterday. 

It’s like it’s multiplayer close-quarters combat cousin, War of the Roses, but better in so many ways, and not just because of all those glorious beards. Take a look at what Rob made of the bloody battles when he, Tim and I swung our axes around at the Paradox Convention in January.

Final Fantasy XIV boasts 2 million registered accounts, causing moogle habitats to shrink

Some people have been playing Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. 2 million of them, according to Square Enix. 

This isn’t 2 million active players, instead counting every registered account worldwide. That’s still 2 million copies sold, however, since Square Enix’s MMO is one of the few subscription based MMOs left.

George, meet George: Broken Sword 5's two halves are united

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse is united today. The Kickstarted adventure game was unceremoniously carved in two with a rusty blade, leaving the adventure only half complete when people played last year. 

But the two halves are back together, now that part two is becoming a tangible, playable thing today.

World of Tanks 9.0 throws players back in time with a Historical Battles mode

World of Tanks’ 9.0 update, New Frontiers, kicks off the heavy metal game’s promised big changes. It’s been shot out of a turret and into the game today.

It brings with it the Historical Battles mode, reworked maps, HD tank textures and improved physics, which is rather a lot of stuff to throw into a single update.

Vlambeer is selling Nuclear Throne via Twitch and thinks you should buy it there

Luftrausers developer, Vlambeer is selling its latest title, Nuclear Throne, through Twitch as well as through more conventional distributors. This is a first on Twitch, but it’s not a sign that the broadcaster is moving into retail territory. It’s Vlambeer that’s selling the game, not Twitch.

DRM still needs to exist, says Square Enix exec - but shouldn't "interfere" with games

At some point in the last two or three decades, DRM became a dirty acronym - like FMV, or GCSE. Yet still the concept persists. The major publishers now tie bespoke online activation systems to their storefronts. And for good reasons, insists Square Enix business man Adam Sullivan.

What are those reasons? “Profit”, first and foremost - but also data privacy, account sharing and hacking.

The great Guild Wars 2 gear merger - or the way PvP works now

ArenaNet have always made a thing of letting you reach the upper levels of Guild Wars your own way - whether that be through questing, World vs World, PvP, or pulling root vegetables out of the earth on the outskirts of Lion’s Arch.

But they haven’t always been so good at letting you swap paths midway through. PvP gear has been nothing but heavy junk in PvE, for instance, and vice versa.

Until now. As our Fraser mentioned in his Guild Wars 2 April Feature Pack preview, the arbitrary division of equipment has come to an end. Here’s how that’s going to work.

Get your Airfix fix: Gaijin kit out War Thunder with user-generated content toolset

Nobody knows precisely the means by which a user generates content. Perhaps they secrete it as a fine paste through their pores; maybe it rises suddenly in their throat, and is hurled violently onto the living room carpet. But one thing’s for sure: them users can’t stop generating that content.

Gaijin Entertainment are the latest to extend a bucket beneath the user to catch the nutritious content as it falls from them - with a new plane-building toolset for wildly popular dogfighting sim War Thunder.

Anti-Centauri: let a panel of Firaxis designers explain Civilization: Beyond Earth

Civilization: Beyond Earth is not Alpha Centuari. Sorry: it’s just not. If that’s what you’re after, you can be disappointed more cheaply with a children’s book named Alf the Centaur.

What it is, though, is worth your time - not Alpha Centauri’s ideological tussle to the death, but a space venture with the same relentlessly optimistic vibe as the very first Civ.

Here’s a panel of Firaxis types ready to explain all that.

Riot have deployed "more human-like" bots in League of Legends - but they still can't jungle 

17 April 2014 • 1 day 13 hours ago • Story by Jeremy Peel

League of Legends players asked Riot for “more human” bots - and rather than ask the necessary questions about AI or read some alarmist fiction about the nature of sentience, the developers just went ahead and built a fleet of them.

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Why Heroes of the Storm is the MOBA Blizzard always wanted to play

Playing Heroes of the Storm at PAX, it doesn’t feel like any other MOBA I’ve ever played. For one thing, I’m actually winning.

For another, it just feels less like something derived from an RTS and more like something I’d expect to play on an arcade cabinet somewhere back in the 1980s, or on a console in a friend’s basement in the late 90s. It’s Blizzard’s Smash Brothers, their Gauntlet and it’s a fresh take on the MOBA that steps out Dota’s long, long shadow.

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Swedish politicians compete in StarCraft tournament to "remind youth that votes matter"

Swedish politicians fought last weekend in a StarCraft 2 tournament which pitted ideology against ideology. Pirate Party affiliate Jonathan Rieder Lundkvist organised the event to “show the politicians eSports is a thing, and to remind the youth that their votes matter.”

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New phishing scam puts your beloved Steam trading cards at risk

A new phishing scam has found a way around Steam Guard, Valve has admitted. Steam Guard requires a code sent to the Steam users registered email address before it lets users on unrecognised devices access the platform. 

This scam bypasses the security completely and Steam have been warning people not to send  their SSFN files to anyone, as this is what the cheeky perpetrators have been using to access users’ libraries. 

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One man and his dog: Risen 3 trailer is dark and reveals an August release date

Risen 3: Titan Lords is doing away with pirates and tropical islands and developer Piranha Bytes is going back to its roots, apparently. No hand-holding and really big, nasty threats, like the titular Titans. They’ve chucked up the first trailer, so maybe we’ll see some of these titanic foes.

“What you see will be dark and comes straight out of a very black place,” The PR says before I clicked play on the video. Sounds ominous, but it isn’t. It literally means that the trailer is very dark and hard to see. 

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The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot gets a bit more free for the weekend

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, Ubisoft’s fort-building and loot-stealing F2P fantasy game, doesn’t sound very free. Not if it takes a special event for players to get to try out all but one of the game’s heroes. And that event kicks off today until April 22nd, unlocking all but the Runaway for every player. 

At least you get to keep the first hero you try out after the event ends.

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Sagas for everyone: Stoic and King settle trademark dispute

The saga of King vs. Stoic is finally over, The Banner Saga developer announced on its website recently. The dispute kicked off over January, when Candy Crush Saga developer King filed a notice of opposition against Stoic when it tried to trademark The Banner Saga. King cited “confusion in the marketplace” as the reason.

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Vrooming noises in new Grid game confirmed in teaser trailer

Vroooom. Vroooom. What’s that sound? Could it be a car!? No, sorry, it’s just a brief teaser trailer Codemasters' just released for Grid, very possibly Grid 3. 

Presumably racing will be involved. If all the engine noises weren’t a give away, the “racing is coming” tagline certainly is. 

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Alien: Isolation has one claw firmly stuck in 1979

There sure have been a lot of these Alien: Isolation dev diaries. Undoubtedly a good thing though, creating transparency that Colonial Marines utterly lacked. This new one continues the theme of authenticity that’s obviously key to the approach Creative Assembly have taken - making the sci-fi elements feel like they were designed in the ‘70s. 

“This isn’t a world of holograms and touchscreens; there’s no sense here that technology is going to save you,” said creative lead Alistair Hope. It certainly looks a lot like Ridley Scott’s original vision. Big ol’ CRT monitors, distortion on screens, thick analog buttons - it’s all been designed with what the original filmmakers had access to 30 odd years ago in mind.

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Blocky shooter Minimum leaves purgatory after being rescued by Atari

Blocky, minimalistic shooter, Minimum has been pulled out of Section 8 developer TimeGate’s bankruptcy proceedings, with help from Atari who have handed it over to Human Head. 

TimeGate announced it just before the studio went bankrupt, and it looks like ex-Prey 2 developer Human Head has kept it pretty similar. Take a gander at the trailer below. 

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Cortex Command updated with Steam Workshop, squad controls, and smarter AI

Cortex Command’s cogs don’t fit together, it’s leaking oil, and its motherboard is chipped. Data Realms, the game’s developer, knows this. When they first released the game on Steam, 18 months ago, there was no Early Access system in place, so they released the game saying it was version 1.0 and they’d just continue updating the game as they had in the years of development beforehand.

It’s taken 18 months for the first major update to be released but it should end a lot of grievances players have with the strategy game.

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Attack of the Artifacts heralds a "more monstery" Card Hunter - flush with angry antiques and tournament tactics

Card Hunter was and is an X-Commy tactics game and committed CCG that didn't quite make the dent it might've if it'd had, say, Ken Levine at its head rather than lesser-known Irrational co-founder Jon Chey.

But if anything can bring new players to the board, it's imminent expansion Attack of the Artifacts - in which scheming, sentient antiques are coupled with an intriguing tournament system.

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JetGetters' Kickstarter cancelled as developer finds investor

The games industry moves faster than a speeding bullet sometimes: tinyBuild launched JetGetters’ Kickstarter, received its needed $50,000, and cancelled it all before we wrote a post about it.*

They've decided to cancel because, despite having the necessary funding from fans, tinyBuild have decided to partner with an investor “to assist tinyBuild in expanding our development and publishing efforts.”

JetGetters is still due for release but it’s just going to take a little bit longer than first expected.

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Elder Scrolls Online duping bug is wrecking game economy. Zenimax shut down guild bank

Zenimax have been forced to shut down the Elder Scrolls Online’s guild bank after a duplication bug allowed players to flood the game’s economy with billions of ill gotten gold. The bug, which has been present in the game since beta, has resulted in players having easy access to rare materials, legendary equipment, and stacks of in-game cash.

While Zenimax have just now started to work on preventing further duplication they’ve said nothing of how they will fix the ESO’s economy which, at this point, is wholly unbalanced.

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None like it hot: How heat’s your worst enemy in Elite: Dangerous

We’ve known from early on its development that heat would play a big part in Elite: Dangerous. Sensors in Elite detect heat, it’s how you find ships in the cold vacuum of space, and everything on your ship seems to create it - weapons, engines, coffee dispenser.

Frontier are just now bringing it to the fore in Elite’s alpha, though. They’re implementing some really canny mechanics that you dogfighters will love.

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Starbound updates slowed while team moved to UK

You might have noticed that Starbound’s updates have slowed of late. The Early Access game started with daily releases adding new biomes, items, and features but in the past month that slowed to a trickle.

“The reason is two fold and it certainly has nothing to do with us taking the money and running,” explains the game’s creator, Finn Brice.

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This way lies madness: Gaslamp Games and Clockwork Empires

“I actually had a dream about Peter Molyneux while I was here,” Gaslamp Games’ Nicholas Vining told me on the last day of GDC, launching into an impression of the famed / notorious British developer. “He showed up in my dream and he’s like, ‘Nicholas, I have something for you.’ So he opened his hand and there was this apple. ‘Take this apple. Bury it deep within the fertile soil. It will reveal to you all the secrets of game development.’

“And then I woke up. I didn’t learn the secret of game development from Peter Molyneux.” Vining paused sadly. “This brings us to Clockwork Empires.”

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AMD On Why Mantle & DirectX 12 Are So Important; “DX12 Is The Result Of Common Goals”

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Styx: Master of Shadows – New Screenshots

April 17, 2014 John Papadopoulos 6 Comments

Focus Home Interactive has released a new set of screenshots for Styx: Master of Shadows; an infiltration game with RPG elements developed by Cyanide Studio for PC. Styx: Master of Shadows will feature open levels and will sport numerous missions with various objectives as players climb up the Tower of Akenash – murder, information recovery, theft of precious artifacts, etc – and gradually reconstruct the puzzle that provides the key to the mystery of their origins. Enjoy! Continue reading →

 

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Dynasty Warriors 8 XL Complete Edition – Coming To The PC This May

April 17, 2014 John Papadopoulos 11 Comments

Remember a couple of days ago when Tecmo KOEI asked PC gamers to show interest? Well, today the company confirmed that Dynasty Warriors 8 XL Complete Edition is coming to the PC this May. The game will be released via Valve’s distribution service, Steam, though there is still no page available to pre-order it. Continue reading →

 

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Jurassic Park: Aftermath – New Screenshots & Videos Will Blow You Away With Their Attention To Detail

April 17, 2014 John Papadopoulos 7 Comments

Modder ‘conceptcrash’has released some new screenshots and two videos for his upcoming Jurassic Park project that is powered by Crytek’s CRYENGINE, Jurassic Park: Aftermath. Jurassic Park: Aftermath started with the aim of making a free open world fps style game,as with many fan projects progress has been complicated and slow. Since that’s never gonna happen though, the modder has decided to change things and focus on a tech demo that might see the light of day. Jurassic Park: Aftermath looks great and stays true to its JP roots, so kudos to the modder. Enjoy! Continue reading →

 

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Half Life 2 Fan-Made Remake – Unreal Engine 3 Versus Unreal Engine 4 Comparison

April 17, 2014 John Papadopoulos 12 Comments

A couple of days ago, Polycount’s member ‘Logithx’ posted three screenshots of his fan-made version of Half Life in Unreal Engine 3. While those shots looked great, the modder claimed that he’d be moving his project to Unreal Engine 4 and today we’ve got the first comparison between these two versions. Continue reading →

 

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The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II – Now Available For Pre-Order On Steam

April 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 0 Comments

Neocore Games announced today that The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II is available for pre-order on Steam. Early adopters can purchase the game with 10% off and get an exclusive ingame gift only available via pre-ordering the game. Continue reading →

 

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Realistic Golf Sim Title – The Golf Club – Released On Steam Via Early Access Program

April 18, 2014 Thomas P 1 Comment

HB Studios has announced that its next generation golf simulation, The Golf Club, is now available on Steam Early Access for PC. The Golf Club features pre-designed courses as well as a Course Creator that allows players to build brand new courses and share them online within seconds. Continue reading →

 

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God of Destiny – New MOBA Title – Main Features Detailed

April 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 0 Comments

Wayi Entertainment has informed us about the main features of its upcoming MOBA title, God of Destiny. G.O.D is developed by LAVA, a development team under Wayi Entertainment located in Taipei, Taiwan. The game has been under development for three years, and will be releasing this year in the West. Continue reading →

 

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Bound By Flame – New Screenshots Focus On Main Hero

April 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 1 Comment

Focus Home Interactive has released a new set of screenshots for its upcoming action RPG, Bound by Flame, that is set for release on May 9th. As the publisher noted, the game hero takes center stage in these screenshots, and players can create and play him before launching into an epic quest in pursuit of the Ice Lords. All your choices in Bound by Flame will therefore impact on your adventure and also on your hero’s appearance. Continue reading →

 

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Unofficial Xbox One Gamepad Driver 2.0 Released

April 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 1 Comment

Great news for all those interested in using an Xbox One gamepad on the PC as YouTube’s member ‘Lucas Assis’ has released a new version of the unofficial Xbox One gamepad driver. According to Lucas, this 2.0 version will make it easier to play games that use XInput. However, we should note that if you intend to play games relying on DirectInput, you should still use version 1.0. Continue reading →

 

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CD Projekt RED Explains Why It Makes Sense To Be Independent

April 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 5 Comments

YouTube’s member ‘pkRenTenTen’ has uploaded an one hour video in which CD Projekt’s Marcin Iwinski and Michal Nowakowski talk about the benefits of being an independent game developer. This talk took place during the Quo Vadis Game Developers Conference in Berlin. Marcin and Michal talked about some really interesting things, including BioWare’s Aurora engine, what pushed them to create their own engine for The Witcher series, why it did make sense to partner with Atari for the distribution of the first The Witcher game, and more. Enjoy! Continue reading →

 

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Success – The Next GRID Game Will Feature A Cockpit View

April 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 8 Comments

What was the one feature that most gamers criticized Grid 2 for not supporting? Yeap, that was no doubt the cockpit view that was removed for no apparent reason. So, GRID 3 (or the next installment to the GRID series) will be announced in a couple of days and a lot of gamers wondered whether Codies have learned their lesson or not. Well, good news everyone as the development team has been listening to its fanbase, meaning that the cockpit view will return in this new installment of the GRID series. Continue reading →

 

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Evolve Gets A Teaser Trailer, Interactive Multiplayer Trailer Coming April 24th

April 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 0 Comments

2K Games has released a teaser trailer for Turtle Rock Studios’ upcoming multiplayer title, Evolve. This teaser gives us a glimpse at a multiplayer trailer – that is said to be interactive – that will premiere on April 24th. Evolve pits a team of four players against a giant monster. The concept sounds interesting, though the main challenge for Turtle Rock Studios will be to keep players constantly interested in it. Enjoy the teaser! Continue reading →

 

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Fenix Fire’s Source – Surreal Adventure Title – Gets A Kickstarter Campaign

April 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 0 Comments

Fenix Fire has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its upcoming surreal adventure title, Source. Source is a metroidvania action adventure game for next gen consoles and PC in which you control a firefly creature with the unique power to manipulate energy with every living being in a strange, bio luminescent world.  Continue reading →

 

Video-News

Skywind – Morrowind Mod For Skyrim – Gets A Second Official Development Video

April 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 3 Comments

The team behind Skywind – a mod that aims to bring the world and environments of Morrowind to Skyrim’s engine – has released the second official development video for it. In this video, we take an inside look into its most recent progress. Skywind looks interesting and has a lot of potential. Question is whether the team will be able to deliver and release such a demanding mod. Enjoy! Continue reading →

 

News

Crytek’s Cevat Yerli On Mantle: “With Mantle We Think That Real-Time Graphics Will Hit CG Quality”

April 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 22 Comments

AMD has released a new video from its GDC 2014 presentation of Mantle, in which Crytek’s Cevat Yerli shared his opinion about Mantle. During this year’s GDC, Crytek announced that CRYENGINE will support Mantle and Yerli claimed that with Mantle developers using CRYENGINE will be able to achieve CG quality graphics. Continue reading →

 

 

Square Enix Is Bringing Final Fantasy III To PC

By Spencer . April 18, 2014 . 1:01am

While Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII already had PC ports, Final Fantasy III for PC is a new version of the game.

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