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Orcs Must Die! Unchained preview: vulnerable bears

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There are two key differences between the Orcs Must Die you know (and we love) and this new upstart. It’s still a game where you fill corridors with traps that slice, dice, crush, incinerate, and impale wave after wave of orcs that are trying to reach your rift gate. But Unchained is now a multiplayer versus game, where two teams of five defend their rifts against the marauding green menace. Think of it as two games of Orcs Must Die lain end to end.

The second key difference: there are now giant, armoured bears.

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Wasteland 2 Early Access sales have helped double its Kickstarter budget

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Once upon a time, Wasteland 2 was to be a $900,000 game - held together by rad-tape and iguana-glue. Now it’s practically finished, it’s both “larger and more nuanced” than InXile envisioned even after its nearly $3 million Kickstarter budget was finalised.

That's because Wasteland 2’s eventual budget has been two times the amount it was Kickstarted with.

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What's it like to cheat at Titanfall?

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I'm a Titanfall cheater. I use Titanfall cheats. And this is how I'm killing you.

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Contraption Maker is second-generation The Incredible Machine, out now on Steam

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Are you ready to hear the sweetest story in videogaming? A man named Jeff Tunnell made The Incredible Machine in the early ‘90s, and seduced the world with its simple puzzles, solved exclusively with needlessly complex mechanisms.

Fast forward two decades, and Contraption Maker has just been released. Rather than the contemporary rip-off it appears to be, it’s actually designed by Tunnell’s son, Jon. Contraption Maker is a true second-generation game.

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Firefall finally fires up the jetpack, launching on July 29th

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After a long and tumultuous development, Firefall is finally gearing up for launch on July 29th, three years after the initial release window. The jetpacks and mining MMO had quite the bumpy ride, with developer Red 5 making massive sweeping changes well into development, shutting down PvP, letting go of staff and even sacking the CEO.

The launch date has come out of the blue, after Red 5 went quiet for most of the year. CEO James Macauley said, in an interview with Polygon, that the developer made a “conscious decision” to go silent so it could knuckle down to deliver the game it wanted to.

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Building the fort of my dreams in Epic Games' Fortnite

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When I was a kid, I dug a slit trench in my backyard, right next to the woodpile. It went swimmingly until I hit the dense clay that lies in patches beneath two or three feet of Indiana topsoil. Then, unable to go deeper, I decided to start digging out farther, using the loose dirt to created a kind of a breastwork.

Either way, my father eventually came outside and discovered his son jamming pointy sticks into an earthen berm, with a replica bolt-action rifle slung over his shoulder. He wasn’t even angry, I don’t think. Just amazed at the curious industry I’d shown.

I loved the idea of digging-in, of fortifying myself against... something. I imagined hordes of the Hun wasting themselves against my defenses as my imaginary platoon and I cut them down like the cordwood that held my left flank on that warm spring day.

For me, Epic Games’ Fortnite is all about that day. It’s about sneaking into the garage to steal some tools, and then getting to work building something that’s equal parts absurd and murderous. Except you can build something better, and it’s easier to get friends to help.

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What Cliff Bleszinski did next: F2P arena shooter, BlueStreak

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Cliff Bleszinski has been teasing his return to game development recently, and today finally revealed what he and his new studio will be working on. It won’t come as a surprise that the studio is Boss Key Productions - which was linked to Bleszinski before he revealed his involvement - and they’ll be developing a free-to-play arena shooter for PC codenamed BlueStreak. 

Bleszinski spilled the beans on Twitter today, but he won’t be giving any specifics until tomorrow. 

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Get out the shears: Guild Wars 2's new Living World episode, Entanglement, blooms on July 15th

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Last week saw Guild Wars 2’s Living World enter its second season with Gates of Magumma. Adventurers were called to assist Seraph forces in rooting out villainy in the Brisban Wildlands. But a living world is a world that keeps on ticking, and the second episode, Entanglement, is set to begin on July 15th. 

Last year we said that Guild Wars 2 was one of the best MMORPGs on PC, and this stream of new content is only making it better. 

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Hearthstone's Curse of Naxxramas won't cost you your soul

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Hearthstone’s dungeon expansion, Curse of Naxxramas, will take adventurous card sharks (and orcs, humans etc) to the floating necropolis of Naxxramas for good times and boss battles this month. Today, Blizzard’s broken down the pricing and bundles and introduces the very World of Warcraft Heroic mode. 

If the upcoming expansion is piquing your interest, but you’re fresh-faced and deckless, take a look at Nick’s best Hearthstone decks for beginners

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MOBAlands: Battleborn is Gearbox's new IP, and it's a MOBA

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Gearbox has joined the increasingly large number of developers trying their hand at a MOBA. The studio’s first new IP since Borderlands is Battleborn, it’s been revealed in a Game Informer cover story, a first-person arena shooter with MOBA sensibilities. 

Warriors from across the universe, including an immortal samurai and a gun-toting robotic gentleman, all come together to battle over the last star in the sky. 

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Humble 2K Bundle: Buy eight games for $20 and help out two charities

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2K is getting in on the Humble Bundle action for the next two weeks, offering up over $200 of games while supporting the American Red Cross and Action Against Hunger. 

You can pay what you want for the original BioShock, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified and The Darkness II. You’ll walk away with two great games and two charities will be a wee bit better off. 

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Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn 2.3 calls on Eorzea's defenders today

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Final Fantasy XIV’s chunky 2.3 update, complete with gargantuan beards and new dungeons, has just launched today. New questlines, challenging boss battles, chocobo raising and a mountain of other additions have being thrown into the MMO.  

It’s come a long way since it was shut down and rebranded as A Realm Reborn, which our Nick became very fond when he worked away on his Final Fantasy XIV review, and called it one of the best MMORPGs on PC. Have you had a chance to dip into any of the new content? 

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@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!

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Hazard Ops – Third-person Online Action Shooter – Enters Open Beta On July 16th

Infernum announced today that the open beta phase of Hazard Ops will be launched on July 16th. Hazard Ops is described as a brutal third-person person action shooter for PC, featuring both co-operative and competitive game modes. The game is currently under closed beta which will end on the 8th of July, and will begin to allow a week of battle preparations for the Open beta. Continue reading

 


Pillars of Eternity To Be Playable At Gamescom, Paradox To Unveil ‘Secret Projects’

Paradox Interactive today announced the catalog of games that would be on display – and playable by attendees – at the Gamescom trade show in Cologne, Germany on August 13-17, 2014. Featuring recently announced titles and impending releases such as Runemaster and Obsidian Entertainment’s Pillars of Eternity, Paradox will be demonstrating and sharing their biggest games with Gamescom visitors, as well as announcing a few never-before-seen titles at the show. Continue reading

 


CRYENGINE-powered “Lichdom: Battlemage” Gets Spectacular New Screenshots

Xaviant has released a new set of screenshots for its upcoming CRYENGINE-powered first-person caster title, Lichdom: Battlemage. Lichdom is currently available via its Early Access program and its latest build comes with a new boss, a new level, a new Sigil and a new Synergy Feature. Enjoy! Continue reading

 


Watch_Dogs – TheWorse 0.97b Mod Out, Comes With Performance Improvements & Graphical Enhancements

Our reader ‘Juan Manuel Brizuela’ has informed us about the latest version of TheWorse’s mod for Watch_Dogs. According to its changelog, this new version of this popular mod comes with performance improvements, adjustments to both DOF and Normal Camera, increased rain and splashes intensity. Continue reading



@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!

Space Trails And Trailers: Deep Space Settlement

By Graham Smith on July 8th, 2014 at 2:00 pm.

It has quickly become trite to say there are a lot of space games currently in development. How about this: there still aren’t enough space strategy games. Sure, cockpit fetishists are well satisfied, but there’s still too few opportunities to command fleets from a spacebird’s-eye-view.

Deep Space Settlement may correct this. It’s an in-development “4X RTS”, meaning it’s about forming enormous armadas and directing them in real-time space battles. There are plans for story and sandbox modes, systems of trade and ship customization, and a lot more. And there’s the first trailer below.

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Video Preview: Epic’s Fortnite Is… Interesting, Early

By Nathan Grayson on July 8th, 2014 at 3:00 pm.

For the past many years, Epic was known as the One True King of console grimdark. Gears of War was about colossal mountain men with veins running rivulets through their stone hewn necks and stubble-dappled chins, their rage matched only by their apocalyptic sorrow and love of running in slow motion to popular songs that described their situation eerily well. But now we have, well, pretty much the opposite. Fortnite is bright, silly, and PC-only. It’s also basically Gears of War’s ever-popular horde mode plus Minecraft, Left 4 Dead, and a bunch of its own ingredients. It’s certainly unique, but I don’t think it’s great. Yet. Watch below to hear my impressions after a full day of playing a pre-alpha build.

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Ashen Looks Beautiful: An Open World RPG About Friends

By Graham Smith on July 8th, 2014 at 4:00 pm.

The Ashen website promises “open world”, “passive multiplayer”, “non-linear progression” and “high risk combat”, which are all things that sound exciting and Up My Street and My Bag so on. That’s not why I’m posting about it though, because those things don’t exist yet and I haven’t and can’t play the game. I’m posting about it because its concept art is gorgeous and because of a five-second animation clip of the scene pictured above.

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Blues On Rails: Hurry the Sorry Word

By Alice O'Connor on July 8th, 2014 at 5:00 pm.

It’s funny how “on rails” is used disparagingly. I like riding trains. They’re pretty great. Hurry the Sorry Word is on figurative and literal rails, and both make it splendid. It’s icefishing v creator Nate Gallardo’s exploration of ‘Death Don’t Have No Mercy,’ a blues song by Blind Gary David.

It’s a walk along ghostly train tracks during a storm, nails rising out, sleepers falling away, and scenery blowing apart as the song echoes. If you have a few minutes, Hurry is free and takes about as long as the song to finish.

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Fortnite To Be Online-Only, Will Have Mods… Somehow

By Nathan Grayson on July 8th, 2014 at 6:00 pm.

Quick recap: once upon a time Epic’s Fortnite was set to be kinda grimdark and more than likely a premium game (i.e. money upfront, party in the back). Over the course of a couple radio silent years and some fairly large revisions, however, it’s emerged more lighthearted and – rather crucially – free to play. It is, then (as is usually the case with these things), an online-only affair, an action/building game built for co-op and PVP, but not really single-player. Also it’ll have MMO-style persistent progression. So Epic will run the servers and sell (largely) cosmetic items. Problem: where do mods enter that picture? The answer, per producer Roger Collum: somewhere, somehow, someday. But “definitely.”

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A Mysterious State Of Mind: Virginia Interview

By Adam Smith on July 8th, 2014 at 7:00 pm.

Virginia set up camp in our collective consciousness the moment we saw its stylish agents and what looked like a small town diner. Inspired by Twin Peaks, The Outer Limits and The X-Files, it’s a game about the investigation into a missing person case in one of America’s first States. This is an America in touch with its fictional history as well as its actual past, and I wanted to know more about how those influences will sit together, and how the game would actually play. I also took the opportunity to ask the team about a few of their favourite things. The team are designer/writer Jonathan Burroughs, animator/artist Terry Kenny and composer Lyndon Holland. Here are their answers.

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Love In The Dark: Steenberg Releases Exo Test

By Alice O'Connor on July 8th, 2014 at 8:00 pm.

You may think you’re something of a video games whizz. After a few minutes of button-bashing and mouse-waggling you’ll figure out any game, you like to think. No. Nope. Not with this. Love maker Eskil Steenberg has released a public test version of his next game, Exo (formerly Dark Side of the Moon), and you should read the helpful file named How_to_play.txt. Without it, you may not even twig that it’s a stealth RTS about heavily-armed exosuits hiding in shadows. I certainly didn’t.

Testing’s centred around a thread on The Crate and Crowbar’s forums (it’s some manner of cyberpod, I told), so grab the build and head over there.

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@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!

As you can see the list has grown, and we have some very cool games coming. The list is divided into 3 groups: games that are released, unreleased, and games that are not yet confirmed to support Mantle, however developers have signed for private AMD beta program.

Games in beta program may or may not support Mantle, but these games will be Gaming Evolved titles for sure. The third group includes GTA5, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, COD:AW and Sleeping Dogs: Triad Wars. Mantle support for GTA5 could be a game-changer for AMD.

While the third group has still Mantle support pending, the second group is confirmed to support new API. Here you can find Star Citizen, Sims 4, Rise of the Tomb Rider, Mass Effect or Star Wars Battlefront.

Thanks to AMD partnership with EA/DICE and Oxide Games, Mantle may finally become a real competition for DirectX. DX12 is still long way ahead, while Mantle is already here.

Of course we will bring you new update as soon as new games will be added.

http://videocardz.com/51018/exclusive-upcoming-games-support-mantle

check the full list on the site



@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!

Mass Effect and Star Wars supporting Mantle was pretty much expected as EA will make sure to use their Frostbite Engine in as many games as possible... but with The Sims 4 also supporting Mantle, does it mean that it also uses that engine?

And CoD will more than likely use it too. They said last year that they would have to support it too to not look worse than the competition (BF) in the PR talk.



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.

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Away with the clouds: League of Legends to ditch Adobe Air for its new pre-game client

 

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At any one time, nearly every part of League of Legends is being sized up for a revamp. Urgot is just the latest of many champions to get a new lick of paint, and the Summoner’s Rift is headed for the biggest update in its existence. But as everything changes around it, the game’s client has aged noticeably - creaking under the weight of every new character.

No longer. Riot are busy laying the foundations for a new client, built on brand new tech.

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Titanfall's Frontier's Edge DLC will bring parkour to the beach, somehow

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Thud, thud, thud. The titans will not be dissuaded from falling in one of the 15 best PC first-person shooters around. Respawn’s second-ever DLC release for their ground-averse FPS will be named Frontier’s Edge, and will take us to the most remote corners of its thinly-sketched universe.

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Battlefield 4 PC patch sees off Battle Pickup exploit, debugs Commander mode on mobile

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DICE were going for Dambusters when they designed Battlefield 4’s levolution shtick, but eight months on they’re still plugging holes. Yesterday’s patch has tackled several bugs in the game’s Commander App, extracted an exploit and, gosh, acknowledged the existence of joystick users.

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Valve launch new Team Fortress maps and Robot Destruction mode in 'Early Access'

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There were no Heavy-humour comics or cartoons to trumpet its arrival, but yesterday’s Team Fortress 2 update was its most important in quite some time. Though the TF2 community long ago became accustomed to helping in the development of their favourite game, this patch was the first in which Valve were comfortable releasing unfinished maps and modes.

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Assassin's Creed Unity is a "new narrative start"; "best entry point" since the series began

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Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag was one of the best games of 2013 - not least because it ditched the contemporary landlord antics of its predecessors completely. In their place were first-person sequences set in offices a lot like those Ubisoft occupy in Montreal. It worked, really well. But it wasn’t a meta-trick the studio could repeat twice, and Assassin’s Creed Unity marks the beginning of a new story cycle.

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Alien: Isolation sets the standard for pre-order DLC with Weaver-voiced missions

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Benjamin Button wasn’t the first film star we saw age backwards. Jeff Bridges lost more than a beard in Tron: Legacy, and the wrinkles have evaporated from Patrick Stewart’s face in more than one X-Men movie. But there’s something about seeing Sigourney Weaver and crew as they were in ‘79 that tickles the nostalgia glands just so. Check out the picture below.

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Trains, planes and Dovetail Games: Train Simulator developer working on new Microsoft Flight Simulator

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I don’t think I’ve managed to land a single plane in Microsoft Flight Simulator X. I’m better off sitting in the passenger compartment, guzzling down tiny bottles of whisky and peering at the tiny screen attached to the chair in front. A new flight sim is on its way, but I suspect I won’t have any better luck with landings. 

Dovetail Games, the creators of Train Simulator and the upcoming Dovetail Games Fishing, today announced a deal with Microsoft. The studio has been granted the rights to develop new flight sims based on Microsoft’s tech, along with distribution rights for Microsoft Flight Simulator X. 

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Battlefield 4: Dragon's Teeth is definitely coming out on July 15th; no take backs this time

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EA’s Origin Twitter account spilled the beans on Battlefield 4: Dragon’s Teeth’s release date back on Friday. July 15th, the tweet revealed. Then it was taken down and replaced with one absent the release date. 

The release date has now been confirmed, and shocker, it is indeed July 15th

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That's a relief: Grim Fandango to be released on PC alongside PS4 and Vita

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When a remastered version of Grim Fandango was announced at E3 last month, my heart skipped a beat. And then it broken when there was no mention of a PC version, only PS4 and Vita. The pieces were put back together again when Tim Schafer tweeted that other platforms would be talked about soon.

Today, Double Fine has announced that PC, Mac and Linux versions of the classic adventure game would release alongside the Sony’s consoles. And all is right with the world once more. 

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Dragon Age: Inquisition's E3 demo makes October 7th seem too far away

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When Tim saw Dragon Age: Inquisition at E3 2014, he called the demo “absolutely stunning”. Seeing it now, just posted today by BioWare, with Mike Laidlaw narrating, it looks like he was right. 

The demo shows a mage and her party travelling through the Hinterlands and through Redcliffe, eventually facing one of the titular dragons in a flashy, but still rather tactical, battle. Take a gander below. 

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What Borderlands 3 would need to be intimidates Randy Pitchford

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What would Borderlands 3 be like? It’s a question Gearbox have been mulling over, even though the game isn’t currently in development. 

The answers intimidate head honcho Randy Pitchford. “We imagine what that might be, and frankly it scared us,” he told Game Informer in the latest issue. “It's like, 'That's so crazy and so big that I'm not sure we can succeed'.”

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Lords of the Fallen will haunt PCs on Halloween

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Halloween, a time for getting sugary treats, carving fruit and drinking so much that dressing up as a sexy ghost no longer seems ridiculous. It’s also a time for demon-slaying and wielding big weapons, because that’s when Lords of the Fallen is coming out. 

On October 31st, City Interactive’s action RPG will launch and put players in the shoes of a condemned ne’er-do-well as he hacks monsters with nasty looking weapons and blows them to smithereens with magic. 

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Modding support for Banished coming: "It just needs a few more features"

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Golden Grove, I remember you well. My first ever settlement in one-man indie endeavour, Banished. It was meant to be a utopia, where there would be food, clothes, medicine and plenty of firewood during winter for every resident. After 50 years, half the town was dead. The other half, struggling through a winter seemingly without end. 

Maybe some of those poor folk wouldn’t have needed to die if I’d been using a mod that allowed me to grow food out of thin air. That glorious dream could soon be a reality, as Banished appears to be well on its way to getting oft-requested mod support. 

It’s too late for Golden Grove, though. 

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@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!

Cliff Bleszinksi Aims To Create An FPS That Will Look Fantastic, Will Be Skilled Based, Targets 5V5

During a recent Reddit AMA, Cliff Bleszinksi shared a lot of new information about his new sci-fi free-to-play FPS shooter. According to Bleszinksi, BlueStreak needs to look fantastic on high-end PCs and – at the same time – run on really dated systems. Whether the team will be able to pull this off remains to be seen. Continue reading

 

 

Impressions – Habitat: A Thousand Generations In Orbit

By Alec Meer on July 9th, 2014 at 7:00 pm.

Habitat: A Thousand Generations in Orbit is a strategy/simulation/survival game about constructing an improbable spacecraft out of debris floating in a post-disaster Earth’s orbit. It’s out on Early Access now.

The first time you move is incredible. You’ve slowly built this absurd, rickety contraption of rockets, buses, burger restaurants, fire-breathing animatronic T-Rex heads and cruise liners, and it looks like a stiff breeze would tear it into so many lethal pieces. Yet now you have to fire up assorted jet engines and thrusters, and make this absurdist space hulk travel across the skies. Never mind that there are deadly, mine-spitting nanoclouds and inconveniently-placed explosive gas cannisters strewn about Earth’s orbit – simply going up and a bit left feels comparable to asking a massive, skinheaded Londoner in a red and white football shirt if he’s a Tottenham supporter.
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A Very Minecraft Megacity: The Endless City Mod

By Alice O'Connor on July 9th, 2014 at 6:00 pm.

To my infinite shame and professional disrepute, I’ve never played Minecraft. I know. But that hasn’t stopped me from hugely enjoying a Minecraft mod for months, Endless City by Julian Hyde. It’s an idea so lovely, I’ve enjoyed it in itself, not even watching other people play. See, Endless City is inspired by this cracking tweet from game-maker Andi McClure:

Reverse minecraft: Minecraft in a large city. Cut away dead frozen impassable skyscraper towers, construct trees and earth in their place.

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How Epic Hopes To Avoid Pay-To-Win With Fortnite

By Nathan Grayson on July 9th, 2014 at 1:00 pm.

Fortnite is, technically speaking, Epic’s first free-to-play game. The crayola colored smash-and-shoot-and-loot-and-build-er is being designed primarily as a co-op thing, but with persistent MMO-style progression underlying it all. There’s also still-nascent PVP in the works, further necessitating balance in the name of fair fun. Fortnite is, however, a giant mixed bag of moving parts, multiple genres (action, building, crafting, a Gears-of-War-style horde mode, etc) mashed together. How do you make all of that free-to-play without mucking it up?

I asked producer Roger Collum about Epic’s plans, influences from games like League of Legends and Team Fortress 2, the potential emergence of a tedious grind with things like XP boosters in the mix, whether or not you can really equate time and money as free-to-play devs so often do, and more. It’s all below.

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@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!

Some people got a tour of Valve HQ

http://imgur.com/a/k6oge?gallery

 

nothing juicy that I can see tho : (



@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!

Nope, I don't see any possible spoilers either, but that clock

Has 2 "soons" and "When it's done" on it!



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.

Kerbal Space Program: First Contract introduces "greatly expanded" Career Mode

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Kerbal Space Program, one of the best space games on PC, just took one giant leap towards “scope completion” - the point where its launch pad is large and stable enough for developers Squad to build high on top of it. 0.22’s Career Mode has been filled out with funding and reputation systems, and players can now take on contracts at the Mission Control facility.

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Digital colours don't run: The Elder Scrolls Online Update 3 will be a “guild extravaganza”

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“Update 3 is almost here,” say Zenimax, “and is sure to impress your guild!” 

Time was, impressing your guild simply meant barrelling through a series of quests in your off-time from being the Grey Fox. Now, though, the Elder Scrolls is a massively multiplayer affair. From Update 3 onwards, that means flying the colours of your group at all times - whether through armour dyes or bibs emblazoned with their emblem.

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Ban rush: how Blizzard tackle cheats in StarCraft II

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Blizzard aren’t really interested in catching StarCraft II cheats - not really. Ultimately, they’d rather deter them, stop them from even trying - so that nobody has to have their match ruined before the banhammer comes down.

Consider this post, then, the Blizzard equivalent of a ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ sticker - and learn something about the anti-cheat measures in one of the best PC strategy games in the process.

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Guild Wars 2 sales doubled in two months since Chinese release

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Those looking for gaps in the shiny carapace of one of the best MMORPGs on PC poked at its missing subscription. Could box sales sustain those bi-weekly updates and the huge team behind them for years to come?

The short answer: yes, so long as there are more countries for ArenaNet to conquer. Guild Wars 2 has 3.8 million players in China, just two months after its launch.

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Sigourney Weaver was "very touched" by Alien: Isolation's premise

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Sigourney Weaver might star in Alien: Isolation’s pre-order DLC, which makes hyper-tense levels of two classic scenes from Alien. But for the main, terrifying bulk of the game she is the mother Amanda Ripley is hoping to hunt down before she’s hunted to bits first.

As it turns out, she liked Creative Assembly's idea just as much as Sega did. Isolation marks the first time Weaver has played Ripley in a videogame.

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EA's Frank Gibeau pinpoints mobile Dungeon Keeper's problem: "We innovated too much"

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EA’s Frank Gibeau left his role at the head of the publisher’s PC and console-focused Labels division last year to become president of EA Mobile. Maybe the Dungeon Keeper license fell off a shelf and into his coat pocket, because it turned up a few months later, looking washed-out and smelling slightly damp, on iOS and Android.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson has already acknowledged that nu-Dungeon Keeper struggled to “stay true” to its namesake - but clearly failed to pass on the mea culpa memo to Gibeau. Instead, Frank thinks EA and Mythic “might have innovated too much”.

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Deep Silver would like you to decide what goes in Dead Island 2's collector's edition, please

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Care to fly the Zombie Flag of California from your car window? No? Maybe you’d rather wear a beer hat controlled using a dismembered arm? Or perhaps endure a radio alarm clock that groans you awake?

Deep Silver have come up with a whole page-worth of tat like this for Dead Island 2’s collector’s edition. Which particular tat ends up in the box is up to you.

Mercifully, there’s no Zombie Bait option.

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Alien: Isolation pre-order trailer alludes to a Ripley-roaring good time

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Oh, this is nice. We haven’t had pretend VHS visual artifacts in trailers since Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. But here’s a trailer for Alien: Isolation, replete with the late-‘70s version of the 21st Century Fox searchlight intro.

They might have stopped there, after the splash screens. But there’s even a couple of seconds of footage from Alien: Isolation’s Weaver-voiced pre-order DLC in there.

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If you're interested in starting Dota 2, you should watch the International 4's newcomer's broadcast

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The International is the biggest eSports event in history; boasting a whopping $10 million plus dollar prize pool. Sixteen teams are all smashing their digital avatars together for the biggest slice of the pie, in Valve’s most played game: Dota 2. It’s one of those MOBAs you see - five on five battles of attrition that can last an hour or more. The intimidating numbers don’t stop there either. It has over a 100 heroes to pick from, representing over 400 unique abilities and you’re gonna have to memorise each and every one if you want to be good.

It’s all a mad jumble of knowledge and numbers; only thousands of hours of play can begin to make sense of it all.

But don’t worry. Because there’s a phenomenally easy way to get in: the International 4’s brilliant newcomer’s broadcast. It’s lovely.

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Nosgoth Founders packs will be revamped and cheaper from July 22nd

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Nosgoth is a bit divisive around these parts. In my Nosgoth hands-on, I was surprised by how much fun I was having, and I continue to play it. Steve, on the other hand, is not a fan at all. In his Nosgoth preview, he called it a “disembodied multiplayer game”. 

You can decide which of us is right by getting early access to the closed beta with a purchase of one of the founders packs, which are currently 25 percent off. What’s the sale for? It’s bidding farewell to these founders, as they’re being revamped come July 22nd. 

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Riot declares war on League of Legends skin resellers

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A number of naughty sites and skin resellers have gained the ire of Riot. The League of Legends developer has declared war on these illegitimate resellers after it noticed an increase in fraud.

As of today, Riot will start to deactivate all previously issues codes for champion skins, and the studio is working with payment companies, recommending that they no longer process payments from these sites. 

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