By Jim Rossignol on October 8th, 2010.
Front Mission Evolved is out today. Here’s Wot I Think.
Front Mission has changed. What was a turn-based console RPG featuring walking tanks and a complex political backstory is now a multi-platform third-person shooter featuring walking tanks and complex political backstory. Front Mission Evolved is an evolution, of sorts, and it starts out well. ROLLERSKATING ROBOTS ARE ATTACKING THE SPACE ELEVATOR! A stylish robo-movie opens things up for us and then…
By Quintin Smith on October 8th, 2010.
Battle.net project director Craig Canessa mentioned at GDC Online yesterday that StarCraft II’s first expansion, Heart of the Swarm, is at least 18 months away, which is a lot of months. Take your current age and add 1.5 years to it. That’s “at least” how old you’ll be when Heart of the Swarm comes out, with its new single player campaign and new multiplayer content. Won’t you be a little old for games then? It’ll be time to pack it in and buy a Renault Twingo, surely. Might as well bookmark this now.
The original StarCraft got Brood War within 8 months, in case you were wondering. Anyway! Click past the jump for the highlights of Blizzard’s new developer diary, including balance changes planned for the next patch.
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By John Walker on October 8th, 2010.
Okay, so, let’s work out what would go in the ideal computer game. Clearly pirates. And robots. Both pirates and robots. Then of course if the game’s going to be any good at all we’re going to need to be able to double-jump, right? And then there’s having a grappling hook, obviously. And collecting coins. So in many ways, the four-man team at Exit Strategy Entertainment are onto a winner with their plans for Pirates of New Horizons. Rather sensibly, the indie devs have released a prototype of the game, giving you an example of three different ways the game plays, including a rather large level to run around in. Play it, and then they ask you to complete a survey about it at the end.
By Alec Meer on October 7th, 2010.
Relax your pretty head after after all the big-publisher drama below with some dreamlike puzzling, chaps. Box is a simple, one-note browser game, simply a matter of arranging puzzle pieces so they push and pull in the right direction simultaneously.
It’s the right balance between sleepy and challenging for my tastes (my tastes being ‘it’s 9pm and I’m knackered’), but it’s not huge on variety. Sometimes, that plum doesn’t matter. Play!
(Thanks to Matt K)
By Quintin Smith on October 7th, 2010.
Yeah, this might just be funny enough to warrant a post. G4TV has gifted the internet with a comedy tour of Gearbox Software, which seems to be the only way we ever actually get a tour of a developers’ studios these days. Still, nevermind. Jokes! Acting! Randy Pitchford talking about Borderlands 3! It’s all after the jump.
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By Quintin Smith on October 7th, 2010.
Today Blizzard announced a new milestone for World of Warcraft. 12 million active subs. If you thought that number had stopped growing, that’s because it had. It’d been holding steady at 11.5 million ever since December 2008. Looks like Cataclysm has given it a shot in the arm.
I know this is evidence of the PC’s importance as a gaming platform and all, but my God, every time Blizzard announce record WoW subscribers it feels like they’re beating up my soul with a sock full of pennies.
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By Alec Meer on October 7th, 2010.
Oh Tim Langdell the nasty trademark troll,
On wrecking businesses you were on a roll.
Now your case against EA’s been thrown out,
And you must be wearing a great big pout.
Everybody! It’s the ‘Tim Langdell finally got his litigous little bottom kicked’ song! Sing it together!
In fact, having his ridiculous attempt to block EA’s further use of the word ‘edge’ in game names denied is the least of the Edge Games bully’s problems… Those ‘edge’ trademarks he’s abused for so long? Looks like he’s going to lose ‘em.
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By Jim Rossignol on October 7th, 2010.
Earlier this week I had a chance to talk to Matt DeWald, community manager at Red 5 Studios, the company making Firefall. It’s a shooter that promises to do new and unusual things to the free-to-play space. The game was the big surprise at the most recent PAX event in Seattle, with its blend of cartoon good looks, Tribes-like shooter action, and a persistent world. Perhaps most intriguingly, Red 5 is the company that Mark Kern and William Petras went on to form when they left Blizzard. It seems to have both the vision, and the design pedigree to be a really big deal. I asked DeWald to go into some of the details.
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By Quintin Smith on October 7th, 2010.
Despite the stat-tacular Hearts of Iron III coming out last year and an expansion for it coming out earlier this year, it seems Paradox are still releasing expansions for Hearts of Iron II. And why not? If I had my way all games would be ever-expanding, like some strange breed of digital fungus, occasionally growing so big that one would completely swallow another.
Hearts of Iron II’s third expansion, Iron Cross, was released today and seems to be a much more straight-laced affair than the nuclear-powered Doomsday and Armageddon expansions, simply providing more countries, provinces and technologies to the existing game. A Let’s Play video of HoI: Armageddon with a chirpy European talking over it can be found after the jump.
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By Phill Cameron on October 7th, 2010.
Brotherhood’s multiplayer is smart. The singleplayer might have you driving tanks and sinking ships, but the multiplayer remembers that you’re all meant to be assassins and has a ton of fun with that. There’s some expositional stuff about how you’re all Templar agents training in the animus, but what it boils down to is that you choose from one of eight different Renaissance characters and then spend the next ten minutes desperately trying to murder one another. But this isn’t some plain old deathmatch, or even some exciting new deathmatch with the Assassin’s Creed engine. You see, you guys are professionals. There are rules.
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By Lewis Denby on October 7th, 2010.
Apologies for the lack of Mod News last week. Imps came and took my eyes away, so I was unable to source any. But it’s fine, because Source is what this week’s Mod News is covered in, with various HL2 bits and bats, and even a little sprinkling of Left 4 Dead 2. But there’s more. Two Command & Conquer games and even Minecraft, of all things, receive a mention. Read on for the most interesting mod-related gubbins of the week.
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