The Dust Settles
By John Walker on June 8th, 2011.
While we’ve known about DUST 514 – the console accompaniment to the PC’s grand space MMO EVE – for quite a while, yesterday’s announcement that it’s to be a PS3 exclusive has brought it to everyone’s attention once more. So I grabbed CCP’s senior producer on EVE, Torfi Frans, and DUST producer, Thomas Farrer, to try to find out their motives. What is DUST? How exactly does it relate to the EVE universe? And how will a game of EVE change once it launches?
By Jim Rossignol on June 8th, 2011.
You might recall that last year I talked to Cryptic’s Jack Emmert about the MMO he called “an old school Western tactical RPG”. It’s Neverwinter, a game that also, apparently, marks a new direction for the studio. You can see some of the fruits of that new direction over on the official site, and also in the teaser trailer below.
Looks like a fantasy action-RPG to me! Yes sir. The most interesting aspect of this, of course, is that Cryptic are planning to let people come up with their own dungeons, with their own fictions, to be installed in the world. If they pull it off it could be a genuinely interesting spin on the way these kinds of games work.
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By Jim Rossignol on June 7th, 2011.
Trion and the tediously-named SyFy TV channel are teaming up to create a multiplatform MMOFPS that somehow links into a TV show, apparently going as far as featuring player’s characters in the TV show part of it. The project is called Defiance, and there’s a teaser trailer below showing flowers, part of an insectile monster, a heavily modified Golden Gate bridge, and a man with a gun. Trion offer this explanation: “Set on a future Earth, Defiance introduces players and viewers to a world where humans and aliens live together on a planet transformed by decades of conflict. The game combines the intense action of a “AAA” console shooter, with the persistence, scale, and customization of an MMO, while its TV counterpart weaves the rich tapestry of the world into a series with the scope, characters, and drama of a classic sci-fi epic. Because they exist in a single universe, the show and the game will influence each other and evolve together over time, with actions in both mediums driving the overall story of Defiance.”
I do love the “intense” “action” of a “AAA” console “shooter” on my PC, yes sir. Ooh, snarky! But I had a late night. It does look intriguing, though. We need more details!
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By John Walker on June 7th, 2011.
Tuesday 7th June, 11am:
So Monday contained the first proper bit of E3ing – the EA conference. This took place in a theatre in central LA, with quite the embarrassing typo on the outside. They’ve called it a “theater”! Everyone seemed too polite to point it out, so I didn’t say anything.
So 800,000 games journalists crammed themselves in and everyone attempted to set up their wifi/3G/4G connection at once, causing a crack to open up in the sky and purple light to rain down, killing at least a third of the attendees. Which was a relief, as it meant I was able to get a fraction of a connection in order to be able to liveblog the events.
By John Walker on June 7th, 2011.
Arrowhead and Paradox are a cheeky bunch. Magicka’s irreverence became infamous in the moment they announced DLC for a fantasy magic game themed around the Vietnam War. Their cheeky approach has continued, after they learned a while back that the Paradox booth at E3 would be immediately next to Bethesda’s megabooth. The result? See below for the full version.
By Quintin Smith on June 7th, 2011.
MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online may have gone free to play, but that doesn’t mean Turbine have to stop making pay-for expansion packs. The third, Rise of Isengard, now has a date- September 27th. It’ll bring with it three new areas (Isengard, Dunlan and the Gap of Rohan), a level cap increase up to 75, a new 24 player raid and more.
I’m continually impressed by the deviousness of games developers. Check this out: As an extra bonus if you buy Rise of Isengard now, you’re immediately granted access to in-game benefits ranging from a 25% XP boost to new mounts. Genius. I’m also not sure I’ve ever seen Base, Heroic and Legendary editions of an expansion pack before. A trailer as well as a full list of both Rise of Isengard’s features and the pre-order benefits awaits after the jump.
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By Alec Meer on June 7th, 2011.
The most arresting E3 trailer for me so far is the new’un for From Dust, the Populous-esque game from Another World/Out Of This World creator Eric Chahi. It seems to take the god game ball dropped by Lionhead/Bullfrog and run with it to about a hundred strange and wonderful places. I have no idea how any of these remarkable world-reshaping powers work in practice, but I almost don’t care. I’m simply happy enough to watch it, goggle-eyed and dreaming fondly of the things only video games can do.
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By Alec Meer on June 7th, 2011.
AND YET IT STILL COMES. The next offering from the infinite wheel of trailers is BIS’s Arma 3. They’ve gone for the live-action teaser trailer approach with this one, and something of a mood piece rather than giving much away about the game. I’ve attempted to ameliorate this by including a second, fan-made video composed of all the screenshots to date stitched together and given an ominous soundtrack.
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By Quintin Smith on June 7th, 2011.
We have a first proper glimpse of the co-operative Star Trek co-op action game! As stated, it’s firmly in the vein of the JJ Abrams reboot of the series, featuring plenty of lithe young things hurtling through vacuums and leaping out of the way of explosions. I expect I already know the answer to this, but to any physicists reading this- is that TV trope of people clinging onto rails and the like to prevent being sucked out into space even remotely plausible? And if not, why not?
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By Alec Meer on June 7th, 2011.
First there were tanks, and now there are warplanes. What next: World Of Armoured Personnel Carriers? World Of Anti-Tank Suicide Dogs?
The here and now, though, is World of Warplanes: the new game from Wargaming.Net, creators of the august WW2 MMO World of Tanks. RATATATATATATATATATATATATetc
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By Quintin Smith on June 7th, 2011.
Since all these blockbuster trailers have the RPS integrity meter showing a dangerous reading of 4.3 corrupts, allow me to bring us back down to Earth with the launch trailer of an indie game. Atomic City Adventures – The Case of the Black Dragon is a single player 3rd person action game by Windstorm Studios, one of several teams that formed by the staffers of Ensemble Studios after Microsoft closed them down. Continuing the trend of devs having no idea what “launch trailer” actually means, the release date for Atomic City Adventures is still simply “this summer”, but you can be sure we’ll post more when there’s something to play.
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