Tag Archive

Yeah, Just Another Halo 1 Patch

Written by John Walker on August 7, 2008.

How’s about this for after-sales support. Gearbox have just patched Halo: Combat Evolved. Yes, the first one. The 1.08 patch for the five year old game removes the need for a CD to be in the drive when you play (a tacit nod to freedom?) and fixes some bugs for online play.

Shack spotted the fix added to their own Fileshack, which will become required for online play from tomorrow. Anyone out there still playing?

E3: Borderlands Ten-Minute Shakycam

Written by Jim Rossignol on July 17, 2008.

This is a really poor quality video, but the developer voiceover does reveal quite a lot more than the constant reiteration of there being “500,000″ weapons in the game. It talks about the persistent nature of Borderlands characters, the level-based system, the nature of online co-op, and the wide-open, exploration-rich terrain.
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Hell’s Highway: Tank Footage

Written by Jim Rossignol on July 5, 2008.

A new trailer has turned up for Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway. This time it shows some vehicular action, with our favourite armoured tractors doing death to the Nazis with spectacular effect. You can see that the Unreal 3 engine can render more than just muscular space murderers: Hell’s Highway is looking rather beautiful.

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“I had to lead them… through Hell.”

Written by Jim Rossignol on April 17, 2008.

I know loads of you disgree like booze-inflated MPs at Prime Minister’s Question time, but Brothers In Arms remains my favourite World War II shooter. This makes me anticipate Hell’s Highway’s revisit to this familiar terrain all the more. The game should be out in October, and I do hope it reprises the excellent co-op skirmish missions from the last games. Ooh, and here’s a vaguely storyish trailer…

Thank me some GameTrailers! Stat!

Gearbox Game Ads

Written by Jim Rossignol on March 26, 2008.

So it turns out that Gearbox, who are currently developing Brothers In Arms 3, Borderlands, and Aliens: Colonial Marines have licensed in-game advertising tech for use in “undisclosed titles”. The technology, supplied by Double Fusion, will apparently allow for “dynamic” adverts in the game. I suppose that could mean billboards onto which relevant ads can be posted, something like that.

The reasoning is that it can generate extra cash that Gearbox can use to buy Ferraris then put back into game development. It’s tricky for games that aren’t set in the real world though, isn’t it? None of the games Gearbox has in development would seem ideal for advertising, except perhaps Aliens. That said, I do feel like in-game advertising is a poorly explored possibility. Given how many people play certain games, couldn’t a future GTA game actually be free-to-play if it came with a city’s worth of advertising (perhaps with some radio and TV ads streamed off the net?) to pay for all the development cleverness? F4 Group have mentioned that they would like to make Empire Of Sports entirely ad-funded, and it makes sense to do so, given the context.

Aliens: Colonial Marines Has Quick-Time Events

Written by Alec Meer on March 11, 2008.

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

Alright, call it a blind, silly prejudice if you like. Unfortunately there are some elements of gaming my petty little mind is going to remain closed to until someone does ‘em well enough to convince me otherwise, and QTEs are right there at the top of the pile o’despicability. They’re just about palatable in the occasional console hack’n’slasher, but I really can’t imagine they’d be appropriate in a first-person-perspective Aliens game. I’m already having nightmare visions of hitting left, right, right, left, space in exactly that order to remove a ravenous Facehugger from my head.
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How many drops? 38. Simulated.

Written by Kieron Gillen on February 21, 2008.

And here’s another one. We’ve known that Gearbox were working on an Aliens FPS - whose name has now been confirmed as Aliens: Colonial Marines - but Sega have released some more information. It’s going to have a script from Battlestar Galactica (The Good one, obv) scribes Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, and while based on the mood and tone of the film, will take the Sulaco to new specially crafted destinations where hopefully our marines won’t all get killed again and have to be saved by the civilian. New weapons are promised, perhaps finally revealing the much-hailed Colonial Marine favourite the pointy stick. Probably the most exciting feature is the 4-player co-op, where - let’s quote the press-release rather than the film - we “will assume the persona of a Colonial Marine and have a distinct role to play in the completion of every mission”. RPS have already had their characters assigned. Jim will be Hicks. I’m Hudson. Alec is Vasquez. Walker is Newt. Stone will be Bishop. Quinns is Wierzbowski . We haven’t a visual yet but Eurogamer have found some cheery magazine scans you can see over here.

How do you get into this chicken-shit outfit? You’ll have to cryo-sleep until the end of the year. Until then, you can amuse yourself with this splendid Java version of the old Aliens board-game.

Games For 2008 - Brothers In Arms 3

Written by Alec Meer on February 7, 2008.

If there’s one thing that came out of all the hoo-ha around our Age of Decadence interview (other than that willful antagonism can be an awesome promotional tool), it’s that there’s something of a split between people who believe mainstream games are justly and necessarily slicker of interface than their more fiddly ancestors, and people who think that no, they’re just getting simpler, because gamers are getting stupider.

Brothers In Arms is fine example of this division. It does squad control - something that in so many older military-themed shooters involved memorising several dozen hotkeys - with great grace. Context-sensitive, just point, click, and your men go there, shoot that, shelter here. Easy? Stupid?

Not a bit of it. It just knows what’s important.
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Gearbox’s Borderlands To Be Published By 2K

Written by Jim Rossignol on August 17, 2007.

Gearbox being the blokes who made Brothers In Arms, and 2K being Bioshock’s publisher, of course. Borderlands is a post-apocalyptic shooter with vehicles (yes, a bit like Id Software’s recent announcement, Rage) delivered in a sci-fi Mad Max style. The game will feature randomly generated missions and even some RPG-style character development, with customisable characters, weapons and vehicles. Best of all, however, is that it’s going to be focusing on co-op multi-player. (Also a bit like Rage).

It’s slightly spooky how much some RPS folk have been talking about vehicular combat games in the last few months, and then two come along at once. It’s almost as if we’re in tune with the zeitgeist, or something.

Also: the press release was filled with some of the most derivative garbage I’ve ever read. How many keywords can you fit in once sentence? I mean really.