Posts Tagged ‘Visceral Games’

Battlefield Hardline Multiplayer Open Beta Next Week

This seems outside police procedure.

Several years ago, I had a meeting with EA and pitched Battlefield: The Thin Blue Line, an FPS adaptation of the ’90s Rowan Atkinson sitcom. [Did you now? -ed.] Players would engage in gossip, give young shoplifters stern talking-tos, and even bop a yob with their truncheon. The final mission would be to sneak a big frilly bra into DI Grim’s office during a surprise inspection from the Superintendent. Unfortunately, EA instead picked up Battlefield Hardline [official site], a quick-drawing, dirty-talking, civil rights-ignoring celebration of police militarisation. Shame. I bet it doesn’t have even one single cascade of misunderstandings with hilarious consequences.

The point is, EA are launching a short multiplayer open beta test for Hardline next week.

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RPS Feature The Squiggly Blue Line

Battlefield Hardline: On Meaning And Theme In Multiplayer

This is not a police car.

Battlefield Hardline takes the series’ now familiar formula and gives it a new theme. It’s still about large teams of players killing, capturing and controlling vehicles in various objective-based multiplayer modes. But instead of visiting exotic locations and fighting as a military force, the game takes place in the streets of Los Angeles and players play the roles of cops and robbers.

I’ve been playing the closed beta since last Friday, and in between rounds of criminal mayhem I’ve been thinking a lot about meaning and structure in multiplayer game design. Now that the beta has opened up to all, let me exorcise those thought-demons here.

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April Cowers: Dead Space Free On Origin Until May

Ahhhhhh, memories.

What is the most terrifying thing? I mean aside from spiders. And human nature. And that one episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Yep, that’s right: being forced to admit there is a legitimate reason to open Origin, to dig it out of your PC’s sullen grave of a start menu and rack your brain to remember your password. But at least now you can pair terror with terror, as Dead Space will be completely free on Origin until May 8th. And that’s free to keep – not just to play.

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Alarming: Dead Space 3 – Awakened DLC

Somewhere in the back of my space-scarred and delirious mind, I knew that there was some DLC for Dead Space 3 in the pipeline. I’d intended to write a reminder to be annoyed about it on a post-it note because it was announced before the game had even been released and contained what sounded very much like the end of the story. Even though I enjoyed Isaac’s latest escapade, it didn’t leave me wanting more, which is perhaps why I’d forgotten all about The Awakened. It’s out tomorrow and there’s a trailer below.

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RPS Feature The Limbless And Clarke Expedition

Wot I Think: Dead Space 3

Even if Dead Space 3 actively carved off your limbs as you played, some might argue it is the best option in the current vent-bursting alien-blasting market. Don’t worry about that though, because I’ve finished the single player campaign without losing an arm or a leg, and I’m notoriously puny. With nothing to fear but the absence of fear itself, I reacquainted myself with Isaac Clarke and took a winter vacation.

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Dead Spin: Yes, The PC Deserves A Better Dead Space 3

Slender finally met his match when he tried playing oogie-boogie with a guy holding a flamethrower.

During an interview with Shack News, Dead Space 3 producer Steve Papoutsis expressed confusion about why PC players are disappointed at the lack of any extra frills in our version of the game. “It’s confusing to me that this question even comes up,” he says. It’s by no means any less important to us; it gets a lot of attention. The PC is a very different platform. As developers, you want to deliver an experience that’s as similar as possible on different platforms.”

In a word: Hurm…

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Pay As You Churn: Dead Space 3’s Microtransactions

Remember how in the previous Dead Space games, the only way to buy new weapons, armour, ammo and medkits was to stomp on the gooey remains of malformed mutants and catch the credits that they had stashed in their internal organs? Those were the good old days. Eurogamer spotted a “downloadable content” pop-up during Dead Space 3’s all-new crafting sections and the game’s associate producer, Yara Khoury, has now confirmed to our EG chums that it will be possible to pay real money to improve weaponry:

“You can buy resources with real money, but scavenger bots can also give you the currency that you can use on the marketplace. So you don’t have to spend [real world] dollars.”

The answer to the question, “Please, sir, can I have some Ishi-more-a?”, is “Yes, but keep your credit card handy.”

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