PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Some gamers had problems with Dark Souls on PC. The game's director admits as much, promising that Dark Souls II on PC won't suffer the same fate.

You wait thirty years for a indie game project to be barraged by fans after saying they were going to charge for DLC and then changing their minds as a consequence, and then you forget how this sentence even began. In the case of Squad, who make the ship-building-and-flying space sim Kerbal Space Program, this occurred after fan misinterpretation of the promise that all “updates” would be free. For 3 Sprockets’ Cubeman 2, it was the use of in-game purchases in promotional material for the main game that caught players’ ire. Both have had diplomatic changes of heart.

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It's a micromanager's dream, but lacks the smooth UI needed to make all that information digestible.

Microsoft responds to the growing popularity of the iPad mini and Nexus 7.

CodeSpells is a first-person game created to teach Java programming. Yeah – that just happened. A project by computer scientists at the University Of California, the game is designed to teach school students the programming language, as a solution for the difficulties of providing computer science education to younger teenagers.

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Reddit user XsimonbelmontX spent eight months adapting the board, pieces, cards and currency...and it shows.

Woohoo, it’s Wushu! Excellent, I have fulfilled my dumb joke quota in the first line. Now then, come reverently kneel in the dojos of intrigue. Age of Wushu, you see, might look like a typical MMO with high-flying wuxian trappings, but – at least, on paper – it actually sounds far more daring than that. Case in point: kidnapping. When you log off, your character stays in the world as an NPC. Said NPC can actually be kidnapped by other players, which I imagine will either prove cinder-block-choppingly infuriating or absolutely hilarious. Wushu also makes bold claims about being sandbox-y, pointing to systems for bounties, crime and imprisonment, random emergent PVP, a level-free advancement system, and more. Be warned, however: it also sounds dauntingly complicated, and F2P doesn’t help matters. See what I mean – first in the form of a gentle, open-palmed video and then with harsh, skull-wobbling words – after the break.

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To analyse the state of the PC these days is to spin around until you get dizzy. PC gaming is climbing and climbing, with extraordinary numbers being published for games like Dota 2 and League Of Legends, the massive popularity of the download market, and the phenomenal rise of the indie market. When RPS launched nearly six years ago, there wasn’t a single other big-name dedicated PC gaming site online. Now there are many. And indeed multi-format sites have switched from treating the PC as a barely mentioned also-ran, to a significant portion of their coverage. From MMOs to Humble Bundles, eSports to Minecraft, the PC is enormous right now.

So why isn’t anyone buying them?

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JAGGED ALLIANCE! JAGGED ALLIANCE! JAGGED ALLIANCE! It’s no good. I just don’t have Alec’s endurance when it comes to repeating words for any length of time. I do have a remarkable degree of stamina when it comes to dancing though and I plan to spend the next five minutes doing the Snoopy dance in celebration of the fact that Full Control, who are currently working on a promising adaptation of Space Hulk, are moving on to a new turn-based Jagged Alliance game once Space Hulk has shipped. Hope springs eternal.

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IN A WORLD where game publishers are all in competition over very silly, largely pointless things for no real apparent reason…

[Scene: the world]

Sega: “Push the button.”

Creative Assembly: “This is madness. We can’t do it. If we take this step, there’s no turning back. Not just for us, but for the world.”

[Scene: still the world]

Epic: “Did you see the readout coming from Sega? They’re just mad enough to do it.”

Crytek: “But why? This is going to change everything. We’ll have to fire back with something even bigger. Somehow. Otherwise, the Graphics Wars will be lost.”

Epic: “It’s a goddamn arms race from here on out. Best buckle up, kid.”

[Scene: that first portion of the world again]

Sega: “PUSH THE BUTTON. PUSH IT NOW. FOR ROOOOOOOOOOOME.”

[Scene: space]

An astronaut, gazing down at Earth: “Sweet mother of god.”

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We check out the PC version of Defiance to see whether it's fantastic or a shoddy port.

The PC market continues its downward trajectory. Are Windows 8 and tablets to blame?

Jazzpunk isn’t like other games. I mean, I guess you could draw lines to old-school adventures and maaaaaybe Thirty Flights Of Loving and other Blendo works for visual stylings, but it doesn’t really take any moment-to-moment cues from either. Instead, it’s a vaguely noir retro cyberpunk romp whose goal is Airplane/Naked-Gun-esque humor first and foremost. All those things sound absolutely wonderful, of course, but games and comedy haven’t really played nicely together ever since games sprouted interactive bits and decided to get all high and mighty about it. But why not make hilarity the focus of those interactions? And I mean for real – not, like, as a byproduct of solving a puzzle or in the interest of creating a black hole where all humor goes to die (also known as creating a Postal game). That’s Jazzpunk’s main aim, and at GDC, I got to find out whether or not it has any chance of achieving that goal.

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Minicore Studios is a small indie developer in Austin, TX, and it's making an alternate history game about the first dog in space. The game is called Laika Believes, but unlike the legitimately terrible fate that befell the real Laika, Minicore's version of history represents something a bit more hopeful, despite its dystopian overtones.

In this universe, Laika survived her trip into orbit and returned to Earth with robotic augmentations, somehow transformed into a capable canine war machine. Why exactly this happened remains uncertain, though her mysterious metamorphosis hasn't changed her into a mindless killing machine. If anything, Laika's conversational skills are just as important as the various weapons mounted on her back.

EA has announced the release date for SimCity on Mac, which will include access to the PC version free.

Research firm DFC Intelligence reports that Dota 2 is now the most-played Western PC game, passing League of Legends and World of Warcraft.

Soda Drinker Pro is a weird game, a first-person, real-time simulation of drinking some soda. Full disclosure: we don't fully get it. And we didn't know that there was a secret passage in the game, leading into a completely different game called Vivian Clark.

Snowrunner Games revealed Vivian Clark in a Giant Bomb interview, and has now gone on to Kickstart a full version of it. It's bizarrely surreal where Soda Drinker Pro is bizarrely hyperreal, a game in which you start as a raindrop and then become the next object or creature you touch - "Everything from a raindrop to a turtlefish to microscopic organisms to electricity to a star wearing roller skates," all rendered in hand-drawn art.

The Kickstarter project seeks $20,000 to build Vivian Clark out from a game jam prototype into a full game, with 100 additional playable "worlds" (or more depending on funds). If you want a proof of concept, look no further than Soda Drinker Pro, which, we'll remind you once again, exists and is inexplicable. Here's how to find Vivian Clark in there.

“RF Online” are words that sow fear into my heart. 160 years ago, in 2006, I had yet to come to the realisation that “No!” was the only sensible answer to, “Would you like to review this MMO for meagre freelance pay?” So it was I took on the task of RF Online, a Korean MMO that put the “grrrrrrr” in “grind”. It is with… confusion, really, that I notice an open beta is beginning for a game called RF Online 1.5.

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Shadowrun Returns developer Harebrained Schemes has narrowed down the game's release date to June. Late last year the studio announced a delay and waffled between a May or June launch, but it's l'eggo of the notion of May.

Also included in the update posted by the developer on its Kickstarter page, they detail a bunch of backer rewards information. If you backed the game on Kickstarter, you'll definitely want to take a look, as there appear to be registration deadlines you'll have to hit for your rewards.

The game will launch in June on Steam (with Steam Workshop integration), pre-orders for non backers will be available the last week of April.

How do you feel about thruster-based games? Me – I’m terrified of them, bringing back haunting memories of endless hours, days, months, failing at Moon Cresta. Oh God, Moon Cresta. Just the name evokes some mad synaesthesiac response, let alone those hateful, HATEFUL Atomic Piles. Oh man, I need a hug… Sorry, far off track. My traumatic Speccy past aside, Flowstorm is absolutely nothing like Moon Cresta, thank all that’s holy. But it is a game about manoeuvring a little rocket ship THAT’S A DANGEROUSLY SIMILAR SHAPE TO MY NIGHTMARES, through ludicrously tight curvy corridors. And what’s rather pleasing to discover is that’s a game about skidding, as much as it is thrusting. (Missus.)

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Another RPG sequel (spiritual or otherwise), another big Kickstarter victory. So it goes. And so Larian Studios go home with $429,508 of their desired $400,000 for Divinity: Original Sin, and that’s with 16 days left on the clock. Across its 9,472 backers, that’s an average of $45 per person. I don’t why I mention that, I just had the calculator program open anyway and thought I’d use it. For fun.

Larian’s Divinity series might have never quite set the world on fire, but it has a passionate following who’ll be clapping their hands with glee about this. As are Larian themselves.(more…)

Obsidian upgraded that first Project Eternity screen from half a year ago into some fully-fledged footage this week. The video, as preambled by project lead Josh Sawyer, doesn't showcase any gameplay, but focuses on some of the RPG's dynamic environmental effects.

As you can see - skip to 1:48 for the footage itself - these effects range from the subtle movement of leaves blowing in the wind to water levels rising and falling. The video briefly throws in some character animations before demonstrating a day-to-night transition.

"In a 2D game, this required our programmers and artists to come up with some creative solutions," reads Obsidian's description. "What they came up with surprised us initially and it continues to amaze us. While we are still working on refining some of the dynamic elements, we're very happy with the progress we've been able to make and hope you feel the same way."

Project Eternity raised just under $4 million in Kickstarter backing last October, making it at the time the most funded game on the platform - inXile's Torment: Tides of Numenera, which has Obsidian's Chris Avellone on its design team, recently surpassed it.

One of the bigger problems with modern society, I think, is that not enough things transform. I mean, yeah, nature does it – you know, butterflies and flowers and whatever – but there are hardly ever enough guns involved. And then there’s the Transformers franchise, which actually needs to take it a step further by transforming into nothing. So, in recent games, that leaves us with what, Strike Suit Zero? And I guess Dark Souls, if you count becoming, er, a vase. Strike Vector, however, is much more the former than the latter (sorry, transforming cowboy space vase fans), and it’s pushing Unreal Engine 3′s bionic piston hamsters to their oil-sweating limits. Also, the entire thing’s being hammered together by just four people. Marvel at their high-speed handiwork after the break.

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A new Kickstarter developer diary offers a first glimpse at the game in action, with a focus on the outside world.

The fastest speed setting is now available on all SimCity servers, as EA is now confident they're stable enough to handle it.

My old-school RPG gland’s been engorged with excitement for many reasons lately, but the past few weeks have seen Torment race to the front of the pack – and not just because it’s chock full of twisted sights and sounds not of this world. In something of a revolution, it also moves. Like, its pictures just sort of do things, without the assistance of a flip book, finger puppets, or any of the other traditional methods. So imagine my elation when I discovered that Project Eternity will, in fact, employ similar motion gremlins to sow the glorious song of movement into its lush mountains, valleys, and plains. See everything dance, wiggle, and jiggle after the break.

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Reality is mutable. The universe is not one, but many. In one existence, an Alec Meer types these words. In another, he drinks a cup of tea. In a third, and one I wish I was in, he types this words whilst drinking a cup a tea. Like BioShock Infinite, free browser puzzler No-One Has To Die toys with how the concept of alternate realities can create game mechanics (no, I’m not spoiling Binfinite, you all know what Elizabeth’s Tears do, for heaven’s sakes), but this one’s a more sideways, and violence-free, take on it. Essentially, there’s a fire in an office. You, as an unseen visitor able to fiddle with the security system, can close doors and activate sprinklers to try and contain the fire. But every time, someone has to die.(more…)

IGN is proud to offer an exclusive closed beta weekend for Marvel Heroes, free to anyone!

Why couldn’t Transport Tycoon Super Ultra Deluxe have been released yesterday so that I could quip about waiting years for a mass transit simulator to come along only to see two chugging around the corner at the same time? Oh well. Cities In Motion 2 has been available for a week now and having played it briefly at the Paradox Convention and for an hour at the weekend, I’m in no fit state to tell you wot I think of its people-ferrying charms, but I do enjoy zooming through the city streets and watching people go about their business. While its a transport business simulation rather than a city builder, the urban sprawl does change and expand as people are given the ability to more conveniently move from one place to another, and the Unity-powered metropolises are a good size, and look splendidly hard-edged and real.

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Eador: Masters of the Broken World will be released into our very own fractured realm later this month and I’ve spent a few hours with a preview copy and had many of my expectations defied. Is it more of a King’s Bounty than a hero’s swordsmanship and spell-biffing, or is it something entirely different? I’m still not entirely sure, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

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