PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

I’m somewhat glad this interview with Chris Cornell of Paper Dino, creators of multiple choice romance/fatality adventure Save The Date, is happening remotely. Frankly, if we were doing it over drinks or lunch, I’d fear for my life. If you’ve yet to play Save The Date a) you should, because it’s funny, thoughtful and surprising, and free and b) the preceding sentence will make a lot more sense if you do.

Save The Date’s nominated for the Nuovo award at this year’s Independent Games Festival. Here, I talk to Cornell about burgers, breaking the fourth wall, player habits and the IGF. … [visit site to read more]

UPDATE: SimCity is currently unavailable while the patch introducing Offline Mode is applied. It'll be up and running later today.

Update 10, which brings offline play to SimCity for the first time, is launching today after successfully coming through final testing. An announcement on the EA forums reads, "Today at 6AM PT we will be releasing Update 10 with Offline play. This involves server down time and the game servers will be unavailable for a few hours."

EA unveiled Update 10 and the new single-player mode back in January, after a 2013 in which the publisher came under severe criticism for implementing an "always-on" system for the city-building sim. That system backfired when servers buckled under the weight.

EA has already said players can access their previously downloaded content in the single-player mode, and they can save their files locally. A new FAQ reveals players still have to sign into Origin to launch the game, but Origin can be put into an offline mode while the single-player mode is being played. [Image: EA]

The few times Mushroom 11 has popped up on my radar, I really didn’t know what I was looking at. There was some talk about shape-shifting fungus, but it all looked a bit formless in the early tech. A smarter man would use that last sentence as a segue, but I am far too dim to link the phase ‘formless’ and the action in Mushroom 11, where you’re a growing mass of mushroom that you have to trim and shape to move through the levels: each cut and slice allows you to grow on. There’s an interesting little puzzle game in all this, and the trailer has spread below the cut. … [visit site to read more]

Facing the Lost Sinner in the fifth part of IGN's Dark Souls 2 diary.

RPS is at GDC! It’s a match made in heaven because both of our acronyms are three letters long. Each day of the conference is jam-packed with formidable amounts of intrigue – far more than any single person could take in on their own without suffering catastrophic brain combustion. And so, I have elected to gather cadres of knowledgeable humans each day this week to discuss the best, most important goings-on. Expect very special guests shouting over each other and probably using words like “cultural zeitgeist” and “doodieface.” Today, somewhat belated and also very bad at staying on topic: John, Cara, Hayden of PCWorld/my floor infamy, and myself all gathered on John’s hotel bed for an uncomfortably salacious chat about This War Of Mine, The Stanley Parable‘s emotional aftermath, SoundSelf, weeping American eagles, hedonism, and Cara’s refusal to stop posting PORNOGRAPHY on our virgin website that’s exclusively for children.

… [visit site to read more]

I have seen things in Space Engineers, readers. Horrible, crotch-related things. I got so wrapped up in seeing those things that I didn’t actually notice if there was any sort of game in there. Now I’m fine with pure building and messing about being considered gaming, but if you absolutely insist on there being some drama then the newly released Survival mode might be for you. There are a number of toggles that you can set, as well as plenty of starting scenarios to launch from, but the basic gist is everything needs energy, and if you don’t have enough of it you’ll die. Better get engineering. … [visit site to read more]

The Witcher 3 developer CD Projekt Red has confirmed it's working on an unannounced mobile project. Could it be tied into the upcoming RPG?

Blizzard has finally taken Diablo 3's controversial auction house offline, six months after announcing this was its intent.

Wargame: Red Dragon is a large-scale strategy game in which you command imprisoned serial killer Hannibal Lecter as he assists in the creation of a wargame. The wargame is set in Asia during an alternate history 1980′s in which the cold war ran hot, and is being designed by Will Graham, whose apparent empathic gifts are only functionally useful in the creation of boardgame rulesets when paired with a manipulative and violent psychopath.

While Graham attempts to make the best wargame possible, your role as Lecter is to subtly sabotage the design without being caught. Do you dare suggest a roll-to-move mechanic? Will Will Graham see through your introduction of a series of random miss-a-turn fail states? Why is the trailer mostly full of boats and jets and military warfare? … [visit site to read more]

A new report suggests Microsoft isn't keen to be left in the dust by Oculus and Sony, so has begun work on its own VR headset.

A bunch of the RPS posse are hitting up GDC, so the remaining blog squad coaxed me into the Forbidden Chatroom Of Mystery 2.0 as cover. They did so by tying my favourite piece of string to a string and dragging it along the floor, trapping me at the CMS and threatening to give me a paper cut. I am making the most of it by watching the latest Limit Theory dev update, and being gently lulled by Josh Parnell’s relaxing manner. Nothing in the world is bad when I can watch an open-world space game come together in blindingly pretty monthly lumps. It’s a good one as well, because it’s probably the first time we get to see what the game will be like to play.

… [visit site to read more]

Beyond the pomp and circumstance, I always felt that theocrats were essentially bureaucrats with bigger hats. And I guess the hats are part of either the pomp or the circumstance anyhow – a Stovepipe of Circumstance +4 or a Zucchetto of Pomp +2. Nineteen minutes of Age of Wonders III footage introduces another kind of theocrat, one with honest-to-badness divine powers and inquisitorial tendencies. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the revived strategy game but spent my time in the soft-soled boots of a rogue rather than the hard-souled vestments of a theocrat. The video is in the form of a developer-led let’s play, showing a late-game battle involving an Eldritch Horror.

… [visit site to read more]

Part way through this trailer for Orbit, a side-scrolling platformer about exploring a space ship, I noticed the particularly fine pitter-patter sound effect of the main character’s feet. The whole game sounds lovely; low drones and cavernous rooms and squeaky machinery and laser fields. “I wonder if it’s made by a sound designer,” I thought.

It is. I’m proud enough of myself for deduction that you should reward me by watching a video of it, embedded below.

… [visit site to read more]

The retro-styled atmospheric experience will soon be on Sony platforms.

But don't worry - Atari assures diehard fans that a 'PC experience' is due for release later this year, too.

A trio of former Disney Interactive developers founded Shark Punch this year, and their first project, The Masterplan, is a heist game set in the 1970s, due out for PC, Mac and Linux in 2014.

The Masterplan has players gather a team and resources to execute "the greatest heist in the history of mankind," and it has something to do with President Nixon abolishing the gold standard in 1971. It's top-down, 2D and physics-based with a "clever" AI system and real-time-with-pause mechanics.

Shark Punch comprises artist and designer Aarne Hunziker, CEO Jiri Kupiainen and programmer Leo Lannenmaki, and it's all self-funded. The studio's description offers the following insight: "Our focus is on creating games that offer deep, involving gameplay in a streamlined package. We do not make 'mid-core' games."

We were pretty sure a company named "Shark Punch" would be into hardcore things anyway. [Images: Shark Punch]

GDC is the indie scrappiness to E3′s mainstream AAA cacophony. E3 is a terrifying place that has only brought me suffering. GDC is, or at least has been the last two years I’ve attended, a really splendid time. Based around a massive range of talks from all aspects of the industry, rather than publishers’ competing subwoofers, the emphasis here really is on the craft, rather than the explosions. As I explore it once again, I’m going to share the experience in diary form.

… [visit site to read more]

Each Monday, Chris Livingston visits an early access game and reports back with stories about whatever he finds inside. This week, virtual arcade management in Arcadecraft.

As kid in the 1980′s, I gazed with envy at a few adults who seemed to have the best jobs ever. The ice-cream man: he could eat all the ice cream he wanted! The ambulance driver: he could drive really fast whenever he wanted! Most of all, the guy who ran the arcade. I mean, we had a filthy belly-sack full of quarters. Probably a hundred dollars in quarters. He probably lived in a mansion. The 80′s may be long gone, but that dream job is finally mine. … [visit site to read more]

According to a new report, Amazon's console may not be a console at all, and it could stream "top tier" PC games.

Veteran game designer Julian Gollop is calling on his years of experience to create a new game.

Capcom has insisted that this trailer is the final character reveal for Ultra Street Fighter 4, but how can we trust a company that released Street Fighter 2 seventeen times (Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is a thing that exists) with any sort of claim of finality? I’m hitting ‘post’ on this, but the minute I do I expect a Special Massive Mega Character Reveal Trailer Remix to arrive, and I’ll have to do a Quantumly Entangled Awesome Excellent Fistbump post in response. Then on and on and on. The trailer introduces Decapre, one of Bison’s henchman, and an apparently new character to control.

… [visit site to read more]

In April, Ghost Recon Online's open beta will close and launch under a new name.

A Titanfall player has managed to hit the max Generation 10 rank in Titanfall in three days, nine hours and five minutes.

One Finger Death Punch seems like a self-explanatory title. If it brings to mind a game in which many tiny enemies are punched into pieces using a simple control scheme, then you have understood the intent of the title. The left mouse button punches to the left, the right mouse button punches to the right. Occasionally there are swords, bows and bombs. That’s about all there is to it, so why do I not want to stop playing? Here’s wot I think.

… [visit site to read more]

Total War: Rome II has probably had the most troubled existence of any Total War game, trampling on expectations like a giant war elephant crushing the skull of an infantry man. At least that’s the impression I had from comment threads and old ladies who stopped me in the street: my brain is not wired for grand strategy games, so I only played it for a short time and then abandoned it to the Recycle Bin. However, that won’t stop me pointing that out there’s a new DLC pack coming out: Hannibal At The Gates. The trailer below shows a whole lot of big talk for people facing a man with angry elephants at his disposal. … [visit site to read more]

The IGF Factor 2014 rumbles on. Today’s homing arrow of investigation makes Matt Thorson its victim. When this interview was conducted, the creator of Towerfall: Ascension was days away from releasing the game on PC and the interviewer had not yet discovered how good it was. What insight might fall out? … [visit site to read more]

Gauntlet, the original co-op dungeon crawler, will return this summer to a home-based arcade near you. Announced only for Steam on PC at this time, the game will also have full support for SteamOS and Steam Machines.

Warner Bros. revealed the "completely modernized action RPG" will be part of its direct-to-digital WB Games Vault portfolio. The initiative will deliver downloadable games based on WB and Midway arcade brands, along with original intellectual properties "across multiple digital networks."

"With Gauntlet we combined the arcade style of the original game with an entirely new look and feature set that includes emergent, local and online four-player gameplay," said SVP of digital at WB David Haddad.

Gauntlet is being developed by Arrowhead Games, best known for creating Magicka. The game is being We'll hopefully have more details to share about the game this week after seeing the title at this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Atari announced Roller Coaster Tycoon 4 today. You may have seen the trailer. At best, it’s a mobile version of an older game rather than an actual sequel – at worst, it’ll behave like a crooked carnie, with all kinds of freemium delaying and money-grabbing tactics. “Pay one dollar to add glue to the coconut shy or your visitors will bankrupt you!” Only a few minutes after seeing that trailer, I received notice that Warner Bros are releasing a new Gauntlet game. I’d donned my grumpy hat before I even clicked the play button beneath the video. And then the hat combusted as I saw that it’s being developed by Magicka maestros Arrowhead. And that it looks ace.

… [visit site to read more]

Magicka developer Arrowhead brings the classic back to life.