All Topics Users older than one year ago

Save 66% on Remember Me during this week's Midweek Madness*!

The discount comes in addition to a significant drop of the base price (from $49.99 to $29.99).
Steam Trading Cards for Remember Me are now available for the first time, as well.

Neo-Paris. 2084.

Personal memories can now be digitised, bought, sold and traded. The last remnants of privacy and intimacy have been swept away in what appears to be a logical progression of the explosive growth of social networks at the beginning of the 21st century. The citizens themselves have accepted this surveillance society in exchange for the comfort only smart technology can provide. This memory economy gives immense power over society to just a handful of people.

Remember Me™ is a 3rd person action adventure where players take on the role of Nilin, a former elite memory hunter with the ability to break into peoples minds and steal or even alter their memories. The authorities, fearful of her knowledge and capabilities arrested Nilin and wiped her memory clean. After her escape from prison, Nilin sets out on a mission to recover her identity, helped by her last and only friend. This search for her past leads to her being hunted by the very people that created this surveillance society.

*Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time

We started Luftrausers halfway through 2011, when Jan Willem at Vlambeer was staring out of a window on a late flight from San Francisco to Amsterdam after the annual Game Developers Conference. He decided he wanted to expand on a little prototype we made back in 2010.

The pitch Jan Willem had for me was simple: the prototype had been made in two days, but had been played by hundreds of thousands of people. Jan Willem felt we might’ve run into something special with the simple high score game we had released for free to the internet. We started working on the very first version of our little 2D dogfighting game in just four colors.

We made a deal not to play the original until the new version was as good as we remembered the original to be, and we were surprised at how much of a struggle that was. We added bigger explosions, we worked on a dynamic camera system, we added trails of smoke on crashing jets, and we even added extra colors to the palette. It still took us almost a month to achieve the same level of speed, of chaos, and of impact that the far simpler original had.

When we played the original again for the first time, we were baffled. Compared to our updated builds of Luftrausers we’d been playing, the old version felt stale. You know that feeling when you’re talking about an old game that you love, and when you play it it falls flat? That’s because your memories of a game aren’t as much about what actually happens on screen, but about how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking while playing it.

Our original game made people feel like the best fighter pilot in the world, as if they skimmed right over the water line taking out a squadron of enemy fighters. Luftrausers actually allowed you to do that.

In other words, we decided to commit to Luftrausers. We reached out to our good friends at Devolver Digital to help us out. They looked at it, nodded sagely, and proceeded to send us a contract for us to sign without question.

Shahid was next on our list of people we wanted to talk to. We loved working with him on Super Crate Box for PlayStation Mobile, so we met up with him in a little food place just across from the PlayStation offices in England. He asked what we were working on and we pitched Luftrausers to him. Shahid, without exaggeration, proceeded to negotiate with us on the spot, scribbled down the name of the game on a coaster, added a few terms to the thing, and went back to the offices.

We expanded the team on Luftrausers with additional programmers. We thought we’d be good to hit the spring of 2012. That turned out to be overly hopeful.

Vlambeer has made games for PC and for mobile — successful games that have won awards and had hundreds of thousands of players. Console development is a completely new story for us, though. We needed time to adapt, to figure out how to make things work, and make them work perfectly. On PC, the variety of configurations means you have to accept that it won’t work exactly the same on every computer; with a console, you have the one exact specification and there’s this automatic urge to make everything flawless. In a strange way, it’s kind of addicting.

We got stuck in that little loop of trying to make Luftrausers better for almost a year and a half, and we started showing what was essentially a finished game at events around the world. If you’re a fan of ours, chances are that you’ve played it and talked to us at one of those events. We took your feedback home, and we’d polish the game a bit more before taking it out to the next event.

Luftrausers is ready.

Instead of one airplane, Luftrausers suddenly allowed you to build 125 airplanes. Instead of one pumping KOZILEK soundtrack, Luftrausers now features one for every airplane you can build. The amount of enemies doubled, the amount of colors doubled, the amount of effects quadrupled, and mechanically we added missions and combos.

We had scoped small, but we knew we weren’t doing the game justice that way. We kept working as the launch date slipped, and then the new launch date slipped as well. We weren’t quite where we wanted yet. Eventually it was 2013, and people stopped giving suggestions on how they’d improve the game at events. We were ready to wrap up.

Throughout the difficult QA process, the teams at Devolver Digital and PlayStation have been extremely supportive of a new studio trying to find its place in the console world, and we really appreciate everything they’ve done for us over the past year and a half. We know how to make good, tight arcade games, and they helped us figure out how to bring that Vlambeer-style gameplay you know to consoles.

Luftrausers is ready. We’re proud and excited to bring it to PS3 and PS Vita today, and we can’t wait for you to finally get your hands on it. With more than 125 Luftrausers to build — each with a unique soundtrack — there are many ways to take on the ridiculously overwhelming amount of action we’re about to throw your way.

Get ready to raus!

Is it a bird? No. Is it a plane? No, not really. Is it a sort of pogoing, semi-submersible death machine? Yeah, pretty much. It’s also the new game from Vlambeer, and it’s out today. Here’s what I made of it. … [visit site to read more]

Things get a bit crazy as Jeff takes to the skies and tries to survive long enough to destroy the world.

Save 75% on Prince of Persia during this week's Midweek Madness*!



*Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time

Today's Deal: Save 75% on Dragon Age™: Origins Awakening!*


Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Thursday at 10AM Pacific Time

Check out more screens here

9-in-1 Arcade Series is due out in Japan on March 26th, available via the 3DS eShop.

There are multiple entries in the Simple DL series of games for the 3DS eShop. Now a large portion of those titles are seeing their prices cut in half for a limited time. The sale prices have gone into effect today, and will last until April 19th. To get a more specific look at which titles are on sale, hit up the link below.

Rocksmith 2014 A Day To Remember Song Pack, all new content for Rocksmith 2014 is Now Available on Steam!

Play "Its Complicated", "The Downfall of Us All", All I Want, If It Means a Lot to You and "All Signs Point to Lauderdale" by A Day To Remember on any electric guitar or bass. Each song includes a new authentic tone.

Danmaku Unlimited 2 is Now Available on Steam and is 20% off to celebrate!

Danmaku Unlimited 2 is an indie labor of love to bring classic Japanese vertical shooting action to modern HD systems. Inspired by Japanese doujin shooters and being authentic to a fault, the game features epic stages filled with beautiful but deadly bullet patterns, nail-bitingly difficult boss fights and seriously rocking soundtracks!

PARIS, FRANCE – 18th March 2014 – NAMCO BANDAI Games, one of the video game industry's leading publishing and distribution companies, today proudly announced a one year extension of its distribution agreement with the global video game developer and publisher Codemasters®. The agreement covers physical distribution of the entire Codemasters 2014 portfolio across Europe and North and South America, plus selected digital distribution channels.

Expanding on the partnership first established in 2010, the agreement will see NAMCO BANDAI Games distribute Codemasters games throughout Europe and the Americas and for the first time, the agreement includes digital distribution rights in those territories, with the exception of Steam and some additional e-tailers. The agreement encompasses all the major forthcoming games to be published by Codemasters through its Codemasters Racing label, including as yet unannounced titles.

“Our company is proud to extend its partnership with Codemasters to grow on the superb success we have already enjoyed together and continue to bring great games to gamers everywhere. We’re very excited about welcoming Codemasters’ 2014 products to our line-up and we look forward to many more excellent games to come,” said Alberto González Lorca, VP Third Parties, NAMCO BANDAI Games Europe.

For more information about NAMCO BANDAI Games and its entire line up, please visit the NAMCO BANDAI Games Europe official website at www.namcobandaigames.eu. For more details on Codemasters, visit www.codemasters.com.

GamesPress

UK retailer Carphone Warehouse will begin selling the new HTC One smartphone starting next Tuesday.

IGN shows you the location of all 9 X.O.F. unit patches, which will allow you to unlock the console-specific exclusive mission - Jamais Vu and Deja Vu (play as either Raiden from MG Rising or classic Snake from MGS1 ). For more on MGS5: Ground Zeroes, check out the full wiki on IGN @ http://www.ign.com/wikis/metal-gear-solid-5-ground-zeroes/

LUFTRAUSERS is Now Available on Steam!
The skies will be set aflame and the seas will overflow with wreckage in Vlambeers stylish arcade shooter LUFTRAUSERS! Select from over 125 combinations of weapons, bodies, and propulsion systems and take to the skies to battle enemy fighter planes, battleships, submarines, and rival aces for glory, honor, and high scores. Bravely volunteer for one of over 100 daring missions to unlock new Rauser combinations and vibrant color variations and become the most legendary Rauser pilot of all time!

Bold Aerial Combat White-knuckle battles against a crimson and cream sky harken back to the pure arcade shooters of the past with tight gameplay, ridiculous combos, and challenges that can only be mastered by the most elite rauser pilots in the world.

Customizable Rausers Unlock unique weapons, plane bodies, and propulsion systems to radically alter your fighter in over 125 deadly combinations. Each daring configuration not only radically alters how your rauser handles and attacks but also rearranges the dynamic soundtrack crafted by KOZILEK.

Daring Missions Make your fellow airmen proud as you tackle over 100 challenging missions from your commanding officers and face off against rival aces in a dogfight to the death.

Glorious Achievements - You know, a little something to brag about on shore leave.

Palmer Luckey, the the man behind Oculus virtual reality goggles, is shockingly young. He may be responsible for one of the current hottest things in tech, but he's just 21. And he says the kind of things people that age say when they're bold enough to dream out loud.Read more...

It's just a little over a month away from release. Very excited for this one.

Valve is gradually embracing the warmth of an enormous video screen being mounted to its face, as it updated the beta client of Steam to add a "virtual reality mode" option. The newest beta version of Steam removes the "-vr" command line option in favor of a button in the view menu, which only appears for those with SteamVR installed when a head-mounted display like the Oculus Rift is detected.

Virtual reality became a big focal point for Valve in recent years, and its former head of VR joined Oculus VR's new Seattle team just one week ago. Our friends at Engadget seem to believe that this week, the week of the Game Developers Conference, is the time that the virtual reality landscape will begin to "look very different." Given the recent rumor that Sony will unveil its own virtual reality headset in the coming days, we tend to agree. [Image: Oculus VR]

One year later, SimCity will finally be playable without an Internet connection—a new update, live today, adds an offline single-player mode to the controversial city-building game.Read more...

The mega chain will compete with GameStop and other retailers that sell used games.

Koji Igarashi is 46 years old. Dubbed "Iga" by fans, he's best known for his work on the Castlevania series. Nearly half his life was spent making games at Konami. Yesterday, he announced he was leaving that company, and in an exclusive interview with Kotaku, he explains why.Read more...

Hey everyone! My name is Jo from D-Pad Studio, and it’s our pleasure to announce that Savant Ascent, a game about robot infested towers, magic missiles, and claiming ultimate power, is coming to Playstation.

Music and style are what the game is all about! Savant in real life is an electronic musician, and in the game you play as Savant as he appears on Savant’s 5th album cover, designed by our art director, Simon S. Andersen.

Our team has been close friends with Savant for a long time, and last summer we decided that:

We should create a game together. We’d use Savant’s music and Simon’s characters as inspiration.

We ended up with a beat-pumping, dodge-and-shoot action game, stylized to fit with Savant’s tracks. Tracks could be unlocked, giving you an introduction to Savant’s music, and also acting as powerful upgrades. This makes you feel like nothing can stop you once you get the hang of things.

We didn’t think it was enough to only be able to shoot magic missiles and defeat robots, so we added some varying stages, powerful abilities to be discovered, and a challenging boss fight to top things off.

Challenge and the feeling of mastery was what we wanted the gameplay to contain. I can guarantee that most players will meet with an ill fate the first few tries at Savant Ascent, but with some persistence you’ll be dodging danger like a pro.

You can change the background music to any of the unlocked tracks at any time. Each track will also change the gameplay, encouraging new ways to defeat the incoming robot onslaught.

Style was the thing we wanted to perfect in Ascent. We wanted players to lose themselves to the music, quicken their pulse, and keep on their toes.

Even though this was to be a game revolving around music, we didn’t want a game resembling Guitar Hero or Rock Band, or any other synced beat tapper. Rather, we wanted the music to blend with the game.

Subtle elements were added, to let the game live through the music — like enemies dancing to the beat, menu elements shaking on bass drops — and let Savant seem like this would be the kind of music he’d listen to as he set out on a robot-demolishing rampage.

Growing together with Savant, Ascent is a game that has and will change over time. We’ve vowed to add elements from future albums, and given time, we might be adding additional soundtracks, possible levels tailored to the album’s design, and new modes, abilities, and secrets.

To keep up with news on Savant Ascent, or our studio, feel free to make a visit to DPadStudio.com or SavantGame.com.

In a final [humiliating capitulation]/[act of goodwill and community empowerment] Maxis will today release SimCity’s offline mode, freeing city builders everywhere from the terrifying fear that a cleaner at the Origin data center will accidentally unplug the servers as he hoovers up the hopes and dreams of the developers. At the time of writing (lunchtime on Tuesday the 18th), the servers are down as the game prepares for the update that will mean the next time the servers are down, you’ll be able to play.

… [visit site to read more]

Offline play is about to become available in SimCity. Get hype?

We learned back in January that Maxis was working on an offline patch for its heretofore online only city building game, SimCity. At the time, we didn't know when that patch would become available, only that it was being worked on. Now, just a bit over a year past the game's launch, that patch is about to go live.

A representative from Maxis posted a note in the official SimCity forums today announcing that Update 10 (which comes with the aforementioned offline play) would be migrating out as of 6 AM Pacific time, which would result in a few hours of server downtime. An update to that post at 7:20 AM Pacific noted that the team's QA department had begun checks to make sure everything was working correctly. It's apparently expected that the update and servers should all be live sometime in the next few hours.

Assuming the offline mode works as intended and everything goes smoothly, this update will allow players to create cities and regions free from a connection to the game's online servers, which initially buckled following the game's launch. Initially, Maxis had previously claimed moving the game offline was "not possible" due to its infrastructural design. Still, fan outcry was strong, especially in the early months of the game's launch, when server reliability was at its worst. Eventually the developer acquiesced to the idea of reworking the game to not require online checks any longer, and the Update 10 patch was made public earlier this year.

Releasing this patch a full year after launch might end up being too little too late for players who ditched the game due to online frustrations, but there's something to be said for a developer actually making good on fixing a problematic design. As Maxis outlined in a blog post on their official site, reworking the game this way was apparently no small effort. Still, is that effort enough to bring back players who have had their fill? I suppose we'll see soon enough.

Deus Ex: The Fall made the jump from mobiles to PC today, and you can pick it up on Steam right now for $10 in North America, or £8/10 euros in Europe. The PC port was originally due on March 25, but Square Enix stealthily brought the release date forward by a week.

The Fall follows on from The Icarus Effect, a prequel novel to Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and it features a different protagonist in former SAS mercenary Ben Saxon. The hero may be new but the game is a familiar mix of stealth, action, and gold-tinted cybernetics.

In terms of what's not familiar on PC, the port professes AI adjustments, revisions to the tutorial, the option to toggle cover styles, and controller support. Also, microtransactions have been removed from the game completely, with the economy tweaked as a result.

Finally, if you're tempted by the itch for more Deus Ex, you might like to know that if you buy The Fall today, you get a copy of Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition for free. [Image: Square Enix]

The new Metal Gear Solid is short. Really short. Kirk called it "a sliver of a larger, more complete game ," and even Hideo Kojima admitted last year that it'd have been ideal if Ground Zeroes was part of the real Metal Gear Solid V, which will be out at some undetermined point in the future.Read more...

Get your Naked Snake on! Wait. That sounded weird.

Hey everyone! I’m the audio director at Sucker Punch, and I’m excited to show off some of the fun and painstaking attention to detail we took with the sound design of inFAMOUS Second Son.

We knew we had to up our game on all sonic fronts because we were launching on PS4, so we started early by identifying the key areas we wanted to focus on. Obviously the powers were going to be the most important aspect, so we began conceiving ideas before there was even visual concept art. We created a language for each power set which we used as a palette to craft the design of each set. With smoke, it was charcoal, air, and extinguishing flames. For neon we strapped a contact mic on our Sly Cooper neon sign and also recorded fluorescent tubes, electromagnetic interference, and a very long induction coil.

Another area we knew needed to come alive was the ambience. Since our game takes place in Seattle, what better way to capture the bustling city than running around with microphones, capturing the subtle nuances from birds, sirens, and car alarms, to rain and traffic? We took things to extreme measures with our ambient design, setting up unique audio events based on the neighborhood, the time of day, and whether or not Delsin or the D.U.P. is in control of a district.

Another concern for us was the final mix. We mixed the game at Sony’s Bridgepointe Studio, which was a wonderful experience. The game sounds great no matter what listening environment you may have: home theater, TV speakers, headphones, and so on.

Going even further, our team also worked closely with the PlayStation hardware team to develop a custom audio mix for the new PlayStation Gold Wireless Stereo Headsets which provides an outstanding example of how the audio mode enhances the sound experience.

Hope everyone enjoys the sonic magic of Second Son starting this Friday!

inFAMOUS Second Son features custom audio modes for both the PlayStation Gold and PULSE Elite wireless headsets. These modes will be available at launch and accessible both in-game for Gold and via the Headset Companion App.