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We go hands-on with WildStar's Design Producer Stephan Frost as he walks us through the Northern Wilds "MOBA" adventure.

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing Family Edition is Now Available on Steam and is 25% off to celebrate!

Mastering typing has never been easier than with the all-new edition of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing Powered by UltraKey! The award-winning software program provides the most efficient way to learn and master typing fundamentals. Designed by educators, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing Powered by UltraKey uses a success-based approach to typing instruction. This powerful and motivating way to learn provides a clear path to learning a new skill by setting personal goals and progressing along guided roadmaps.

In Hyper Light Drifter you’ll travel a ruined land with a twisted past, delving deep to collect lost technologies and unveil secrets long buried. I’d like to share a few of the key components under development that make Hyper Light what it is: 1) combat that’s lightning quick, brutal and never unfair; 2) a strong narrative and character interactions expressed through visual design; 3) a rich and varied world to explore with an intense atmosphere.

Combat

At Heart Machine we’re all fans of fast, heavy­-hitting combat that requires skill and rewards a bit of finesse. To hell with bullet­sponges, witless drones and unfair scenarios. We spend a great deal of time tuning our systems, ­adding meaningful feedback in the controls, visuals, and audio design ­so they feel responsive and satisfying each time you lop an enemy in half, blow something up, or wipe out entire packs of ravenous creatures.

Each enemy reacts to strikes with visible knockback, flashes, and brutal sound effects. No weak or shoddy weapons (I’m looking at you, Klobb), no pea­shooter projectile sounds. The player should feel empowered in every encounter.

Creating intelligent and tactical scenarios with enemies is key, rather than stacking cannon fodder that waits gleefully in line to get their heads chopped off. Some enemies dodge projectiles, others deflect attacks, some (the poison wolves) attack you and vulnerable enemies as a pack. We even have enemies that command weaker types in order to gain an advantage. Each encounter should feel different, and remain challenging.

Narrative & Design

We are wary of endless blocks of text, poorly designed UI, and explicit hand­holding, which can often dilute a great experience. These leave a player frustrated, or worse, disinterested. Instead, we want players to uncover the rich mythology along with the Drifter in a more organic way, with a narrative that’s not explicit. We chose to recognize that players are smart.

We keep the systems management as straightforward as possible, with zero visible UI elements that don’t relate to the world itself. This helps to keep the player immersed and focused on the moments and constantly unfolding story in the world, rather than on numbers, bars and maps.

Dialogue and quests are presented in storyboard­like sequences, which convey a specific mood without the use of text or voice­overs. This also allows us to keep the game as visually lush as possible and break past language barriers.

Atmosphere

To make the world of Hyper Light a believable and compelling space for the player, we’re focused on the excitement of discovery and conveying specific feelings while traversing each new area; you recognize that something is always slightly off, but you don’t know precisely why. A sense of anxiety will build as you travel further and deeper into this savage world.

To achieve this sensation we rely on the soundtrack, which is being scored by Rich Vreeland (Disasterpeace), a master at atmospheric audio design. It will create an identifiable and eerie atmosphere for the landscapes, and develop a darker sound the deeper you explore, pushing the dangerous nature to the forefront.

The visuals will be the other major factor in forging the tone and intention of the spaces. Each environment uses a striking and specific palette to highlight landmarks, and they’re littered with touches like reactive wildlife and intricate architecture. The world is long past its era of great carnage, but remnants are everywhere: craters from battles fought, wreckage from hulking machines grown­over, bones from mammoth creatures, tubes of rotting experiments in ancient labs.

Conclusion

Our goal to make an experience that’s visually and atmospherically compelling, has a well­-crafted story and is a hell of a lot of fun to play remains a challenge each day, but it’s incredibly rewarding. We’ll be posting more screenshots, videos and other items on our devlog and in future PS.Blog posts, so stay tuned.

Please feel free to ask us (mostly) anything about the game, and we’ll do our best to answer without spoiling the experience.

It’s been nearly six years since Hideo Kojima and his team at Konami delivered the PS3 epic Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Finally, its sequel is nearly upon us. The first part of Kojima Productions’ ambitious Metal Gear Solid 5 project arrives next week on PS3 and PS4. Titled Ground Zeroes, it serves as a prologue for the main event – the still-in-development The Phantom Pain.

Last month, our colleagues at SCE Japan sat down with the legendary creator to learn more about the game, and how he and his team are leveraging the power of PlayStation 4. Check out the full video above to see what he had to say.

Good news for Titanfall fans living Down Under: EA has announced that Australia now has dedicated servers for Respawn's robot-infused first-person shooter. According to EA's help site, that applies to all platforms, so both Xbox One and PC players should be able to take advantage of the new, local servers.

Respawn engineer Jon Shiring stated on Twitter that Australia's new servers were "tapped pretty quickly," and that more servers are already being added. [Image: EA]

Microsoft discontinued its subsidized $99 Xbox 360 with Kinect bundle in July 2013, the console manufacturer confirmed with the Wall Street Journal. The low-cost console was introduced in May 2012 and required a two-year Xbox Live commitment of buyers at a rate of $14.99 per month. The bundle worked out to be roughly $60 more than the closest option, a $299 4GB Xbox 360 console paired with two years of Xbox Live Gold as separate purchases.

"This program was intended to be a pilot experiment from the start, and Microsoft routinely adjusts the mix of offers available to its customers and this change was simply standard business practice," Microsoft spokesman David Dennis said. He added that the subsidized Xbox 360 option was for "squeezing the last 10 to 15 percent out of the potential market." [Image: Microsoft]

The rumors about Amazon's entry into the game console/set-top box gained a ton of credibility this morning, as shots of a gamepad bearing the online giant's logo hit the web.Read more...

Today's selection of articles from Kotaku's reader-run community: Theories and Speculation On A Nintendo/Apple Collaboration • Games Are More Than Entertainment • Out There: The TAY ReviewRead more...

This year has a seen a marked shift in how LGBT characters are portrayed in games, so what does the future hold?

There’s just something about going fast. The desire for speed seems to be ingrained in our very nature. Race the Sun is our attempt to distill that desire into its basic form — to strip away all pretense and let players experience pure, brutal speed. Building a game with this goal in mind took a lot of trial, error, and some new ideas.

The Goals

When we first played the prototype that would become Race the Sun, we felt like we had something special. Every time one of us would crash, we’d say “Just one more run. I know I can do better.” It felt like we were playing a classic arcade game designed to suck you in.

After quite a bit of discussion and thought, we decided on some specific goals for Race the Sun. It had to be fast, fun, and challenging. We knew that some of the fastest games out there were encumbered by complex rules and controls — and we really wanted our game to be fun right from the start. The mantra “easy to learn, hard to master” was adopted in lieu of design documents, and we got to work.

Easy to Learn

The first major problem to tackle was control. When it comes down to it, controls of any racer (no matter how complex) usually revolve around making your vehicle turn left and right. We decided that we wanted the turning mechanism to be super simple, and that turned out to be easier said than done.

When simulating the physics of a real object moving in 3D space, there are tons of things to consider. Acceleration, inertia, and drag need to be calculated, and the control algorithms need to act in harmony with those forces. Every little change to one of the variables makes the controls feel totally different.

So you test, you play, you try a different number, you test again, you try a different algorithm, and so on and so forth. The process was time consuming, but ultimately worth it. We didn’t stop tweaking until we felt we had struck the best possible balance: not too tight, not too loose.

Hard to Master

After a few months of work, we had a vehicle that felt great to control at crazy speeds, and a really basic world to race through. Aaron (our programmer) had created a procedural system to make the world go on forever, and we had decided on solar power as the source of energy and speed. The heart of the game was there, but once you got good at it there wasn’t much challenge.

We knew what needed to happen. We needed to hand-design more varied and interesting obstacles in the world, but — being a small team — we didn’t know how we were going to pull it off in any reasonable amount of time.

This is when Aaron came up with an idea for generating the world out of a combination of hand-designed and procedural elements. The end result was that we were able to make complex combinations of obstacles in short order. This also meant that we could make the world rearrange itself each day — so you could never quite predict what would be coming.

On the Horizon

Making this game has been crazy, interesting, stressful, and fun, but we feel like we’ve accomplished what we set out to do. The simple, arcade-inspired heart is still there, but there are layers of complexity that let skilled players advance and get higher scores. The core experience has remained centered on that feeling of pure, deadly speed.

Our top priority in bringing the game to Playstation is to keep that experience consistent and pure. To that end, we’ve decided to support cross save and make the game a cross buy purchase. Everything is falling into place for Race the Sun, and we’re pumped to launch on PS3, PS4, and PS Vita this Summer.

We can’t wait to share our creation with you, the Playstation community, and hear what you think about our game of unsafe speeds. Feel free to comment or ask us anything below!

Continuing adventures in the beta (i.e. unfinished, thus everything I mention is subject to change) of inXile’s post-apocalyptic RPG Wasteland 2. Part 1 is here.

And so our merry band of four – wait, suddenly we’re a merry band of five. Angela, a grizzled but approachable senior Ranger, requests to join us just as we prepare to step into the irradiated desert sands proper, as we’re on the trail of a mysterious killer, someone or something that murdered Ace, a comrade of hers. She speaks of experience and adventures past, of how something ain’t right and how we look like the stuff that stories are made from. She speaks suspiciously as though we might have heard of her before, a long time ago. Nah, can’t be. … [visit site to read more]

Imagine Me is Now Available on Steam Early Access!

The world is darkness. My mind is blank, like a void. Except, well, I recall that book...and you! Help Robbe reclaim his memories in this 2D, adventure platformer. Search shadowed dungeons, face his darkest fears - and maybe some of your own.

Dungeons are filled with traps, secrets, and hidden collectibles in this non-linear story of conquering fears and finding yourself. Battle shadowed bosses, find keys, and discover the next room.

TowerFall Ascension launched on PS4 earlier this week, introducing PlayStation gamers to an addictive, challenging, and delightfully pure arena game. With an electric, competitive design and an all new, co-op Quest mode, TowerFall Ascension is a great reminder of why local multiplayer is so much fun.

I touched base with TowerFall creator Matt Thorson to hear more about what inspired TowerFall, how it feels on PS4, and what it was like working as a small indie developer. My thanks to Matt for spending time on PlayStation.Blog!

PlayStation.Blog: What inspired your original vision of TowerFall? Did you always have a competitive element in mind since the game’s conception?

Matt Thorson: I tried a lot of things with TowerFall early on, with a focus on single-player gameplay. But the competitive modes just clicked, and it was obvious I had to follow the game in that direction. I realized, once I started designing the versus gameplay, that I had been thinking about local multiplayer for years. I was happy to finally have an outlet for those ideas.

PlayStation.Blog: What’s it like working as a small indie team?

Matt Thorson: Leading a team and being the backbone of the project was stressful. It’s a heavy weight knowing the whole project can stall if I lose motivation or get stuck on a problem. But it was also incredibly rewarding and just a lot of fun to see the game take shape. It helps that everyone on the TowerFall team is brilliant, capable, and a joy to work with.

PlayStation.Blog: How did you come to the decision to launch TowerFall Ascension on PS4?

Matt Thorson: The game did really well on Ouya and it felt like it was time to expand to a larger audience. We continued working on it because there was a lot of stuff we still wanted to add, and PlayStation was super proactive in helping me figure out how to bring the game to PS4. It felt like the natural next step for TowerFall.

PlayStation.Blog: Why do you think competitive, local multiplayer works so well in TowerFall — and in games as a whole?

Matt Thorson: Local multiplayer is just a great way to bring people together. These games can allow players to express themselves socially through play, and get to know each other by interacting in the game. And those interactions can bleed into the real world. It’s really simple, but so powerful.

Being local rather than online makes those interactions even more personal — these are actual people sitting right next to you, not a vague representation of a person somewhere else in the world. The energy in the room is a big part of TowerFall.

PlayStation.Blog: How did you settle on the retro sprite style of TowerFall Ascension?

Matt Thorson: The retro style started as a constraint for me, so that I could draw all the graphics myself. When Pedro took over for pixel art, we kept the low resolution and what he did with it is just perfect for the game. I love how he made it so dark and gothic — my original art was a lot less moody.

I love pixel art as an aesthetic. It would be nice to see people appreciate it as more than just a nostalgic artifact of previous generations. It definitely ages better than most 3D styles.

PlayStation.Blog: Tell us about the new quest mode in TowerFall Ascension! How challenging was it to implement this addition?

Matt Thorson: Making Quest mode was scary because I had already tried four or five different variations on single-player modes and failed. But I gained a lot of understanding of what makes TowerFall fun by working with the versus mode, and that knowledge helped us make something I’m really proud of. I think it stands on its own as an interesting part of the game. Quest mode lets you see the same mechanics from versus mode in a new light.

PlayStation.Blog: What new power-ups have been added in TowerFall Ascension? How do they compare to the original power-ups?

Matt Thorson: There are four new arrows types and one new orb pickup that affects the entire arena in a crazy new way (you’ll know it when you see it). My favorite new arrows are probably the drill arrows that burrow through walls toward players — they completely change the game.

When I created these new power-ups, I had a more complete understanding of how players think while they play TowerFall. So they were designed to shake things up, to encourage players to change their strategies, and surprise each other even more.

PlayStation.Blog: What was it like working with PS4? What sort of advantages does DualShock 4 provide you as a designer and the players you’re designing for?

Matt Thorson: Bringing TowerFall to PS4 went smoothly — Sickhead Games down in Dallas handled the majority of the work. DualShock 4 quickly became my favorite controller to play the game with — the d-pad is perfect for TowerFall.

Once I realized how useful the controller speaker was, we experimented with that a lot, too. It’s a cool way to give feedback to specific players. For example, when you die or run out of arrows, the sounds play through your controller as well as the TV, making it that much more clear what is happening. In a game as fast and chaotic as TowerFall, this feedback helps a lot.

PlayStation.Blog: What’s your favorite local multiplayer game? Did you draw inspiration from it, or try to design in a different direction?

Matt Thorson: Smash Bros. Melee. I’ve played thousands of hours of that game, and studied every aspect of it. TowerFall draws inspiration from a lot of places, but the influence from Melee is most apparent once you know to look for it.

Unlike Smash Bros., I designed TowerFall with the hope that it would develop a hardcore player community, but I wanted to capture the same pick-up-and-play instant fun, the focus on spatial positioning, and dramatic kills.

Sega announced Crazy Taxi: City Rush this morning, a new free-to-play entry that's being developed exclusively for mobiles. Kenji Kanno, the man who created the original 1999 arcade game, is back as an exec producer on the series' first new entry in seven years.

The dev behind the steering wheel is Hardlight Studios, the mobile specialist team that recently delivered Sonic Dash. Hardlight is going with one-touch controls like swiping to switch between lanes, but the aim of City Rush remains the same: grab some unsuspecting passenger and deliver them to their destination as quickly and recklessly as possible.

Looking at the nitty-gritty features, in City Rush you can cab Facebook friends around the city, and there's support for both portrait and landscape play. Most important of all, you select your own music to drive to; we've already got the four Offspring and Bad Religion songs we need lined up and ready to cycle endlessly.

Also, Sega is marking today's announcement by making the original Crazy Taxi free on iOS and Android for a limited time. Meanwhile, City Rush is due to screech onto our sidewalks later this year. [Image: Sega]

Sega's just announced a new Crazy Taxi game. For mobile. Now what do you think that's going to look like? If you guessed something that looks a whole lot like an infinite runner, then congratulations. This ride's on us.Read more...

Deadspin "Golf Tee In Butt" Stunt Leads Model To Sue Playboy | Gizmodo Health Officials Blame Hook Up Apps for Syphilis Spike | io9 Why I refuse to watch movies without spoilers | Lifehacker Six Downloads and Extensions to Make Facebook Even BetterRead more...

This is Si at indie games developer Eiconic Games in the UK. We’ve been busy developing Final Horizon for PS4 and PS Vita, and are excited to share the first batch of screenshots with Playstation.Blog readers.

Final Horizon has some great puzzling levels that will demand all your skills to solve, and frantic action levels where you won’t even have time to blink.

The story takes the player on a journey from planet to planet and into dark, undiscovered galaxies that are home to the alien Swarm. But not only will you play on planetary surfaces, but you’ll also get to take over the Overwatch orbital satellite as a killstreak reward. Ever want to shoot the legs off a spider from space?

As you play through Final Horizon, the levels get tougher, the Swarm gets stronger, and you’re going to need to think fast and act faster.

This is a strategic, puzzling, action-packed tower defense game. We’ve developed and optimized our PS Vita engine to be able to pack more action in that we know Vita players have been asking for. Developing on PS4 means more of everything — more explosions, more special effects, and we plan to add more during the coming months.

Final Horizon is coming exclusively to PS4 and PS Vita.

Final Fantasy XIV's 2.2 update is upon us. The changes are outlined in this eight-minute video, but the gist is this: new dungeons, new quests, a raid that's supposed to be hard (the hardest the game has ever seen), and a way to swap armor stats that looks similar to Guild Wars 2's transmutation system. Fun!Read more...

It took 27 years and a lot of plot twists for the main character of the Metal Gear series—whether it's Big Boss or Solid Snake—to become something more than just a bunch of pixels or polygons.Read more...

If brevity is the soul of wit – and what reason to doubt arras-dwelling Polonius? – then Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow: Mirror Of Fate HD is the most witless game title since Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army. Of course, if brevity truly is the soul of wit then you could also argue that the first paragraph of any article in this esteemed periodical is a hollow parp from the joy-buzzer of a dead clown. Let’s move on.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow: Mirror Of Fate HD is coming to PC later this month, having made its society debut on the Nintendo Several Screen before porting across to the last-gen MicroSonys. Although it is canonically related to the 3D Lords of Shadow games, Mirror Of Fate is a more traditional side-scrolling Castlevania. And therefore, to my eyes at least, far more interesting.

… [visit site to read more]

We’re celebrating! We’re in the final stages of Metrico‘s production. We’d like to celebrate this phase with a special, branching trailer. We got a lot of requests to show some Metrico gameplay, but we’re not showing everything just yet. We’re really excited though to finally release a trailer with in-game footage.

As we explained in our previous blog post, Metrico is all about using input to shape the infographics around you and solve puzzles. In this blog entry, we’d like to give a bit more insight into the world of Metrico and our design approach.

Over the last few months, we’ve been working hard on finishing Metrico’s last worlds. There will be six worlds in the final game. We wanted every world to feel fresh and exciting, that’s why each world has its own shapes, type of infographics, colors, music, mechanics, challenges, typography, and animation, which all tie closely into the world theme.

But we’re also introducing new means of input for the player to play around with, in each subsequent new world. Therefore, it made a lot of sense for us to design the game in chronological order. This helped bolt down the way each specific mechanic works, and how they work in combination with the previous ones.

It also helped us get the difficulty curve right and understand what the final experience will feel like. In fact, we believe the experience you’ll have with the game to be quite similar to how we designed and created Metrico: we had to experiment a lot and come up with new ideas every time, and hopefully so will you when you play.

When we started out, we thought Metrico was mainly about infographics and finding out what to give as an input to solve puzzles. But when we played around with PS Vita and all of its hardware features, it became clear that the game is not just about solving puzzles.

Metrico is a lot about the player and his or her physical presence while playing. With all the hardware inputs, PS Vita is the perfect console for this. For instance, Metrico knows how you’re holding the Vita, or how much light is in your room.

We’re working hard and putting a lot of effort into getting the overall experience to feel just right. The next time you hear from us, we’ll have an exact release date in Spring of this year!

A list of non-functioning (for now) links point towards the kind of rental options users can expect from the PlayStation Now streaming service. MP1st and PSNStores spotted links for 1-day, 7-day, and 30-day rentals of Atlus' romantic puzzler Catherine, and when PSNStores tried to purchase one of the rentals, it found "Catherine PS Now" in its transaction history.

The links follows the clues laid out on a PS Now concept image published by Gaikai (via VG247) earlier in the week. Certain tiles displayed low prices for PS3 games - Uncharted 3 at $5, Far Cry 3 at $6 - perhaps an indication of the service's base prices for rentals.

PlayStation Now is expected to see a full rollout sometime this summer, letting users rent games individually or pay for a subscription to the service. Developed by Gaikai, who Sony acquired for $380 million two years ago, PS Now lets users stream PS1, PS2, and PS3 games on PS4, PS3, Vita, Bravia TV, and other unannounced devices. [Image: PSNStores]

Blizzard's holding a fan-art contest at DeviantART to celebrate the upcoming release of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. This piece, made by Jian Guo, summarizes the storyline of the game in a really unique way. But head over to the site to check all the submitted fan art. Most of them are really well-made.Read more...

“In a couple of thousand years’ time bent-backed archaeologists are going to find the phrase ‘The Greased Pigs Rule!’ scratched into hypercaust tiles, carved on marble horse troughs, and written in tessera on villa floors. Being clever sorts they may guess who we were, but they’ll never fully understand how famous we were and how much that fame cost us in blood, sweat, and tears.” … [visit site to read more]

Microsoft has quietly stopped the deal that offered an Xbox 360 console for $99 when it was purchased with a two-year Xbox Live subscription.

The golf portion of Wii Sports Club has been updated to include 9 courses from Wii Sports Resort, which brings the total number to 27. The update is currently being pushed to Wii Us everywhere!

Those who grew up in America during the 1980s might remember those "Just Say No" posters. They were anti-drug propaganda, and Japan has them, too. Though, this particular poster looks like it was made by people stoned outta their minds.Read more...

Sometimes using real people in your advertisements makes things more real. Sometimes, it makes things more awkward.Read more...

First Capital Connect Class 319 EMU Add-On, all new content for Train Simulator 2014 is Now Available on Steam!


The modern, dual-voltage Class 319 EMU is here for Train Simulator in the familiar First Capital Connect livery as seen on Thameslink services out of London.

Typical of EMUs built in the 1980s, the Class 319 was built by BREL York between 1987 and 1990 for north-south cross-London services from Bedford to Brighton, entering revenue-generating service in 1988. The four-car units were able to run on both overhead electrification on lines north of Farringdon - and third rail pick-up, for lines south of Farringdon.

Two sub-classes were originally built and over the years, the 86 trainsets have been refurbished, creating five sub-classes in total, of which four still exist. Following privatisation of British Rail, the fleet was divided between two operators, Thameslink and Connex South Central; in 2006, First Capital Connect took over the Thameslink franchise and now operates Class 319 units on Bedford to Brighton services.

The Class 319 EMU for Train Simulator is available in First Capital Connect livery and includes a full four-car unit, comprising DTSO, MSO and TSO vehicles. Features of the model include passenger view, fully detailed cab interior, cab lighting, working cab fan, opening cab windows, two-tone horn, cab window blind, day/night running light selection, window reflections in passenger compartments, and driver vigilance device (which can be enabled and disabled).

The fantasy RPG has a release date on PS4, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.