 Square Enix confirms lay-offs, says MMO service will be unaffected
 17.12.2012 11:42  0 views  0 comments
There's never a good time to lose your job, but something about it happening at the tail-end of December seems particularly unpleasant. This month has already seen Petroglyph and Trion Worlds make staff cuts, and now Square Enix have confirmed to Massively that they have downsized their LA office. Read more »
| Dota 2 Polycount Contest overall winner revealed; Frostivus announced
17.12.2012 10:28 0 views 0 comments
Valve have revealed the final five winners of the Dota 2 Polycount Contest, including the recipient of the Best Overall award. The modelling competition tasked entrants with creating a unique item set for one of the heroes, and the Dota 2 team have been listing their favourites over the past week. Read more »
| StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm will feature new training area
17.12.2012 4:33 0 views 0 comments
While there’s still no confirmed date for Blizzard’s forthcoming StarCraft 2 expansion, details continue to trickle through. The latest announcement confirms a new training area will be packaged with Heart of the Swarm, which will aim to help players transition from single player to matchmaking. In an interview with PCGamesN, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said… Read more »
| THQ pondering Linux development after the success of the THQ Humble Bundle
16.12.2012 18:00 0 views 0 comments
Valve aren't the only company throwing their weight behind Linux, everyone's favourite open-source operating system. Following the success of their controversial, definitely-not-indie Humble Bundle, THQ president Jason Rubin has stated that they are "evaluating the cost/benefit [of developing for Linux] as we speak". (Thanks to PCGamesN for discovering this.) Read more »
| The 15 best co-op games of all time
16.12.2012 18:00 0 views 0 comments
Games get a bad rap for being a solitary, violence-obsessed form of entertainment. But they can also be a collaborative, violence-obsessed form of entertainment. Just ask the close-knit PC Gamer team. Tom F Co-op based games teach us the value of teamwork better than any kitten based motivational poster, by showing us how many more of our enemies we can crush if we can just learn to work together. Read more »
| Medal of Honor: Warfighter ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ map pack out next week
16.12.2012 15:00 0 views 0 comments
Not to be confused with Kathryn Bigelow's upcoming film, of which this is sort of a tie-in to, it's been revealed that Medal of Honor: Warfighter's 'Zero Dark Thirty' map pack is due out on December 17th. As the name suggests, it's tastefully set in the region of Pakistan in which Osama Bin Laden was tracked down and killed. If killing each other on a plot of land vaguely related to a recent military event isn't exciting enough for you, there will also be new weapon camos and attachments. If you pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe version or bought the Limited Edition of MoH: Warfighter, you'll be getting this for free; the rest of us will have to stump up $9.99. Read more »
| Sim-plicity: I am a spearfisherwoman
16.12.2012 10:00 0 views 0 comments
Having retired from world-saving heroics, Christopher Livingston is living the simple life in video games by playing a series of down-to-earth simulations. This week he's on vacation-- simulated vacation, of course-- spearfishing, diving for treasure, taking pictures, and occasionally freaking out about ghost pirates and aquatic bats.
Over the past couple months, I've had a number of jobs in these Sim-plicity columns: a rotten tow truck driver, an ineffective police chief, an inept bridge-builder, a confused bus driver, a frustrated lumber-cutter, and an airport firefighter so bad at fighting fires his airport was shut down. There's really only one conclusion to draw from this pattern of failure and incompetence: I deserve a vacation.
I'm taking my break with Depth Hunter: The Spearfishing Simulator, which plunks me into the ocean as a spearfisherwoman. At least I think I'm a woman. It's a first-person simulator, so I can't see myself, but the promotional art for the game shows a woman with purple hair wearing a bikini top. The simulation promises I will "face the difficulties of breath-holding spearfishing, an ancient fishing method", though I don't think the ancient purple-haired bikini-wearing spearfisherwomen had spring-loaded mechanical harpoons. Read more »
| RAGE ‘Scorchers’ DLC sets the post-apocalypse ablaze next week
15.12.2012 17:00 0 views 0 comments
So it turns out RAGE has DLC. DLC that's coming out a year after the game, with all the marketing bluster of a mouse's fart. But hey: we enjoyed RAGE back in the hazy mists of 2011, so perhaps it's time to get excited. Scorchers will set you back a relatively modest $4.99, and it's actually sounding pretty substantial, offering half-a-dozen new areas and a shiny (well, rusty) new gun, among other things. Read more »
| Firefall preview: taking to the skies in Red 5′s ambitious open world MMO
15.12.2012 17:00 0 views 0 comments
“We’re a shooter, we’re an online shooter, we’re a social game, we’re an MMO, we’re an RPG, we’re an RTS. There’s a massively persistent open world, deep character progression, deep backstory and lore, competitive PvP and e-sports-focused match types, ladders and leagues. We have all these different aspects of different games, we have the social features of MMOs, we have armies – built-in clan support much like a guild – we have all of this stuff and it’s a free-to-play game.” Read more »
| A Valley Without Wind 2 alpha footage emerges
15.12.2012 15:00 0 views 0 comments
AI War/Tidalis/A Valley Without Wind developer Arcen Games has shown off the first footage of AVWW2, the sequel/do-over to their divisive procedurally generated platformer. You might remember us telling you that owners of the original game will be given this for free, but now you can finally see what your non-money will be getting you (well, if you already bought the first game). Read more »
| The making of Uplink
15.12.2012 12:00 0 views 0 comments
As a game designer and co-founder of Introversion, Chris Delay is a respected, successful indie developer. He and his partners, Mark Morris and Tom Arundel, won the grand prize at the Independent Games Festival for their virus-infected strategy game, Darwinia. They’ve haunted a thousand multiplayer servers with the spectre of global thermonuclear war in Defcon. They’ve also established themselves as a cornerstone of the independent developer community.
But before all that, there was just Chris and an idea. Read more »
| Saturday Crapshoot: Rockstar!
15.12.2012 10:00 0 views 0 comments
Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, are you ready to rock? I said ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?! Oh. Okay. I'll come back later. Sorry to have disturbed you.
You've got to admire confidence, I suppose. Rockstar, no relation to either the makers of Grand Theft Auto or games with actual music in them, describes itself like this: "THOSE MESMERISING NEW AGE HYPNOTISTS WIZARD GAMES PROUDLY, NO EXTRAVAGANTLY PRESENT FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT AND AMAZEMENT, BEWILDERMENT AND CONFUSION, THEIR LATEST PSYCHADELIC EXTRAVAGANZA: ROCKSTAR!"
Well, one out of four 'aint bad, I guess... Read more »
| Ranger mode returns in Metro: Last Light for pre-purchasers
15.12.2012 2:37 1 views 0 comments
The Ranger difficulty for Metro 2033 (PSA: free keys are being given away on Facebook) stripped the UI, crosshairs, and health while making precious ammo even more scarce in Russia's monster-infested tunnels. Such a masochist's dream come true degree of challenge will reappear in Metro: Last Light, but only as part of a deal for those pre-ordering the $60/£37 Limited Edition. Read more »
| Splinter Cell: Blacklist developer video details art direction, camera effects
15.12.2012 2:12 1 views 0 comments
Pools of light and the shadows they create are Sam Fisher's constant companions in Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and developer Ubisoft aims to lavish as much attention to their behavior it has with the rest of the stealth series. A new developer diary video showcases how the camera shares the same physical space with Sam and reacts to atmospheric effects such as rain and the harsh glare of flashlights and flares. Art Director Scott Lee also pays respect to the franchise's legacy of well-crafted lighting. Let's hope he won't get too upset when we plug a silenced bullet into many a lightbulb to keep things in the dark. Splinter Cell: Blacklist should be releasing sometime in the spring. Read more »
| PC Gamer US Podcast #340 – Malicious Laser
15.12.2012 2:00 1 views 0 comments
Logan, Evan, T.J., and Omri sit down to discuss our Game of the Year Nominees, what we loved and didn't love about BioShock Infinite, Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight, the confirmation of Steam Box, and what we'll spend our time playing before the inevitable end of the world next week.
PC Gamer Podcast 340: Malicious Laser Read more »
| Infographic shows $6.5 billion spent worldwide on MMOs in 2012
15.12.2012 1:51 1 views 0 comments
The MMO genre is synonymous with pea-soup-thick data of subscriber counts, upkeep costs, and microtransactions. Confusing stuff, but the number wizards at Newzoo gathered together the most worthwhile info into a friendly blue-and-grey infographic as a snapshot of the state of the MMO market. Also, if you scroll slow enough, you can turn it into a Star Wars-esque credit crawl. Read more »
| Turbine revives Asheron’s Call 2, opens beta server
15.12.2012 1:34 1 views 0 comments
Asheron Call 2's run lasted from 2002 to 2005 as the sequel to Turbine's original Asheron's Call, which is still active to this day. Yeah, MMOs are weird like that sometimes. In a forum post yesterday (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun), Turbine abruptly announced it's bringing back Asheron's Call 2 via the new Dawnsong server. Read more »
| DmC: Devil May Cry’s PC release date is January 25, system requirements released
14.12.2012 22:17 1 views 0 comments
Ninja Theory's DmC: Devil May Cry reboot tells the story of half-demon Dante's quest to figure out why his hair isn't grey anymore. Actually, it's probably about fending off an apocalyptic demon invasion. We'll know for sure when the PC port arrives January 25, Capcom announced yesterday. Read more »
| Obsidian almost made Baldur’s Gate 3 in 2008
14.12.2012 20:12 1 views 0 comments
According to Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart, Baldur's Gate 3 was on the table in a serious way not too long ago. In an interview with Kotaku, he revealed that Atari, owners of the rights to Dungeons & Dragons-based games, were interested in the project and had even given the verbal thumbs-up on a Mass Effect-sized budget. Read more »
| SOE president John Smedley on PlanetSide 2′s future, free-to-play and EverQuest Next
14.12.2012 20:00 1 views 0 comments
John Smedley is unusual among videogame executives for his outspoken Twitter presence and friendly, direct engagement with gamers. Maybe other suits should take note: the SOE president comes across as someone who understands and loves the games SOE makes and his responsiveness to players instils some considerable trust. If PlanetSide 2 wasn't perfect when it launched, gamers may feel reassured that with John Smedley at the helm SOE will continue to work towards that goal. Last night I got to speak to the big man about the future of PlanetSide 2, fighting in-game crime, free-to-play and the recent internally-revealed Everquest Next. Read more »
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