Games Digest

Tabula Rasa offers free re-enlistment week for old players, starts May 5th

Poor old Tabular Rasa. It’s a tough world out there if you’re an MMO without the word 'Warcraft' in your name. And for all the experience behind it, Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa has been struggling to keep players interested.

However, since launch there have been 8 new content updates, new Alien-hybrid thingies and new tokens – surely enough for players to want a second peek at the action?

I played in the beta and although Garriott’s re-envisioned combat mechanic was reasonably interesting, the rest of it seemed like standard MMO fare with little else to separate it from the crowd. However, it is a real shame that competition struggles so much in the WoW era – really, do none of these games manage to better anything that Blizzard has done? Go on, give it another go... it's free after all.

Tabula Rasa (via Kotaku)

Related posts: Developer admits Tabula Rasa is struggling | Too many beta invites blamed for final game populace

Team Fortress 2 Gold Rush Map and Medic Achievements now out in the wild, plus free-to-play weekend May 2nd – 4th

In the biggest update since the Orange Box launch, Valve has announced that the new Gold Rush Map and Medic Achievements update is available to download. Like all other updates it is completely free – Valve believes in rewarding its regular players, not shafting them for micropayments, which is why their multiplayer games are among the best there are.

The Gold Rush map offers a whole new game mode. Attacking players must escort a mine cart, which helpfully spills health, to the defending players’ base. The more players that stand by it, the faster it goes, while the quicker the opposing team blows them into tiny bloody chunks, the slower it will advance. Extra control points along the way give the attacking team more of a chance and less of hike – the level is a pretty big one.

That all sounds very neat, but the medic achievements are having more of a polarising effect on player opinions. I put my own case for the prosecution the other day, not questioning whether the new weapons, detailed here, will break the game, but whether the sheer scale and complexity of what needs to be done to win them will break the game as players perform all kinds of illogical, tactically disastrous acts just to get them. Check out the full list of achievements, ranging form the basic to the bloody impossible, right here.

There’s no doubt this tactics are going to go to pot while people try and earn achievements, but we’ll have to see whether really adversely affects the game overall once we’ve had time to settle in. Right now and for the next week or so you can probably expect TF2 servers to be completely flooded by medics seeking the new medic unlocks.

If you haven’t played TF2 yet, you need to fix that shit right now. Fortunately, Valve is more than happy to cater for your slackness. You’ll be able to play the game absolutely free for the whole of this weekend. Simply get Steam, create an account and download it.

Team Fortress 2

Related posts: New Medic weapons deets

 

Team Fortress 2 Medic achievements revealed, will spoil the game

As we’ve mentioned before, Valve is planning an update to Team Fortress 2 which will add an extra dimension to the Medic class along with a good reason to polish of medic gun skills and get back into healing for a living. Unlocking 36 achievements will earn you three new weapons which we outlined yesterday – now we also have the full rundown on the individual achievements themselves and, to be honest, I have my doubts.

Firstly let me clarify that Medic is my class of choice and so when this news came along, the first thing I thought was score! – it seemed directly tailored for my play style. But now that I’ve seen the actually achievements themselves, fears that this will basically spoil the game are seriously beginning to mount.

I won’t list the whole lot here because it would just go on forever – Destructoid has the whole shebang and with a very tidy little set of individual icons that frankly would take me an hour and half to replicate here, so go look at theirs for the full run down. Before you go though here’s a few examples.

Roughly a third are pretty easy – the kind of thing you’d expect like:

Preventive Medicine: Block the enemy from capturing a control point with an Uber-Charged teammate.

Or the ones that’ll build up over time like:

Grand Rounds: Heal 200 teammates after they've called for "Medic!"

And one’s where you’ll have a bit of fun:

Hypocritical Oath: Kill an enemy Spy that you have been healing.

Then we ease into the more tricky selection, including:

Autoclave: Assist in burning 8 enemies with a single Uber-Charge on a Pyro.

Or

Ubi concordia, ibi victoria: Assist in killing 5 enemies on an enemy control point, in a single life.

And others of a similar nature – they’ll require a fair bit of skill mixed in with some good timing and luck of course – but then this would be no fun without some challenge.

Then we move into the really challenging ones:

Big Pharma: Assist a Heavy in killing 30 enemies, where neither of you die.

and

Doctor Assisted Homicide: Assist in killing 20 nemeses.

Again, not exactly impossible. Of course they’re some are going to be made a whole lot harder by the fact that when the update comes, every player and his dog is going to suddenly switch to Medic class, but who knows, maybe that’ll make of the medic-on-medic or medic-versus-medic challenges easier. Regardless though, it is only going to make playing the game and the Medic himself less enjoyable for the time it takes people to get over the novelty.

However, the ones I really object to are the achievements where you actually have to alter your gameplay in a way that might actually cause a detriment to your whole team. As a medic, I consider my role to be fundamental to the overall tactics of the team. A well timed ubercharge can and regularly does change the whole outcome of the game. Who you give it to and why is important and if there are people only out to score an achievement point or two, it’s going to spoil it all for those who just want to have a normal game.

Prime examples of these are:

Blunt Trauma: Assist in punching out 4 enemies with a single Uber-Charge on a Heavy.

And

First Do No Harm: Play a full round without killing any enemies, and score the highest on a team of 6 or more players.

And if Valve decides to do this for every class, which would only be fair, we’ll have to face this same thing each and every time.

In the end though, I think a lot of people are simply going to get these by setting up custom games for the sole purpose of earning them, and basically that defeats the entire point of having the Achievements in the first place.

It’s good to have an update and incentive to get back in TF2, but it looks like Valve may have broken the game in the process.

Interplay officially planning Fallout MMO and return of other classic series

It has been rumoured for a while, it has even been confirmed officially, but now Interplay is definitely back, baby, and firing off important sounding press releases to financial types. Check it out:

“2007 set the foundation for our growth strategy. Going forward, we have the vision, unique intellectual property, and low debt and operational costs to help us pursue financing for our various projects,” said Interplay Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Herve Caen.

Heck, there’s enough buzzwords in there to make any sound minded venture capitalist erupt in fountain of investmentgasms.

Why is Interplay on the up and up? Well, it sold off the Fallout 3 IP to Bethesda (creators of Oblivion) for a cool $5.75 mil, and, because they don’t look like they’re about to balls it up completely, that paves the way rather neatly for a Fallout MMO, which Interplay still owns the IP for.

That’s going to take a really serious wad of cash to bring to fruition, so: “at the same time, the company will leverage its portfolio of gaming properties by creating sequels to some of its most successful games, including Earthworm Jim, Dark Alliance, Descent, and MDK.”

Descent! Holy wow – I hope so. Some of those others will do too I expect. Keep your eyes peeled on the Interplay website for a grand relaunch which will confirm what the company is up to.

Source
Gaming Today

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Is WoW over the hill? THQ man reckons so

Speaking at Gamers Day in San Francisco last week, THQ’s Jack Sorenson stuck his neck out to comment on World of Warcraft:

I wish I could see the numbers, but my guess is that it probably already has peaked” Sorenson told Eurogamer.

In context, this is not likely to be a kind of ‘yah boo sucks to Wow’ kind of a statement, more a kind of a collective sigh of relief from every other MMO maker in the world who would very much like to have their shot at making online worlds without Blizzard’s behemoth pissing all over their barbeque.

Although the height of WoW’s fame may indeed be passing, that’s not to suggest that other devs and publishers haven’t learned a lot from the event:

That’s certainly one thing that World of Warcraft’s proved: not only do you have to do it well, it has to be great from day one. There’s not a tolerance like there used to be, when Ultima came out…”

Furthermore, even if Sorenson’s statement proves correct, Blizzard has undoubtedly got a few more tricks up its sleeve that will coax recovering WoW addicts like myself to fall back off the wagon. But at least it might give someone else a shot at the MMO big time. Can’t wait to see what they come up with. Just keep it the hell away from me, that shit’s dangerous.

Source
Gaming Today

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Only two levels to ship with Battlefield Heroes

Buried within a recent interview, Ben Cousins, senior producer on Battlefield Heroes has revealed that the game will ship with just a paltry couple of maps to play on.

It’s hard to really whinge about this, seeing as the core game is designed to be freely available to download – so essentially you’re getting more than you actually pay for. EA’s money making strategy on the game is two-fold: first it’ll be earning revenue form in-game ads, and it’ll also be garnering cash from in-game micro-transactions for things like player skins, weapons and now most likely maps.

Cousins outlines the other logic behind it too: “What we did is, we come to this from two angle,” he said. “The first one is that in every Battlefield game, we bust our asses making 50 maps, and then within six months of the game being released, everyone's playing two maps. The two best maps. So, we just decided to make just the two best maps, and not the other kind of maps.”

The maps will consist of one designed for infantry confrontations and the other for vehicles.

It’s certainly true that most online games end up being played most on just a small subset of the maps on offer. Team Fortress 2, for example, seems to be limited to either 2Fort or CP_Well, but annoyingly these are the ones I like the least.

It’s more disappointing that DICE will only start building new maps based on what the majority of players like after the game has launched. Not only could this lead to long waits for new maps to become available, the majority rule system – although democratically preferable – could lead to a bland feel in the long. Following the will of the masses won’t really help encourage DICE to try out new ways of creating challenges for online players and could just lead to a string of samey offerings.

In the end though, Heroes is still going to be an interest experiment in online gaming and if successful it could pave the way for things to come. And if it sinks without a trace, at least <i>we</i> won’t be out of pocket.

Source
Gamasutra

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Developer: Tabula Rasa is down but not out

In the post WoW market, it’s a tough job launching a new MMO. Many have tried, but very few have managed to stay out of obscurity for long and none have had a chance at toppling Blizzard’s giant. Hopes were pinned on Tabula Rasa, which stood out thanks to its backing from MMO legend Richard Garriott (might have gone a bit far putting his name in the actual game title though), but although it signed up plenty of beta testers, it didn’t exactly leap off the shelves.

Damning reports from Korea described the game as a “financial disaster” for publisher NCSoft although the company was keen to downplay them. Now to prove that they are still completely behind the Tabula Rasa project, Producer Starr Long has spoken out on the website’s Dev Corner section, reassuring fans that there is a bright future for the game:

"NCsoft has committed a lot of money and resources into continuing post-launch development of Tabula Rasa. We have been putting new content into the game every few weeks, and we will continue doing just that. We have already added more upper level content and new features like Hybrids, and we’re working on tons of exciting content, such as Personal Armor Units (mechs and mini-vehicles that players can use and will grant them new abilities). "

Long doesn’t skirt the issue of the game fairly flat launch nor the rumours of company lay offs. Naturally, it wasn’t as good as expected – anyone can see that – but it arrived at a time when there were several other well-known IPs dominating the market place. As for the staff layoffs – these are normal in the games industry. You build up levels as launch day approaches then you have to let some go. There will however be a team left in place to oversee ongoing player services.

Whether you want to take this as read and trust that everything is under control is up to you. You can read the full statement here. Either way it does look like for its problems NCSoft will be sticking by its title and ensuring that it has long term prospects for its fans. Now, what I'd really like to see is a trial period, just so that I can see whether it has improved since the beta.

Check out the game here.

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Gold frauders threaten to send cost of MMO subscriptions soaring

Gold Farmers are a pain. They play through MMOs in an entirely selfish manner squeezing as much of the best loot as possible and not caring a damn for those who aren’t the most familiar with the game mechanic. They are there solely for the purpose of earning in-game stuff so they can sell it on. But they are a pretty minor irritation compared to what Gold Frauders – a term coined in a very interesting piece written by PlayNoEvil – might be doing to the MMO business.

Gold Frauders are players that use stolen credit card information to either buy game time to earn gold for future sale, or, in the worst cases, to buy game gold from other sellers – a practise which is itself banned (but still prevalent) in many online game worlds. That gold is bought using someone else’s money and then sold on at a 100% profit or more to the Gold Frauder. Simple.

Of course that’s a pain too, but it’s hardly ruining your game experience is it? Unfortunately yes; we’re just starting to see the knock on effect of all these fraudulent transactions. You see credit card companies don’t like operating in high risk markets. In fact markets like gambling and pornography have to pay a big premium for the benefit of credit card payment processing. And those that suffer frauds the most just get cut right off.

According to The Register, UK bank Halifax has now banned payments to Blizzard Entertainment – operators of huge international MMO World of Warcraft. If MMO providers are unable to stem the tide of fraudulent gold transactions or of the use of stolen credit card information, then the cost of play time simply has to increase as it will come under pressure from the banks.

If more banks decide to cut off MMOs then it’s going to be a very serious problem for their business models. Most MMOs get by using a subscription method of payment. Sure, you can use prepaid game cards as well, but that doesn’t have the same marketable appeal as getting someone to sign themselves up for a long term contract. In fact it makes it a lot harder to persuade players to part with their cash.

As online worlds and MMOs increase in sophistication, at the very least it should be fascinating to see how the developers respond.

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Major Team Fortress 2 update on its way - TONIGHT

At seven o’clock this evening Valve is rolling out on its largest Team Fortress update to date. Alongside an enormous list of tweaks and fixes, the star of the show is a brand spanking new map called Badlands.

Badlands is a remake of the TF original of the same name but with some adjustments to seek the re-envisioned iteration. Further changes have been made to Dustbowl, CTF_Well and Granary.

You can go here for the full blow-by-blow account of the various changes, but here are a couple that caught my eye for having the potentially having a noticeable effect on the average player’s game: a small delay (200 ms) has been added before a zoomed sniper shot can get a critical hit. Not sure how that’s going to be received – I reckon we’ll hear cries of nerfing before long.

Pyro’s also get a flamethrower "sizzle" sound when the hitting a target. As someone who favours the Pyro class, this is definitely welcome news. The flamethrower is a fun but inexact tool and a little more positive feedback of it having its effect will be highly useful.

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Age of Conan will be censored for Germany, but US unconcerned by partial nudity

Slipping video games violence past Germany’s Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK) is a bit like convincing a young mother to let her toddler fiddle with a chainsaw. As a result, some game makers just don’t bother trying. Others opt to tone content to suit the country’s sensitivity.

And so it is with upcoming MMO, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Developer Funcom has announced that it will be censoring the content of the game to remove the more graphic by-products of in-game combat – dismemberment, decapitation and serious gore.

But while Germany is tough on violence , the US has an equally negative view of people’s nudey bits. This lead to some speculation that the American version of the game would have some of its naughtier content – i.e. character nipples – censored. However, Funcom’s community manager, Shannon Drake, has clarified that nipples are going ahead and that the game has been granted an M rating.

So we’ll have nips in AoC, we’ve got a reasonable shot of a bare arse in Mass Effect – pretty soon there’ll be enough for a whole nekkid chick. Won’t Fox the papers have a field day then?

Source
Kotaku

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Battlefield Heroes: What we know so far

EA has been doing a lot of work over the past couple of weeks building hype for the upcoming new Battlefield sequel, Battlefield Heroes. But if you lost interest around Battlefield 2142 or thought that BF2 wasn’t given the attention it deserved by either DICE or EA then you might be wondering why you should give a damn what the next game contains. Well, for better or worse, it’s worth paying attention because Battlefield: Heroes really might change the future of online PC gaming.

For starters, it’s pioneering a new ad-based revenue generation system that means that the game will be entirely free to download and free to play. Which helpfully negates the ever present threat of piracy. The system has been tried with other genres in further flung regions with varying degrees of success, so it should be very interesting to see how well it performs when let it loose in Europe and North America.

Cash from in-game adverts won’t be paying for everything though - a whole new system of microtransactions will allow you to customise your characters for a small fee. EA has stated that these buying options won’t actually affect your ability to fight effectively though, so it will be striking a hard balance to make things worth buying and not spoiling the games for cheaper players.

Early screenshots were immediately called out for looking a LOT like Team Fortress 2 – Valve’s seminal multiplayer portion of the Orange Box – which is currently decimating the online FPS charts. We’re going to have to just accept that cel-shaded cartoony graphics are going to be very ‘in’ for a while. But at least we now know that BF Heroes is not a completely ripping off TF2 because it is in fact a third-person action game.

Not that it doesn’t share some similarities with other big multiplayer shooters of the moment; Heroes is sporting RPG elements that will allow you to unlock different abilities as you progress, which of course sounds rather a lot like Call of Duty 4. In fairness though, BF2 enjoyed a similar levelling system, but instead of getting bogged down in realism, Heroes is going to milk the cartoony style for all it’s worth and offer power ups such as inflammable ammo and the ‘I eat grenades’ ability.

This style is going to be common throughout; Senior Producer, Ben Cousins, has stated on his blog that “We wanted to return to the crazy unrealistic feel of Battlefield 1942 and Codename Eagle.”

The game is going to run on the Battlefield 2142 engine. The aim of this is presumably to ensure that a decent number of PC users can actually play the game. There wouldn’t be much point pulling a Crysis and limiting your playing audience to double figures when the bulk of the revenue-generation model depends on having a larger gamer audience. There haven’t been any specs released yet, but I’m guessing they’ll be lower than most of the major PC shooters of the moment.

Gameplay is still a bit of  mystery but we do know that traditional Battlefield teamwork values are being employed. There is one Conquest mode planned that will see each team starting the round with two flags and 100 tickets. Killing enemies reduces their tickets and capturing more flags will increase your own team’s, meaning that tactical play may lead to a victory regardless of whether your side loses more troops or not. At launch 2-3 maps are expected – less than a normal full priced release but definitely not a bad deal for, well, nothing.

Finally, vehicles are of course going to be involved. We know that there will be planes – including a Spitfire – as well as an M4 Sherman and a PzKfzIV.

Via Planet Battlefield, Battlefield Heroes, CVG

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What the next BIG thing in Second Life? Bouncing boobs…

You’d be mistaken if you thought that jiggling, gravity defying virtual knockers are the domain of adolescent fantasists (well, slightly anyway). In Second Life, however, female users are flocking to a new virtual store selling a combination of something called “flexi prims” – building blocks which bend to physical forces, such as gravity – and “sculpties” which are used to simulate organic shapes.

Putting these together, Second Life store owner Raven Ivanova is selling the virtual world’s most realistic sets of funbags – both au naturale and contained within in outfits such as bikinis, lingerie and dresses. As you can see from the video, these are a marked improvement from the twin static globes stuck immovably to the front of ordinary Second Life avatars.

[S]o far no one has told me that they find the breasts vulgar or sexist," Raven told New World Notes."My intention is to provide women with the option to make their avatar a bit more realistic, by mimicking the motion of real breasts. It's the same reason why I and other SL creators make realistic skins. We are trying to reproduce reality."

And it’s earning a fair bit of cash too – a set of wobbling jubblies confined to an outfit sell for between L$400 – 600 (roughly $2000 of equivalent real money).

There’s a bit of question mark on the future horzizon of these ground breaking cans though – the Havok 4 Physic Engine is due to be introduced in a future update and it isn’t yet know how this new technology will react to it. Could be unspeakably disastrous.

Source
Tech Digest

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Compo time: Win Lineage II – The Kamael game and schwag!

To celebrate the launch of Lineage II: The 1st Throne – The Kamael for PC (priced at £14.99, and available at retailers from 1st February), publisher NCsoft is offering you guys the chance to win a copy of the game, together with a range of specially made goodies, including a key ring, a Standee, two posters AND a T-shirt.

The Kamael introduces for the first time an entirely new playable race to the world of Lineage II, additional and evolving pets to train and fight alongside characters, fortresses to lay siege to and terrifying, high-level zones to conquer. This coupled with incredible visuals and modified gameplay makes this expansion the largest in the game’s four-year history.

All you need to do to win is answer the question on the turn (no registering, no surveys, nada - just sweet, sweet free stuff):

What is/are The Kamael?

1. A delicious flavour of tea, often drunk with ice AND milk. Sick
2. A new playable race in the world Lineage II 
3. A rare breed of desert horse known for its shaggy fur and native to Scotland

Got that? Excellent – now drop it on an email to us here (remeber to delete the anti spam bit)  along with your name and address and we’ll put it into a big ol’ hat, wear it for while, and if anything vaguely legible emerges after a week – it’s yours.

Winners picked at random, our decision is final and we're closing the competition next Wednesday 30th.

 

First details of Team Fortress 2 ‘Unlockables’ trickle out

It has been common knowledge for the past few weeks that Valve is planning some major changes to Team Fortress 2. We have also known that the medic class will be affected first and foremost, but that these changes will then spread to the various other classes in time. Now we have a couple of fresh details to work with; Medics are going to have the chance to unlock two new weapons through 35 new achievements.

Rather than being simple upgrades to the normal Medic healing ray, unlocked versions will have tactically different properties, which will be set on a new Loadout menu. One of these is the Overhealer. As the name implies, it enhances the Medic’s ability to boost friendly player’s health beyond its default capacity. Instead of stopping at 150% then decreasing over time, the Overhealer will permanently boost health to 200%. This is likely to come at the cost of the Ubercharge, or at least a severe inhibiter to the speed at which it builds.

The second unlock remains a mystery for now, but we’d love to hear some suggestions. Based on some rumours I’ve heard in-game, I wonder if deployable health packs might not be a possibility...

Unlockables are acquired by successfully acquiring a new set of Medic achievements, which is a system that obviously strongly reflects the system Infinity Ward so brilliantly pioneered in Call of Duty 4.

I’m not sure how I feel about these changes though. Naturally, as a sensible human being, I fear change with morbid irrationality and don’t want my favourite online shooter turned into a CoD4 wannabe just for the sake of it. And how annoying is it going to be once the new achievements are launched and we have to play for a full week on teams consisting of nothing but medics?

On the other hand, PC Gaming needs a leg up and Valve’s dedication to keeping TF2 fresh and appealing should be great to keep casual gamers interested. For more seasoned gaming vets’, they sould be reason enough not stray to copycats like Battlefield Heroes whenever that comes along. Particularly if there will be regular new sets of Unlockables to acquire, it could do wonders for the TF2 community.

Source
CVG

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Age of Conan opening beta up to all, but at some point much closer to launch

The AoC closed beta has been up and running for a while – in fact thousands of beta invites have already been distributed. If you missed out though, Funcom has now revealed that in the grand tradition of MMOs an open beta will be opening up shortly prior to the game’s full launch, expected on March 25th of this year.

Funcom had formerly indicated that there wouldn’t be an open beta for the game.

Naturally players will be required to register for the open beta, but there shouldn’t be any real shortage of invites open to the public. Community manager, Shannon Drake, assured CVG that the number of beta keys would be in the region of tens of thousands.

Given the ever present might of WoW, I wonder how well such a large beta event will work out for Age of Conan, especially in light of MMO veteran Richard Garriott’s recent assertion that the launch of Tabula Rasa was in fact undermined by the existence of too many beta invites.

I was able to get a little time at the AoC stand in the Microsoft booth at CES this year. Although there wasn't a whole lot to add to what we already knew about the game, the qualityof textures and graphics in general were looking much snazzier than I've seen them before. To me the combat still feels a touch on the clunky side, but it also seems like an issue of fine tuning than a more fundamental problem.

Source
CVG

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CrosuS game manager makes finding game mods easier

We’ve been tipped about the arrival of a new game management system for PC gamers. Game manager isn’t perhaps the best description – ‘mod finder’ might be better, but has less of a ring to it. Anyway, what Isotx's tool does is scan your PC, finds all your games and then it goes out and finds mods, maps, patches, tools, etc and makes them available to download and install in a couple of clicks, saving you the trouble of trawling through reels of fansites to find them yourself.

Sensibly, it’s not directly challenging the digital retail channels like Steam, or multiplayer services like Xfire. It’s actually designed to work in conjunction with these tools, giving you the chance to, for example, update Half-Life 2 whilst running Steam at the same time.

Operation seems very smooth and detection of games worked a treat for me (although this is my work system so the volume of games isn’t too overbearing). The layout looks good and I like the news delivery system too, which has the potential to grease more gears on the mod scene.

The only real obstacle is whether you’re prepared to have yet another piece of third-party software running in the background of your PC. Well, at least it’s free and so you’re not going to get stung if you try it and don’t like it. Download it here.

Tales from the other side of the counter – Xmas edition

The traditional holiday rush has reached its peak, and finally folks seem to be more eager to stay at home in the warm, rather than brave the high street to nab that last pair of socks for granddad.

From the other side of the counter – the poor sods working their fingers to the bone for barely any more than minimum wage – things have been a little intriguing, and a whole heap frustrating.

The insane popularity of the two Nintendo consoles rose to yet another peak, with stock levels being back to 0 within a few minutes of arriving in store. Not that most understand that stock is almost impossible to receive, as numerous parents who finally realise that their spoilt brats aren’t going to receive their number one present descend into rudeness, and pathetic shouts to shop staff that they’ve single handedly “ruined Christmas,” for little Johnny. The stupid sods.

The Xbox 360 continued to sell in steady numbers, with the Premium being the top seller due to some wickedly cheap priced bundles lumping in the likes of Halo 3 and *spits* Need For Speed: ProStreet. The ‘Arcade Pack’ remained on the shelves with not a single unit changing hands. As for the Elite console, it’s not too shocking to discover that only a few folks were happy to shell out the extra cash for a bigger hard drive.

Sony have had a good run the closer Christmas came, with sales of the PSP suddenly rivalling the 360 for seemingly no apparent reason. Maybe a case of kids having to plump for their ‘second choice’ with DS’s all sold out? As for the PS3, the rush after the still fairly recent price-cut slowly calmed down and current sales are neck-and-neck with the Premium 360.

Games wise, the usual suspects were the biggest sellers. The various SingStar titles sold by the truckload, though the PS3 iteration remained merely a steady seller. The delightful FIFA 08, and the rubbish Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 also sold in hefty numbers, as did the PS3 Tomb Raider-a-like Uncharted as word spread of its absolute genius. The various Guitar Hero iterations shifted in ridiculous numbers too, particularly at its cheap price point.

The good taste award goes to DS owners who snapped up numerous copies of the sublime Hotel Dusk literally minutes after the stock hitting the shelves. Good on those folks eager for a decent yarn. Bad taste award goes to those DS owners who actually purchased the various ‘Imagine’ titles, featuring the likes of ‘Babies’ and ‘Fashion Designers’. Blimey. Any old crap really will shift at this time of year wont it?

So, the big winners are essentially the retailers who have done astonishing figures the last few weeks. The losers are the shop workers, who have all the idiots attempting to return titles they purchased elsewhere on Boxing Day, still to look forward to. Fantastic.

 

Play Vanguard: Saga of Heroes again for free

Sony Online Entertainment is taking a desperate but not unwelcome step to lure disgruntled players back to MMO flop, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Anyone who has previously owned a Vanguard account and cancelled it before the last 60 days will find their account reactivated for free until January 3rd.

Vanguard’s launch was at best plagued, at worst horrifically undermined, when it transpired that no one had bothered to, y’know, finish it before it came out. The result was a horrible bug-ridden mess that offered precious little enjoyment to those who’d coughed up hard earned cash for the ‘game’.

In fairness, developer Sigil – after a dramatic acquisition by SOE – has tried hard to fix most of the problems. Oh it isn’t really the EverQuest successor we wanted it to be, but at least it is now playable, and hell – you’ve probably got the box sitting there gathering dust, why not brush it off and have a free game courtesy of SOE? Could even be fun.

Source
Wired

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Introversion Anthology on Steam for a mere $19.95 - bargain of the year?

Got Steam installed on your PC? Chances are you only have the titles that came with The Orange Box for it. Fancy a bit more gaming goodness for the holiday season? Then get Steam open, and you’ll find yourself able to purchase all 3 of Introversion Software’s astonishingly fantastic titles for a pitifully small $19.95 USD.

If you’ve never heard of this talented bunch (for shame!) then here’s a quick look at what you can get for your spare change.

First is Uplink, a hacking masterpiece that packs the most atmospheric gaming experience known to man. Though not drenched in visual splendour – but by no means an ugly game – this one deserves to be tried by anyone who fancies a dip in the glamorous world of hacking. Seriously, it’s blooming brilliant.

Darwinia no doubt attracted many due to its stylish visuals, all were gripped by its unique blend of fast paced action, and strategic planning. Saving those cute little Darwinians was the aim, and it all plays out to one of the greatest gaming soundtracks ever created. A must play.

Last, but by no means least, is the multiplayer great Defcon. Thermo-nuclear war on a grand scale in earnest, Defcon could teach, as well as entertain. Co-ordinating your assault and defence with precision was your main aim, but having one of your nuclear weapons hit its target and simply see a white flash of “5.4 million dead” was even more chilling than the time the dogs smashed through the windows in Resident Evil.

This isn’t an advertisement; these are three of the greatest shows of gaming genius from the modern age. And at $19.95 USD, this is a true bargain and a half.

Source: Steam

Opinion: Facebook and OpenSocial gaming are changing the face of gaming, but consoles are the future

Over at our big brother-blog, Tech Digest, fellow editor Stuart Dredge writes; “the next title that's a true paradigm shift in gaming, won't be on a console or handheld device - it'll be on a social network.” I thought it only fair to offer some kind of reply to temper his blatant Facebook fanboyism with some of my own console-centric thoughts.

Facebook’s surge to global dominance has been the kind of thing that every would-be web entrepreneur dreams of. Its seemingly overnight success has been by no means impeded by the introduction of the Facebook Platform earlier in the year which opened the floodgates for all kinds of pointless time wasting applications that at least satisfy a Ludologist’s interpretation of gaming. For all the countless amounts of pure garbage, however, there are few shining gems. Tech Digest cites the recent arrival – Tower Bloxx – which made the leap from mobile phones to Facebook bringing with it new social networking features.

As you play Tower Bloxx and build up your score, the pictures of your Facebook friends are displayed on the side of the game window showing their scores and allowing you a more immediate feeling of satisfaction, plus the allure of potential bragging rights, as you pass.

This of course instantly doubles the appeal of the game as it generates a competition, not between you and some slack-jawed thirteen year on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, but someone you actually know and haven’t wanted to throttle within ten seconds of meeting them.

Is this the future– the long sought Game 2.0, the place where social interaction and video gaming finally meet in blissful union – then? Hell no. Facebook’s elephant in the room, particularly when it comes to these games, is the fact there‘s actually no means of generating money or financially rewarding those whose applications do claw their way to the top of the dung heap.

As a result Facebook games will remain as little more than intensely budget pastimes, unable to evolve beyond bedroom programming. Not that there’s anything wrong with bedroom programming, which has itself been responsible for a more than significant number of truly brilliant games, but there is also an undeniable appeal in the bigger budget efforts involving teams of talented people working towards one goal.  While Facebook applications could be a great testing ground for new ideas, without real fiscal incentive or reward, they can’t hope to evolve much further than their current rudimentary status and are destined to sink into insignificance at around the same time as Facebook inevitably will – just as soon as we all start signing up to MybookSpace or Facebebo or whatever.

I’ll concede that Google's recently announced OpenSocial initiative, which is designed to be enjoyed over multiple social networking platforms, has a better chance of success, but as few players will presumably want to pay to play such games or be lumbered with intrusive advertising mechanisms, there remains the same lack of incentive to really push the boundaries of what can be done with the gaming medium.

That’s not to say that the social networking model has nothing to offer console gaming; there is a huge amount to be learned from the overwhelming popularity of games like Scrabulous (currently enjoying over half a million active users each day – as much or more than any big budget alien shooter can ever hope to achieve) and, more importantly, the way it is enjoyed.

So far all three of the current-gen consoles (Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3) have tried different ways to connect players in a social space. But it tends to be in a clunky impersonal way and, in one case, then charges you for the pleasure of it.

The true strength of the console platform is its potential to enhance gaming as an entertainment medium – not just in terms of graphical spectacle, but in narrative and gameplay and, yes, social interaction. While social networking platforms struggle to reward new thinking in game design, the console platforms also struggle to encourage it – a point epitomised by the sheer number of generic shooter titles and endlessly running sequels.

I’m confident though that, sooner or later, the console giants will wake up and smell the coffee, or risk labouring under their finite niches indefinitely, which, as the cost of development continues to rise, will be an increasing handicap. The social networking model provides an answer to that; giving players access to social space that it is contextually relevant to them and their real lives. Facebook, for the most part, encourages you to do the legwork and actually get out and meet people – it then provides a handy means for keeping track and in touch with them afterwards. Consoles don’t have that to anything like the same degree, unless you and all your friends happen to all own the same consoles and games, and any chance of taking console gaming forward will have to approach the problem from a far more open perspective.

The next real paradigm shift in gaming won’t come from a first person shooter, an MMO, a brain exercise or a Facebook application. It will smash down the artificial barriers between all three and take what is best about big budget collaborative efforts, social networking and the fact that a standalone console unit has the potential to be both more powerful and significantly cheaper than any home computer, to form a far greater whole.

Al Warmington is editor of Games Digest and PSPSPS. He spends more time playing PS3 than any half-arsed Facebook game because the last thing he wants to do after a long day slaving over a hot PC is look at another damned PC. TVs are okay though.

For more consumer technology and Web 2.0 news, check out Shiny Media's Tech Digest blog.

New maps landing in Team Fortress 2 soon?

Yes - say the rumours. Arguably the six maps you get with Team Fortress 2 were a generous enough offering for a game that forms only a small part of the whole Orange Box. Well, they’re not enough and Valve is doing something about it. We don’t know how many maps we're talking here – just that there could be one in testing right now.

In console news, the Xbox 360 version is expected to get a patch between now and Xmas, fixing gameplay exploits, stats reporting, bandwidth usage and menu bugs. It should be interesting to see whether Xbox 360 players will be required to pay for any new maps that come out in future if they’re free for PC players. Likewise with PS3 owners.

Source
Kotaku

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EVE update kills XP; issue since resolved and fixed

EVE Online’s long-awaited Premium Graphics update arrived on Wednesday, bringing with an unexpected and rather unfortunate bug. Users yesterday were reporting that their boot.ini file had been erased by the update, thus killing their copy of XP.

The players potentially affected by the problem – what CCP calls “a small percentage” – includes those that were running any version of Windows other than Vista and more than one hard drive. I’d call that more like ‘the vast majority’ to be honest. Fortunately, CCP pinpointed the cause of this colossal balls up in reasonably good time and released the proper working update.

However, if you’re an EVE player who downloaded the EVE Online: Trinity update 0400 GMT on Wednesday, then you’ll need to visit this page to sort out the problem. Assuming your computer still actually works.

In spite of the hiccup, EVE online does work on a highly original MMO / virtual world model, which means that ongoing graphical, as well as content updates such as this will give the game an unparalleled lasting power. Lets hope this rock in the road doesn’t put them off future updates – many fans are still eagerly looking forward to Ambulation (read: avatars) and Factional Warfare in the next round.

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Garriott: Tabula Rasa launch undermined by having too many beta testers

Lead designer of Tabula Rasa, space adventurer and man behind the Ultima series, Richard Garriott, has spoken out about the hit and miss launch of the MMO. Talking at the 2007 Independent Game Conference, Garriott said “We burned out some quantity of our beta-testers when the game wasn’t yet fun. As we’ve begun to sell the game, the people who hadn’t participated in the beta became our fast early-adopters.”

Tabula Rasa struck out to offer an alternative to the rather monotonous combat which supposedly tarnishes other MMOs (but in no currently discernible financial manner). To be fair, the combat was a bit more interesting, but TR let itself down by failing to provide an easily accessible and compelling world. Although, I was one of the same beta testers, so perhaps I’ve fallen into the very trap Garriott is taking about.

However, the ‘too many beta testers’ argument is really interesting. As I’m currently playing in another beta (I’m guessing I’ve signed some form of NDA and I don’t want to jinx it either, so I’m not going to mention its name) which is a much hyped, upcoming MMO – it has gone down a similar route of having a boat load of beta invites floating about, but as it stands the game feels a very, very long way from being ready.

Of course it’s not fair to judge based on the experience now, but each time I play, my hopes and dreams of what the game was going to provide seem to sink just a little further out of reach. In the end that could undermine its launch day sales, no matter how many of the problems the developers manage to fix. Hopefully Garriott’s warning will give more developers pause for thought when they’re feeling a little too generous with the beta invites.

Source
Gaming Today

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Turn your World of Warcraft character into a real life figurine

Awesome idea alert! For all the hundreds upon thousands of hours you pour into World of Warcraft, levelling up and kitting out your character with only the finest of hard farmed epic equipment, you get very little tangible evidence for your efforts. Someday, god forbid, in the long distant future, Blizzard is going to turn off them WoW servers and that not insignificant amount of your life is going to vanish. Gone.

Unless you get a FigurePrint, of course. Basically what you do is provide your character and realm details to the company, choose the gear you want and FigurePrints will immortalise it in a fully detailed 3D model.

It’ll cost $100, which seems a teensy bit on the expensive side, so it’ll be down to the quality of the recreation to determine whether it is all really worth it. However, I’m betting this idea – which is full endorsed and licensed by Blizzard – has the potential to be a really big hit. Who knows, this might even help WoW addicts to break the habit in the fear that upgrading their character yet further will ruin the accuracy of their model. Or maybe it’ll just be fresh incentive to keep playing to make the best model possible.

The website is up but doesn’t officially open until next Tuesday. However with a bit of careful timing of the Stop button, you can see most things already.

Source
EvAv

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First sightings of Football MMO

That’s soccer to you lot across the pond, but if this idea works then I can 100% Surfer Girl guarantee you this will make it across to whatever that bizarre rugby variation it is you play in the US. Maybe even to Aussie rules as well, who knows. Back to, ah yes, the point; the game is Football Superstars and is being developed by CyberSports. Players will start their career with an ordinary Joe Nobody player and build up their career through playing online matches where every other player is controlled by a real honest to goodness human being.

Matches will range from 3, 5, 7 and 40 player raid dungeons 11-a-side. It’s not clear whether this will all take place against computer players or rival teams or what. It’s definitely one of the most ambitious football game concepts to date and, given the obsession with which people refer to Championship Manager, it could have the goods to be a real hit – or people will realise that it’s only actually fun when the other players are sat beside you to feel the full effect of your humiliating 6-0 win.

"The player will exist in a persistent football-themed world” explains developer CyberSports. That sounds like my very own personal hell.

Source
CVG

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Freaky video of the day: Kwari tutorial

Yeah, I’m officially weirded out. This is a new tutorial for Kwari. We’ll talk about Kwari in a minute, but for now lets try and decide if this is funny, lame or somewhere else entirely.

KWARI Walkthrough Video

So… Kwari. It has an interesting concept and plenty of ambition, certainly. Basically, as the video explained (assuming you still have a lose grip on your sanity) you pay money to Kwari, which buys you ammo, then you run around in the game scoring points by shooting other players or achieving in-game objectives, which in turn transforms back into real money for you to go off and spend on shiny trinkets.

Even though the vid jabbers on about payment security and the MMO engine, I still can’t get around the two absolutely massive flaws in this idea. Firstly, for a PC shooter to take off to the point that it can be considered for genuine real-money-at-stakes tournament level, it needs to be a very big deal on the online circuit, preferably coming from bloody good heritage and have a very tight anti-cheating system. Of course there are exceptions to this rule – the number of cheats in Counter-Strike for example – but that can be controlled in a big LAN contest, where the real cash changes hands. Kwari, for all its other security measure will have to be damned sure it’s got this nailed down as haxx could be a definite stumbling block.

Second, why the hell would you want to fork out hard earned cash to other players anyway. Plenty of people have enough fun just fighting for bragging rights, to climb to the top of the leaderboard or just getting a feat neat headshots in. Money doesn’t need to be a part of it. And despite promises you won’t get your ass handed to you by better players, there’s absolutely no way this game possibly completely hustle-free.

Furthermore, there’s even evidence that broad scale gaming for money doesn’t work either – look at the recent demise of Tournament.com – and that even had backing from an established online shooter.

I’m sceptical, but it’s still an interesting idea, so we’re looking forward to seeing how it pans out.

Source
FileFront

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NCsoft nabs City of Heroes, announces new studio

NCsoft, long-time publisher of the City of Heroes MMO, has fully acquired the City of Heroes IP and has announced the opening of a new studio built around “key members” of the development team.

Intriguingly, this doesn’t mean that the three year old MMO is to start winding down, as the new studio will be in charge of expanding on the property and making “a major reinvestment in the City of Heroes product line”. The company that current City of Heroes and City of Villains players will experience no noticeable effects on the game as the company makes its transition.

With NCsoft signing a new agreement with Sony at this year’s E3, we’ll be interested to see whether the next step forward for the MMO might be a console adaptation. This is of course, purely idle speculation on our part. It is also believed that the new studio will also be working on the Marvel Universe Online title, announced last year and expected to arrive on PC and Xbox 360.

Source
Gamasutra

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My Space gets its game on in 2008

Aging social networking site, MySpace, is stepping up its effort to stop everyone jumping ship on to Facebook broaden its appeal into world spanning dominance and at the same time tap into that oh-so-lucrative casual gaming market. Through a partnership with Oberon Media, MySpace will launch a new gaming channel, imaginatively entitled MySpace Games, at some point early next year.

Luckily, the actual implementation sounds far more intriguing as it will allow MySpace users to add Flash games into their profile pages and challenge their friends to multiplayer games, which in turn incorporate online chatting services.

The only real problem I can see with the service is that Oberon’s selection of games might not have all that it takes to really make an impact on the MySpace community, but then of course the injection of cash the agreement undoubtedly comes with will probably help remedy that.

Console download revenues estimated to hit more than $580 million

It's been a good year for digital delivery, with the recent projections by IDC and IDG entertainment that online console download revenues will increase threefold from $133 million in in 2006 to $583 million in 2007. That's not all- while third-party retail and online stores are expect to see growth of 19.5 percent, downloadable content will see a growth of 1,039 percent and subscription will see a 158 percent increase. But what could it mean for Xbox Live? Go on to Xboxer to find out.

Read the full story.

Source:
Gamasutra

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British Intelligence turns its eye to in-game advertising

Not some fiendish Al-Qaeda  plot to hide subliminal mind controlling messages in in-game advertising; the Government Communications Headquarters branch of the British Intelligence services is actually planning to use game ads to recruit new members. Apparently, if there’s one thing that’s sorely lacking in the war on terror, it’s smack-talking, pimply faced youths with lighting-fast reflexes and a peculiar body odour.

It’s not clear exactly what roles within the intelligence services are hoping to be filled with this strategy, but the games believed to be showing the ads include the Tom Clancy franchise, Need for Speed Carbon and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Honestly though, they should really be looking on the Team Fortress 2 servers – there you’ll find a whole army of ready trained, bloody annoying highly skilled spies.

Source
GamesIndustry.biz

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Portal Multiplayer possible, maybe

Portal is an incredibly brilliant, trippy and mind altering 3D puzzler-come-adventure game out now on Steam and Xbox 360; if you haven’t played it, I strongly urge you to go get that Orange Box. And with it you’ll get a great shooter and an even greater online game AND you’ll be able to understand where the recent flood of Weighted Companion Cube references on the interwebs are coming from. But what could make Portal even more mind altering, trippy and indeed brilliant? Multiplayer, of course.

Frankly, the idea of several players all running around creating their own portals, springing through them behind other players, and using them to drop their rivals into poisonous goo could only make the game nine times more awesome. Although it might do seriously bad things to your special awareness.

Anyway, making Portal work so smoothly can’t have been an easy task, so to adapt it for multiplayer with so many other more portals being set up around the place could prove damned near impossible. Luckily, some clever chap by the name of Matt Malesky has made a first step towards getting it in a multiplayer game. It’s a long way short of having a real game but hopefully the ever-amazing mod community will be able to sort something out sooner or later. We have every faith.

Check this video for a proof of concept and a walkthru on how Malesky got it working.

Source
Rock Paper Shotgun

Former World of Warcraft, Fallout and Starcraft developers join up to create new studio

NCsoft recently aannounced the formation of a new development house – called Carbine Studios. The development team consists of a number of names from a selection of downright impressive titles, including World of Warcraft, Fallout and Starcraft. Some of these include Kevin Beardslee – formerly lead developer of WoW, Tim Cain – once the lead programmer and designer for Fallout, and Jeremy Gaffney – Executive Producer of City of Heroes.

Robert Garriott, CEO of NCsoft said “This is a dev team made in heaven, this group is as experienced as they come in the area of computer role playing and multiplayer game design. Making successful games is second nature to them. They are a very welcome addition to the NCsoft family. The gaming community should be excited to see what great things come out of Carbine Studios in the coming years.”

The next task for this team of grizzled games development veterans is, unsurprisingly, one of the hardest of them all – starting work on a brand spanking new MMO. The title has yet to be announced, but given that Carbine Studios is so well integrated with NCsoft, which recently entered an agreement with Sony to begin development of online games for the PS3, it might not be too huge an assumption to guess that a PS3 MMO could be on the cards...

Source
GameInformer

Valve promises it won’t charge for Steam Community features. Not ever.

Didn’t even enter their minds. That’s despite the fact that Microsoft is touting its own Game for Windows Live community system – okay you don’t HAVE to pay for it either, but you do need to pony up if you want to play cross-platform with Xbox 360 players. Yeah, because Shadowrun makes that sooo worthwhile. Anyway, it is fair to say that Steam is giving any rival Microsoft system a real run for its money (read: wiping the floor with it) and we know that gamers are by and large happy to pay for a premium service when you can see an obvious quality difference; think Xbox LIVE vs PlayStation Network.

Valve Project Manager Erik Johnson stated “We will not charge for The Steam Community and its features. […] when folks first bought Half-Life 2, Steam didn't offer many reasons to stick around. It didn't do enough for customers, and it didn't justify itself. So I suppose we're paying off a debt now.”

And given the recent experiences we’ve had with Team Fortress, the community features are paying us back ten-fold. Frankly, the ease with you can organise players and enter games is exactly what PC games have been desperately needing since Xbox Live showed us how it should be done. Shame the voice chat system is still a little crappy though.

Source
1UP

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Ultima Online celebrates 10 year anniversary

Although not the first MMO of all time, Ultima Online was the first game to really put MMORPG gaming on the map and open it up to the masses, thus paving the way for mega titles like World of Warcraft. This week the seminal title celebrates its tenth anniversary and, in proof that the online world is still going strong, EA is offering all players who have ever dabbled in any of its many incarnations in the past the chance to get back in and enjoy a couple of weeks of free play.

"Ultima Online has thrived for 10 years and achieved the status of an MMO classic, thanks in large part to the devoted player community," said Mark Jacobs, VP and general manager, EA Mythic. "We are very excited to celebrate this special anniversary with players."

In game celebrations will include a load of freebies for all players and some special monster hunts that will let players win special, limited edition prizes – armour, amps, ankhs, necklaces and such like.

Source
Read via Kotaku

Blizzard culls erotic World of Warcraft guild

We’re a little late picking this one up but it does raise a few interesting questions that will no doubt be important to the very future of Massively Multiplayer Online gaming. Last week Blizzard forcefully closed down a and erotic roleplaying (ERP) guild called Abhorrent Taboo, which was found on the Ravenholdt server. Practises within the guild consisted of simulating sexual acts through “grinding avatars together” and an array erotic text chatting.

Hey, whatever floats your boat. The problem was that there were a few even less savoury aspects to the guild’s unusual practises, which started to ring alarm bells at Blizzard HQ. For example, their welcome post  read: "NOTE: Be advised that we frequently ERP in guild chat and often engage in even potentially offensive kinks such as (Extreme) Ageplay, Bestiality, Child Birth, [censored by the WoW forums], Watersports, or any other kink those playing may wish to explore."

Given that there are obvious paedophilic connotations in there, you can see why Blizzard might have panicked. Although, I’m actually left wondering it was that was considered so depraved it had to be censored from that list. The mind boggles.

The guild itself claimed that no one was allowed to join unless they were over 18, but it would really have been very difficult to prove either way. The counter-argument is that if the guild aren’t involving other players, they should be allowed to ‘play’ in any way they like. To be honest though, shutting the thing down was probably by far the most sensible move at the moment, but you can bet it will be back in some other guise sooner or later.

The risks faced by Blizzard – and other games when in some far off, murky point in the distant future, some other game comes along to steal the MMO crown – is how to prevent similar things happening or regulate the if they do. Similar instances could sorely undermine a game’s age rating, not to mention the scale of bad publicity it would kick up if Blizzard hadn’t got to it first.

But, arguably, the very point of a virtual world is that you are able to experience it how you want. If your tastes lie in things so particularly taboo, then so be it – without a police-state level of player regulation, it is going to be pretty much impossible to keep track of all such goings on.

Source The Register

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Man dies in cyber café after three day gaming binge

In an incident that will no doubt spark fresh concerns about video game addiction, a 30 year old man has died from exhaustion after 72 hours of solid online gaming. Fellow net users reportedly left the café (not the one pictured) in the city of Guangzhou, Southern China, “in fear” after witnessing the man’s death. Paramedics attempted to resuscitate the man but were unable to revive him.

This certainly isn’t the first time people have died as a result of obsessive video game binges, although so far all of the incidents have occurred outside Europe and North America. So - keeping playing safe, kids and always remember to, y’know, eat and stuff.

Source
CVG

EVE Online heading to Mac and Linux

Since speaking to Hilmar Petursson at EIF this year, I’ve been really tempted to try my hand at EVE Online again. Even as far as virtual worlds go, EVE’s universe is amongst the most diverse and cut-throat there is, packed to the gunwhales with economic shenanigans and scandals. But with my PC now struggling with strenuous tasks like Word and Firefox, it perhaps isn’t the best suited for EVE’s gorgeous graphical effects.

Fortunately for me, and indeed for the ever-growing EVE community, it’s Windows PC exclusivity is soon to come to an end as a partnership between developers CCP and TransGaming Inc. may see the game making its way on to Mac and Linux machines. TransGaming Inc. specialises in porting title across to other operating systems without having to go back and redevelop them from the ground up. The Mac and Linux versions are expected later in the year.

Source
Game | Life

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Enemy Territory: Quake Wars demo out Monday

Online FPS fans should keep their eye on this one: ET:Quake Wars, the sort of successor to Return to Castle Wolfenstein sequel/mod/expansion and online hit, Enemy Territory, gets its first demo on Monday. The demo is pretty much the same as the more recent beta level and offers you the chance to play Valley, one of the larger maps in the game. Set in Yosemite, California, Valley has the Global Defense Force on the attack, as they attempt to foil a Strogg contamination plot centring on a water treatment facility.

Alas it’s not a simple as all that – because there are multiple objectives to achieve and these also differ depending on what class you choose. If you’re interested in the game – and it is pretty decent after you’ve had a chance to get used to the simply vast amounts of things you can do beyond just shooting at each other – and want to have a vague inkling of what you're meant to be doing, then you should read this. And watch this. And this. That'll clear things right up, honest.

You don’t have to play online of course – the demo also allows you to host local servers and play against bots if you like. For those who already tried the beta, Splash Damage is keen to point out that the balance has been tweaked, so hopefully it won’t just be all one long war of attrition while GDF try and fail to hack the shield generator. And maybe those Strogg sniper rifles will have been toned down slightly. Or the GDF ones will shoot straight. Either way works for me.

Full system specs are out too; check ‘em out below.

Kwari ups the ‘anti’ in social FPS gaming

Kwari, publisher of the game of the same name has a very unique idea for online first person shooters. We’re used to the idea of online tournaments in which the winning team or player can win a big cash prize, but Kwari is set to try out a different concept. Players can win (or lose) money from each other in real time during the game.

It starts off as a free download, but to play the game you have to place a stake at the start of each match, which will be skill-ranked so as to prevent highly skilled, and therefore highly wealthy players from milky cash off less fortunate n00bie players. As the game goes on, every time a player hits another, money is decremented from the target’s stake and added to the shooter’s. Jackpot’s are also included which are topped up by players doing something really silly and throwing themselves off the top of a building and hurting themselves.

“Money changes everything,” said Eddie Gill, founder and creator of Kwari. “I wanted to create something that had more of a buzz than a traditional FPS.” Al King, Global Marketing Director for Kwari adds “This is an inevitable evolution for online gaming. Like most skill-based or competitive games, once played at a professional level or where money is involved, it’s unappealing to return to an amateur status.”

So far I’m still a little confused… I’m not sure why players would really want to risk real money playing an online shooter when they can play ordinary ones for free anyway. I can see that the idea is to make an online FPS that little bit more emotional and frantic, but it’s not as though FPS multiplayer games aren’t already fraught with abuse-screaming hyperactive teens anyway – why add recently impoverished adults into that equation?

Most importantly, Kwari is going to have to be a very high quality shooter to really make it worthwhile. Apply the Kwari model to a game like Halo, Counter-Strike, Enemy Territory, etc and I would at least have a look at it. But unless the game is built to an absolutely cutting edge standard and completely immune to hacks or in-game exploits (which the aforementioned definitely are not), I can’t see people wanting to risk losing real money to unfair play.

That said, it’s an interesting idea and we’ll be keeping an eye on how things progress. The free download part sounds decent enough at least. The game should be available later this year, although the complete lack of screen shots at the moment makes me a little sceptical about that.

Tabula Rasa Collector’s Edition revealed

Tabula Rasa is shaping up to be a promising MMO, thanks largely to it having Richard Garriott’s impressive video game heritage to its name. So, like any self respecting Publisher of an MMO with such good breeding, NCSoft has come up with a Collectors Edition box-set for the final release due sometime this Autumn.

If I had a Collectors Edition box-set ratings system, this one would come out quite highly. First up you’ve got a decent selection of real-world goodies including a player guide complete with ‘classified’ maps, a pair of dog tags, an AFS challenge coin and a poster. And because this is an MMO, you also get your virtual goodies as well, consisting of a special character emote, an exclusive armour dye recipe and the ubiquitous unique pet. The pet is pretty much guaranteed to be whipped straight from one of Richard Garriott’s other titles – anyone care to wager which character it will be?

Source
ars technica

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