Archive for the 'News' Category

Upcoming Releases: Left 4 Dead and Silent Hill

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Andy
on August 25th, 2008
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Some more news this week regarding Left 4 Dead, as well as news of Silent Hill Homecoming.

It was revealed this week that Silent Hill Homecoming will be coming to PC along with the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 releases, and will be available on Steam. The game should be released some time in September.

If that’s not enough to fill your thirst for the supernatural, you will be able to get through hordes of undead in Valve’s new release Left 4 Dead.

This week, we learned that Left 4 Dead will be following both Team Fortress 2 and Portal’s examples, when Doug Lombardi told us that, like Portal, there would be:

subtle hints fleshing out the game’s back story.

He goes on to say that:

graffiti and scratches [will pepper] the walls of the zombie filled city, with messages to and from survivors scrawled upon the walls of the game’s safe rooms

In addition, like Team Fortress 2, there are plans to:

feed Left 4 Dead players with regular updates. [There will be] new scenarios as future downloadable content through Steam, [and] new monster types and weapons sound like a distinct possibility

As Left 4 Dead sounds like it’s getting better by the day, we also heard this week that the boxart that we showed a few weeks ago (and can be seen above) may well be open to change.

Why would they do that, you ask? Well, apparently, it may have something to do with the obvious pun in the image. You see, the hand obviously only has 4 fingers, and it is clearly dead, however the more observant of you may have noticed that it’s a right hand…

Yes, really. They are thinking of changing the artwork so the one person in 3 million who actually notices this will feel all warm and fuzzy inside! I guess we’ll actually have to wait an see if this transpires, however I for one wont even be looking at the boxart… who needs a physical copy when you’ve got steam?!

Unfortunately, the final bit of news about Left 4 Dead is that there has been a release delay. Left 4 Dead will now be released on November 20th, not the originally planned 4th November (to go with the whole ‘4′ thing…).

No news as to why this is, and it’s not that much longer to wait, however at least we will be playing it exactly 10 years after we were originally playing Half-Life. That’s right folks, Left 4 Dead will now be released on the 10 year anniversary of the release of Half-life… ah the nostalgia :)

Heavy Update introduces Badwater Basin

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Andy
on August 15th, 2008
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The Heavy Update Site has released news of the next part of the pack - the new map Badwater Basin.

From the site:

Badwater Basin is a Payload map focusing on more open spaces and less chokepoints than Gold Rush.

So far so good!

Unlike Gold Rush, where the track is split into three separate stages, Badwater Basin uses a single large stage with several checkpoints. As a result, the Blue team is highly encouraged to push the cart hard after beating their way through the Red defensive line.

Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun!

Head over to the site to see some pictures in anticipation of actually getting to play it. This pack is shaping up to be a cracker!

Bionic Commando swings away from Steam

Published
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Andy
on August 15th, 2008
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A notable omission from Steam this morning was the fact the the anticipated Bionic Commando Re-armed has not appeared.

While it was supposed to be on Steam, Christian Svensson, a Capcom employee, has said on their official forums that Capcom and Valve have “been unable to reach mutually agreeable terms”. He doesn’t go into detail about this, but does say that Capcom “continue to have a good relationship with Valve and future Capcom titles we expect to be carried on Steam”.

For me, this is a little worrying - what terms couldn’t they agree on for this one game that other games will be alright? It doesn’t seem to bode well - whatever may be said in front of the curtain.

I guess the only way we will find out is by letting time work it’s magic…

Oh, and while it’s kind of irrelevant to the point I’m making, after playing the demo on Xbox Live Arcade last night, I personally don’t think we’re missing out on that much, although it still doesn’t change the fact that we should have the option.

Unreal Tournament 3 and Team Fortress Update News

Published
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Andy
on August 14th, 2008
in News and Updates
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An update has been released for Unreal Tournament 3. The update makes the following changes:

  • Fixed overlay mesh showing up on hidden sniper rifle when un-zoomed
  • Added motion blur menu option for PC (defaults to off)
  • Fixed zero extent collision bug in octree code (finding nodes in Z axis)
  • LOD Hysteresis / LOD Decision making bug fix
  • Fixed default mesh not having proper LOD settings
  • Fixed rare darkwalker physics crash
  • Added player name list to server browser

If you’re still playing this, and not Team Fortress 2 then these could be interesting*. If however you’re a Team Fortress 2 player, there is some more news for you!

Following on from yesterday’s update, the Heavy portal site has released information on the first new weapon and all of the achievements that will be available for the class.

The weapon is the K.G.B (or Killing Gloves of Boxing) which will give the Heavy “five seconds of guaranteed critical hits”. This can be used to “to punch and kill further enemies, extending the boost time” or to “switch to another weapon and use the boost to take out an enemy at range”. Either way, sounds like a lot of fun to me!

As for the achievements, no news has been released on what to do to get them, however you can see them all, as well as download the icon pack at the official portal site.

* Please note, I am aware that Team Fortress 2 and Unreal Tournament are significantly different games, however I wanted some way to link the two items and this was the best way I could think of. Sue me ;)

Valve announce Heavy Pack coming ’shortly’

Published
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Andy
on August 12th, 2008
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Valve have just posted on the official Team Fortress 2 blog that the much anticipated Heavy update will be coming shortly.

To count down to the release, valve have launched a special Heavy ‘portal‘ which will showcase some of the key features of the pack in small bite size chunks.

According to the blog:

Throughout the rest of the week [they'll] be giving you the details on [everything in the pack], and if all goes well, you’ll have your hands on it shortly afterwards

First up on the heavy update site is the community map they are releasing - cp_steel.

For information on this and everything else in the pack, make sure you keep checking the official blog!

This is going to be fun :)

Want mods? Get them on Steam!

Published
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Andy
on August 11th, 2008
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A new dawn has come on Steam, with four Half-life 2 mods being given access to the Steamworks SDK. The scoop comes from Steam Review who quote the Synergy Mod’s site (a co-op mod for HL2) as saying that they:

will be releasing Synergy and future updates through Steam! Valve Software has allowed us to do so by giving us access to the Steamworks SDK.

We are honored to be one of the four first selected mods to be given this opportunity. We will certainly put this to good use!

For you players, this means that you will see Achievements and Stats coming to Synergy in later updates. (Not to mention the automatic updates, provided by Steam.)

This really is great news for Steam users. While initially we are only getting 4 of the numerous mod’s out there, there are a number of benefits to this system. There is now much more incentive for modders, since they will be able to distribute their mods far more quickly, easily and to a greater number of people. On top of this, it means that us players will get more mods and that means more gameplay time, for free!

Just to add a little dampener, this doesn’t necessarily mean that these mods will be appearning in the Steam store, however I think it isn’t an unreasonable jump. Still, automatic updates of mods, achievements and stats from these differing types of game is a definite bonus! I for one look forward to seeing many more mods coming to light over the next few months! :)

Valve “happy” to talk aquisition with EA!?

Published
by
Andy
on August 9th, 2008
in Editorials and News
. 3 Comments

“What!?” I hear you say, “our favorite independent developer could be selling out”!?

But do not fret, all that happened is that Doug Lombardi has only said that “anything is possible”. He said that he would be happy to talk about acquisition - he’s not saying that it will happen.

And while your initial reaction may be a bad one, just think of the possibilities that could come out of Valve if there was even more money behind them. If they did get bought out, you would have to believe that anybody who bought them would be crazy to go and change things since Valve have such a successful formula already.

Not only this, but they’d also have to stupid to get rid of Steam, a system that works, and works well. We all know that EA have had their fair share of problems when it comes to digital distribution, so getting their games released over Steam would benefit everyone.

Who knows how this will pan out, but I for one am not worried at the moment.

Bioshock Is $15 Right Now (USA Only)

Published
by
John
on July 26th, 2008
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. 3 Comments

Go buy it right now if you missed one of the best games of last year.

This offer only seems to be valid in the US. Anyone else had any luck?

Valve E3 Update

Published
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Andy
on July 23rd, 2008
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Last week we posted some news regarding Valve’s ’showing’ at E3, and since then some more information has been released regarding both of the games mentioned, and who would we be if we didn’t update you!?

Left 4 Dead’s disturbing boxart has been released (left) which I think makes clear that the game will feature plenty of gore (if any of us were in any doubt!), and zombies.

In addition, if you were still unsure if you were going to buy the game, Kotaku have an interview with Doug Lombardi (Valve’s Director of Marketing), where he gets 15 seconds to sell Left 4 Dead to you… whether it will work for you, who knows, but it’s worth a watch as Doug is always interesting.

Moving on to Portal, it has been revealed that the newly announced Portal: Still Alive release for Xbox Live Arcade will in fact be a combination of Portal and Portal The Flash Version Mappack. The excellent (see our review) map pack is an interesting addition to the game and it is great that Valve are clearly still helping out independent developers by buying into their work. I’m sure that Valve will add their own seal of quality to the pack, and perhaps remove story elements so that it doesn’t clash with the original story arc, but until the actual release, who knows… Either way, if you have the PC version of Portal, there really isn’t a great deal of incentive to buy this, since you can already get the additional content… for free, but it’s good that Valve are spreading the Portal love :)

Ubisoft sail the high seas… become pirates

Published
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Andy
on July 20th, 2008
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So, after slagging of Ubisoft before, and then partially retracting it, Ubisoft have provided me with some more ammunition to slag them off further.It seems that Ubisoft have been found to have pirated a patch created by RELOADED in order to fix a problem with one of their own games. Oh the irony. It seems that after an recent update for Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, and disc check was implemented, but unfortunately they forgot to think about those who got hold of the game via digital download (no, not via Steam, it was through Direct2Drive - this sort of thing would never be allowed to happen via steam…). So, after a number of people complained, Ubisoft released a patch on their official forums, which turned out to be the said crack created by RELOADED.

This would all be very funny, but it just brings to light a few issues - firstly, Ubisoft should be using Steam. If they had, these issues would have been noticed before release and they wouldn’t have been made to look like idiots.

Secondly, it shows just how good these scene groups are, and how widespread their work has effect. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is down to your own point of view, but it certainly cannot be ignored.

Finally, it re-awakens my (and many others) feelings towards Ubisoft. I like a lot of the products they push out, however I can’t get them through Steam because I don’t live in the right place. It’s ridiculous, and this kind of mistake just goes to show how many problems they must have internally that they need to start sorting out.

Anyway, something tells me that Ubisoft (and any other game publishers that may be reading) won’t be making this kind of mistake again, but in this industry… who knows! Watch this space :)