Midweek News – 0 x 10^c, SimCity, Halo Stats and some Demon Hunting

If you noticed Tim’s post yesterday you’ll know that we’ve been making a few plans to change the way we do things here. Most of it comes down to we will be posting less often but will try and make each post count more. As part of this I won’t be posting News every day now, instead I will be combining all the cool news stories of each week into two separate posts. One on Wednesdays and one on Sundays. The Midweek and the Endweek News posts. This is the first post of that layout, so let’s hope it goes well! As always make sure to comment here or via Twitter or Facebook to let us know of your opinions on the change!

So, what’s been in the news since Sunday? Well we’ve got a whole lot of interesting stuff that you can check out after the jump! We’ve got some stats from Bungie about Halo now that they are no longer making the games, gameplay footage of Diablo 3 featuring the Demon Hunter, some game announcements and some trailers. There’s even some stuff about GAME as well!

Teeth of Naros – Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning DLC

After the release of the Legend of Dead Kel on the 20th of March Big Huge Games and 38 Studios aren’t slowing down and have a second batch of DLC headed our way before the end of April. This batch of DLC, called “The Teeth of Naros” will see you exploring a land known as the Teeth of Naros (what a coincidence) where you will “encounter” a group of devout giants called the Kollossae and you will be looking into the mysteries of their faith and beliefs (whether encounter means “meet” or “they meet your sword” I’m not quite sure yet).

The DLC will feature a magical, floating city called Dalara- I mean Idylla, 20 new side quests, new dungeons new enemies and new loot and armour sets (of course, can’t have an RPG expansion that DOESN’T have new loot or quests). The DLC will be coming to Steam, Origin, XBL and PSN on the 17th of April for the equivalent of $10 on each.

 

Notch/Mojang New Game – 0x10^c

You might recall that last week Notch was tweeting and being mysterious about a game he wants to make? Well now he has finally announced the actual plans that he and Mojang have for the new game called 0x10c (and the mathematician inside me insists on calling it 0x10^c just to be pedantic). Over at the game’s new website he has announced his plans for the game.

It’s supposedly going to be big and ambitious and will work in a similar way to Minecraft. By that I mean, they will release a very unfinished and incomplete version of the game and slowly build it up to the final product via a series of updates, getting feedback from the community as they go.

The backstory for the game is actually fairly depressing and not the sort of future that I hope will come to pass. The idea is that the game is set in a parallel universe (the one where we don’t get lightsabers in the future) where the Space Race never finished and that then around 1988 someone invented a “deep sleep cell” (can you say “cryogenics”?) which for some reason a lot of people wanted to try out.

However due to a complex bug in the mathematics behind the deep sleep cell people were put to sleep for far longer than was intended with them waking up billions of years after they were meant to. Well it’s not the year 281, 474, 976, 712, 644 AD and most life in the galaxy is extinct. Stars have long since ceased to form, distant galaxies are lost to Red Shift and the galaxy is dominated by massive black holes (so we don’t have a whole Universe to explore?).

And NOW people are just starting to wake up…

I assume the way it will work is you will wake up on your own ship in the middle of space (and from what I can tell, it will be a first person environment inside). Each ship will run on a “fixed-wattage CPU” which means that any action which requires electricity will take up some of the ship’s energy. For example running a computer might take up some of the wattage while a cloaking device might take up all of it meaning you have to switch off everything even the lights in order to run it.

As well as this, the computer in the game will be a “fully functioning emulated 16 bit CPU” which is used to control the entire ship. So I assume you use it to direct power to the engines, lights, cloaking device and you can even use it to play games while you are in the middle of a long mining operation (Minecraft within another Mojang game you say?).

Other features listed on the site include:

• Hard science fiction (meaning that Notch will try to make a lot of the game’s science and gameplay fit in with real world science laws. You can see what he has to say about it here).
• Lots of engineering.
• Fully working computer system.
• Space battles against the AI or other players.
• Abandoned ships full of loot.
• Duct tape!
• Seamlessly landing on planets.
• Advanced economy system.
• Random encounters.
• Mining, trading, and looting.
• Single and multi player connected via the multiverse.

I think I’m mostly excited by the duct tape…

The only thing that does concern me is that he says that online play will probably have some sort of monthly subscription fee as the game will continue to run and play even when you are offline… Damn. Singleplayer won’t have any recurring costs though! Huzzah!

Subscription fees aside, this is actually sounding REALLY cool already. I am genuinely excited about the whole thing, I mean who else here has always wanted a spaceship? Like an actual spaceship that you can do whatever you want with? I thought so…

 

GAME Saved – Official

I won’t bore you with the details. The essence of it is, the remaining 333 open GAME and Gamestation stores in the UK will remain open after the retailing agent was bought out by Baker Acquisitions Limited, “an entity advised by private investment company OpCapita”. That means that 3200 jobs will be kept and GAME will once again continue to trade as normal.

Okay, serious stuff done! More games!

Batman: Arkham City – Harley Quinn DLC

While there hasn’t been any announcements or official news or anything of the sort the PS3 trophies for a set of new Arkham City DLC have been leaked onto the interwebs. What they suggest is that the DLC will heavily feature Harley Quinn and Robin as a playable character.

This will be the fourth major batch of DLC for Arkham City following the day-one Catwoman stuff and the Nightwing and Robin downloads (both of which just gave you a new character for the challenge maps, something we were very disappointed about).

I think I speak for the majority of the gaming world when I say: “FINALLY! Story orientated DLC!! No more challenge maps!” I’m looking forward to it already. The full list of achievements from which people have made these deductions can be viewed here or at PS3Trophies (down the bottom).

• Lost Property [Bronze] – No crimefighter should be without this
• Breaking and Entering [Bronze] – Find a way into the secret base
• How’s It Hanging? [Silver] – Clean up the Dry Docks
• The Last Laugh [Silver] – The joke’s on who?
• Frequent Flyer [Bronze] – Zip Kick 3 different thugs
• Battering Ram [Bronze] – Shield Bash 5 different thugs
• Snap To It [Bronze] – Snap Flash an unarmed thug, an armed thug, an environmental object and a Titan
• Bomb Squad [Bronze] – Defuse all bombs in 3 minutes or less
• A Few New Tricks [Bronze] – Use 5 different Quickfire gadgets in one fight as Robin in Harley Quinn’s Revenge
• Party’s Over [Silver] – Destroy all Harley Balloons

 

Orcs Must Die 2 – Announced

Robot Entertainment have announced that their fortress-defence strategy game will be receiving a sequel some time in the Summer. So far only a PC version has been mentioned but as the previous game had an XBLA version as well I think we can speculate that it will be the same again here.

The game will continue on from where the previous one left off and will feature new singleplayer and co-op campaigns, more defence options and a new upgrade system. You will play as either the War Mage or a new companion of his the Sorceress in fighting off the hordes of orcs.

Skip down to the bottom to see the announcement trailer.

Assassin’s Creed 3 will feature much more Desmond

Lead writer at Ubisoft, Matt Turner, says that not only will Connor Kenway have a major role in the upcoming Assassin’s Creed 3 but our futuristic, whiny protagonist Desmond Miles will also be heavily featured in the game.

Now there ain’t nothing in the ‘Verse could stop me from wanting Assassin’s Creed 3, and this is no exception. But my relationship with Desmond until now has been strained at best. I’ve never really bought into the whole “Those Who Came Before” story arc and I haven’t actually really bonded with the character. But in this final instalment in the series we will apparently be spending a lot more time in the present than we have previously. I think this might be the most ambitious goal for Ubisoft yet… Forge Desmond into something as cool and memorable as Ezio Auditore and Altair.

I, for one, hope they pull it off.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier has release dates now

Ubisoft have finally got round to announcing the PC release date for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, so with that in mind I will announce all of them here and now! The console versions will be coming out on the 22nd of May followed by the PC version on the 12th of June online and in stores.

As the PC version will be coming out on the 15th here in the UK I think we can also assume there will be a few days delay before the console version is released here as well (I’m thinking the 25th).

The Secret World pre-order gives you lots of bonuses

If you are one of those people interested in Funcom’s upcoming MMO The Secret World then I think that pre-ordering the game might well be of some benefit to you. Not just because you get the game on it’s release but because you get access to a rather large pile of nice bonuses.

To start you off if you pre-order you will get access to all the weekend Betas that will be running from the 11th of May and will, according to the developers, be running fairly consistently every weekend. You will also get a four days head start on other players, an in-game item which will boost your EXP gain, an exclusive in-game t-shirt and combat pet and you will get the option to reserve character names.

As well as this when you go to pre-order you will get the option to have an increased number of character slots, more than one name reservation and even a lifetime subscription to the game.

Essentially if you want the game then this might definitely be worth a look in.

Bungie Halo stats

Having moved on from the Halo franchise to who-knows-what, Bungie have released in a massive infographic (of which the image above is only a part of) which contains all the stats and information they could gather about the gameplay of the past eight years of Halo (it goes all the way back to Halo 2!).

It’s a truly awe-inspiring set of data with a signing off line of “in the collective time you have spent playing Halo you could have travelled across the expanse of the Milky Way at the speed of light… And back.”

Even if you aren’t into games that’s a rather eye-watering statistic… Does anyone else feel the sudden urge to go outside?

SimCity Glassbox Engine

If you weren’t aware of this then I shall inform you now. Maxis, a subsidiary of EA is currently developing a new SimCity with a proposed release date of next year (2013) and it is looking pretty damn good (this coming from someone who hasn’t played a SimCity game since SimCity 2000).

Well Maxis have recently released a couple of videos which display the inner-workings of the new SimCity. They don’t show off the final graphics or gameplay but they do show how Maxis wants the game to function and how they want the various parts of the game to connect, and I have to say it’s rather cool and intelligent stuff.

Definitely worth a look!

Tell you what, I’ll post the official cinematic trailer as well!

Trailers

As well as all this news there has been a few trailers out recently! A trailer for the Demon Hunter from Diablo 3, the announcement trailer for Orcs Must Die 2 and a rather awesome looking trailer from the upcoming expansion for the space-strategy game Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion (something that after looking a bit more into I have decided looks like a really AWESOME game!). Check them out!

Awesome

Yeah, I know condensing all the news into one news post makes it take quite a long time to get to the bottom!

As a thank you, here is your weekly dose of epic coming from GroBroPros. Enjoy!