Endweek News (unfortunately late) – Much releases and trailers, some early 0x10c screenshots, a new Borderlands character and some Bullshit Excuses

A number of you might have noticed the conspicuous absence of any Midweek News this past week. Well I fear those sharp-eyed amongst you to have spotted that will probably spot similar things again over the coming weeks due to a number of excuses that we at MMGaming have. Very good excuses actually, I’ll have you know! We can’t spend all our time playing games and talking about them…

Ye gods! What the hell am I saying?!?

Levity aside, it’s actually true. Nick and Josh both have commitments outside of the world of gaming which make the time they can spend on MMGaming fairly limited and me and Tim have now, once again, entered that foul time period known to all in University… Yes my friends we are once again preparing for exams and Tim at least won’t be posting AT ALL while doing so. Coincidentally we both finish on the 14th of May so you should see a return to normal around then.

However! Now that we have the excuses aside we can get on with The News!

 

Tribes: Ascend released

The shooter that both me and Tim have been rather looking forward to has finally been released after several months of beta-testing and cool screenshots and videos. Tribes: Ascend by Hi-Rez Studios is completely free to play and actually looks completely awesome so I wouldn’t be surprised if you guys get a review out of us on this sometime soon!

I say “soon” in the same way that I mean we will finish our exams “soon”… Just keep an eye out!

In the meantime, I would say that I have heard good things and that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a pretty damned good game, especially as it’s F2P and even more so because it’s not set in World War 2. Probably worth checking out folks.

 

0x10c – Notch produces some early screenshots

 Notch has been a busy chap and has already unveiled seven preliminary screenshots from 0x10c. The image above is one such example and shows what appears to be two armoured polygon-men walking around in a dark and slightly creepy room. The blue in the background is, I believe, the computer used to control the space-ships which is also fairly worrying as it looks like it’s gone all blue-screen-of-death on the owner of this particular ship.

All the images are look pretty unfinished and raw to my eyes. But as this is an indie project perhaps this is what the finished product is going to look like, I don’t know. I’m not sure how I feel about the images actually, some of the environments definitely look like they could use some more work and I hope both they and the character models get it. You can check the rest under this batch of text or you can go to Joystiq OR you should click on this link and change the 001 to 002 or whatever (up to 007)

 

Borderlands 2 Mechromancer 

 It would appear that there won’t just be four playable and loveable characters in upcoming Borderlands 2. No indeed, after it’s release on September the 18th you will be able to download a piece of DLC which gives you access to the Mechromancer class (concept art above) a fifth gun-toting vault hunter who also happens to be a cyborg and has a Claptrap friend called D374-TP (Deathtrap).

Moreover, if you pre-order the game you also get this particular batch of DLC for free, so it’s a definite bonus there for anyone who is already set on buying the game and lets face it, after the trailer how could we NOT be set on it?

 

Kinect Star Wars actually sells

 My expectations for Star Wars: Kinect went something along the lines of this: “Oooo! A Kinect Star Wars game! You FINALLY get to pretend you are using a lightsaber! GOD… I LOVE Star Wars! I bet it will be absolutely rubbish… NOT interested”. And I was proved pretty much right. From what I can make out, it IS rubbish. Plus, we have all seen the Just Dance spin off in the game which puts me off this thing even more. I can understand the reasons behind making Star Wars accessible to more/younger audiences but I just wish that they wouldn’t… I want it to remain as awesome as I know the original trilogy is, but these days it’s sort of becoming hit-and-miss with the brand (thank god for SWTOR).

With this in mind I think I should also mention the Kinect itself. I think it’s something we can all agree on that the Kinect just isn’t that great and games designed especially for it particularly amazing either. While I approve of the technology and the step towards virtual reality (I swear to god ONE DAY I’ll get my own lightsaber wielding game) I do think that in it’s current form it just isn’t very good.

And with all that in mind (poor tech and poor game) I think I won’t be alone in being amazed that Star Wars: Kinect actually was top of the UK charts in the last weeks after it’s début. Finally taking Mass Effect 3 down. I’m not sure what shocks me more, that the game actually seems to have done pretty well or that it did pretty damn well where I live… My own damned country!

I think this proves once and for all that one should never underestimate the power of the Star Wars brand. If Star Wars can sell that piece of rubbish it could sell ANYTHING. Truly a case of “I feel as though millions of voices cried out in terror and then were suddenly silenced as George Lucas gives them some more rubbish to look forward to”.

 

God of War 4 teased by Sony?

 Sony have gone all mysterious on us with the release of the above teaser image which displays the date of next Thursday. Naturally rumours are, as usual, running wild amongst gamers and game-reviewers alike. The most likely explanation (and one hoped for by a great many) is that this will be the date when Sony announces God of War 4 the sequel to the extremely successful hack-and-slasher released back in 2010.

This is supported by the fact that the official image contains the text “gow_fb” in it’s file name (God of War – Facebook being the generally accepted translation) and the fact that way back when God of War 3 was released the studio boss of Sony said that it “was not the end” for the series and that they would be back, albeit not in the same trilogy. Of course they would say that, it was successful! Nobody simply STOPS making games that sell well.

Even more interestingly the game, with a supposed release date of September might be the first God of War game to have multiplayer.

Having never played a God of War game (and I am always irritated that it’s initials are the same as Gears of War) I am still fairly interested in this as I was awfully tempted by God of War 3 on it’s release. Not enough to buy it though, just saying…

 

Level 50’s get 30 days of free SWTOR

Bioware and EA are rewarding players who have stuck with them for a while. If by 5pm last Friday (the 13th of April) one of your characters was level 50 in SWTOR then the developers will be kind enough to give you a whole free month of play in the game as a way to reward you for sticking with them so far.

Some small print does apply, but I think most with a level 50 are eligible for this!

Also if you are a former player of SWTOR then if you log into your account in between last Friday and this coming Friday (the 20th) you will be able to play for free as Bioware and EA attempt to entice you back, you won’t need to resubscribe for this either (although once again there is some small print in the above link to check out).

Mass Effect 3 extended edition – It’s SO you!

 Developers of Mass Effect 3, Bioware, are saying that the new extended edition of Mass Effect 3 won’t JUST be some new cut-scenes for you to enjoy but will actually, hopefully, feel more “personalised” to you. The biggest issue that fans had is that the game didn’t present a wide enough variety of endings based on the number of choices you could make. Now though, the plan is that more of the choices you make will affect the end of the game and the overall finish will reflect those choices that were perhaps neglected in the original end.

It’s interesting to note that the developer do stand by their original endings to the game but the overwhelming disappointment from the fans is what drove them to create this extended edition. It was never anybodies intention to change the ending of the game or include the extended edition but it seems the voices of the players made themselves heard.

 

Bioware on Dragon Age 3

Bioware it appears have been busy, busy, busy lately because as well as all the stuff with Mass Effect 3 and SWTOR they have revealed a few of the concepts and features that they want to include in Dragon Age 3, the third in the series of fantasy-RPG epics. Well, actually they say it’s for a completely hypothetical project as Dragon Age 3 hasn’t been announced yet, but it was pretty thinly veiled stuff.

The Bioware board at PAX East gave some fairly heavy hints that they wanted to set the third Dragon Age in France inspired Orlais which, if memory serves, is south of Ferelden (the “country” you explore in Origins). They want it to be bigger and more varied as well, so people won’t be getting a one-city environment which people complained about from Dragon Age 2 (at least I understand that was a common complaint).

Bioware also announced that they want their “hypothetical project” to have decisions which matter. They want decisions that your character makes to change the world around you and change the way NPCs act to you. They also said that they would want these decisions to carry over via save file imports (at least that’s what I took away from it).

Finally they announced that they would be, returning to the concept of allowing you to customise your followers/squad-mates armour and weapons. I know that in Origins you could change anything you wanted about your followers equipment and I understand that in Dragon Age 2, you couldn’t as each follower had their own distinct look and style. The plan now is to allow for a mix of both. You can change your follower’s equipment but they will still always have a distinct style which will be noticeable even in the battlefield.

It’s not really much to be going on at the minute, and who knows how far along development of the game is, but it’s some new information and so it pretty much should be of interest to anyone who is a fan of the series.

 

Halo 4 multiplayer details

“Spartan’s… WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION?!?”

“T-BAG! T-BAG! T-BAG!”

Anyway… 343 Industries have revealed quite a few details about the multiplayer for upcoming Halo 4 and their plans for how it’s going to be different from previous instalments of the series.

First up comes the changes to the Firefight mechanic introduced in Halo: ODST and continued in Reach. Instead of the whole “waves of enemies” thing there is now something called Spartan Ops which will, apparently, function in a similar fashion to Call of Duty’s Spec Ops game mode. I believe that means that there will be series of missions with smaller objectives which you will be able to do with up to 4 play co-op. The Spartan Ops will be played out over several months with several instalments of DLC coming in an episodic fashion. Spartans Ops will compare in size and scope to the actual campaign, so you won’t be running out of Covenant to kill any time soon.

You will also gain access to Spartan Points (which I assume you will earn from all areas of Halo 4 gameplay) which can be used to buy new armour, armour powers and  new Spartan Ops missions. There are returning powers from reach, such as sprint (being the standard fro all players), jetpack and hologram. But now there will be new ones as well, including one called “Forerunner Vision” which allows you to see through walls.

Some big details have been revealed about the PvP multiplayer as well. A big change seems to be that there will be no designated weapon spawn points, instead weapons will come from the sky in drop-pods. This will discourage weapon spawn camping that became such an integral part of previous Halo games. They have also replaced the respawn timer with a button which will allow you to drop straight back into the fight.

Finally there has actually been some information released about the story as well! It would appear that as well as having to fight the Forerunners, Master Chief will have to deal with the fact that Cortana is coming to an end of her life cycle and she is dying. How that makes sense in terms of software/hardware I can’t possibly imagine, but hopefully they will have a legit reason…

I’m not going to lie I am actually feeling both excited and optimistic about Halo 4. 343 are making big changes and have big plans for the game but they also want to keep that inherent Halo “feel”. I hope they pull it off.

 

Quake 4 re-release

You might well be wondering why I included the Quake 4 logo at the top of this whole post and the reason is simple. Bethesda have recently announced that they are re-releasing the widely popular FPS Quake 4.

The game will be released in the US on the 19th of June this year (with a release probably following shortly afterwards in Europe) and will be available on both PC and Xbox 360. It will cost $19.99 or whatever equivalent in your currency and will be available through Steam.

Quake 4 was developed and released by Raven Software in 2005 and now after 7 years is making a return. I wonder if Bethesda plan to use it to duel with Notch…

Sleeping Dogs release date

 Square Enix’s Hong Kong, police, shooting game, Sleeping Dogs has been given a release date of late this Summer, the 17th of August to be precise.

So, you come to me on this, the day of my daughter’s wedding, and ask me to play Hong Kong detective shooters with you while absolutely ruining a Godfather quote? We have a name for scum like you… “Pre-orderer”.

Well, actually, seeing as there is (as there always is) a number of bonuses to pre-ordering Sleeping Dogs then if you ARE interested in this game then you might want to look into it.

 

Dark Souls release date

 Namco have announced that Dark Souls will be released on PC on the 24th of August and followed that announcement with the fact that it will support Games for Windows Live.

That’s about all there is to this news post…

 

Resident Evil 6 release date

Despite having originally aimed for a late November release date, Capcom have announced that the official release date for their latest zombie-shooter-horror game will actually be early October. October 2nd to be precise. This announcement was accompanied by a trailer that had leaked onto the internet a few hours before the announcement (official trailer posted below).

There will also be a demo of the game released some time in early Summer, available for download on Xbox 360 on July the 3rd and on September 4th on PS3.

Once again, that’s really all there is to this news post, except to say that it does seem like Capcom might well be rushing the development of the game a little to try and get it out as early as possible. Whether this will mean any compromise in quality is hard to say, as it is only one less month of development time, but it has happened before that rushed games result in poorer displays.

I wonder what could possibly have made them try to push the release date forward so much. Perhaps they want to get their game out before another game… Something big… Something that could possibly steal sales from them… Oooh I know!

Lost Planet 3 confirmed

After another leaked trailer from a different company Sony and Capcom have now officially revealed the trailer and announcement that they are in the process of  developing. I’ve posted the trailer down below in the trailer section and I will say, it’s pretty bloody awesome.

While the trailer is fucking cool, I’m not sure how I feel about this game. I did play the first one and was completely underwhelmed although I have heard good things about the second. Who knows, might be worth keeping an eye on (I always say that though!).

 

Crysis 3 confirmed

 This, on the other hand, I definitely know how I feel about. Having briefly played Crysis 2 I was extremely impressed and EA have now announced that they are working on a successor.

The sandbox FPS will be built using the latest CryEngine tech and from the few screens available at Eurogamer it does look absolutely bloody amazing.

With a release date set for sometime early Spring 2013 it features the return of Prophet (seen above) wearing an enhanced Nanosuit, wielding a composite bow and using alien tech.

He also appears to be on a “quest for retribution”. Because no video game character has ever been inspired by anything other than revenge. Seriously. Ever.

For more details on the multiplayer packs, pre-order bonus and a little about the story I would suggest you click on the Eurogamer link I posted just above there!

 

Trailers

There have been a goodly number of awesome trailers with which to entertain ourselves with this week. Awesome is flying from the Prototype 2 live-action trailer, swiftly followed by the Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition launch trailer which is by no means shabby. After this we have some trailers for Resident Evil 6 and Lost Planet 3 the former of which contains a tense and pounding atmosphere and some boobs and the latter of which is just plain awesome.

Finally I’ve posted the latest trailer for Sniper Elite V2 which actually, just from the trailer, looks pretty cool as well and has a supposed release date of sometime this May.

Enjoy the awesome folks!

 

Song of the Week

In honour of the announcement of Crysis 3 let’s all get down to floor with an awesome remix of a bit of the soundtrack from Crysis 2. While not actually wubwub, it’s still worthy of a bit of dance-floor shenanigans!