Forza Horizon 2 was all about beauty, its rendition of Italy and France a thrilling and glorious display of rolling hills blanketed by vineyards, stucco buildings and poppy fields. Isola Della Tempesta is a little more dramatic and brooding. Sure, there are rolling hills, but there’s a lot more dirt and gravel with the odd stretch of tarmac, and it’s usually very, very wet as you barrel across – well, through – the countryside in rally-themed events. Continue reading
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Jeez, it only took decades, but two of the finest space combat games – not to mention best Star Wars games – of all time are about to get a re-release.
Special downloadable versions of both X-Wing and Tie Fighter will soon be released on Good Old Games. They’ll be $10 each.
For that price you’re getting not just the special editions of the games (which had slightly higher resolutions and improved sound, as well all of both games’ expansions), but more importantly they’ll be editions of the games that will run on a modern PC without the need to tinker.
The Special Edition offered here, includes Star Wars™: TIE Fighter and Star Wars™: TIE Fighter – Defender of the Empire, both in the 1994 and 1998 versions!
The Special Edition offered here, includes Star Wars: X-Wing Collector’s CD-ROM and both Tour of Duty expansions: Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing.
It’s crazy that it’s taken this long. These games were two of the giants of PC gaming in the 1990s, and from the mission design to the combat still hold up very well today. If you’ve never played either of them, but keep hearing people like me blabbing on about how fucking fantastic they were/are, this is going to be $10 well spent.
Note that the announcement of both games comes via a GoG forum notice, which spilled the beans a little early. Similar postings reveal other classic Lucasarts games will also be coming to GoG, such as Fate of Atlantis, KOTOR and Sam & Max (though of course they’re exciting, since they’ve long been available on services like Steam).
Given the timing of the posting, it looks like both X-Wing and Tie Fighter will be available as early as tomorrow.
Both games are now out. You can get X-Wing here, and Tie Fighter here.
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If you’re not familiar with Myst, you might be wondering why such a big hit hasn’t been optioned for a movie or TV project before now. If you are familiar with Myst, you might be wondering how the hell Legendary will make a TV show out of it. Because the thing about Myst is there aren’t any people around. You do catch glimpses of other characters, mostly through flickering videobook portals to strange realms, but you spend most of your time silently exploring beautiful, abandoned islands and solving the puzzles therein. So unless we’re going to watch a mute hero fiddle with the controls on a rocket ship’s pipe organ for an hour, the creators of this show will have to take a few liberties with the source material. The nature of those liberties remains to be determined, but Variety says that Myst creators Rand and Robyn Miller will be “creatively involved” in the show, potentially with a video game tie-in.
Everything changed with the arrival of the Traveler. It sparked a Golden Age when our civilization spanned our solar system, but it didn’t last. Something hit us, knocked us down. The survivors built a city beneath the Traveler, and have begun to explore our old worlds, only to find them filled with deadly foes. You are a Guardian of the last safe city on Earth, able to wield incredible power. Defend the City. Defeat our enemies. Reclaim all that we have lost. Be brave. Watch the video trailer and prepare.
The game is being built on Unreal Engine 4 and though platforms haven’t been mentioned yet, it’s expected that the game will release on both Xbox One and Xbox 360.
“With Unreal Engine 4, we could rapidly achieve visual quality expected on next-gen platform and go beyond it,” Harada has said. “Not only is Unreal Engine 4 powerful and easy to use, but it allows us to immediately bring Tekken 7 to any platform we desire.”
The trailer focuses exclusively on the Mishima clan, whose family history is more convoluted than an episode of Corrie. Basically, they’re all horrible people prone to throwing each other into volcanoes. Stay tuned for more info on Tekken 7 coming out of a Comic-Con panel on 25th July.
Gross or great: you decide. The cast of 1979?s Alien will be appearing in pre-order DLC for Alien: Isolation.
“Great” because Alien is one of the greatest science fiction films and thrillers of all time and much of that comes down to the easy chemistry of the cast who are supplying their likenesses and voices to the “Crew Expendable” DLC. Well, mostly everyone: Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), Tom Skerritt (Dallas), Harry Dean Stanton (Brett), and Yaphet Kotto (Parker) are all supplying their faces and voices as playable characters while Ian Holm’s face will be returning as Ash with a sound-a-like handling the vocal duties.
SEGA and developer Creative Assembly have two DLC offers planned, one for pre-orders, offering you the chance to play as any member of the crew after the death of John Hurt’s character Brett (hence his exclusion from the cast list), while Gamestop is getting in on things by letting you play as Ripley as she attempts to escape the ship.
It really only feels gross because (and this is overactive fandom speaking here), Isolation as a product feels like a weird thing, what with it being about Ripley’s daughter, a character who was a bit more important as someone that Weaver’s character had lost. This might be a way to give the first-person survival horror game a little more veracity.
From the press release:
“Anyone who pre-orders the game will get a free upgrade to the Nostromo Edition, which includes the bonus content “Crew Expendable”. Players can choose to play as one of three surviving crewmembers, only moments after Brett’s death at the jaws of the creature. As Ellen Ripley, Dallas or Parker, players can explore the Nostromo from habitation deck down through engineering, coordinating their efforts with Lambert and Ash to lure the Alien into the ship’s airlock.
In addition, consumers who pre-order at GameStop will exclusively also receive “Last Survivor” in which players pick up the story as Ripley tries to escape on the Narcissus. On hearing the screams of Lambert and Parker, players must navigate their way back down through the Nostromo in order to activate the self-destruct sequence, before retracing their steps back to the Narcissus shuttle and their escape.”
Last year, Neil Gaiman announced he was putting out a video game (hooray!). Then, its October release was pushed back (drat!). Now, according to an update on the game’s website, Gaiman’s long-awaited “Wayward Manor” has an official release date, and it’s just over two weeks away!
A project update was posted to the game’s website on Friday, along with the teaser featured above:
It’s been a long journey, from the initial announcement last July to today’s exciting news. After the rarified success of the presale, we’ve been hard at work throughout 2014 to build on the initial scope of the release. The immensely talented developers, The Odd Gentlemen, have spent countless hours crafting each level with care and precision. Although it was a difficult decision to delay the release of the game, we did it with the knowledge that we were creating an even more immersive, enjoyable experience for amazing fans like yourself. Because, hey, you deserve the best, as your enthusiasm for Neil’s first game has only been outdone by your patience. Now, it’s time to reward your forbearance and open the doors for haunting.
Wayward Manor will be released on July 15th. The game will be available on Steam for PC and Mac. If you haven’t yet preordered the title, buy it on The Humble Store, where 10% of the proceeds go to charity.
Here’s the game’s synopsis, via Steam:
Wayward Manor invites you to jump into the afterlife of a disgruntled ghost, trying to reclaim his house from its newfound owners. Set in the 1920s, this puzzle/adventure game transports players to an era of dark screwball comedy where they must unlock the secrets of a twisted mansion. Players will discover the quirks of Wayward Manor’s unwelcome guests and choose how to prey on their darkest fears.
The Budds, a dysfunctional family of misfits and eccentrics, have brought their own abysmal possessions into your humble abode and stifled your power. Each level is a playground for scares where players earn fear to take back control of the room. If you want free reign over your mansion once again, you must drive the Budds mad with fear using only your imagination and their hideous belongings.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo, the videogame industry’s largest convention, could leave Los Angeles. If it does, it would cost the city $40 million a year in revenue.
The Entertainment Software Assn., which owns E3 — this is the event’s 20th anniversary — signed a three-year deal with the Los Angeles Convention Center in 2013, and is now considering requests by other cities to host the show starting in 2016.
The ESA declined to disclose the other cities vying for the show. Atlanta has hosted E3 twice, while a much smaller version took place in Santa Monica in 2007 and 2008.
A reason for E3?s move out of L.A. would be an aging convention center that needs a major update as other cities have spent considerable coin upgrading their own facilities. Los Angeles had hoped the LACC would have been expanded as part of the construction of the Farmers Field football stadium, but no team means city officials are now considering Plan B.
One major issue for ESA and other event organizers is that the LACC splits its main convention halls into two, separated by a hallway and smaller hall. That has made some exhibitors in the South Hall feel left out of the activity taking place in the West Hall (next to Staples Center), for example. Other convention centers typically off one large room for exhibitors and attendees.
E3 had around 230 exhibitors last year, with some companies bringing hundreds of people to the show from all over the world.
Farmers Field would have been built where West Hall currently stands and add new space to the rest of the LACC.
“That is no longer going to happen,” Mike Gallagher, president and CEO of the ESA, the gaming industry’s main trade organization. “All of the city’s efforts are now focused on Plan B.”
But the Los Angeles City Council and AEG, which operates the LACC’s 720,000 square feet of exhibition space, and L.A. Live complex will have to move quickly.
Plans for future E3 shows need to be in place within the next 90 to 120 days, Gallagher said, because the show typically takes a year to plan — especially for gaming giants like Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo that build massive booths on the show floor.
“We (still) have time,” Gallagher said. “We’re going to work through this issue and have a lot of discussions with the city and the partners in the city that are critical to making E3 a success. But the time is relatively short.”
If E3 leaves, the move would cost the city of Los Angeles around $40 million in revenue each year, which is spent on hotel rooms and restaurants by the 50,000 that attend the show each year. San Diego also has had to deal with a convention center that needs a significant upgrade — now approved — or risk losing major moneymakers like Comic-Con, which attracts 130,000 attendees.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom are visiting E3 this week to try to keep the show in the city.
Gallagher stressed that the ESA is keeping its options open. “We have to make sure we’re looking at all the options and we are and there are several. E3 is a world class show that deserves a world class venue. Other venues are ready to go right now.”
It won’t be easy for E3 to move since Los Angeles is a major media market and has an airport that makes travel for the show’s 50,000 attendees from around the world fairly easy.
Yet, the number of hotels and available hotel rooms around the convention center have been cited as an issue for attendees, as has parking and restaurants.
One thing that won’t change is the time on the calendar when E3 takes place.
“We wouldn’t move the date of the show because there’s a rhythm in how things are developed in a large segment of the industry,” Gallagher said.
While the show once took place during the Consumer Electronics Show in January, “the industry has found a sweet spot where the content is best able to be shown to the world in a quality way that fits the development schedule.”
E3 also won’t start selling tickets to consumers anytime soon.
“In this venue, the sweet spot for attendees hovers around 45,000 to 50,000 attendees, Gallagher said. “We’re already at that number. Adding consumers would be too much. If E3 was to evolve and go to another venue, those questions would be revisited anew, but we will not jeopardize the production value … the quality of the experience and the value of E3 in that process.”
Gallagher added that E3 is more accessible to consumers than ever, because of digital technologies. “It’s available on every platform, Twitch is our streaming partner … you have 50 billion media impressions off the show. It’s hard to say the consumer isn’t present at E3.”
Officially announced at last year’s E3, EA has debuted a new trailer for the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront showing players the lengths that the developers at DICE have gone to to create an immersive “Star Wars” experience. Check it out in the player below!
In the upcoming game, you’ll be able to fight in epic Star Wars battles on iconic planets and rise through the ranks playing as the heroic Rebellion or the evil galactic Empire.
Looks very exciting i just hope it looks as good as it sounds! I hope it keeps getting better are you a fan of star wars games? what was your favorite?
Producer Ridley Scott is currently in the process of producing a Halo web-series for Bungie, and at E3 we learned that the title of the show will be Halo: Nightfall.
The project is part of Microsoft’s Master Chief Collection, which is an anniversary edition of previous Halo games. The collection and web-series are set to be released for Xbox One in November of this year.
The series is being directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan (Heroes, Under the Dome), and the live-action weekly series will center on the life of Master Chief. According to reports it will tie together the first four Halo games and also lay the narrative groundwork for Halo 5.
Steven Spielberg is also producing a separate Halo series that looks like it will end up on Showtime. I’m excited for both of these projects, and I’m confident that both of them will turn out awesome and be something that fans of the franchise will enjoy.
Hopefully we’ll get more information on what these series will be about soon!
I am excited about this so far what are your thoughts?
