Typically we don’t cover console games, but the Halo franchise is an exception. Most of us have played — and still own — at least one of the seven titles released over the course of eleven years, maybe even the original Halo on PC (just admit to having an Xbox, it’s ok, we understand). That said, many readers may be waiting anxiously for Halo 4, Microsoft’s first full-fledged venture into the Halo universe without holding Bungie’s hand.
The new installment will be the first chapter in the new “Reclaimer” trilogy, developed by 343 Industries, a studio created by Microsoft to handle the Halo IP once Bungie signed off. Previously 343 Industries gave the original Halo an HD spit-shine and re-released it as Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary in November 2011. Now its first full-blown Halo game is slated for a Holiday 2012 release.
NeoGAF is now reporting that an article in Finnish magazine Pelaaja claims that Halo 4 will be revealed at Microsoft’s Xbox Spring Showcase on February 29 (aka Leap Day) in San Francisco. If true, this will be the first time we’ve seen Halo 4 since Microsoft offered a little taste of concept art last year at E3 2011. Backing up the report, an image has appeared on Twitter that looks to be a scanned event advertisement (pamphlet).
Has Microsoft milked the Halo franchise to the point of exhaustion, or could there never be enough Halo? 343 Industries is hoping to take the franchise “back to what made Halo 3 so amazing,” but we’re wondering if it’s time to retire Master Chief’s helmet. Or at least, bring the franchise back to the PC if Microsoft insists on milking the Halo cow a little longer. Talk about sore nipples, though.
Hear that Microsoft? Bring Halo 4 to Windows PC and make it cross-platform, pitting the console fanboys against the hardware junkies.
If you’ve been enjoying Forza 4 on your Xbox 360 but have been clamoring for some new cars to try out, you’ll want to mark February 7 on your calendar. That’s when Microsoft is releasing the new American Le Mans Series pack, complete with ten new cars in digital, downloadable format.
The February ALMS Pack includes some serious race machinery, including the Audi R18 TDI that reigns as current champion at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Mazda 787B that was the last Japanese car to win the race back in 1991, the new Panoz Abruzzi “Spirit of Le Mans”, and the iconic 1986 Audi Sport Quattro S1. Also included are the Platinum Motorsport Bentley Continental GT, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson’s Dodge Challenger SRT8, the 1992 Alfa Romeo 155 Q4 touring-car-for-the-road, the 1995 Ford Mustang Cobra R, the Holden HSV GTS and, for when a little hatchback is called for, the Volkswagen Polo GTI.
The downloadable content pack is included in the Forza Motorsport 4 Season Pass, or can be bought for 560 MS Points (worth $7). Check out the new additions in the video after the jump and the image gallery above.
A 10am EST on Sunday, MuchDifferent set a new world record for having 999 players battle simultaneously on a single multiplayer map, just one player shy of the company’s 1000 goal. The previous record-holder was Sony’s PlanetSide which saw 399 players participate in a battle within the same zone.
“The world record number has been confirmed by an independent expert who was observing the game as it was taking place,” MuchDifferent announced at the conclusion of the Guinness event. “Confirmation from the Guinness World Records Gamer Edition will take a few more days, but we are supremely confident that our world record will be included in their next edition.”
According to MuchDifferent, more than 1000 players were trying to sign into Man Vs. Machine simultaneously, but only 999 players were able to get in at any one moment. That said, for those who signed up and weren’t able to attend — it’s not your fault the 1000-player goal wasn’t reached.
“At 16.04.29 CET, Man was winning the battle against Machine as 999 people were part of a new world record,” the company said. “About a second later, our server choked on the enormous number of people trying to get in to the game. We were receiving a far higher number of requests than we were expecting.”
“But the server was restarted and during the next hour and a half we were averaging somewhere around 980 players at any given moment,” the company added. “Proving that PikkoServer can take the strain and deliver an entirely new multiplayer experience never seen before.”
This is certainly good news for developers seeking to create a FPS of large-scale multiplayer proportions. PikkoServer, the server and network technology behind Sunday’s Man Vs. Machine demo, will be offered to studios at a later date. MuchDifferent will likely take the data it acquired from the recent FPS-based “test” and make the necessary tweaks to provide a more stable solution… and maybe even achieve the 1000-player goal after all.
After announcing a long list of changes that were made in Diablo 3, Blizzard has announced that a few more additional changes are in order. The team stated on Friday that both the Scroll of Companion and the Scroll of Reforging will be removed because they “weren’t good enough” for the upcoming PC game in its current state.
“The companion pets felt like they were mandatory to maximize play efficiency and some of the pets were too cutesy for the gritty, dark world of Sanctuary,” wrote the community manager. “Neither of those are issues we felt like we could solve without a lot of additional work, and we’re trying to close in on a solid release date for the game, not move further away. When weighing these systems against releasing the game, we decided to cut these scrolls and stay on track for the game’s release.”
Before its death, the Scroll of Companion allowed players to summon a random non-combat pet to pick up gold within a short radius. The list of pets included a bat, a chicken, a pig, a rat, a scorpion and more. As for the Scroll of Reforging, it transmuted all properties of a single magic item into an entirely new set of properties which in turn permanently reduced the maximum durability of the item by 10-percent.
For those currently in the closed beta who were particularly fond of these scrolls, they’re not quite completely dead just yet. “We think we can make companion pets into a much cooler system (both mechanically and visually), and evolve the reforging scrolls into a more meaningful system at some point in the future,” the blog reads. “For the time being, they will not be in the initial release of the game.”
Diablo 3 is currently at v.0.6.0.8296 (patch 10). As previously reported, the team already made changes to the core character attributes: Attack, Defense and Precision have been removed, and Dexterity, Intellect, Strength, and Vitality have been added. Armor has taken the place of Defense, +Physical Resist has replaced the original Armor, and +Chance to Crit has replaced Precision.
To see the full list of changes, check out the Diablo 3 blog here. Nope, it doesn’t look like Diablo 3 will be out anytime soon…
Valve’s popular cloud-based PC gaming platform Steam will now be accessible from your iOS and Android-based mobile phone, according to a press release sent out today by Valve.
The app is currently available, though the service itself is in closed beta. From the press release:
With the Steam app, gamers around the world may chat with Steam friends, browse community groups and user profiles, view screenshots and user-generated content for their favorite games, read the latest gaming news, stay up to date on unbeatable Steam sales, and more.
“The Steam app comes from many direct requests from our customers,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “Seeing which of your friends are online and playing a game, sending quick messages, looking at screenshots for an upcoming game, or catching a sale – these are all features customers have requested. Mobile is changing way people interact, play games and consume media, and the Steam app is part of our commitment to meet customer demands and expand the service functionality of Steam to make it richer and more accessible for everyone.”
To be considered for inclusion in the beta, users should log into their steam account from the app, which is available for free via the Apple App Store and the Android Market. Valve says that more and more users will be signed up for the beta as time passes.
Finally, we can blow tons of cash on Steam sales from the LRT!
Based on the topic header, it sounded as if Blizzard planned to change the system specs for its upcoming action/RPG for the PC, Diablo 3. But (currently) that’s not the case at all, and instead is an announcement that the team is changing some of the core in-game systems based on feedback from the closed beta and from internal testing.
“Our job isn’t just to put out a game, it’s to release the next Diablo game,” the team states in the latest update. “No one will remember if the game is late, only if it’s great. We trust in our ability to put out a great game, but we’re not quite there yet. In addition to finishing and polishing the content of the game we’re continuing to iterate on some of the core game systems.”
For starters, the team has removed the Scroll of Identification. Instead of using this item to identify items, users simply right-click on the object in question and wait for the character to examine it. They’re also moving the fifth quick slot button and turning it into a dedicated potion button. The Mystic artisan is also getting evicted, as the team didn’t feel that she added anything to the customization system.
“[Mystic] enhancement was really just the socket and gem system with a different name, and it would prolong the release of the game even further to go back to the drawing board and differentiate it, so we’ll revisit the Mystic and enhancements at a later time,” Blizzard writes. “Removing her from the game took some time, but it’s nowhere near the efforts that would be required to flesh out a better customization system. We hope she’ll be able to join your caravan in the future, but for now we’re going to focus on the extensive customization options the game already offers.”
For those that aren’t keeping up with the continuous development, none of these changes may even matter in the end. If anything, the update offers a good idea of where the team is at in regards to cranking out a finished product. Still, for those who have followed development since the beginning, this lengthy update includes the removal of the Cauldron of Jordan and Nephalem Cube, changes to the core character attributes, moving character stats into the inventory UI and more.
Swedish tech company PikkoTekk — now called MuchDifferent — sent along a friendly email on Wednesday reminding us about its attempt to land in the Guinness Book of World Records with 1000 simultaneous players participating in an FPS. MuchDifferent asked if we wanted to participate, and naturally we gleefully agreed.
As reported back in March 2011, Man vs. Machine is an FPS based on the Unity engine that can support up to 1000 simultaneous players on a single map. The purpose of this game is to demo the capabilities of the PikkoServer load balancing product. By using the software, game developers can supposedly build any kind of high-player density MMO game that can handle up to 1000 players on one specific map across eight cell servers. It also supports eleven actions per second (10 movements plus 1 fire), a total bandwidth downstream per player of 420 kbit/s and more.
“MuchDifferent has created a dynamic traffic router/load balancer, PikkoServer, that divides the battlefield between the game servers and glues the result together for the clients, multiple times per second,” the company said in a separate press release on Wednesday. “Although Man vs Machine is based on the Unity Engine, any modern game engine could easily be retrofitted with the technology to create something similar in a few months time.”
“When we first announced it as Tanks vs Robots in Spring 2011, several hundreds of thousands took a look at the trailer that showed our pretty crude test game,” CEO Christian Lönnholm said in his blog. “Even though we made a disclaimer where we kind of explained that this was by far not the best looking game and that the networking was the real eye candy, people simply assumed that there was some kind of trade off between graphics and having a massive battle.”
He said that the resulting game which will be used for the Guinness World Records attempt stems from the studio’s research into how the Unity engine can be tweaked for the best performance, graphics, animations and effects while still maintaining an acceptable framerate as 1000 players duke it out on-screen.
“I guess we might have overdone pouring love and time into this onetime event,” he said. “However, it is not often that we network engineers get to stand in the general spotlight. For network nerds such as ourselves, this game shows a new dawn to completely new types of online games where massive amount of players, advanced AI and complex interactions with physics can be achieved with great ease. As a gamer, I just can’t wait to experience the feeling of rushing towards the horde of enemies and anticipating the thrill and insuring chaos of battle.”
For more information about Man vs. Machine, head here. The Guinness World Records event will take place on January 29 @ 16:00 CET. Gamers can actual participate by purchasing a ticket via the Engineers Without Borders – Stockholm organization’s website here. All earnings will go straight to the organization.
According to Electronic Arts, the use of brand names in video games falls under creative freedom. In a document filed with a California court, the company seeks a declaratory statement that the presence of Bell helicopters in Battlefield 3 is a form of artistic expression and therefore protected by the first amendment. Textron previously said that that it is considering legal action over the unlicensed use of its trademarks for the AH-1Z, UH-1Y and V-22 Bell helicopters in the video game.
For EA, the use of the helicopters has nothing to do with trademarks, but simply serves to create a realistic combat scene. Conceivably, some may assume that the use of the helicopters could fall under trademark violations, but Paidcontent.org writes that the courts recently sided with video game makers.
For example, Rockstar was able use a “Pig Pen” club in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas despite claims from Los Angeles strip club “Play Pen” that trademarks were violated. EA also prevailed against a claim that attempted to use the word “Derringer” to describe Tommy Guns in Godfather video games. The current environment appears to favor artistic freedom over trademarks.
Normally the holidays are good to video game sales. This year, though, not so much. According to NPD game sales in December were down 21 percent over the same time last year, to just $3.99 billion. Hardware sales took an even larger nosedive, plummeting 28 percent, and accessories dropped 27 points. For the full year, video game sales were down 8 percent compared with 2010, and even digital sales suffered. Downloadable content, in app purchases, subscriptions and other non-physical media gaming sales totaled between $16.3 and $16.6 billion — down 2 percent from last year. And, in case you’re interested, the best-selling game of the year was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3!
Age of Wushu is an intriguing free to play MMO from China. You play as a martial arts expert, but there aren’t any levels or character classes. You learn your skills from one of eight schools of combat, and will be able to raid other schools to gain bonus knowledge and unlock more abilities. You’ll be able to train your character outside of the game as well, using 30 “offline activities.”
Expect lots of customisation, too. Apparently there will be more than 5,000 equipment upgrades, 17 progressions and aerial combat. The fighting style draws heavily from Wuxia genre, so there will be plenty of superhuman acrobatics and, as shown in the trailer above, water-running. It’ll be released in the UK as well, under the name Age of Wulin. An “international test” is supposed to be starting soon. Keep an eye on the official Age of Wushu site for news of the beta.
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