Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Jube Weighs In On The Demo
Uprising44
In-House Interview
Demo Alert
Mass Effect 3 Demo Coming
More Max
Feel The Payne In New Video
I'm not normally one to gush, but hot damn am I excited as hell about the full release of the FotS. The limited preview build that I had a chance to play around in was absolutely wicked, and left me wanting more even after three complete playthroughs. Fall of the Samurai is definitely a title to keep an eye on.
It appears as if Ubisoft's top dog Yves Guillemot is quite pumped about ACIII, as he reportedly declared during the call that it's going to be the true next generation of the AC brand and interactive entertainment / storytelling in general, and that the company plans on it being the biggest launch in Ubisoft history.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm looking forward to seeing what's ahead in ACIII. I'm going to miss Ezio for sure, but I've really got to know what the whole first civilization conspiracy is all about, and what Desmond's role is in everything.
joinDOTA spoke to Valve’s Erik Johnson about DOTA 2's upcoming tournament and LAN play. Johnson was asked about the possibility of a LAN mode to which he responded "Dota 2 will have LAN mode. There are some systems that LAN mode requires that we haven’t finished yet, mainly because we’ve been focused on matchmaking. We know how important this feature is for the community."
Other interesting tid-bits from the interview include the prize pool for the next round of official tournaments will be at least $1.6 million, and that they plan to support the mod community with DOTA 2.
Check out this new cinematic trailer for Far Cry 3. Though it doesn't actually show any gameplay, I think the trailer is pretty engaging and sets up a fun story; ultimately with me it accomplishes its goal - I am definitely now looking forward again to Far Cry 3, which if you asked me several weeks ago, I probably wouldn't be able to remember if it had even been announced.
Apparently everyone and their cousin wants to throw money at Tim Schafer these days; not only did he make a bazillion dollars for a point and click adventure game on kickstarter, but Notch said he can cover the full $13 million estimated cost for a Psychonauts 2.
Nothing of course is set in stone regarding a Psychonauts sequel, but chances look good with Notch ready to front the cash, and Schafer confirming a sequel had always been planned. "We had a lot of plot elements that were backstory in that game that we planned on revisiting in the future and tying it back in," Schafer said. Time will tell, but hopefully we'll be playing both a new Double Fine point and click adventure as well as a second coming of Psychonauts in the not too distant future.
But slowly, the further I got, the more it made sense. It’s pretty much the moment you enter the caves that what Dear Esther wants to be comes to the foreground, and you accept it for what it is. There’s no use button because you’re meant to be on this inexorable path, and the game simply wants to tell you its story.Walker expresses that Dear Esther is a bit on the short side, taking just a little over an hour to finish.The caves are stunning. Just utterly stunning. While the whole island is meticulously detailed and extremely pretty, the caves are something else, masterfully lit and so intricately crafted, that I found myself taking screenshots not to illustrate the review, but to set as my desktop background. Photographs for a frame, rather than images for a website. And here the corridor is justified, the story becomes more intensely told, and the mysteries finally present themselves. This central act sets you up for the final third, asks you all the questions you’ll then want to be answered.
So hey, that Kickstarter deal with Tim Schafer and the Double Fine team was pretty interesting last week, wasn't it? I expected it to get a lot of attention, but not to the point that donations went several times above the $400k goal. Last year Gemini Rue went above and beyond with a fraction of the now $1.7mil Adventure budget, so as far as I'm concerned Double Fine's Adventure needs to deliver on that level and then some.
Speaking of Kickstarter, when Jube shared details on the situation here prior to departing there was a surprising outcry of support, including offers of donations, requests for tip jars and/or Paypal details, and suggestions to make a Kickstarter campaign for a new site. Sadly the Double Fine campaign kind of made the whole Kickstarter thing feel like a "jump on the bandwagon" kind of effort, but it's still worth asking if you guys would think a Kickstarter would be appropriate for the development of a new site if some of the departed wanted to move forward. What do you think?
In other news, we received a tip that an interesting webpage popped up for what may very well be a new Ironclad game. At the moment the site is very bare, featuring only a countdown, and a sign-up form for a newsletter. What could "SoaDA" stand for?
Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum UsersThe update will go out to all Steam forum and account holders soon.We continue our investigation of last year's intrusion with the help of outside security experts. In my last note about this, I described how intruders had accessed our Steam database but we found no evidence that the intruders took information from that database. That is still the case.
Recently we learned that it is probable that the intruders obtained a copy of a backup file with information about Steam transactions between 2004 and 2008. This backup file contained user names, email addresses, encrypted billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. It did not include Steam passwords.
We do not have any evidence that the encrypted credit card numbers or billing addresses have been compromised. However as I said in November it's a good idea to watch your credit card activity and statements. And of course keeping Steam Guard on is a good idea as well.
We are still investigating and working with law enforcement authorities. Some state laws require a more formal notice of this incident so some of you will get that notice, but we wanted to update everyone with this new information now.
Gabe
Well I'm actually quite surprised this issue hadn't come up earlier, but Blizzard has filed a lawsuit against Valve for using the DOTA name, which Blizzard argues, is associated with Blizzard in the mind of the consumer.
In contrast to Blizzard, Applicant Valve Corporation ("Valve") has never used the mark DOTA in connection with any product or service that currently is available to the public. By attempting to register the mark DOTA, Valve seeks to appropriate the more than seven years of goodwill that Blizzard has developed in the mark DOTA and in its Warcraft III computer game and take for itself a name that has come to signify the product of years of time and energy expended by Blizzard and by fans of Warcraft III. Valve has no right to the registration it seeks. If such registration is issued, it not only will damage Blizzard, but also the legions of Blizzard fans that have worked for years
with Blizzard and its products, including by causing consumers to falsely believe that Valve's products are affiliated, sponsored or endorsed by Blizzard and are related or connected to Warcraft III.
I'm sure this has nothing to do with the upcoming Starcraft 2 Mod Blizzard has been working on called Blizzard Dota. Neither company currently has the Dota name trademarked, but Blizzard is confident that because Warcraft III was required to play the original Dota mod that they've got a strong enough case to block Valve from claiming that copyright.
I'm just sad to see two of the best game developers ever fighting like this, can't we all just be friends? *Sniff*
Happy Friday everybody! So it turns out that the 'Diablo 3 will kick your ass' video I posted was actually a couple of months old, but easiness complaints over on the Diablo 3 forums are still alive and rampant, so probably was a pertinent move by Blizzard to re-release it to ease complaints. What we don't know yet, is what Blizzard will do to address their foul-mouthed voice actors. I kind of like it...