February 22, 2012

Hey, have I got the surprise for you dear reader, todays news will be covered by none other than the irreplaceable, delicious, eccentric, crunchy member of the podcast known as Will. Yes your favortie Tuesday/Thursday news guy is covering Wednesday news today. Chris had some difficulties with his internet tonight so I will be covering for him today. Don't worry he will be back on Friday.

Frictional announced their new game today. It is a sequel to 'Amnesia: The Dark Descent' called 'Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs' (GameInformer). The game is due to come out sometime in 2012 so fans of the horror game will not have to wait too long for the anticipated sequel. The developers also promised to keep veteran players on their toes, by hinting at even more horrors. The game itself is suppossed to take place in 1899 Mexico and a site for the game has already been released. For those interested in the game here is the link.

Come Friday, 'Tribes: Ascend' beta will be open for all gamers (Joystiq). After releasing the game to 300,000 players, Hi-Rez decided to get more people to test the upcoming title by launching an open beta. Before the open beta launches Hi-Rez will be implementing an Arena Death Match game mode and additional maps. Owners of the closed beta do not need to worry, their progress will carry over into the open beta.

'Last Guardian', Fumito Ueda's new game, has been getting help from Sony's Western Studios (Industry Gamer). Sony hopes that this help will speed along the production of Guardian. The game was supposed to ship last year, but technical issues and Ueda's departure from the company have caused the game to be pushed back indefinitely. As of now, no release date has been confirmed.

And now for some news very near and dear too my heart. Borderlands 2. It has a trailer and possibly a release date. Speculation in the Youtube comments/voices in the video itself seem to pin it on a September 18, 2012 release date. In other words, watch the video below you will not be disappointed.

Thats it for today. Have a good night.

-Will

February 21, 2012

It's Tuesday. You log on to your computer for some APR quality news. After you turn on your computer and log onto the site you see your weekly Tuesday news, but something is different. You cannot tell what it is until you read what I, the writer am about to tell you. It is I, Will, Thursday news guy and Official Other writing the Tuesday news. And with that epiphany I will now start telling you what happened today.

Mass Effect 3 had some slip ups recently and the first DLC has been confirmed (Joystiq). Bioware accidently released a batch of Mass Effect 3 DLC onto the XBOX Marketplace. Not sure how that exactly happens but the DLC was named 'From Ashes' and will cost around $10 when released in the near future. The DLC description confirms that a new squad member will be introduced. That is all that was mentioned in the description on the Marketplace.

The sequel to Ironclad Games's Sins of a Solar Empire has been announced today. The game, currently in development, has been named 'Sins of a Dark Age' (Game Informer). As of now the strategy game has no set release date. Beta will be out in the summer and fans can register for Beta on Ironclad's website. Developers have not announced how the game will be different but assure fans that it will not be Sins of a Solar Empire 2. The studio also confirmed that there will not be a single player campaign in this game, rather a few set multiplayer scenarios (Ironclad).

A new free to play MechWarrior game was announced today (Game Informer). The game will be a PC release and has quite a few new features. The game seems to focus heavily on customization and there will be competetive online ranking. Fans of the series can go to the MechWarrior website here to register. The game will come out later this year.

Thats it for the happenings this Tuesday. See you....... on Thursday. Yeah guys this change is pretty official.

-Will

February 20, 2012

Hello everyone and welcome to a quick President’s Day news update.

There is a small handful of news, let’s get down to it:

To start, last night during the latest Walking Dead episode, the new Mass Effect 3 “Take Back Earth” CGI trailer premiered. Enjoy and check out the fantastic demo that is currently out on the PC, PSN, and Xbox LIVE:

In other news, Double Fine has reported that their kickstarter for Double Fine Adventures has broken the $2,000,000 mark (via Joystiq and Game Informer). The project’s kickstarter  page shows that the contributed wealth is currently sitting at $2,024,163 with 21 days left in the fundraiser. The kickstarter has hit 506% of the original $400,000 goal. The extra money will lead to the localization of the game as well as porting the adventure title to other operating systems.

To finish today off, during an interview today, Valve head Gabe Newell stated that he would be open to the idea of moving Valve into hardware sales (via Industry Gamers, Game Informer, and Joystiq). During an interview with the new Penny Arcade Report, Gabe Newell stated that he was interested in the development of wearable computers and, when asked if Valve would have a future in hardware sales, Newell replied “Well, if we have to sell hardware we will”. Newell continues stating, “We have no reason to believe we’re any good at it, it’s more we think that we need to continue to have innovation and if the only way to get these kind of projects started is by us going and developing and selling the hardware directly then that’s what we’ll do. It’s definitely not the first thought that crosses our mind; we’d rather hardware people that are good at manufacturing and distributing hardware do that. We think it’s important enough that if that’s what we end up having to do then that’s what we end up having to do.” Newell also commented on the people who wish to play Episode 3 or Left 4 Dead 3, stating “We’re acutely aware of how much we annoy our fans and it’s pretty frustrating to us when we put them into that situation.” He goes on to say “part of the reason that we backed off talking so much about what was happening in the future is that when we’ve done that in the past, you know, with Half Life 1 it was a year after we originally said it would be, Half Life 2 basically if you go and read the forum posts apparently took us fifty or sixty years to get done so we’re trying to be careful not to get people too excited and then have to go and disappoint them. So we’re sort of reacting in the other direction and saying “okay, well let’s have things a little more baked before we start getting people all excited about it.”

That’s all folks, this is Chris signing off saying dreams walking in broad daylight.   

February 17, 2012

Hello everyone and welcome to a long awaited weekend.

By the Gods, I need this is long weekend:

To start this wonderful Friday news is the announcement of the release date of the second Saints Row 3 DLC (via Joystiq). The “Gangstas in Space” DLC will throw the Third Street Saints into space to make a movie and will be available on February 21 for $6.99 on the Xbox 360, PC, and PS3. 

                                                               

                                                                     Gangstas in Space, 'nuff said

In some other news, the rumored Assassin’s Creed: Revelations DLC from Wednesday has gotten a name, a price tag, and a release date from GameStop (via Joystiq). An email sent to customers that lists downloadable titles lists that the “Lost Archive” for Revelations will be available for purchase on February 28^th for $14.99 on the Xbox 360 and PS3. Nothing involving the plot has been revealed minus the achievements noted Wednesday.

In unrelated news, Atlus recently sent out an email to its “Faithful” mailing list that had a subject line of “_____” and only a giant black image as the body. Destructoid discovered that the black image, if played with the black tint, revealed a teaser for something to come (via Joystiq). The pictured teaser shows a graphic and the words “Stay tuned”. Readers of Destructoid recognized the graphic as part of the logo for Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena, which has led many to believe this is a tease for the localization of the fighting game. Atlus has not commented as of print up. 

To finish today off is the rumor that Treyarch will release Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 this year, after multiple leaks onto the internet. The first hint of the game comes from the LinkedIn page for Hugo Beyer, an artist at Nerve Software (via Joystiq and 1Up ). Beyer’s LinkedIn page has been pulled since the story first broke but the screenshot shows that Beyer listed Black Ops 2 as a part of his current work. Nerve Software is a private corporation that has does contract work for Activision, including work on the original Black Ops. Activision, Nerve, nor Beyer has commented on the situation. The second leak comes from a listing of the game on Amazon France (via Industry Gamers, Kotaku, and Game Informer). The French game website, GameBlog.fr, reported on the find and was able to take this screen shot before the page was taken down. Activision has stated that they do plan on releasing another Call of Duty this year, and tradition holds that it is Treyarch’s year for a game.

That is all ladies and gentlefolk, have yourselves a fantastic weekend, this Chris signing off saying Oh, how have you ever felt so Goddamn strong.

February 16, 2012

Good evening, this is Will. If you haven't heard already I got a new job on the site. I have officially become the second News guy. For those following the news regularly you know about the many recent upheavals and well Alex and I did a little swap of jobs on the site so I will be the new Tuesday/Thursday news guy. Now that that's out of the way lets get into some actual news.

Mojang has recently had some big devlopments. The team, best known for Minecraft, stated in a video on Youtube that they would be developing a game for the Humble Bundle. Here's the kicker they are developing the game in a single weekend and putting all the proceeds toward charity (Joystiq). This is a monstorous undertaking for such a small company but they didn't stop there. The leader of the company, Notch, announced via Twitter that he would be willing to fund Psychonauts 2 (Industry Gamer). The idea is still being tossed around and is in no way official.

EA has gone overboard with the new Mass Effect game. To celebrate the upcoming launch of the third installment of their award winning Mass Effect series, they decided to launch a select number of copies with tracking chips into space via weather balloons (Game Informer). Fans can track these balloons online and attempt to grab a copy before they are available in retail.

Microsoft has confirmed that they will not be showing the Xbox 720 at E3 this year. They did however announce the codename for the new system. The new home console from Microsoft is being called the Durango while in production (Industry Gamer). This does in fact confirm the existence of a next gen console for Microsoft. We should be getting more news on that in the upcoming months.

More disheartening news from THQ today. They have just shut down their Japananese publishing business (Industry Gamer). This is just another of the many cuts the company has had to make in recent months because of their sudden defecit.