Football Manager 2012 fan patches update rosters
Mass Effect 3 footage shows opening missions
Tim Schafer talks Double Fine’s uphill battle to publish games on PC
Is there any bigger darling on the internet than Tim Schafer and Double Fine right now? After all, you guys forked over north of a million bucks just to see the man revisit the point-and-click adventure genre, a wonderful little gaming niche where bigwig publishers fear to tread.
Related to that, late last year our very own Logan Decker sat down with Tim (and Double Fine’s mysterious millionaire/heroic partner, Steven Dengler) to talk about the uphill battle involved in simply porting games like Costume Quest and Psychonauts. Have a watch.
Guild Wars’ Winds of Change concludes on a high note
Like a turbulent gust blowing off the Jade Sea, the latest installment of Guild Wars’ Winds of Change clears away the heavy fog that has been hanging over players since learning of the Ministry of Purity’s duplicity. With the Ministry not as innocent as it once seemed, the Kurzicks and the Luxons at it again, and Cantha in peril, heroes are needed. Who will answer this call? Why the players of course!
With the nine new quests available, as well as new rewards both in game and in the store, players will have plenty of fat lootz to entice them back to the adventure in Winds of Change.
Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial – part 4
Making a mod for Skyrim actually isn’t that hard, and Bethesda are making it even easier with a series of 15 minute video tutorials. This is part 4 – if you’re just joining us, see part 1 of the Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial first.
And in other PC gaming news…
Got problems with your life freezing and then skipping forward unpredictably like that great episode of Futurama? No problem. All you have to do is change the structure of spacetime and apply a bit of slow motion every now and then, like the bit in that great episode of Spaced. It worked perfectly for CCP with their lag problem in Eve Online.
That’s time anomalies dealt with, then. Now for the small matter of all the interesting PC gaming news that’s been happening today, with the most serious links first, and the rest arranged to deliver PC gaming news at maximum intensity. Are you ready?
Dear Esther review
You wander the cliffs, caves and sheep-pens of a windswept Hebridean island. A single voice reads out fragments of letters, and through these you gain snatches of information about the island and other people who took a walk similar to yours.
Their stories bleed into each other: the travel writer who visited the island in pursuit of a legendary hermit. The shepherd stranded here without friends or family, whose situation reflects the hermit’s. Dear Esther is about heavy subjects: isolation and tragedy tie the island’s visitors together.
Anno 2070 update adds new buildings, increases “probability of tornado disaster”
You know what’s way too easy? Building a city and managing resources when there are absolutely no tornadoes happening. Perhaps realising this, the Anno 2070 devs have updated the game with a patch that increases the “probability of a tornado disaster” and “the interval at which they can occur.” Regular, predictable tornadoes. That is the key to exciting city building.
The latest patch also adds new “ornamental buildings” and makes loads of fixes and balance tweaks. If you wondering whether Anno 2070 is worth a punt, check out our Anno 2070 review. Meanwhile, here’s the full patch list from Steam.
Gratuitous Tank Battles preview
When I arrived at the Wiltshire HQ of Positech Games I was met at the door by receptionist Cliff Harris. The studio’s PR manager, Cliff Harris, then made me a mug of tea before introducing me to the head of development, Cliff Harris, who took me down the hall to meet the lead designer, Cliff Harris.
Positech Games isn’t a typical developer, so it’s hardly surprising that the upcoming Gratuitous Tank Battles isn’t a typical tower defence game.
Tucked away in a small backroom in his 18th Century home, 21st Century Cliff is building a game that’s as much about galloping through the Valley of Death as ensuring the Valley of Death is good-and-deathy. As well as being asked to line wiggly assault corridors with all manner of turrets, towers and infantry bunkers, we’ll have a chance to sample the slaughter from the other side, sending our own armies of inexplicably eager mechs, tanks, and grunts down AI-controlled avenues of doom.
Football Manager 2012 unofficial winter transfer updates keep your rosters current
The January football transfer window has slammed shut with the roar of a billion bank notes changing hands, and the echoing wail of the odd player who gets loaned to Millwall when all they really want is to play for Manchester United. Football Manager players will have to wait a few more weeks for the official transfer patch to arrive and update their rosters, until then, FMScout have compiled a couple of useful unofficial updates from around the web.
Graphing Double Fine’s Kickstarter adventure at $1.6 million
When Double Fine’s campaign to fund a new point-and-click adventure game reached its funding goal in record time, I did a little graph of how all the donation options contributed to the enormous sum they ended up with. Four days later, it’s nearly quadrupled that amount.
So now that they’ve passed 1.6 million dollars, do the contributions break down differently? Yes! The graph above shows how much money each donation option made – blue bars are from last week, red bars are today’s figures. Now for some interesting stats, and what they mean.
Team Fortress 2′s Boston Boom-Bringer shake-shake-shakes the room
The Scout just got 15% more obnoxious with the addition of a great big ghetto blaster to Team Fortress 2. It’ll tease your enemies with a selection of sick beats during every taunt, upgrading the Scout from “unbearable” to “must be killed at any cost” in your enemies’ estimations.
It’s described as a “level 1-100 Futuristic Sound Device,” and will set you back a hefty £7/$10. A portion of that will go to a community member. The Boston Boom-Bringer is the latest item to be promoted from the Steam Workshop, which is still overflowing with nonsensical but brilliant items like an Anubis headdress for the Pyro, a Soldier plushie on a stick and this magnificent bug mask.
Make a drive caddy out of cardboard
Just upgraded your hard drive and not sure what to do with the old one? Why not recycle it into an environmentally friendly external drive for backing up game saves and the like with a cardboard case?
That’s what’s on offer with the rather remarkable BytePac hard drive enclosures. Order one, and you’ll receive a box full of SATA to USB cables in the post. Empty the box out and you can fit a standard 3.5inch drive inside with plenty of room for air flow. It’s fully recycled and recyclable, guaranteed for five years and designed to look like a magazine boxfile for archiving and labelling multiple drives full of old game saves and screenshots.
Max Payne 3 screenshots cause collateral damage
Cool guys don’t look at explosions, or the pedestrians who happen to get caught up in them. “I’m a successful main character in a major action franchise. What of it?” says the expression on Max Payne’s face. They were just going to their nearest internet cafe to look at screenshots of you, Max. They just wanted to see their favourite action hero not looking at explosions, now it is they who are not looking at explosions, because they are dead. YOU MONSTER.
Still it’s nice to see Payne’s back in his leather trench coat, shirt and tie combo. That’s Classic Max chic. He’s joined by his two other styles, Grizzly Commander Riker chic and Breaking Bad chic, in the new screenshots below.
Eve Online’s mad time dilation tech beats lag
The time dilation feature added to Eve Online last month is a good example of CCP’s weird genius. It’s an elegant solution to a problem that’s plagued Eve’s epic conflicts for years: server lag. Time dilation stops pauses, juddering and drop outs by spreading the server load of a big scrap across multiple star systems, turning game-breaking time skips into a gentle slow motion effect. According to a recent post on the Eve Online blog, the system seems to be working.
“I want to share my favorite two graphs of the past few weeks with you folks,” says CCP Veritas. To have a fortnightly favourite graph, you must look at a lot of graphs, but this one is pretty good. It shows how the time dilation kicks in as soon as server load is detected, reducing the game speed for players affected players and, most importantly, restoring the game to its natural speed afterwards.
Mass Effect 3 demo footage shows opening hour
The Mass Effect 3 demo is imminent, but if, like me, you have a genetic predisposition to absorb everything related to Mass Effect 3 immediately with no care for spoilers, then you might enjoy these many minutes of footage from the first couple of missions.
VG247 spotted the videos, uploaded by a YouTube user who apparently got early access to the demo. We get to see a few familiar faces like Anderson and Ashley, and see more of the half man, half neck hybrid James Vega machoing his way around the corridors. Is it possible for a man to have too many muscles? James Vega has the answer, and that answer is “yes.” He has the look of a man permanently on the verge of explosive decompression. Don’t salute too hard, Vega, you could pop at any moment.
The demo is due out tomorrow, and the full game is out on March 6 in the US and March 9 in Europe. Here’s part two of the demo footage.
Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial – part 3
Making a mod for Skyrim actually isn’t that hard, and Bethesda are making it even easier with a series of 15 minute video tutorials. This is part 3 – if you’re just joining us, see part 1 of the Skyrim Creation Kit video tutorial first. We’ll be posting part 4 this time tomorrow.
