I spy with my eye : DwarfCorp

What do you get when you mix Dwarf Fortress,A hint of Minecraft and a smidge of Dungeon Keeper?

Well you get a game called DwarfCorp.

I spotted this classy looking project over at kickstarter a few days ago, and I almost immediately threw my wallet at the screen.

It looks rather promising, the concept of it all is:

You are the regional manager of a "DwarfCorp" your job is to build up your outpost and mine all the shiny stuff you can, on a Unexplored Continent.

That might sound like an easy task right? I mean it's just telling your Dwarfs to mine to their hearts content?

Well you have to look out for the locals, Goblins really don't like Dwarfs, and neither do MoleMen or small Devils.

Oh and other Dwarf Corporations don't take kindly to anyone else setting up shop in the vicinty, oh and since your the regional manager, well the bane of your existence is  as always: The suits. 

You need to keep the shareholders happy, as well as the "bigwigs".

You accomplish all this by simply mining for shiny stuff, and sending it back to the Dwarven motherland.

"Your" Dwarf Corp will send you quotas to match every now and then, and if you fill the quota, good the shareholders and bigwigs are pleased with your work, if you fail, well the stock price will fall, and if you fail to produce a profit and fill the quotas one to many times, the bigwigs will pull the plug.

I never liked shareholders

Now I mentioned Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft and Dungenon keeper at the start, well as they say, a picture says more than a thousand words.

Everyone needs to start out small, with just a mine entrance and a stockpile for the shinys.

The Dungeon master in me will probably want to slap the dwarfs around a bit.

 

You can find the Kickstarter over Here

They are looking for 20.000$ to get the project funded, and the first stretch goal at  25.000$ is a Linux+Mac version!

At the time of writing we are already at  14.204$ with 23 days left to go of the Campaign.

And before I forget to mention it, they have a pre-alpha prototype that's playable , which you can get without even backing a single gold lump. (But come on, you really should throw all your gold lumps at this) 

You can find the prototype over at the games homepage over Here

Now I shall scurry on over to the unexplored continent, and see which kind of shiny's I can find!

Satellite Reign is in the final stretch on Kickstarter

 The spiritual successor to Syndicate Wars, Satellite Reign needs a bump.

Somehow I'd managed to completley miss that this campaing was even going on.

Satellite Reign is quite literally the spiritual successor to the good old game Syndicate Wars 

The kickstarter campaing has about 5 days left, and at the time of writing, It's sitting at £318,253 out of the  £350,000 goal.

The game is being made by the creator of the old Syndicate Wars, Mike Diskett, who was, as many others, not so pleased when the new "Syndicate" got released last year.

Since they took a good old Top down tactical game, and made it into a Scfi FPS.

In my opinion EA did it for the usual reasons "Because of money" they probably wanted to try and cash in on the success of the new Deus Ex game

Either way Mike Diskett wants to make a true spiritual successor, and recently released a in-engine gameplay "visualization"  as can be seen below.

I'll try and throw my money at the screen as soon as my bills are paid, and hopefully Satellite Reign can meet it's goal in the 5 days that are left, and we can get a "new" and amazing game!

And here is the Kickstarter link for this amazing looking project.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/5livesstudios/satellite-reign

The Mega-corporations of the future will gladly relive you of your funds

Total War: ROME II Campaign map

A nice long look at the campaign map and some new gameplay

The guys over at Gamespot had Al Bickham from Creative Assembly over, to talk about Rome II and show off some new stuff.

We got to see how massive the new Campaign map is, as well as some new features and of course some nice battle footage. 

I feel the need to Conquer it all

During the video/interview Al Bickham hinted at some new multiplayer features that were being "tested" right now, more info is bound to come about that at a later date.
He also mentions that they are trying to make the minimum specs around the same as they were for Shogun 2, that way people with low end machines can still enjoy the game at a good framerate.

As I've said before, I am looking forward to Rome II quite a bit!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Directors Cut no longer Wii-u exclusive

Damage Control after Deus Ex: "The Fail" ?

It seems that Square Enix has decided to make Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut for all platforms now ,and one would surmise that this is some form of damage control.

Everyone were outraged when the revealed the Directors Cut would only come out on Wii-U, and now with the recent announcement of Deus Ex: The Fall, that will only come out on Tablets/iOS, It seems like Square is desperate to not throw more blood in the shark infested waters.

Obviously it's a good thing that everyone else will be able to play the DC, but again : It's clearly an attempt to gain some good grace back.

Score!

"After our Director's Cut announcement we received an overwhelming response from the community asking us to bring this ultimate edition of Human Revolution to other platforms," said Stéphane D'Astous, General Manager of Eidos-Montréal.

"We're thrilled to accommodate that request. We can now say with pleasure, 'You asked for this!'"

 I'll most likely play it but there is now way in hell I am going to pay a full retail price for it.

Battlefield 4 Can DICE redeem themselves?

Well maybe, it looks good so far.

The only thing they need to give out info on is Squad-size (6 man squads is something we want back) Seems to be 5-man squads in the video, and if they have been stupid enough to make the Commander mode only accessible on tablets (hopefully not)

Anyways, I'll let this video talk for itself :

And here is the Commander mode trailer:

I'm actually aboard this particular train

DICE Hearts Battlefront

Hoth + Lasers + ATAT Foot in a few seconds long teaser

Well it's official , DICE is making the next Star Wars: Battlefront.

And they revealed this with something that looked like it came from Vine ,a mega short CGI teaser on Hoth, lasers, explosions and an ATAT foot.

ALL ABOARD!

10 Million gathered in just crowd-funding for Star Citizen

Star Citizen is now half-way to being completely funded without any Investors

With 10.000.000 $ reached in funding just moments ago, Star Citizen is now 50% -completely- funded via crowd-funding.

The thing is, 20.000.000 $ is the "complete" cost to actually make the game (office space, hiring staff, etc etc etc etc) and Chris Roberts has always stated that 20M $ would be the cost, with or without investors.

But since it has been going so well for Star Citizen, they have turned down investors, and now they can turn down even more investors.
The less money from investors, and the more money from the consumers, the better.
It means the only people they have to "answer" to is us : the consumers/backers, and not any private investors.

Reaching 10M$ also means that they can get their own Mo-Cap Studio.


Either way, at the end of the month there will be a 24-hour Live-stream right around the time that Star Citizen launches it's new (and much prettier) website.

Let's hear it for 10M$ more!

Internet spaceships is always serious business!

TitanFall

Futuristic Infantry and Mech combat

The last game to be shown off at Microsofts press conference was "TitanFall".

I'd describe it as if, Lost Planet , Call of Duty and Hawken had a threesome and the love child that was born got named TitanFall.

Luckily it's not Xbone exclusive, it seems it will be out on PC as well.

The gameplay they showed, featured infantry combat in first person (with "jetpacks) where you fought over "capture points" ,from what I could hear, the voice over said something a long the lines of "Secure that terminal, we need to get the guns off-line ,we are getting torn to pieces up here" .

In the skies above the combat zone 2 massive ships were flying around (Reminded me of good old Battlefield 2142), taking fire from said guns on the ground, these ships also appear to deliver your "Titans" which are mechs that can be called-down and then piloted by you.

All in all it looks interesting, however as usual, I'm sceptical until I get "hands-on".

CHOO CHOO

Xbone Price "Let's Fuck over Europeans"

Big company Math 499$=499€

So the Xbone is coming out in November 2013, as we all knew before, now we know the price will be 499$ in the US, and 499€ in EU ,429£ in the UK, BECAUSE WHY THE FUCK NOT? , everyone knows that 1$=1€=1£ Right?

Sheesh.

CHOO CHOO

RYSE, Xbone exclusive

RYSE shows of the kinerrrrr QTE's

RYSE was a game that had been on my radar since E3 2011, they showed off a "concept teaser trailer" then.
It's an XBOX-ONE exclusive as well it seems.

Old trailer

However what we were showed just now , was a bunch of Quick-time events and pretty graphics.

I hate QTE's, well let's see how the hell the kinect works for it.

CHOO CHOO

Metal Gear Solid : The Phantom Pain (Xbox One)

Snake get's to play in a dynamic open world

The next instalment of the MGS game series, will let you roam free in a massive open-world environment.

A trailer shown at the conference opened with Snake and another character riding horses through a desert. Through conversation, it is revealed that Snake is headed to Afghanistan. According to the trailer, the game will feature new kinds of stealth elements, various modes of transport and a realtime weather system.

CHOO CHOO

 

Dragon Age 3 at E3

Mark Darrah Executive Producer for Dragon Age Franchies hint's at DA 3 at E3

Earlier today the EP for the Dragon Age Franchise Tweeted  "Watch the @EA conference tomorrow at 1pm PST for something new from @DragonAge"

Dragon Age 3 is the next instalment in the Dragon Age series, and since it will be running in the Frostbite 3 Engine, one would assume that it will be out for PC, and next-gen consoles.

Concept Art

EA's press conference can be found over Here, and sadly I'll be watching it, mostly to see if DICE can redeem themselves with the Battlefield 4 Multi-player.

There's a quite neat "all in one" countdown site for all the E3 press conferences over Here as well.

CHOO CHOO

Watch Dogs E3 trailer leak

CGI-Trailer for E3 leaked

According to All Games Beta, the E3 trailer for Ubisofts new game Watch Dogs has been leaked, and is available as a direct DL from their site.

It's a CGI-trailer which shows off the protagonist: Aiden, going after a guy who's involved with Human-Trafficking, it shows of some of the "gameplay" elements albeit in CGI.

"Give me four seconds and a clear signal," Aiden says in the trailer. "I'll get in and you'll never know. But I want you to know. You're not anonymous. I've seen your kind before."

If they show off some proper gameplay on E3 I'll be a bit less reserved, Watch Dogs looks good and the concept sounds good, but I want to see the -whole- thing in action first.

 

To Hype or not to Hype, That is the question

 

E3

All aboard the Hype Train!

I'll be posting as much as possible during E3, I've been slacking the past few days, mostly due to a crappy sleeping pattern. So to anyone that have been checking back everyday (maybe one or two people) Sorry!

But with E3 just around the corner there will be massive amounts of pre-rendered "gameplay" teasers and the likes, that I can bash!

CHOO CHOO!

 

Deus Ex: The Fail *update*

Quick update regarding the video

The video has been up for 30 minutes, the internet and subsequently Twitter is on fire, oh and the video already has over 1.500 Dislikes, and here's hoping for a couple of hundred-thousand more.

"I never asked for this" comes to mind

I personally think this is one of the stupidest things I have seen this year ,well If we don't count the Xbox "Go home your drunk" one. Either way, completely alienating your fan-base and making something that -no one- has asked for is the pinnacle of stupidity.

I mean, did they sit at a board meeting and say "HMMMMMM How can we possibly outdo ourself in stupidity after we did the Directors Cut with extra features and only released it on one console as a gimmick? OH WAIT I KNOW! let's make it into a Tablet/Phone game" 

New info on Deus Ex: The Fall

Eidos-Montreál reveals Deus Ex: The Fall with a video

It's a game for iPad and iPhone.........

It starts of where the novel "Deus Ex: Icarus Effect" ended, and  you will be playing as the Former S.A.S operative Ben Saxon.

"We are back in 2027 -- a golden era for science, technology and human augmentation, but also a time of great social divide and global conspiracy. Ben Saxon, a former British SAS Mercenary who underwent physical augmentation, is desperate for the truth behind the drug conspiracy. Betrayed by his private military employers, the Tyrants, not only is his own life at risk, but for all augmented humans, time is running out..."

In the video they talk a bit about the game and show of some actual gameplay on an iPad.





Well my hopes and dreams went down the drain.

Keep on looking for the truth JC

 

Deus Ex: The Fall

New Deus Ex game teased via Twitter and Youtube

Yesterday it was discovered that Squre Enix had registered several domain names related to "Deus Ex The Fall".

And about 14 hours ago Eidos-Montréal tweeted out "Are YOU ready for The Fall?"

12 of hours later the official Deus Ex youtube channel had a new video uploaded.

They also tweeted out this "Who is Ben Saxon?" and Ben Saxon is one of the two protagonists in the book "Deus Ex: Icarus Effect" which was released in 2011.
Link to the Wiki with info on Ben Saxon can be found here

Now before the video was uploaded and only the Tweet was out, some sites logically assumed we would see something at E3, however the video has "05/06/13" plastered over it, and that does not correlate to E3 which kicks off June 11th.

Well I'm excited, and I hope they manage to pull something great off, but for the love of god Eidos, make sure to include ways to beat bosses other than direct confrontation in the -standard first run- of the game, and not some "Directors cut" that only comes out as a gimmick for -one- console.

Who is Ben Saxon?

Wasteland 2 shows off the inventory

inXlie's baby Wasteland 2 shows what it has in it's backpack.

There are quite a few Kickstarter games that's being developed right now, and sometimes you loose track of them all, today tough, we take a look at some new footage from Wasteland 2!

Wasteland 2 is the sequel to the open world sci-fi game that spawned the Fallout series.
It's also worth mentioning that Obsidian Entertainment is giving a helping hand in the development.

The rough release date is currently set for October 2013, and you can still help the development by "donating" some money over at the Wasteland2 homepage and you obviously will receive a copy of the game for this. (so you might as well call it a pre-order) 

EvE Online DDOS'd

EvE online and DUst 514 servers got ganked yesterday.

Around 02:00 UTC on June the 2nd CCP's servers came under fire from a DDOS (Distributed denial-of-service) attack. 

CCP's policy in these cases are "to mobilize a taskforce of internal and external experts to evaluate the situation."

However that taskforce quickly came to the conclusion that bringing the server clusters off-line were the best action at this point.

I would not want the job of physically rebooting CCP's main server room

In a news-post over at the EvE-online site CCP said :

"What we can now confirm is that a person was able to utilize a vulnerability in one of the back-end services that support the operation of the Tranquility server. This vulnerability has now been secured and thoroughly tested."

As of 10:13 UTC today (June 3rd) both the EvE and DUST514 servers are back up and running, and CCP will "compensate" players in some fashion, CCP is nice like that, even when it comes to stuff that really are out of their hands. 
The usual thing would be Skill-points which you can just apply to any skill you want, but nothing has been said yet on what the compensation will be.

The whole news-post can be found over at the EvE-online page Here

 

Dean Hall talks about pricing model for DayZ

DayZ standalone will most likely go the "Minecraft route"

In an interview with VG24/7 Dean Hall the creator of the ARMA 2 mod DayZ, discusses his plans on the pricing model for the upcoming DayZ standalone game.

He mentions that it will "most likely" go the so called Minecraft route, of letting players purchase the early Alpha, and that the price will subsequently go up during the beta , and then finally Retail.

Hall also points out that there may be some kind of "Special Edition" further along the road, but none of this is set in stone yet.

One important thing he also mentions is the fact that he want's to be 100% sure that they have enough server capacity, and at the beginning they might have to "stop" selling keys for a little while to circumvent any major server overloads. 

I'll probably throw my money at Hall and the dev team when they start with the sales, I enjoyed the Mod quite a bit when I played it "back in the day".

I love the taste of beans in the morning

SimCity: Get your puke bags ready

The new DLC "Amusement Park" is out for SimCity

So EA have released the "first" DLC for SimCity, and lo and behold, it let's you build an Amusement Park in your city.

Apparently they thought it was a good idea to add something that takes up even more space when the city area still is extremely small (wonder when the "larger city area DLC, only 14.99$" comes out?), well it's not that often EA listens to it's consumers anyways right?

"The Amusement Park is a tourist attraction similar to casinos and landmarks, however the way in which you use the Amusement Park is very different. We really wanted to add new content that not only enhances the look and appeal of your city, but also give you even more things to do as a Mayor. And that’s what this set does – in addition to managing your city like always, running a successful Amusement Park is almost a mini-game in itself. Sound fun?"

This DLC will set you back 10$ if your in the US, and as per usual, if you live outside the US, you just have to bend over and let EA have their way with you. 

As an example since i live in Sweden, I have to pay 16'ish $ (with today's exchange rate) due to EA's regular math of 10 $=100 KR when in fact it's 10 $=62 KR , now if I decided that this DLC would be worth my money, I'd rather buy it from GreenManGaming.

All the information of what this brand new DLC entails can be found here over at the SimCity homepage.

SimCity Amusement Park DLC in a nutshell

Gameplay from the creators of Homeworld 2's new game

Black Bird Interactive have released a gameplay preview from "Hardware Shipbreakers"

The Homeworld 2 vibes are all over the place, both from the aesthetics and the music in the first ever shown gameplay from Hardware Shipbreakers.

For those of you who haven't heard of Hardware Shipbreakers, it's an RTS where you go through the deserts of a massive planet, that serves as a Spaceship graveyard and try your best to hit payday in the form of salvage.
It's being made by some of the developers that made both Homeworld 1 and 2, the beta sign-up is open over at Blackbird Interactive's homepage

They are also selling "The prospector's Guide" which the first 10.000 units sold, will grant you guaranteed Beta access when the beta kicks off.

Prospector’s Guide Highlights:

Getting Acquainted:

 

The History of Long March Industries, LMI and You, What It Takes To Succeed, Your first 72 Hours, Known Shipwreck Manifests and Coordinates.

Equipment Catalog:

 

Military Ground Support, Aerial Support and Attack Strategies.

Operators Manual:

 

Baserunner Model, Packages, Options & Accessories, Capabilities and Best Uses, Military Commands and Visual Controls, Gameplay Overview.

 

Homeworld 2 truly was a great game

 

"Hidden" Sidequest in Final Fantasy 9

After 13 years some games still have secrets.

FF IX apparently had a very obscure side-quest that has not been "reported" up until now.

"The_Kusabi_" a user over at GameFaqs posted this Thread a few days ago, where he describes how he found it (via the FF IX Ultimania Guide book)  and how you actually get to this Side Quest.

After this  "GarlandTheGreat" put together a video of the whole thing:

It's kinda nice, and funny for that matter, that a game that has almost 13 years behind it can still surprise you.

Good times, good times.

Source

Total War: ROME II

Release Date and pre-order bonus.

For anyone that has been living under a rock the past month and missed the reveal of the release date for Rome II, well it's September the 3rd 2013.

In their latest Rally Point Video they also revealed that they will show the campaign map (in-engine) for the first time during Rezzed.

Early this month Creative Assembly revealed the release date and also showed off a pre-order bonus in the form of "The Greek States" DLC.

In this day-one DLC you get access to the following 3 "extra" factions:

• Epirus

  Epirus is a nation of great commanders and, as such, its generals and admirals enjoy a greater command aura in battle. As a nation centred more around village life than the city, Epirus also gains increased income from smaller settlements. However, their chequered past with the Greek states and colonies means they suffer major penalties to diplomatic relations with other Hellenic factions. 

• Athens

  As a city state, the capital city of Athenai enjoys great wealth, and its rich classical heritage makes it easier for their conquests to convert to the Athenian way of life. Its strong naval tradition gives its fleets the upper hand, with the downside being that her land units are less developed. 

• Sparta

  Trained to a level of martial prowess few others achieve, Spartan troops are excellent warriors, and, due to their oppression of the Helot people, they suffer less public discontent due to slavery than other factions. However, due to their Laconic austerity and focus on military training, Sparta benefits less from natural resources.

I usually don't pre-order games, it happens very rarely and only for games that I "know" for a fact will be something I will spend several of hours on and enjoy, I'm also against Day-one DLC in general.
However since the Total War series have a very special place in my heart, I will probably place a pre-order after the summer.

Blizzard delays Titan MMO

Blizzard's new IP, the Titan MMO is delayed.

Blizzard has reduced the size of the development team that was working on Titan to 30 people from the 100 or so people it was before, and this "core team" will be re-working the basis of Titan from scratch.

Last month some details of what Titan would have, gameplay and lore wise, as well as some miscellaneous information regarding the development team was leaked. 

But now this information might not be so relevant any more, since they supposedly are re-working the core of the game.

Shon Damron a spokesman for Blizzard stated the following:

"We’ve always had a highly iterative development process, and the unannounced MMO is no exception. We’ve come to a point where we need to make some large design and technology changes to the game. We’re using this opportunity to shift some of our resources to assist with other projects while the core team adapts our technology and tools to accommodate these new changes. Note that we haven’t announced any dates for the MMO."

The fact that development seems to have been reset, in favour of rebuilding the game from the ground up, indicates that we won't see Titan any time soon, some sites are throwing around "2016" as a most likely date for launch.

Hopefully we won't end up with something like this.

Source

Be a diver using the Oculus Rift

World of Diving finds it's way to Indegogo

The Dutch indie developer Vertigo Games are trying to fund their new diving simulator that will utilize the Oculus Rift, which will come out for PC,Mac and Linux.

Vertigo Games are looking for 75.000$ over at Indegogo and at the time of writing they have managed to get 5.870$ and there is 35 days left on their campaign.

"We recreate the world of wonder and discovery that is at the bottom of the ocean – together with you."

 Some of the features listed over at Indegogo are :

•  Play using the Oculus Rift for the full immersive experience, or use a traditional monitor.
•  Discover rusty ship wrecks, World War II submarines and eerie underwater caverns.
•  Explore the Earth’s oceans without limitation thanks to procedurally generated environments.
•  Team up and explore with friends or one of your NPC companions.

The smallest pledge you can help them out with is 15$ and by pledging on this "Goldfish" tier will get you a DRM free digital copy for Pc/Mac/Linux when the game is finished and "access to the official World of Diving ccommunity".

Below is a table of what you get for pledging in the different tiers, and a video from the developers.

I wish Vertigo Games the best of luck in their endeavours.

Star Citizen almost at 10.000.000 $

Chris Roberts latest project Star Citizen is nearing 10.000.000 $ in just crowd funding.

At the time of writing Star Citizen is sitting at a shy 9,786,218 $ gathered from just crowd funding.

A month ago an update on the Star Citizen homepage went out, where they introduced a limited run of pledge packages and added two new Stretch Goals for the campaign.

One of these two stretch goals were the 10M$ one , where Cloud Imperium Games could actually build there own Motion-capture studio.

"Renting mocap equipment and studio time is expensive: upwards of $35,000 a day, with four hours work for each 30-second segment. Having our own studio would cost more right now but will allow us to produce a lot more content for Star Citizen in the long run!"

The so called catch to this stretch goal, was the fact that it would only be achievable up until the new website they have been working on goes live.
However we now have an estimated date when the site will go live, and that's at the end of June.
Right around the time that Cloud Imperium Games will host another 24 hour live-stream.

The probability of reaching 10M$ is quite high since at the time of writing, only  213.782 $ is needed to go over the 10M$ mark.

I for one wish everyone at Cloud Imperium Games good luck, and I'm also looking forward to the 24 hour live-stream.

I started a blog it seems

Gaming you say?

Hi there, so it seems that I have started a blog about gaming.
Now I'm an avid gamer myself, and I always keep up to date on what's going on in the gaming world, and thanks to some shoving and pushing from an annoying acquaintance, I will now write about it.

You will mostly find gaming news here, and obviously as the name of the blog implies, I'll be writing up some personal opinions and thoughts about gaming related "stuff".

I'll be starting with some posts tomorrow, and let's see if someone finds it interesting.