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.