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Nearly 20min worth of SWTOR gameplay video
If nearly 20 minutes of Star Wars: The Old Republic gameplay footage narrated by BioWare developers themselves is the kind of thing you get excited about, then today is a very exciting day for the both of us.IGN is hosting the video that's so huge it comes in four parts. Here's where it gets awesome: It'll show you lengthy gameplay for the Bounty Hunter, Smuggler and Sith Warrior classes in addition to some of the game's planets. Plus, BioWare gives you something of a director's commentary of what's happening with each of the classes. In effect, it's almost pure nerdnip.Even at almost 20 minutes long, we found ourselves feeling like it all went by far too quickly and there's a definite possibility we may re-watch it again. That seems like a good sign of things to come, at least for BioWare and not so much for our social lives. Check out all four videos after the break.
Take a wander down memory lane with the History of Warcraft
Just in time for the inevitable announcement of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, IGN have decided to turn in the opposite direction and take a peek at this history of this momumental franchise. They've posted an epic five-page retrospective feature on the entire Warcraft franchise as part of the run up to BlizzCon.It looks at everything from the original game, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, to the failed Thrall-centric loregasm that was Warcraft Adventures right on through to Warcraft II and III. Of course, they also look in detail at World of Warcraft and its two expansions, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. If you only discovered the Warcraft franchise with WoW, as I did, it's a fascinating glimpse into one of gaming's biggest franchises. World of Warcraft is not just a game or a single mythology, it's the culmination of a decade of gaming history. So if you've got an hour to kill before the fun and games today, you might want to check this out.
GamesCom offers a closer look at the Sith Warrior class
It seems Star Wars: The Old Republic is the next big thing. We've been raving about it for months and this week's GamesCom gave the press and, more importantly, the public a chance to get down and dirty with BioWare's biggest project to date. IGN took the time to nip to the Jedi Temple and revealed that BioWare were spoiling attendees with a brand spanking new demo focusing on the Sith, specifically the Warrior class. Indeed they report this demo was basically a back to basics with this mysterious sect, focusing on their training on Korriban – could this be their starter area? They report it examines their mentality and beliefs within the Star Wars universe. After all, if you're going to roll a Sith you need to understand how their minds work as well as taking them down pits and killing giant worms. The piece is amazingly detailed and does more than enough to whet the appetites of Star Wars fans as well as Team Massively. Check it out by clicking here and you might want to start thinking up evil-sounding names while you're at it.
Pitchford on Borderlands cover: The game 'will blow your mind'
Gearbox Software prez Randy Pitchford says upcoming post-apocalyptic shooter Borderlands will "blow your mind." After issuing the game's daring cover this past week, the development studio head talked to IGN about it and claimed, "The motive is about the goals of a box cover – you want to evoke something, get attention and have something honest to say about the promise of the game." Though he admits some were worried at Gearbox as well as at publisher 2K Games, he believes it was the right decision to choose that cover in the end. "Judging from the response so far, it looks like it was the right call." We absolutely agree, Mr. Pitchford. Will gamers pick it up at the store this October next to Brütal Legend and other AAA titles? That remains to be seen -- but all these games that have been pushed back to 2010 couldn't hurt, right?%Gallery-69817%
Champions Online melee powers trailer, plus teleporting
We know plenty of you have been itching to see all of Champions Online's melee powers in motion, and that's what you'll get with this recently released trailer at IGN. Additionally, Cryptic's seen fit to show off the teleportation travel power, which we're completely in love with and know you'll be too if you're a melee user. There's nothing quite as awesome as appearing out of thin air, right behind your soon-to-be victim.In fact, we may have cackled the first few times we did it in-game. Okay, we still cackle now, just a little.Some props are in order to whoever was responsible for editing this trailer, because it certainly does a good job showing off all the awesome powers. Watch closely for the Martial Arts and Dual Blade powers, because in our humble opinion those are the coolest of the bunch. Then again, there's something to be said for Supernatural chains and reality-distorting Might. Check out the video after the break.
New details emerge on SWTOR's healing and space components
So it looks like those lucky buggers over at IGN sat down with a couple Star Wars: The Old Republic developers and pelted them with as many questions from the community as possible. The results have made our day much brighter, and we're sure yours will benefit in much the same way.While a lot of the questions were deflected in one way or another -- as this is a game that's probably not coming out for a while -- some tiny new pieces of information did surface. For instance, much of the community has been wondering about healing. Will the game go with the "Holy Trinity" or is something else planned? The answer appears to be a little bit of both. It sounds as though each class has the opportunity to invest resources into healing abilities. Although, BioWare is quick to point out that parties will definitely want some "healers" in higher-level situations.Insofar as space combat is concerned, it appears that BioWare isn't talking about it, yet. Yes, they didn't flat out deny its existence in the game nor did they give confirmation, so for now we'll have to wait. A large part of the interview merely confirms things we've already known or suspected. Planets will have multiple zones, PvP is important to the team, customization will be very important and all the stuff you'd expect from a game this immense.
Are you sitting down? 'Asteroids' movie has a plot
You know that epic three-hundred page screenplay you've been polishing over the last decade for a film adaptation of Asteroids? Throw it away, because Universal has it nailed down. Speaking to IGN, producer Lornezo di Bonaventura said the upcoming film will focus on two brothers who must have "a seminal experience" to figure out their relationship against a backdrop of rocks in space. Riveting.Bonaventura -- who will soon help ruin your childhood with G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra -- added that his attraction to the Asteroids license was because it promises an action-packed affair with "some guys in spaceships blowing stuff up." Also, he thinks it tells moviegoers "that there's going to be this big thing in space." So, we can only assume that Universal Studios buys movie licenses by scanning a dictionary.[Via Shacknews]
LucasArts games also going Direct2Drive starting with Monkey Island SE
If, for some reason, you should find yourself in need of an alternative to Steam but don't want to miss out on LucasArts's recent reissuing of back catalog titles, you're in luck. IGN has sealed a deal to distribute the publisher's titles via its Direct2Drive service, beginning today with The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition for $9.95. Unfortunately, the announcement makes no mention of what other LucasArts games will be offered, saying only that there will be others. At some point. We've contacted IGN to find out if its lineup will mirror Steam's, or if there'll be any notable additions (or omissions).
Black Prophecy interview confirms station walking feature, post-release
Let's face it, playing a sci-fi MMO where your ship is essentially your avatar is a deal breaker for some gamers. Typically we're referring to EVE Online when 'ship-as-avatar' discussions come up, but CCP's game will soon have company in the sci-fi MMO genre, with Jumpgate Evolution and Black Prophecy both on the way. Anyone who's played EVE knows that, yes, you do create a portrait-style avatar during character creation but what you see throughout gameplay is your ship. This will also be the case with Black Prophecy, although character avatars will be 3-D. Black Prophecy's developer Reakktor Media revealed that they'd like to take this a step further and introduce the ability to walk about in stations, post-launch. Black Prophecy's development director Simon Bachmann mentioned this in a recent interview. Simon told Sheila "Jube" Lewis at IGN's Voodoo Extreme: "Your ship is your game character which you can equip like you equip your player avatar in any other MMO. Next to your ship you will also have a fully customizable 3D avatar of your pilot which will appear in conversations with NPCs or other players. This special avatar will become more important in the so called 'Station walking' feature which we plan to implement in one of the future game updates post release."
IGN shows us Milo's future
Concept and execution are two totally different worlds. Although the concept and initial presentation of Lionhead Studios' Milo blew everyone away at E3 2009, what does fate have in store for the little digital boy's longterm execution? IGN attempts to answer that question in a little sketch they put together. We all know Milo will lose his innocence once he's in the hands of normal people, but just how bad will it become? Check out the video after the break.
Metareview: The Conduit (Wii)
While you're patiently waiting for the end of the week so you can cash that paycheck and pick up High Voltage Software's The Conduit for your Nintendo Wii, why not take a gander at what the rest of the interweb had to say about the game? Considering the lack of correlation between Metacritic scores and the sales numbers of Wii games, though -- at least according to Peter Moore -- you probably shouldn't let these numbers get to you too much. GamePro (70): "The Conduit is the closest you will get to recapturing the magic of Goldeneye ... To be blunt, The Conduit is a by the numbers shooter that offers a couple of thrills but ultimately doesn't make much of an impact ... anyone who loved Goldeneye will want to give a look as well if only to get a nice dose of nostalgia, but the rest of you shouldn't feel a need to abandon your favorite next-gen shooter for this one." GamesRadar (80): "The Conduit is fun, controls well, and is, at times, quite beautiful ... Both humans and alien drones are animated with competent physics and personality that puts High Voltage Software's Quantum3 engine outside the realm of the "GameCube 1.5" criticisms ... The truth is you probably wouldn't bat an eye at The Conduit had it appeared on PC, PS3 or Xbox 360 ... The solid, yet unremarkable single-player won't win any awards, but The Conduit still features the most finely honed online outings available on Wii." IGN (86): "The Conduit is not a revolutionary first-person shooter, but it's a damned good one ... the title features the tightest, most comfortable control scheme of any console-based first-person shooter to date ... The Conduit features a robust list of modes and maps to play online and nearly 20 weapons to use as you rip through arenas blasting foes ... it's not revolutionary, but The Conduit is a great first-person shooter designed just for Wii owners." %Gallery-33787%
Champions Online is open with its missions, that are open
If you're like us, then you always appreciate it when game developers open up and share their design process. And while this latest Champions Online developer diary on Open Missions may not have the most crunchy pieces of information -- or really any new stuff, for that matter -- it does a great job illustrating how Cryptic formulates their open missions.You may be more familiar with Warhammer Online's original concept, Public Quests. Although it probably does both games a disservice to compare the two mechanics all too much, because they do different things for different settings.What's presented here for Champions Online has us very curious to see how creative Cryptic can get with zones that are set underwater and even potentially in space. That's of course assuming there's a moon zone or something -- but why wouldn't there be something that awesome in the game?
Interstellar Marines still exists, has actual landsharks
So here's the thing: When you cross sharks with marines, things get hilarious and, ya know, kind of bloody. It gets even weirder when the title in question is a relic from 2006 -- a game we've only seen in trailers for three years now! -- named Interstellar Marines.All joking aside, the game looks to be in good shape and seems to be distinctly more defined than in our last look at it. Seriously, what could be better than real landsharks? A giant robot ... maybe. And this video's got that too! Check out all the landsharkery just a couple inches up.%Gallery-64360%
IGN analyzes the GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony announcement
IGN took a microscope to yesterday's announcement and came up with some with some ideas on what to expect from Rockstar's latest GTA IV DLC episode. We already know about Tony's fall from financial grace in the main GTA IV campaign, so IGN surmises that this latest episode will focus on Tony's attempt to reclaim his lost riches through the exploits of his assistant, Luis.When The Lost and The Damned released, it included updates to Liberty City's LCHC and Liberty Rock stations, and IGN expects the same to happen for K109, Electrochoc and The Vibe, which hold Liberty's club-dwelling populace's interest. There's a good chance that The Ballad of Gay Tony will mostly take place in Algonquin, IGN writes. Considering that Lopez's Dominican friends operate out of Northern Algonquin, and Gay Tony's empire spanned most of the south eastern part of the island, it's a safe bet to assume Luis will be handling business in the area when the DLC releases this fall.
Cities XL dev blog explains integration of gameplay with social networking
Cities XL is a game in development at Monte Cristo Multimedia that's ... well, it's a little hard to explain, as it's quite different from the titles we typically cover at Massively. Essentially, Cities XL is an MMO variant of popular 'builder' games where players can create urban landscapes with all that entails, plus businesses and industries, even determining the makeup of city populations (age, education, wealth). The cities designed and established by players can become part of a global, interconnected system, giving rise to all sorts of interactions in this persistent world. (It should be noted that Cities XL can be played in single-player mode as well.)There's a Cities XL dev blog at IGN that's taken a look at some of the features that will be in place with the Planet Offer (fully interactive), namely how a user's profile page will integrate social networking into Cities XL play. The blog entry states: "You will be informed in real time of everything that is happening around your game."
Tunneling travel video appears for Champions Online
We told you about it in our expansive hands-on previews of the game, but now you can see it for yourself. The latest travel power video for Champions Online is here, and it's Tunneling! Now you can pop up behind your enemies Tremors-style, the maul them with whatever powers you've happened to choose.Just don't do it to us, because that's totally not cool.Burrowing, or Tunneling if you like, can be a lot of fun and is surprisingly faster than you'd think for a movement power that involves digging through the ground. Between this and swinging, we get the feeling that players are going to be dropping in and popping up all over the place come launch day in July. Check out the full video after the break.
Champions Online dev diary by comic book writer John Layman
The next major superhero MMO to be released will be Champions Online, based off of the pen-and-paper RPG system and in development at Cryptic Studios, slated to be released in mid-July 2009. To add even more superhero cred to the game, Cryptic has hired writers well-versed in the comics industry like John Layman, of both Marvel and Wildstorm fame. IGN is hosting a Champions Online developer diary written by Layman that focuses on his work at Cryptic Studios. Layman introduces what he does,"I'm the writer-guy for Champions Online, a comic book writer imported specifically to write a comic book themed game. And, just like writing comics, coming up with the right words, concepts, and plots is the very first part of a very long chain of work." He writes about the process of hashing out the best ideas with other Cryptic notables like Jack Emmert, Randy Mosiondz, and Brian Gilmore, and then working to tailor those concepts to 'comic book-ese' that works for Champions Online.
MadWorld places relationship between online hype and actual sales in doubt
Analytics firm OTX Research seems to already be making a name for itself after announcing intentions last month to track game sales. Speaking at the LA Games Conference, OTX's Nick Williams explained the surprisingly weak connection between strong online awareness of a game versus actual, hard sales numbers, citing Sega's recently released MadWorld as a striking example. Noting the game's top position among IGN.com's games with the "highest level of unique interest," MadWorld came in at a paltry number 41 using OTX's "GamePlan" metric, a system that measures "1,000 gamers on a weekly basis, tracking 400 games at any given time." This translates to a bleak eight percent of Wii owners having even heard of the title, much less purchasing it (that's .32 percent according to April's MadWorld sales data compared with the 20 million Wii owners in the US currently). Hmm, we wonder what that data would look like for Grand Theft Auto's recent foray onto Nintendo's massively popular handheld! It took an awful lot of numbers right there to explain an idea we've all quietly agreed upon for so long now -- hype and marketing in the "hardcore" gaming world doesn't necessarily equal copies moving at retail. Now, if you'll excuse us, we'll be over here playing BlazBlue.
Masthead Studios announces GNi as worldwide server host for Earthrise
Masthead Studios is a relative newcomer to the massively multiplayer online game industry and is presently developing the post-apocalyptic MMO Earthrise, a sandbox game where players will vie for control over finite resources in a large, open world. As players of another prominent sandbox MMO know very well, ensuring smooth operations in an unsharded game requires a substantial investment in server technology. To this end, Masthead Studios has partnered with server infrastructure provider GNi to host Earthrise. GNi's 'Infrastructure as a Service' (IaaS) offers "dedicated storage, network, and server capacity on a pay-as-you-grow model." With this week's announcement, Masthead Studios joins companies like Vivox and Frogster Interactive Pictures AG as a GNi client. [Via IGN]
Swinging travel powers and expansive cities in Champions Online
The ability to swing around has long been one of the most requested travel powers from many a caped player. And so it's with great joy that we announce this video showcasing the newest travel power in Champions Online, swinging! Now, ill themed adult-orientated jokes aside, this new video has really got us excited for the forthcoming launch of Cryptic's next game, because it give a brief glimpse of Millennium City's expansive scale.Actually, we'd be lying if we told you that the expansiveness of the city in the video wasn't more astonishing than the characters monkeying it up with their hook guns. Although speaking of hook guns, it'd be a nice comicbook classics nod if players were able to attack bad guys with said devices -- even though they were never meant to be used like that.Check out the entire video after the break.
