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Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions twin-sticks with you
Late last week, Activision teased the return of longtime developer and publisher Sierra Entertainment, which birthed series like King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest and Gabriel Knight. The resurrection of the Sierra brand was not only confirmed earlier this week, but brought with it the announcement of two new games: new entries in the King's Quest adventure series and Geometry Wars twin-stick shooter series. The latter is Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions, and will be the first game to launch under the "new Sierra indie label," the game's description reads. It follows the fast-paced trend set by series creator Bizarre Creations, picking up the spacey, shape-shooting action where it left off in 2008's Geometry Wars 2: Retro Evolved. It will include "full 3D action" with competitive online multiplayer, a revamped cooperative multiplayer mode and "dynamic and persistent progression." The game's single-player campaign features 50 challenges and over 10 battle modes, five of which are new to the series. The publisher also introduced screens of Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions, which does not have a determined release date or platforms just yet. [Image: Sierra]
Seminal game publisher Sierra returns from obscurity with 'Geometry Wars'
Ready to blast some pinwheels again? Hallowed '90s game publisher Sierra is back as an Activision subsidiary with an upcoming sequel to King's Quest and, yes, Geometry Wars. The latter game will be called Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions, and Venture Beat reports that Sierra is in talks with independent developers to produce new content as well. In case you've forgotten (or not played the mobile versions), Geometry Wars is about avoiding and blasting an ever-thickening pile of graphically-shaped enemies. It first came out on the original Xbox platform through Project Gotham Racing 2, while the sequel arrived on Xbox Live Arcade -- leaving Xbox One gamers in the lurch. There's no word on which platforms it'll hit when it arrives this Christmas, but Sierra did say that King's Quest will come to Xbox Live, Playstation Network and Steam in 2015 -- a good sign for Geometry Wars.
Old Sierra games coming to iPad as unofficial web apps
Sierra's old-school adventure games of the '80s bring back many memories of days where finding cheats and walk-throughs were hard to come by, and a binder of scribbled clues sat by my tiny monitor. Many of those same games have been ported to the web, and we're likely to see them made especially for the iPad soon. Martin Kool of sarien.net has made a hobby of porting many of Sierra's older adventure games to the web, and now he wants to make those same games work especially well on the iPad. Kool plans to make each title on its own landing page, where visitors can create web app icons on their iOS devices to each page, essentially giving them access to a full-blown, free Sierra game. Another cool aspect to these ported games is that Kool has added a multiplayer aspect to them. You could be walking around the Kingdom of Daventry and see another player completing the quests along with you! So far Sierra's parent company, Activision, has not submitted a cease and desist letter, but he won't fight them if it comes to that. Kool does not plan to make any money off his ports, and they will remain ad-free. [via Touch Arcade]
Aftereffects of the Activision-Blizzard merger
Unless something crazy happens, it seems that the Activision-Blizzard merger (which is really the Activision-Vivendi merger, actually) will go down without a problem -- shareholders are voting on it this week, so by next week we should see confirmation that Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft are under the same umbrella.Gamasutra has posted a nice long feature about what exactly that means, for both companies and for the rest of the industry. As we predicted, there probably won't be huge repercussions for either of the biggest companies involved -- both Activision and Blizzard will continue to go their own separate ways for now, sharing only a name among investors (Gamasutra even says the names on the game boxes won't change at all). The biggest impact will be on the little guys in between -- Activision's previous shareholders now have to answer to Vivendi (who will hold a majority stock in the company), and Viviendi's smaller division, the former glory of Sierra Games, will have to answer to Activision before publishing any of their titles.And of course the other big consequence we've seen so far is that Bobby Kotick apparently feels he knows everything there is to know about the MMO game. Sure. For now, though, it's business as usual for both Activision and Blizzard -- if there will be any change in either company because of the merger, we likely won't see it for a while.[via Blizzplanet]
