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Some of the best Batman games are coming to EA's Origin Access on PC
Homegrown games on EA's Origin Access service are getting some company. Starting today, your subscription will also include, erm, access to titles from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment including a trio of the Batman: Arkham games. Unfortunately we can't trade Arkham: Origins for Arkham Knight (above), but that's just how things work out at the moment.
Everything you missed from 'The Game Awards'
Each year that Geoff Keighley's Game Awards distances itself from its SpikeTV past, it gets subsequently less embarrassing to watch. And without a doubt, The Game Awards 2016 was the best show yet. Couldn't watch the stream? Well, that's too bad, but we've got you covered. Below you'll find a list of the night's big winners in addition to all the trailers that made their world premieres onstage at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. There were a few emotional moments onstage as well, including Ryan Green accepting the Games for Impact award for That Dragon, Cancer; Keighley presenting his friend Hideo Kojima with a statue for Industry Icon and Nolan North throwing striking voice actors under the bus during his acceptance speech for best performance.
'Bulletstorm' is back, baby
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition takes the blood, brutality and bone-shattering moves from the original 2011 shooter and beefs it all up on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, due to land on April 7th, 2017. The remastered game features high-resolution textures, remastered audio and smoother frame rates, and it'll run in up to 4K resolution on the PS4 Pro and PC. Full Clip Edition also comes with every piece of Bulletstorm DLC in existence, plus some new content.
Epic Games is the latest hacking victim
Not even a chainsaw bayonette (or the stealthy gent up above) could stop Epic Games from falling prey to hackers. The Unreal Engine-maker sent emails to members of its forums announcing that unauthorized access to usernames, email addresses, passwords and birthdates may have been accessed by an intruder. From the sounds of it, the only channels affected were related to Bulletstorm, Gears of War, Infinity Blade, UDK, and older Unreal Tournament titles.
Bulletstorm disappears from Steam
2011 shooter Bulletstorm is no longer available on Steam, having disappeared from the marketplace earlier in the week. No reason has been given for the game's removal and we've reached out to publisher EA and co-developer Epic Games for comment, but suspicions are it's linked to Games for Windows Live. It's believed (but not yet confirmed) GFWL will be discontinued on July 1, and without an update that could make Bulletstorm one of a number of unplayable PC games. The game remains available on Origin at the time of writing, but that version also uses GFWL. Co-developed by Epic Games and People Can Fly, now Epic Games Poland, Bulletstorm is a first-person shooter romp in which players perform Skillshot murders with style, finesse, and variety to rack up high scores. It may sound artful and it's definitely a blast to play, but high culture it ain't. To remind you of some of the Skillshot names: Rear Entry, Nutcracker, Assplosion, and Meat Fountain. And those are just the Skillshots... [Image: EA]
The Astronauts and Ethan Carter steer away from 'mammoth-sized' games
The Astronauts are working on an eerie, macabre, non-combat game called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and while we're still not sure exactly what it is, one thing is certain – it's not AAA. After founding People Can Fly, working on Bulletstorm and Gears of War, and leaving to start an indie studio, designer Adrian Chmielarz says AAA games have lost their appeal."We're no longer excited by mammoth-sized games," Chmielarz tells Games Industry International. "We're still very interested in high quality, but now and in the future we want to focus on smaller projects."The Vanishing of Ethan Carter will involve death and murder, but won't feature any shooting. It's a game of discovery, similar to Dear Esther, but with more corpses, as Chmielarz describes. Horror is thriving on the indie scene, he says, and he hopes Ethan Carter shows that video games can offer a broader range of experiences. But if no one understands this approach and the game bombs, The Astronauts may need to come back to Earth."If we don't slip, we'll have just enough money for this first project, and then it's sink or float," Chmielarz says. "Kickstarter was tempting, sure, whether we like it or not it's a great marketing tool and gives your project that extra visibility boost. But we think that Kickstarter should only be used by those studios for which there's just no other way without losing their freedom. We're just old-fashioned this way."The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is due out on PC this year.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter will be combat-free, focus on exploration
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is the recently announced (and kind of creepy) new game from creative lead Adrian Chmielarz, formerly of People Can Fly, where he worked on violence-ridden games like Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgement. But while those games celebrated a proliferation of firearms, Chmielarz says his new title will be quite the opposite: There won't be any shooting at all.There will be some death, however. "Take Dear Esther, add gameplay, murder and corpses," Chmielarz said to Eurogamer this week. "That's the closest to what The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is." Dear Esther was a first person exploration game more than anything, but Chmielarz added to expect slightly more interactivity in the new title. Players will play as a detective (presumably researching the titular mystery), and will find clues as the game goes on. Chmielarz said that "the focus is not on mind bending puzzles, but on unsettling discoveries."He also said he was considering supporting the Oculus Rift, and other 3D displays and devices. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is set to launch on the PC later this year.
Cliff Bleszinski quits Epic Games, leaves us with an Unreal feeling
Fall must be the season for sea changes in the game industry. Just weeks after BioWare's founders retired, key Epic Games veteran and Design Director Cliff Bleszinski (known to many as just CliffyB) is hanging up his hat. He simply describes it as taking a "much needed break," which makes sense when you see his development experience: he joined Epic's crew with Dare to Dream Volume One in 1993 and has nurtured virtually every major (and often minor) game franchise at the company since, including the Jazz Jackrabbit platformers, untold numbers of games in the Unreal line and most recently the Gears of War series. Bleszinski hasn't said where he's headed next, although it's hard to imagine him switching professions like the two BioWare doctors -- for many, he's synonymous with certain eras of first- and third-person shooters. Wherever he goes, we wish him the best of success.
Faux PS4 built based on rumored specs, gets rumored results
The fine people at Official PlayStation Magazine UK trust the PlayStation 4 spec rumors enough to build the entire next-gen console with the assumed parts, which are all off-the-shelf PC pieces. Rumors have the PS4 using an AMD A8 3850 processor and AMD Radeon HD 7670 graphics card, the latter of which is identical to a mid-range, year-old AMD graphics card, the HD 6670. The processor is a "cheap" CPU solution, OPM writes.With that stellar introduction, OPM tested its fake PS4 against an Intel i7 2700K with Just Cause 2, and against the PS3 with Bulletstorm and Skyrim. OPM tracked rendering and frame-rate benchmarks for each system, and was underwhelmed with the results. Just Cause 2 was clocked at 21 frames per second, and the other two stuck around 30, but with barely noticeable graphics improvements from the PS3 version.Again, these are only the rumored PS4 specs, and simply duct-taping them all together and popping in a game doesn't equate a true, finished console. Techradar's components editor Dave James offered some insight into OPM's test: "Sadly just benchmarking the relevant PC components in the current crop of Windows-compatible games wont give you much of an idea how a PS4 utilising those components would actually perform."Coding on closed-platform devices, like consoles, means you can squeeze every last drop of performance out of the hardware because you know that every one of those devices will be exactly the same."Sony may use newer versions of the graphics card and processor as well, James said. The moral of this story, then: Rumors are rumors. Image credit: OPM
Epic considered Bulletstorm sequel, but found project that's a 'better fit' for People Can Fly
During a post-panel interview at PAX East, Epic Games president Mike Capps admitted he thought about letting People Can Fly loose on a Bulletstorm sequel. He even admitted that there had been some "initial development" completed on a sequel."We thought a lot about a sequel, and had done some initial development on it, but we found a project that we thought was a better fit for People Can Fly," Capps told Gamespot. "We haven't announced that yet, but we will be announcing it pretty soon." He may be referring to the new PC-exclusive title that Cliff Bleszinski revealed was in development.In regards to the possibility of a sequel, Capps said he'd have no problem producing a second Bulletstorm game. "I'd love to go back [to Bulletstorm]," he said. "I think there's more to do with Bulletstorm. Heck, it kind of ended wanting more. I'd love to see another project, but right now we don't have anything to talk about."
Amazon offering dramatic discounts on digital EA games starting this Sunday
Amazon doesn't care for your silly stack of unplayed, unopened games -- it simply wants to trick you into buying more with a variety of impressive deals, albeit on games that exist only in the digital realm. Starting this coming Sunday (the 15th) and running through the end of the week (the 21st), individual EA titles will be offered day by day at ridiculously discounted prices: Bulletstorm and Dead Space 2 for $7 a pop, for instance. The daily itemized list is just after the break, should you be preparing for yet another (admittedly minor) assault on your bank account in the effort to catch up on 2011's best games. Might we suggest conquering the concept of time scarcity first?
Best of the Rest: Arthur's picks of 2011
Battlefield 3 I love Battlefield 3. I love it almost as much as it seems to hate its players. At least, that's the way it feels sometimes, trying to get into a game, trying to get correctly squaded up, trying to find a server with room, having to use a server browser on consoles in 2011, downloading 2 GIGABYTE patches ... y u no luv me, BF3? But when it does love me, it loves me so well ... and there I go, into that cycle of abuse again.
Best of the Rest: Dave's picks of 2011
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP This masterpiece is 98 percent of the reason I bought an iPad. Okay, maybe not quite -- it's more like 99 percent -- but Sword & Sworcery is a puzzle so perfect in its assembly, I haven't fully recovered. I'm sad I won't ever again experience the drive for discovery I felt the first time I was thrust into its picturesque locales. At the same time, I'm grateful I could spin that vinyl so long ago and step into another world.
Bulletstorm devs shocked by how much swearing was in their own game
The October issue of Game Developer's magazine features a postmortem on foul-mouthed shooter Bulletstorm, which includes one of the greatest anecdotes on cross-cultural development ever. If you've ever had a foreign friend just learning how to swear in your native tongue, you can totally see how Polish developer People Can Fly fell into a snare of its own creation and made a terrible mistake. "Do you know any swear word in a foreign language? German, French, Polish? When you say it out loud, no biggie, right? Not a problem to use it during a family dinner, I assume?" Adrian Chmielarz, creative director at People Can Fly told the magazine. He explains the swearing in Bulletstorm was just "exotic and fun" to them, and publisher Epic let the studio run with it, not realizing that they'd gone beyond their own intentions. The developer didn't realize the power of the words. "It was only at the end of the development," Chmielarz remarks. "When I read the Polish translation of the game, that I realized how dirty we were. I swear a lot. A LOT. And yet still I ... kind of blushed."
Amazon celebrates PS3 price drop with discounted games
The temptation was just too much. Even with the car payment, the mortgage, and the hospital bills from having your squeedlyspooch removed, you still couldn't resist dropping the tantalizingly reasonable 250 clams for a new PlayStation 3. And who can blame you? We went out and bought a second PS3 that we have absolutely no use for, it was that enticing of a proposition. But now that you've got the system, these tough economic times have left you with very little money for actual games. What's a gamer like you to do? You can't even sell your squeedlyspooch on the black market. Thankfully, Amazon has your back, as they have both recognized and seized the opportunity to get that skrill provide valuable savings by shoveling a big ol' pile of discounted PS3 titles in your face. The sale is an eclectic mix, to be certain: Bulletstorm and Def Jam Rapstar aren't often mentioned in the same sentence, for instance, and while some titles may be better than others, this still seems like a good way to get some use out of your new console.
Weekend Sale Roundup: Origin and Direct2Drive
For a lot of people, Friday means pay-day, which means a weekend full of extravagant spending: a little boutique shopping, perhaps a night at da club, etc. If you're like us though, and the majority of your pay checks are followed by staying in rather than going out, fear not. Huge weekend sales mean you can still feel like a big spender without having to blow an entire check, all from the comfort of your own home. Origin's $5 PC offerings are back, along with a slew of fairly-recent console titles like Dead Space 2 and Portal 2 for 40 percent off. Both sales run until August 9, and every console game purchased comes with a complimentary PC copy of Need for Speed Shift. Direct2Drive, not to be left out of the fun, has both Bulletstorm and Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition marked down to $11.95 a piece. No sale expiration date is listed for either title, which could mean that both are ending right this very second, the thought of which instills a primal fear directly into the shopping cortex of your brain.
Bulletstorm worth making despite not being profitable, says Epic
Speaking with Kotaku, Epic President Mike Capps lamented Bulletstorm's financial performance, saying that the title "didn't make money for us." However, despite its relatively poor sales, Capps implies that the game was still worth making, and that Epic-owned developer People Can Fly is more to the studio than a content farm for the Gears of War series. "The next thing we do with People Can Fly will be great," he said. We loved Bulletstorm, so it's good to hear that lackluster figures in the consumer sector haven't blinded Epic to the FPS's stellar critical reception. Now that we think about it, a lot of games we've liked lately have been selling poorly. Maybe Joystiq is cursed? Maybe we shouldn't have stolen that gypsy's ice-cream. Or defiled that mummy's tomb. Or built our headquarters over this ancient burial mound. Whatever, this monkey's paw we got at that frogurt place should take care of it.
Bulletstorm 'Gun Sonata' DLC out now on PC
Having been available on consoles since mid-April, the Bulletstorm "Gun Sonata" is now finally available on PC. The meat of the DLC is comprised of three Anarchy mode maps: Sewers of Stygia, Hotel Elysium and Villa. The pack also includes two new Echo mode maps, Crash Site and Guns of Stygia. Gun Sonata can be purchased for $10.
StarCraft 2 headlines game-related Lightning Deals on Amazon
It's time once again to save on a seemingly random selection of nine games -- the Amazon Gold Box is loaded with game deals today. The Deal of the Day is Starcraft 2 for $39.99, but if that's not the craft you're after, you can also pick up the World of Warcraft Battle Chest right now (until 11AM EST, at least) for $18. Hints for upcoming deals suggest that savings for Dragon Age and Kingdom Hearts games are on the way, along with Bulletstorm. Find the full schedule, with hints, after the break.
PSA: Gears of War 3 beta available now to Bulletstorm 'Epic Edition' owners
Those jerks in the press (and those other jerks who won codes from us) aren't the only ones who get to enjoy the Gears of War 3 beta anymore. You too can be a jerk (and help fine-tune the multiplayer of a major game!) if you picked up the "Epic Edition" of Bulletstorm. The beta is open to Bulletstorm buyers today, and will open even further, to those who pre-ordered Gears 3 at Gamestop, on April 25. It will run through May 15.
