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Penny Arcade 3 shaves pennies for PAX, down to $3
In celebration of PAX, which is taking place this weekend, the price of Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 has been knocked down to $3 this week, two bucks off the usual price. You can grab it now on Steam.In other Rain-Slick news, the mobile version will be shown at PAX in space S4 of the South Lobby. The mobile version is headed to both iOS and Android this October. The Mac version is slated for October as well.
Jurassic Park: The Game promo Jeep deal causes dino-sized kerfuffle on Reddit
Yesterday, we received a flood of tips from Redditors and other folks urging us to report on a post at the community site, titled, "I let TellTale borrow my Jurassic Park Jeep and all I got was this lousy Dino-Damage." Written by Jurassic Park-themed Jeep Wrangler owner Kevin "Boomerjinks" Henry of the Jurassic Jeep group, he recounts the events that transpired upon arranging a deal with Telltale Games to use his vehicle for promotion at this past September's PAX, where the studio was showing attendees its upcoming Jurassic Park game. Henry alleges that a variety of communication issues transpired prior to shipment of the Jeep from his location in Colorado to the convention in Washington, and that upon arrival, the vehicle itself had been damaged (scuffs and chips, mostly). Though he says he was assured that he'd be compensated for the damages, the company apparently went dark on him after several exchanges in the weeks following PAX. So he took to Reddit, but we'd only heard one side of the story. But after a minor uproar ensued, Telltale head Kevin Bruner took to Reddit himself to air his company's side of things, even agreeing to pay the damages in full out of pocket immediately. While he says he doesn't like "the circumstances this is going down in," he'd rather move things along. "This way we won't need to hash this out publicly any longer." As Telltale has been going through the vehicle transport's insurance holder, things haven't been speeding along for Henry's Jeep fix, Bruner claims. Meanwhile, as a fallout from the initial report, the ex-Telltale employee who organized the Jeep deal with Henry has been virtually mobbed by angry Redditors -- one of which posted the former employee's name, which resulted in "83 phone calls (according to Google voice), 41 Facebook messages, and 19 emails." Also, Jurassic Park: The Game is out today, in case you were wondering. Update: Apparently Henry himself outed the former Telltale employee, according to this Reddit comment.
Firefall adds pets for you to cuddle... and kill
Just in case you thought Firefall was going to be nothing but guns, ammo, and models toting guns and ammo, Red 5 wants us to know that there's a softer side to the game for those who love fluff. Talking with Shacknews, Mark Kern revealed that the shooter MMO will include a pet system for grizzled combat veterans who can't bear to leave the base without the security of Rygel and Princess Pebbles. Of course, this being a red-blooded shooter, Firefall's pet system can't stop with extended grooming and cuddles. "We had had to do little things to actually make it interesting," Kern explained. "Not only can you get a pet, but we're thinking that there's actually an item you can buy in the store to load your gun with special ammunition so you actually shoot the other guy's pet." Red 5 will be hosting an upcoming promotion starting on Wednesday called Crystite Challenge that will give fans a chance to get into the beta and unlock a Penny Arcade "The Merch" pet. "The Merch is awesome because he's all about merchandising and he fits with our item-based theme," Kern said. Firefall is currently in beta and gearing up for a December launch. Curious onlookers would do well to check out Massively's hands-on impressions of the title from PAX.
Rusty Hearts celebrates the PAX experience with a testimonial video
You could sit here and read our opinions of Perfect World Entertainment's Rusty Hearts all day long, but it's not until you see the faces of those who just played the game as they talk about how much they loved it that you realize it might be something worth checking out. PWE recorded video testimonials from PAX attendees who just finished playing the game demo, showing off some true-to-life opinions of the game from those still riding high on the adrenaline from that famous Rusty Hearts action combat. "Rusty Hearts cuts all the bull crap out," one attendee claims, while several others are particularly excited about the game's gothic art style. If you'd like to check the game out for yourself, it's set to hit open beta on September 13th. Don't miss the PAX video right after the cut.
Monaco preview: Get in, get out, get paid
You know what? My friends and I are better thieves than George Clooney. Well, we are if Monaco is any indication. Sure, George may have all the charm and handsomeness, but if there's any one trait I look for in my friends, it's the appreciation of a good heist. And Monaco is all about stealing some stuff. The premise of Monaco is simple: Take your team into a heavily guarded building to steal a trophy, and get out without getting caught or killed. A retro feel, a top-down camera angle, and a simplified control scheme comprise its approach to getting some co-op good times going. Rather than implement an overly complex control scheme that requires a specific set of controls for each class, Monaco designer Andy Schatz has culled the controls down to a two-button system. Every action, like hacking a computer, breaking into a safe or unlocking the door to the escape car is done by running into the object for a couple of seconds. %Gallery-117834%
Mythic: Wrath of Heroes gets rid of 'all the boring crap' of WAR
Mythic is taking an interesting approach in promoting its new MOBA, Warhammer Online Wrath of Heroes -- it's throwing Warhammer Online under the bus. At the Wrath of Heroes reveal panel at PAX, the Mythic team talked up its new project as something that Heroes' parent game is not. The team found that people liked WAR but couldn't justify investing in it, so Mythic wanted to create an experience for them. The team took what it saw as one the more popular aspects of WAR -- the scenarios -- and modified them to pit three teams (six on each) against each other for quick, 15-minute gameplay sessions. On death, you can choose any hero in your arsenal so you can adjust to whatever your team needs. This game format allowed the team to strip away the parts of the game it saw as unnecessary. "We went, you know what? If you play the MMO, we give you all this cool equipment on your adventure, and it's a neat thing to do, but let's just get rid of the boring crap and give people cool [stuff] to wear," Paul Barnett said. Citing the accumulation of multiple -- and sometimes quite situational -- skills over the course of "748,000 hours of grinding," Barnett said that his team got rid of this approach by focusing on only five skills per hero in Wrath of Heroes. He thinks that the small incremental progress of skills and skill effects in Warhammer Online is "dull" and instead extolls Wrath of Heroes for picking the best skills, effects and armor so that players don't have to worry about getting all of them. You can watch the full reveal panel of Wrath of Heroes after the jump. [Thanks to Joris for the tip!]
SpyParty preview: Turing, eat your heart out
These days, multiplayer games are all about letting the player play the way that they want to. Shooters let you customize your loadouts, racers give you a selecton of cars. If it's online, it's all about standing back and letting players determine their experience. And Spy Party creator Chris Hecker couldn't care less.Spy Party, his multiplayer espionage game, demands that you play by its rules. It doesn't bend the rules, even in the slightest. Either you learn its complexities, or you lose. Every time. Guaranteed.%Gallery-117474%
Antichamber preview: Psycholudology
Trying to describe the hour I spent with Alexander Bruce's PAX 10 Finalist indie game, Antichamber, is going to be one of the most difficult descriptive feats I've ever attempted. I think that the big hang-up is that it's going to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people: For me, my time with the game was all about learning the obscure rules of a universe with no immediate context; a game about second, then third, then fourth-guessing my own actions until I found a solution I was able to walk away from with just a modicum of satisfaction. For the person who took up the demo after me, it was about moving forward as quickly he could, attempting to adhere to an entirely pointless 90-minute time limit while ignoring all the lessons the game had to teach. Here's the thing: I'm not entirely sure either of us was playing it wrong.
TERA podcast highlights convention news
Episode five of the official TERA podcast is in the can, and it's also available for your listening pleasure on the TERA website. The show finds En Masse community manager Evan "Scapes" Berman talking with producer Chris Hager and COO Patrick Wyatt for approximately 20 minutes. The subject? Convention season, of course, and the gang talks about everything from the TERA Gamescom demo to the preparation necessary to convey a certain message to members of the gaming media. The trio also mentions the challenges inherent in answering difficult questions on stage at a major convention, and Wyatt even chats briefly about his experiences working on Blizzard's seminal StarCraft RTS.
The MMO Report: Cybernetic Arm Replacement edition
Welcome to a very special PAX Prime 2011 edition of The MMO Report. Surely you've read all of Massively's PAX coverage (you have, haven't you?), but in case you somehow missed it, don't fear. The MMO Report is here to give you the skinny on the big MMO happenings at one of the country's largest gaming conventions. The show kicks things off with -- surprise! -- Guild Wars 2. Content Designer Mike Zadorojny talks about the new skill progression system and the removal of the energy mechanic, and also notes that closed beta is still on track to take place before the end of the year. Then it's on to Firefall, the new MMOFPS from Red 5 Studios. The open-world portion of the game was the newest addition to the game's PAX 2011 demo, though players also had the opportunity to try their hand at the game's competitive PvP. Funcom's The Secret World is up next with news on the game's large-scale persistent PvP. Small-scale PvP battlefields make an appearance as well in the form of Stonehenge, El Dorado, and Shambhala. Star Wars: The Old Republic rounds out the MMO selection with the game's Huttball and Alderaan PvP battlegrounds and the Eternity Vault endgame Operation. For the full video and all the juicy PAX 2011 MMO details, jump on past the cut.
Uber Entertainment explains Super Monday Night Combat's lessened lethality
Later this year or early next year, Uber Entertainment's going to try and thread a fairly dangerous needle. The studio, which saw success with its very first product, the XBLA and PC shooter Monday Night Combat, is trying to branch the franchise out into the increasingly populated free-to-play space. To do so successfully, it'll need to maintain its community's good will with some substantial -- but not too substantial -- changes. "Super Monday Night Combat is going to be the same basic world," Uber Entertainment creative director John Comes explained to us at PAX last week. "We still have the same kind of lightheartedness, with the announcer and the mascot -- that same happy, fast, punchy game." The development team won't leave the formula entirely untouched, however. "Some of the balance has changed," Comes added. "Mainly, the lethality has been lowered a bit, which we've found makes for more frantic fights."%Gallery-132035%
Firefall's PAX trailer could really use a lozenge
There's so much to fight on Firefall's planet: Indigenous creatures, invading aliens and, if the voice in this trailer is any indication, air full of particulate matter that can clog up your vocal folds. Need some water, dude?
Vessel preview: Don't forget to hydrate
You know how they say that water is the essence of life? In Vessel, water takes it one more step: It literally becomes life. Inventor Arkwright has invented what he calls Fluros, little creatures that attract any liquid around them and build them into a body. They're pretty great for doing work around his factory, especially because of their seemingly bottomless desire to step on buttons. Handily, Arkwright's entire factory seems to run on those little buttons. Relying on the little guys probably isn't the best idea, though. If Fantasia taught us anything, it's that employing vaguely magical automatons to do your dirty work always goes awry. Soon, the Fluros have taken over the factory and start wreaking havoc, breaking down a variety of large machines that the good inventor needs to keep things running smoothly. So, obviously, he must go on a 2D-platformer adventure to solve that not-so-little issue. %Gallery-132067%
Bethesda's Todd Howard not interested in an Elder Scrolls MMO
Whenever the subject of untapped RPG franchises that could make the jump to MMOs comes up, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series is almost always mentioned. After all, if Blizzard and BioWare made the jump, why not the folks behind Oblivion? In talking with our sister site Joystiq at PAX, Bethesda's Todd Howard fields the question with blunt honesty. "I like this kind of game better," he said. "You know, it's what most of us are into. I'm not really an MMO guy. I respect them, I look at them, but I don't play them. It feels more real to me when I'm the hero and it's crafted for that. A community aspect to it, I recognize a lot of people would want that in a game like this, but it changes the flavor for me. Of course, one man's feelings toward the genre aren't always enough to stave off corporate demands, but Howard says that isn't the case: "We can just do our thing, and it's kind of grown with each game. So there was no pressure from anybody above me to say 'Hey, you need to change this.'" That doesn't mean Bethesda will forever abstain from MMOs, however. Bethesda's parent company, ZeniMax Media, built an MMO customer support facility in Ireland earlier this year, an indication that online gaming may very well be in the company's future.
PAX Prime attendance grows to 70,000
Hey, PAX East? Sit down, we gotta talk. You know how we made a big deal about your 69,500 attendees earlier this year? Well, we don't want you to freak out, but your older brother PAX Prime has surpassed that figure, establishing the record for most attendees at a PAX. Look, don't be down, PAX East. We're a growing family with a third kid on the way, but there will be plenty of opportunity for you to prove yourself again. Chin up!
See SOL: Exodus' space battles in gameplay video
Now that we've got adventure games fairly well resuscitated (yes, we're taking all the credit) our next target is the space shooter. And no, we don't mean guys from different planets shooting at each other (that's already roughly 74 percent of the market). We want to get behind the throttle of our own ship, fly in any direction we please and, perhaps most importantly, make much larger capital ships explode by shooting exposed vents. SOL: Exodus, a downloadable space shooter coming to PC and (maybe) consoles from Seamless Entertainment, is doing its part to help us realize the dream. We got a look during PAX, and were hugely relieved to finally find a space sim that's not mired in the past. For starters, there's the "slide" mechanic, which lets you shoot in any direction and immediately redirect your ship without having to fight momentum or an unwieldy turning radius. Purists may complain, but it made the ship feel responsive in a way that most modern gamers would likely expect. SOL: Exodus also features a bit more interactivity than we're used to from the genre, such as the ability to hack into enemy defenses to help turn the tide of a seemingly hopeless fight. Here's hoping that Seamless' baby can be a similar turning point in our struggle to bring back the space opera.
Go Home Dinosaurs preview: Steak 'n' Shake
I learn something new every day. While playing the Go Home Dinosaurs PAX demo, I learned that even the most herbivorous of dinosaurs can't resist a nice, juicy steak. Also, little prehistorical mole creatures are the controllers and distributors of said steak, and they don't take too kindly to dinos attempting to crash their BBQ. Fortunately for them, dinosaurs aren't smart enough to stray from a straight path to get to those delicious smelling things. Yeah, Go Home Dinosaurs is a tower defense game where moles are trying to defend their BBQ from advancing hordes of pterodactyls. Excellent. Another thing I learned: Moles aren't terribly good at spacial management. They may be great at creating prehistoric turrets, lasers, and all kinds of general dinosaur-harming structures, but the concept of uniform sizes for those buildings is totally foreign to them. Like big, oddly shaped Tetris blocks, each of the weapons takes up a different shape on the board, each defensive building's location has to be carefully planned out to allow for future placements of those of different shapes. Making sure your laser fires down the longest stretch of dino path possible is tough when you have to think about where you'll place your meteor magnet next. That's right, a meteor magnet. How else will you make those dinos extinct? %Gallery-132208%
WildStar preview: Have it your way
If I were to ask you how you like to play your MMORPGs, you'd probably describe a perplexing predilection for one of the genre's cookie-cutter classes: "Oh, I'm a Mage-guy, definitely." Though NCSoft and Carbine's recently announced MMO Wildstar will allow you to fill that (or any other) professional archetype, they're taking a broader look at that question, not asking what type of character you prefer to be in-game but what type of player you prefer to be. The PAX Prime demo of Wildstar showed off some interesting innovations on the MMO formula, like fast-paced combat and an active dodge system that rewards you with bonus XP for your deft avoidance. The most promising aspect of the game, however, is that very core tenet: Wildstar rewards you for playing the game how you choose to play it. %Gallery-130856%
Todd Howard on Skyrim's worthwhile glitches, MMOs and when big is big enough
November 11 is fast approaching and that means that Bethesda Game Director/Executive Producer Todd Howard and company are putting the finishing touches on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. But with a game this massive, is there really such a thing as "finished"? How do you know? "I guess we just kind of know," Howard told us at PAX. "Content wise, we want to have a lot, and we want it to work well together. Mainly we're looking for a saturation of activity -- is there always something to do, without being overwhelmed. As the project goes on, we're finding areas where there isn't enough to do, and we keep adding. So the game always ends up a lot bigger than we anticipated.%Gallery-120207%
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: PAXflop
It's been anything but a quiet weekend in my neck of the woods. I'm currently writing this with no real ETA on when I'm going to have power back, which is a bit of an issue considering that my job sort of requires a functional internet connection and a computer to type and play things on. Also, there was a hurricane that sort of prompted that string of events, which made things all sorts of interesting and has led to a variety of interesting circumstances at home and abroad. In short, thank you, but I could really do without living in these particular interesting times. You know what was remarkably quiet, however? PAX Prime. OK, that's not true; there was a lot of interesting information to be seen on display over the course of the event, not the least of which being previews of WildStar, which only increased my enthusiasm for the title. But for me and my fellow City of Heroes fans, despite the game's staff's having a definite presence, there wasn't a whole lot to be said about the proceedings that I saw. (Admittedly, that may have something to do with the fact that, as mentioned, I'm kind of limited in my current ability to correspond with the outside world.) So what happened? When did City of Heroes fall off the radar?
