DeadSpace
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The original 'Dead Space' is free... on EA Origin
Beloved horror survival game Dead Space is now available completely free on PC. The 2008 sci-fi hit is the newest addition to EA's "On the House" offering, and as long as you grab it directly from Origin it's yours without charge, to play and keep forever. That said, it's not clear how long the promotion will run for, so you should probably download it sooner rather than later.
EA shuts down the studio behind 'Dead Space'
So much for hopes of a Dead Space sequel in the near future. EA is shutting down Visceral Games, the studio behind the Dead Space series, Battlefield Hardline and The Godfather. According to EA, the closure is the result of a decision to "pivot" Visceral's Star Wars title. It was intended as a linear, story-driven adventure (not surprising given the involvement of Uncharted director Amy Hennig), but player feedback led EA to decide that a it should be a "broader" game with "more variety and player agency." This included changing "central elements," EA added. To put it another way: the publisher wanted a game that was more, well, EA-like.
Recommended Reading: Video games and the issue of slavery
How Historical Games Integrate or Ignore Slavery Amanda Kerri, Rock Paper Shotgun Video games certainly don't claim to always offer a depiction of the "real world," but for those titles rooted in historical events, how the narrative addresses certain events is key. One of the issues those historical games have to wrestle with is how to address slavery. This piece from Rock Paper Shotgun takes a look at how games have integrated events or ignored them completely.
Playdate's Xbox 360 Halloween Horror: 'Dead Space' and 'Condemned'
Today on Playdate, we're facing our fears. Not of things that go bump in the night, but of industrial mining spaceships and rabid hobos. It's all in the name of good fun though! We're taking a trip back to check out some of the Xbox 360's best horror games this Halloween week with Dead Space and Condemned: Criminal Origins. Join myself and Sean Buckley for the scream-fest starting at 6PM Eastern / 3PM Pacific for two hours of survival horror here on this post, the Engadget Gaming homepage or Twitch.tv/joystiq if you'd like to make fun of Tim's shrill shouts of terror.
JXE Streams: 'Splatterhouse' makes a mess of Friday the 13th
Jason Vorhees' hockey mask in Friday the 13th was an accident. Special effects man Martin Jay Sadoff just happened to really like hockey and have a bag of old-school gear with him when the third movie was in production. As pop culture serendipity goes, the mask is a brilliant success: when Friday the 13th rolls around, it's impossible not to think of that chipped face guard. In turn, it's impossible not to think of pulpy horror and that infamous date when you see something that even sort of looks like the mask. No doubt that was the logic at Namco when it conceived Splatterhouse -- one of gaming's earliest gore-fests -- and its masked star. That's also why we're playing a whole lot of Splatterhouse for you on JXE Streams!
EVE Evolved: Getting ready for Rubicon
EVE Online's Rubicon expansion goes live in just two days on Tuesday, November 19th, introducing four brand-new personal deployable structures and revamping PvP across the board with a seemingly innocuous warp acceleration fix. The expansion represents the first step in new Senior Producer Andie Nordgren's plan to bring true player-run deep-space colonisation to EVE Online. The new Mobile Depot that can be placed anywhere in space is possibly the most sandboxy feature since the introduction of player-owned starbases back in 2004. Players have been coming up with plans for the device since its first announcement, but I think we'll see its true potential revealed in the coming weeks and months. If you've been saving up your Sisters of EVE loyalty points to get your hands on the faction's new exploration ships, be prepared to buy and build the blueprints as soon as the server comes up. These will be the first pirate faction ship blueprints that are available in high-security space, and a recent devblog confirmed that players have been collecting Sisters of EVE loyalty points like crazy lately in anticipation of the expansion, but those who get the built ships to market first will make an absolute killing. For the rest of us, getting ready for the expansion means planning where to set up a Mobile Depot for some quick profit-making enterprise or building a few small PvP ships to put the new warp speed mechanics to the test. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the best places to set up a Mobile Depot, re-consider the lure of low-security space, and propose adapting your PvP fleets to take advantage of the warp acceleration changes.
EVE Evolved: Ghost Sites and PvE goals
PvE in most MMOs revolves around killing hordes of NPCs for currency, XP, tokens, or loot, and EVE Online is no exception. Players can hunt for rare pirate ships in nullsec asteroid belts, farm Sansha incursions for ISK and loyalty points, or team up against Sleeper ships in dangerous wormhole space, but most prefer the safe and steady income of mission-running. Missions are essentially repeatable quests that can be spawned on request, providing an endless stream of bad guys to blow up in the comfort of high-security space. Completing a mission will earn you some ISK and a few hundred or thousand loyalty points, but most of the ISK in mission-running comes from the bounties on the NPCs spawned in the mission sites. Similar deadspace sites with better loot are also distributed randomly throughout the galaxy and can be tracked down using scanner probes. But what would happen if the NPCs in these sites were a dangerous and unexpected interference that could get you killed, rather than space piñatas ready to explode in a shower of ISK? This is a question CCP plans to test with the Rubicon expansion's upcoming Ghost Sites feature, which promises to introduce a whole new form of high-risk, high-reward PvE. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at EVE's upcoming ghost sites and explain why I think its goal-oriented approach to PvE should be adopted in other areas of the game.
Humble Bundle's Origin package offers up some of its biggest games yet
Humble Bundle has had a pretty good run with its game offerings so far, but its newest grouping of Origin titles provides some of its biggest names yet. Included in the bundle are Mirror's Edge, Medal of Honor, Dead Space, Dead Space 3, Crysis 2 Maximum Edition, and Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box (most of which are available on Steam). The games can all be purchased for $1, but paying over the average (currently $4.54) will also net you Battlefield 3 and The Sims 3 Starter Pack. Buying the bundle won't just score you some sweet games; you'll also be contributing to a few good causes, as Electronic Arts is donating its share of the proceeds to charities like the Human Rights Campaign, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the American Red Cross and the American Cancer Society. For more info, check out the video after the break or follow the Humble Bundle link below.
EVE Evolved: Strategic resources for everyone!
The past four EVE Online expansions have mostly focused on adding small features and overhauling old game mechanics and content that were beginning to show their age. Crucible delivered dozens of small but highly-requested features and gameplay improvements, and Inferno and Retribution continued with overhauls of several aging PvP systems. Even Odyssey contained mostly small features and revamps, its biggest gameplay features being a new hacking minigame and a streamlined scanning interface. It's been several years since EVE has received a truly massive and game-changing feature like wormholes or a sovereignty revamp, but that may all be about to change! CCP recently announced its intention to start reaching for big ideas again, but this time set over a more realistic timeframe. If everything goes according to plan, the next five years could see the introduction of player-built stargates and true deep space colonisation. I wrote about the potential of this concept last week and looked at some of the big features we'd need to make it a reality, but I didn't really delve into my personal favourite idea for a potential future expansion: New strategic resources and player-created deadspace complexes. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at how strategic resources could be used to get even individual players invested in something worth fighting for, and how player-created deadspace dungeons could be a great way to introduce them.
Rumor: Dante's Inferno and Dead Space dev may be working on a MOBA
If you were just thinking that the world needed another Massively Online Battle Arena (MOBA) based on a previous game IP, the team at Visceral Games may have read your mind. The Dead Space and Dante's Inferno dev studio has posted a handful of tell-tale job listings on the Gamasutra job boards that point to the development of a MOBA. Among these MOBA-esque positions are a game designer, a global community manager, and a character concept artist, all with experience or passion for the PC MOBA genre. As it stands, the connection between these job listings is only speculation, but the real question seems to be whether or not the studio is working on a MOBA for one of their existing IPs or an entirely new way to kill your friends in three-quarter overhead view with pre-made classes.
Easter App Store sale kicks off with deals from EA and Sega
It's Easter, and although that normally means stuffing your face with chocolate and a bit of a break, it also means it's time for another App Store fire-sale. Hot on the block this year is EA's impressive, console-quality, survival horror third-person shooter Dead Space for iPhone and iPad; it's been discounted from US$6.99 and $9.99 respectively to the absolute bargain price of $0.99. If you haven't checked out Dead Space yet, now is the time. But that's not all from EA mobile -- it's got a whole host of games on sale. For iPhone at $0.99: Monopoly Tetris Dead Space The Sims 3 Need for Speed Hot Pursuit NBA Jam Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Madden NFL '11 For iPad at $0.99: Dead Space Pictureka! Reckless Racing HD Command & Conquer Red Alert Sega's got a couple of games on sale as well, with ChuChu Rocket! HD down to $2.99, while Super Monkey Ball, SMB 2 and Altered Beast are all down to $0.99. Many other games and apps from all sorts of developers are also on sale this Easter weekend, so if you're after a new app or game to play with, now's the time to check and see what bargains you can pick up. If you've found an absolute steal worth noting, drop it in the comments and let your fellow TUAW readers know.
DARPA's next-gen wearable display: augmented-reality, holographic sunglasses
The US military seems to adore the idea of wearable displays, hence its continued efforts to make them a reality. We know it seems like just yesterday that DARPA tapped Lockheed Martin to build low-power, lightweight augmented-reality eyewear, and it was actually four full years ago when the wild and wonderous dream was to craft HMDs as small and light as "high-fashion sunglasses." Well, that dream lives on, this time with holograms: the lenscrafters at Vuzix just received a cool million to develop goggles that holographically overlay battlefield data on the wearer's vision. It all sounds very Dead Space (or, you know, like a Top Secret version of Recon-Zeal's Transcend goggles), promising realtime analysis of anything within sight. The company believes the finished product will be no more than 3mm thick and completely transparent when turned off. If all goes well, expect this to trickle down to consumers in short order; soon you'll have full "situational awareness" -- including relationship status -- of that mysterious stranger you've been eyeballing from across the room.
Lots of iPad games go on sale this weekend, likely more to come
iOS developers have realized that there will probably be a whole lot of iPad 2 apps sold this weekend (since there will be so many new iPad 2s wandering around), so they've dropped prices on quite a few iPhone apps. AppAdvice has a good list up -- EA's apps are in there, including Mirror's Edge and the recently released Dead Space, and Firemint's Flight Control HD is down to a buck this weekend. Minigore HD is also on sale for a dollar, definitely worth a purchase if you haven't grabbed it yet. Bulkypix is also putting most of its iPad games on sale, though that sale doesn't start until tomorrow morning. I doubt this is the last we'll see of these sales -- there's going to be a pretty big rush for the top apps lists in iTunes this weekend, as developers try to take advantage of the incoming flood of iPad 2 owners. The good news is that you, as an iPad 1 owner or someone lucky enough to get a shiny new iPad 2, will get to grab some great apps for cheap.
Kinect hack gets a Wiimote assist, stomps all over Dead Space 2
It's not the first time that a Kinect hack has incorporated a Wiimote, but this demonstration from YouTube user Kick755 is certainly one of the more impressive examples to date -- even if it's still not quite ready to fully replace a controller. As with similar hacks, this one relies on the FAAST emulator for the Kinect end of the equation and GlovePIE for the Wiimote, but it has one notable feature that the others lack: the ability to quite literally stomp on your enemies in Dead Space 2. See for yourself after the break.
TUAW's Daily App: Dead Space
Dead Space is already known as a high-quality title on both consoles and PC, and the sequel just arrived this week to play through. (Though I'm a fan of the series and was even able to play a few preview builds of the game, I haven't had time to play the actual game because of Macworld Expo this week.) But along with the full title, EA has also had its Iron Monkey Studio create and release a Dead Space iOS tie-in, and it's a pretty solid experience. Rather than just rehash the console series, the game is an all-new experience in the Dead Space universe, sporting a pretty impressive recreation of the original game's limb-severing mechanics and horror-based sci-fi setting. You play as a character named "Vandal," a member of the freaky Church of Unitology in the series, who is working on a little sabotage when things go horribly wrong and the series trademark Necromorph baddies start to appear. Just like the full game, the controls are excellent, and while the graphics don't quite scale to the same resolution, they're more than serviceable. The iOS game does a really amazing job of recreating the feel of the full experience. It's not quite as inventive or polished as the full release, but the story especially does a nice job of carrying you right through the game. The game sells for US$6.99 on the iPhone and $9.99 on the iPad, which is quite cheap when you consider what the console versions cost. I should probably say as well that this is definitely a mature game -- while the player death animations aren't quite as gory or detailed as what I've seen in the full title, there are still lots of limbs everywhere and scary moments to experience. The game also offers some microtransactions for power-up items, though the experience is still full-featured without them. And sadly, there's no Game Center integration at all -- this is very much a standalone title. Still, it's an excellent download for fans of the series, and even those who haven't played Dead Space but are still interested in the horror genre should get a kick out of it.
EVE Evolved: Mission-running - the basics
Agent missions are one of EVE Online's most popular pastimes. While EVE is most often lauded for its open-ended gameplay, player-determined markets and PvP action, a significant portion of the game's players use missions as their primary income source. There is something comforting about missions that seems to draw players in. For many, running missions and upgrading their ship with the ISK becomes the focus of their achievements and their primary measure of progress. The ability of mission-running to provide a direct translation of effort into a stable ISK income offers us a reassuringly linear work-to-reward scheme in a relatively risk-free environment. Missions and exploration are EVE's primary PvE experiences and new missions are released with each major expansion to help keep the game fresh for casual players. There are even several epic mission arcs planned for the future, long sequences of storyboarded missions much like the quest chains you might find in other MMOs. In this multi-part guide, I will thoroughly examine the profession of mission-running, from the basics to ship fittings and finally some tips and tricks for maximising your performance. In this first part of the guide, I look at the basics of mission-running from mission types and rewards to agent standings and how to find the best agent for you.
One Shots: Minmatar stargate
Known as the tribal race in EVE Online, the Minmatar have spent years being ground under the heels of the Amarr empire. According to lore, they have been enslaved by them, and those who have escaped or evaded capture banded together in a tribal affiliation. Their architecture, while just as useful as that of other races, tends to be towards the ragged-looking, angular and sharp side, as if it was put together on the run, or out of found parts. Today's EVE Online One Shots was sent in to us by Sered Woolahra, who captured a shot of this decrepit-looking Minmatar stargate while flying around deadspace in New Eden. Have you found an interesting set of ruins, or near-ruins, in your favorite MMO? If so, we'd love to see them. Just email them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name and the game it's from. A description is always welcome, but not required. We'll post them out here and give you the credit for sending the screenshot in.%Gallery-9798%
Empyrean Age factional warfare exploit identified
Factional warfare in EVE Online, by design, ensures that ships of a much greater ship class cannot engage smaller ships in certain deadspace mission pockets. If you and your fellow militia pilots are in a zone designated for nothing larger than frigates, for instance, you shouldn't find yourself getting locked by battleships fighting for your rival militia. Apparently this has started to occur; some players have found that the jump gates to these zones don't actually prevent them from warping in ships of a magnitude not allowed in such areas. GM Grimmi had this to say at the EVE Online site: "Flying bigger class ships than allowed by the jump gates to Factional Warfare complexes has been classed as an exploit. If you are found doing this we will be forced to take in-game actions as abusing game mechanics is not allowed." So there you go. You might still be able to get in there with something obscenely overpowered and pop frigates like balloons, but you'll say goodbye to your account over it.
