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PlayStation All-Stars, Sportsfriends free on PS Plus next month
Sony revealed next month's PlayStation Plus lineup, announcing that subscribers will get free access to PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Sportsfriends, Velocity 2X, and other featured games throughout the month of September. Starting September 2, PlayStation 4 owners can download Futurlab's hybrid shooter-platformer Velocity 2X and Die Gute Fabrik's competitive multiplayer party game compilation Sportsfriends free of charge. PlayStation 3 members receive copies of the Super Smash Bros.-like mascot brawler PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and dragon-riding multiplayer action game Hoard, while PS Vita players can expect to see Hello Games' motorbike stunt sim Joe Danger and Llamasoft's Tempest variant TxK. [Video: Sony]
Share keys and other small items with Hoard's mini lockers
Everyone knows the ol' key-under-the-rock trick for hiding your spare keys for guests, but it's not exactly a secure method. Still, sometimes it's preferable to the scheduling nightmare of arranging when and where to hand them off. Not so if Hoard has its way, however. Describing itself as a local drop box, Hoard is essentially like Amazon's delivery lockers, except for your own stuff. Here's how it works: You use the app to find the closest "hoard spot" to you and get the code for a tiny locker box, as seen above. You deposit the keys in the appropriate locale, send a confirmation to your guest, and then he or she will use the same code to retrieve them (bearing in mind the code is only good for 48 hours). They can also use the same method to hand the keys back to you.
The Daily Grind: Do you hoard in-game money?
I will never be a rich man in real life. My only interest in money is in spending it, generally on whatever game is offering the cutest in-game hats at any given moment. In games, however, I am absolutely loaded. I carefully conserve my money, spending only when absolutely necessary, and by the time I reach the level cap, I'm already fairly well-off. My bankroll in Final Fantasy XIV is enormous, my wallet overflows with credits in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and if I ever go back to World of Warcraft, it will involve enough gold to swim in, Scrooge McDuck-style. There's rarely a reason to hoard cash, of course. It doesn't convey any advantages aside from allowing you to make enormous impulse purchases. In many games, it's not going to help you really kit out your character, and you don't need to be flush with cash to cover mandatory expenses like travel and repairs. But sometimes it's just nice to know that even if you're subsisting on a diet of instant noodles and water, your character is part of the one percent. So do you hoard in-game money? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Canadian Indie Bundle on Steam: Superbrothers, Shanks and more
Our brothers and sisters in The Great White North are getting some time in the spotlight today with a new bundle on Steam. The Canadian Indie Bundle packages together games from Klei Entertainment, Capybara Games, Gaslamp Games and more for $14.99.Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, Shank and Shank 2 highlight this Canadian Indie Bundle, joined by Space Pirates and Zombies, Waveform, Hoard, Dungeons of Dredmor and Capsized. Many of the games in the bundle offer SteamPlay between Windows and Mac OSX.
Meet LittleBigPlanet Karting's antagonists, 'The Hoard'
Apparently, after the events of LittleBigPlanet 2, mysterious beings from far away lands arrived on Craftworld and began hoarding all of the world's most valuable treasures, with no other motivation than to be in possession of them. Somehow, this all translates to go-kart racing.
The Daily Grind: Are you an MMO hoarder?
My guildies will tell you I'm a little bit OCD when it comes to my in-game MMO organization. I keep a pristine inventory, bank box, and house, assuming the game offers these features. I simply cannot log out of a game without emptying my mailbox, selling off junk loot, and making sure every stack of ore is just so. Other players game as if every MMO were an episode of Hoarders. We're not talking insects and pizza boxes here, but quest items from three expansions ago aren't out of the question ("maybe I'll use it for RP?"). In a way, I'm even a little bit jealous of these laissez faire folk, and I wonder whether they waste more time searching through their messy inventories than I do organizing mine obsessively. What about you -- are you an MMO hoarder? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Final Steam Sale of 2011 predicts zombie apocalypse, crime in 2012
The Steam Holiday Sale doesn't stop for anyone or anything -- not the end of a year, an era or the world -- and today, New Year's Eve 2011, is no different. The 13th day of the Steam Holiday Sale offers 75 percent off L.A. Noire, Bit.Trip Runner, the Hitman franchise, Magicka, both BioShocks, Hoard, GRID and the Counter-Strike series, and more titles at various other deduction rates. Check out all the deals before the year and our life as we know it ends.
Limbo, PixelJunk Shooter 2 top best-selling PSN indie lists for 2011
The PlayStation Blog has posted PSN's top-selling indie games of 2011, with Limbo and PixelJunk Shooter 2 topping the third-party self-published and Sony-published lists, respectively. Big Sandwich Games' Hoard flies above the list of indies sponsored by Sony's Pub Fund. Asked if the lists are skewed by free PlayStation Plus or "Welcome Back" content, a Sony representative told Joystiq, "The list includes all paid downloads, including Plus, but excludes free Plus content." Head on over to the PlayStation Blog for the lists of the best-selling PSN indies of the year.
PSN Tuesday: Swarm, Hoard and Castlevania: LoS Reverie DLC
PSN delivers another week of interesting downloadable titles with PS3's Swarm and PSP's Hoard. If you haven't checked out the demo from last week's PSN exclusive Slam Bolt Scrappers, that's definitely worth taking for a test drive. For something with a bit more machismo, the demo for WWE All Stars is available, along with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow's "Reverie" DLC. Konami kinda just snuck that release in this week for the States, but it should be available in Europe on March 30. There's plenty more to peruse in the full update after the break. Choose your platform to view the corresponding release list: (Note: Continue past the break to view both release lists.) %Gallery-118218%
Hoard coming to PC and Mac via Steam on April 4
Big Sandwich Games' underrated strategy/RPG Hoard has added another platform to its growing stash -- it's due out on the PSP later this month, and now the game is also coming to PC and Mac via a Steam release dated for April 4. Its price is set at $9.99, but starting March 21, it'll be available for pre-sale at 25% off, or you can buy a four-pack for you and three friends and get the last copy free. In addition to the standard features, the Steam release will also boast a Night Mode, a new Winter tile set and new maps to play with. And since the game is being released with Steam Play, buyers will have access to both PC and Mac versions, and players across both platforms will be able to play with each other online. Hoard's a great game that didn't really find the audience it deserved, so maybe a big Steam release will help bring the gold home.%Gallery-94606%
11 PSN games discounted by 50% tomorrow
Tomorrow's PSN update will be notable for what it adds to the PlayStation Store, though you may be a little fonder of what it's set to remove: fifty percent from the price of 11 games in an "11 for 2011" sale. Among the discounted games are Double's Fine enchanting Costume Quest for $7.49, hypnotic brick breaker Shatter for $3.99 (its excellent soundtrack is also discounted to $2.99), and Hoard for $7.49 -- a fitting saving for a dragon looking to amass a boast-worthy pile of presents and a roast-worthy mass of peasants. Sony has also included other well-received games like Swords and Soldiers, Tumble and Space Invaders Infinity Gene in the sale (valid in the US, Canada and Mexico through January 31). Have a peek at the full list after the break. Warning: Peggle is in there too.
Hoard patch to include text fixes and free map, DLC on the way
Big Sandwich Games already promised us a patch was coming to fix Hoard's text size issue, but over on the official site, it's revealed even more goodies coming in the same update. In addition to the text size fix, there will be a new option to restart the game both on the pause menu and the game over screen, allowing players to more quickly replay a map rather than having to go back through the options. There will also be a persistent multiplayer lobby (so you won't have to invite friends after every match), and there's a brand new Hoard mode map included in the patch for free. Big Sandwich also promises that DLC is forthcoming, but we don't get much more than a hint as to what it might be, or when either it or the patch might be out. Hoard is a good game hidden in an unfortunate UI (as we said in the review) and these fixes will definitely make some of the frustrations a little easier to deal with.
Hoard patch to fix small text size issue
We really liked Hoard, Big Sandwich Games' unique dragony RTS/RPG mashup. What we didn't like, however, was the game's incredibly small text size. In our review, we said that the developers "should have known better than to make the text that small." Apparently, Tyler Sigman, designer of Hoard, agrees, telling us that, "it was a bit of an oversight on our part that came from too many hours sitting right next to our development TVs." Thankfully, the team is already at work on a quick fix. "You'll be happy to know we are working on a patch which includes increasing the text size," Sigman added.
Hoard review: Go for the gold
Have you ever heard of Narbacular Drop? It's a simple little proof-of-concept game created as a senior project by a group of kids at DigiPen. It's actually still available to download for free -- the graphics aren't much to see, the story is a cliche (you play a schlub trying to rescue a princess from a demon), and the FPS-style controls aren't all that well-tuned. The game is almost a mess, save for one amazing gameplay element: you can "shoot" door-like portals onto any wall in the game, and then move between those at will. If you haven't already heard this story: Narbacular Drop was the student project that was later funded by Valve and turned into one of the best games of the past decade, Portal. Hoard reminds me a lot of Narbacular Drop -- the graphics are kind of dull-looking, the controls are pretty basic and somewhat clumsy, and there's almost no story at all, just a few sets of game modes and maps. But there is a sparkling gem of gameplay to be found here. %Gallery-94606%
Hoard terrorizes villagers on PSN November 2
Hoard, the twin-stick, dragon-riding shooter from Big Sandwich Games, is set to land on PSN starting November 2. As the name implies, Hoard has players guiding their dragons over the countryside destroying crops, distressing damsels and snatching cattle in order to rack up the most precious loot. After all, what's a dragon without a massive pile of treasure to sleep on? The game will be available for $14.99 and includes 35 maps and offers offline or online co-op for four players.
Breakfast Topic: Are you a hoarder?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. It began innocently enough. My first toon was a druid who, like all druids, started collecting off sets. As the soulbound epics began to pile up, I rolled a bank alt to store the herbs and other sundry BoE items she amassed. And then I started collecting alts. And professions. And materials to level just about anything you could imagine, from reputation to first aid. Before I could intervene, the bank alt formed her own guild simply to manage the inventory. On impulse one day, I decided the hoarding was too much. How many Bone Fragments does anyone really need, after all? Over the next few weeks, I auctioned off every item not directly related to profitable endgame crafting, making a substantial amount of gold in the process. There was order and storage and sanity -- until the turtle mount obsession kicked in. Maybe it's just me, but I'm incapable of vendoring potentially useful materials. Potions of Speed sell nicely, but not as quickly as the aptly named Pygmy Suckerfish float in, and a thousand hours of Guru's Elixir seems a tad excessive even for nine alts. Do you too have a hoarding problem? Glacial Bags across the board filled with complete tier sets from every level? Rare materials of dubious value looted while getting Loremaster? Stacks of epic gems you can't auction off rapidly enough? Fel Armaments in case someday you might want to become exalted with Aldor? Rows of Northsea Pearls you have no idea what to do with? Am I really the only person whose fifth guild bank tab is given over to something as questionable as Pygmy Oil?
Hoard coming to PAX, bringing four-player online/offline co-op with it
We never did see Hoard in action at E3, but that's okay, because we'll have another chance next week at PAX -- Sony's official blog confirms that the dragon-based dual-stick shooter will be playable on the floor of the convention. Big Sandwich Games will be showing the title off in style, with four-player co-op added to the Treasure, Survival and Princess Rush modes already announced. There will also be a trailer released right before the event, so we'll keep an eye out for that. Big Sandwich is going to have to make with the information about this one, and fast -- it's scheduled for a PSN release (for both PS3 and PSP) sometime in September. Not that hearing a game is "about dragons" is bad, but we'd like to know a little more than that.
HOARD: dragons meet dual-stick shooting on PSN
We're not sure if HOARD is an acronym for anything ("HD Online Ancient Raging Dragons?") but we do know that it's the name of Big Sandwich Games' just-announced dual-stick shooter for PSN. The top-down, 2.5D game will have players controlling dragons as they attempt to rack up a high score by destroying crops, stealing livestock, kidnapping princesses ... you know, the usual dragon-y shenanigans. Its developer notes that the game takes place in "a living kingdom that grows around you," and will support two-player co-op both online and off. No release date yet, but the game will be playable at E3 next week. We'll bring you impressions then. %Gallery-94606%
Nintendo's Harrison denies Wii hoarding accusation
George Harrison, Nintendo's senior vice president of marketing, apparently didn't appreciate the accusation from Gamestop COO Dan DeMatteo that Nintendo was strategically waiting until the start of the new fiscal year to ship out more Wiis. He countered with something that seems a lot less corporate cloak-and-dagger, and a lot more common sense: Nintendo is, in fact, selling a whole lot of Wiis in three regions, and that is why there's a perceived shortage.Harrison went on to speculate that DeMatteo's comments were an attempt to get some of the Wii supply diverted to Gamestop. You'd think he would have learned a lesson about such speculating from the very thing he's responding to, but perhaps we're expecting too much.[Via Game|Life]
