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'Halo' will bring back local multiplayer
When I critiqued Halo 5: Guardians, the lack of split-screen co-op was low on my list of gripes with the game. But that's not to say it wasn't a problem. In the lead-up to the 2015 game's release, developer 343 Industries crowed that there were no sacred cows on the road to hitting 60 FPS in the campaign mode -- including the local co-operative play that'd been a part of the series since 2001. That's changing, though. "I would say for any [first-person shooter] going forward we will always have split-screen," 343's head Bonnie Ross said recently at the DICE summit in Las Vegas, according to Polygon.
Defiance free to play on Steam this weekend
Defiance, Trion World's transmedia MMO made in conjunction with SyFy, is offering a free chunk of to players on Steam this weekend. The trial will be paired with 30 percent discount of the full game, bringing it down to $42 for the standard edition. If you're more interested in the television show, SyFy will air all six previously seen episodes on Monday night, starting at 4 p.m. local time and running until 11 p.m. SyFy's website will also be streaming episodes and offering a mid-season recap for those looking to catch up in as little time as possible. The show was recently cleared for a second season.
Alt-Minds is a 'transmedia fiction' from Amy publishers, coming November 5
Lexis Numérique is setting its sights on its next title: Alt-Minds, a game the publisher claims will feature "a true transmedia fiction." Its first title since launching the less-than illustrious horror game Amy, the European publisher says that Alt-Minds will arrive on both PC and Mac on November 5, along with a companion app.Alt-Minds follows the story of five young scientists working on a mysterious physics experiment. While the PC/Mac game will tell the core story, players will also be able to use the location-based app to find story clues in the real world, and get (oh so not creepy) texts and phone calls directly from the story's characters.The experience will take place over eight weeks, with participants being given clues or missions at any time during the period. If you can't be on your computer all of the time, the game will also have a "catch-up mode," to access past missions and re-play live events. To help tell its story, Alt-Minds will have a web series of ten seven-minute episodes, explaining the scientific background of the proceedings as they unfold.The full experience will be free for everyone for a week. After that, players will need to pay about $5 per episode or around $30 for the entire series.
Trion releases Defiance feature video, details 'transmedia' synergy
Trion has released a new making-of featurette for Defiance, its "transmedia" property that includes a sci-fi shooter MMO and a Syfy television series. Defiance the game takes place in the bombed out ruins of a post-alien-invasion San Francisco, while Defiance the TV show is set in and around St. Louis, Missouri. Despite the location differences, Trion says that the events of the virtual world will affect those of the show and vice versa. How so (and how much)? That remains to be seen, but Shacknews has a game preview that sheds a little light on the subject. In a nutshell, characters on the show might namedrop a gamer avatar who completes a particular mission or makes an impact on the game world in some way. Syfy president Dave Howe also told the website that he's hopeful that gameplay events will have a more significant impact on season two of the television series. Head past the break to view the full video feature. [Source: Trion press release]
THQ and Random House team up for new transmedia IPs
Hot on the heels of the Homefront prequel novel, Homefront: The Voice of Freedom, comes THQ's announcement of a partnership with Random House Publishing. The agreement between the two publishers will see the creation of "original intellectual properties for publication across multiple mediums." The first such property is said to embrace the publishers' strong suits -- games and books -- with other mediums to be explored in future IP. THQ also has big plans to build out story franchise bibles with Random House Worlds, the book publisher's "IP creation and development group." Bungie's Halo franchise is a prime example of a game's universe being expanded and curated through novels, and it's a "transmedia" success story that other publishers are likely to covet. If THQ wants to hasten its success in both games and novels, maybe it should get cracking on that romantic, teen-cyborg-vampire saga set during World War II.
THQ's Bilson: Metro 2033 'wasn't properly nurtured,' sequel to address issues
Last March, Metro 2033 snuck up on our reviewer radar and went on to earn respectable Metacritic scores of 77 on Xbox 360 and 81 on PC among critics at large. Though THQ CEO Brian Farrell characterized the title as "very profitable" for the publisher, it wasn't exactly burning up the sales charts. Speaking with the company's VP of Core Games, Danny Bilson, this week, we asked about Metro 2033 falling short of its potential. "I'll give you the straight answer: It wasn't properly supported in all areas," Bilson said frankly. "It was a cool deal," he explained of the publishing agreement with developer 4A Games, "where it was inexpensive and they were doing their stuff." "Did the game need polish in certain areas? Yes." he admitted. "So when I say it wasn't fully supported, it was product development and marketing that didn't support it the way it should've been." Bilson described Metro 2033 as "an orphan stepchild," saying that "a great marketer picked it up with four months to go and did what he could with four months to go, but it wasn't properly nurtured by marketing." The absence of polish, Bilson assured, won't be an issue for Metro 2034, the in-development sequel. "The new one doesn't have any of those issues," Bilson said. "I green-lit the sequel before [the first] one shipped, because I know what [4A Games is] capable of -- I knew how cool it was."
inSane trilogy game rights held by THQ, del Toro keeps movie rights
Wanna hear something crazy? Guillermo del Toro's inSane game project is gonna be a trilogy. Of course, that lengthy proposal, as documented by THQ, will still be bound by reason -- at least, by the reasonable success of the "first chapter in the series," due in 2013. (Remember how that Too Human "trilogy" started ... and stalled?) "With this new series of video games, I want to take players to a place they have never seen before, where every single action makes them question their own senses of morality and reality," said a confident del Toro as if narrating atop the mysterious and positively creepy teaser (embedded after the break). "THQ and Volition, Inc. are equally excited to make this vision of a completely new game universe into a reality." Not only excited, THQ is heavily invested in what it's dubbed "an original trilogy of triple-A games." The publisher will retain the intellectual property rights to the inSane games, while del Toro holds the rights to any associated "filmed entertainment" projects. It sounds like our sanity could be tested. A lot.
