Half-Life 2
Indie Mod DB awards


Choosing the best thing out of a pile of really good things is always a tough decision, but hey, we're used to it. You too can participate in the careful choicemaking by voting for your favorite mod and indie game of the year over at Mod DB and Indie DB, where the top 100 nominations were just plucked from a gargantuan pool of over 9,000 mods and 5,500 indies.

With friendly vote buttons large and in charge until December 21, each database's 100 selections are sorted by genre and game for easy perusal. Numerous strong contenders vie for your mouse-click's thumbs-up, including noteworthy entries DayZ, The Dark Mod, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, and Natural Selection 2.

Current favorites leading the pack are Half-Life 2's powerful mod lineup—among which Black Mesa and our own 2011 Mod of the Year No More Room in Hell count themselves among the ranks—and role-playing indie games. You'll find Legend of Grimrock, Dear Esther, Mount & Blade: Warband, and others in the latter category. But like everyone's slowly expanding backlog of shame, plenty of other potentials yearn for your attention. Head to both award pages for the full lists.
Mount & Blade
battle cry


You might remember developers Flying Squirrel from their work on the multiplayer Mount & Blade expansion Napoleonic Wars, but one look at their first standalone project, the brilliantly ambitious Battle Cry of Freedom, and that short sulky Frenchman will be forever banished from your mind. Like Assassin's Creed 3, it's set during the American Civil War, but not the American Civil War as imagined by a grumpy bartender lying in a sci-fi sunbed. Read on for details, including mention of the 500-player(!) battles.

Here it is: whoa, there's going to be 500-player battles. Actually, there's a '+' in there too, so the game may be capable of supporting even more. Other things we can expect: historically accurate maps, uniforms and weapons, a "completely destructible environment", 3D voice chat, 5X5 km big maps and, perhaps best of all, "special musician units with drums, fifes, fiddles or trumpets, able to play historically accurate tunes." It appears as if combat will be largely similar to that seen in Mount & Blade, but with a bigger focus on muskets, obviously.

Flying Squirrel are taking donations on their homepage via their own form of Kickstarter, and at the time of writing they've raised just over a grand of their surprisingly low 60,000 Euros goal. 20 Euros is the minimum donation needed to bag a digital copy on release (plus early beta access), though if you have a spare million, the developers promise to "personally fly over to you and host the most awesome party you have ever had in your life". Hey now - I've been to a roller disco. I'm not sure anything will ever compete with that.
Mount & Blade: Warband
Mount and Blade 2


Taleworlds are working on a sequel to Mount and Blade subtitled "Bannerlord" according to the teaser trailer posted on the Mount and Blade site. There are no screenshots or details at all yet, but this is excellent news nonetheless. Mount and Blade 2 promises to once again "take players on a journey into a fictional world of up-close and personal medieval combat on a huge scale, bigger, bloodier and more intense than ever before" and include "highly requested new features." Oooh, what could those be?

There is a teaser trailer, but I don't want to get your hopes up. It is just a series of dramatic statements layered over some mist. LET THE LAND BURN AND THE BLOOD FLOW.

Mount & Blade: Warband
Mount and Blade Warband Napoleonic Wars


The latest update to Mount and Blade: Warband's Napoleonic Wars DLC releases the full source code into the wild, which should give Mount and Blade modders plenty to get their gnashers into. Warband's been a great platform for modders, and the extra units and features added by Napoleonic Wars has only put more muskets in the toolbox. The addition of new units, more swords, longer swords and better saddle textures can only help. The ten most popular maps from a recent community map contest have joined the rotation, and there are a bunch of balance fixes to boot.

The full update notes follow, plucked from Steam.

New features:

Added “Litovskiy Ulanskiy Polk”, Lithuanian Lancer Regiment, to Russia.
Added new swords for British Musicians and 95th Rifles, Austrian Infantry and Jägers.
Added new wall scene props for mappers - in desert and wood styles.
Added more destruction stages for some walls (that are commonly used in custom siege maps) and improved their textures.
Added new French Officers pants.
Pioneer earthworks can now be removed by using the shovel in alternate mode (accessible by press X).
Added the top ten community maps from the mapping contest.
Released full source code for modders.

 
General Changes

Remade all equipment for Russia: Cartridge bags, belts, etc.
Remade Austrian battle flags.
Players are now forced to walk when surrendering.
Improved textures of British and Austrian saddles.

 
Balance changes
Reduced the length of the bayonet slightly.
Increased the length of all cavalry swords.
Made the readying animation for the upper stab slower.
Upper stab chamber attacks are now not blockable anymore just like the lower stab.
People getting bumped by a horse now stay on the ground a bit longer before getting up.
Removed the damage a rider would receive when his horse dies.
Horses don’t rear up anymore when hit by a bayonet to their front.
Reduced the amount of bullets and damage of the Musketoon.

 
Bug Fixes
Fixed an exploit that allowed players to spawn objects on the map.
Fixed an exploit that allowed players to spawn with multiple firearms.
Fixed an exploit that allowed players to spawn naked.
Fixed a bug that made upper stabs unblockable when in crouch-mode
Fixed a bug that when a rocket launcher is picked up whilst someone is using it the player using it would get stuck.
Fixed small historical errors on Russian uniforms.
Fixed the mirrored banners above players.
Fixed stones not spawning near the walls that got destroyed.
Fixed some upside down texture errors on roofs.
Fixed some cases where you would not be able to spawn explosion crates.
Removed riding skill from pioneers.
Fixed several specular and normal map issues.

 
Mount & Blade
Caribbean2


Snowbird Games, creators of Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword, have announced their upcoming project, Caribbean, that brings many of the mechanics of M&B to a 16th-century swashbuckling setting. The Mount and Blade series is definitely in that "high investment, high reward" category that only really works on the PC (with the likes of EVE, Dwarf Fortress, and Day Z). It's also about as close as you can get to a full-blown Game of Thrones RTS.

If commanding hundreds of scallywags in real-time boarding missions interests you, read on.

Snowbird's announcement cites a trove of ambitious features, including:

Sea battles with intuitive and easy control system;
The real-time boarding fights that throw player in the centre of the action;
Detailed management and customization of both the fleet and the crew;
Complex siege system allowing the players to storm forts, harbors or entire cities;
Different kinds of artillery: shipboard cannons, mortars and howitzers;
Random events system that keeps players question their decisions during their voyage;
True ‘Carribean’ atmosphere of the vast and dangerous world;
Unique NPCs whose design based on the real historical figures;
Various multiplayer modes featuring the sea and land battles, boarding and sieges.

 
The devs say you should be able to get your hands on the buccaneering goodness this September.
Mount & Blade



The Mount & Blade series has had a spotty history with guns, which is understandable when you consider that gunpowder was ultimately responsible for making both mounts and blades totally irrelevant. After the troubled Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword, Taleworlds and Flying Squirrel Entertainment are taking another pop at blackpowder in the form of this multiplayer-only expansion for Warband.

It'll feature five factions and 220 units, historically accurate weapons and artillery, and an engineer class that can erect barricades. You'll also be able to become a musician and play drums, fifes, trumpets and bagpipes - which seems like a recipe for getting shot, to me.

Mount & Blade
Mount and Blade Lord of the Rings mod
The Lord of the Rings Last Days of Middle Earth mod for the original Mount and Blade has been released after five years of work. The mod lets you fight and command all the factions of Middle Earth, no less, with some top notch custom armour sets, new textures and new locations designed to bring Middle Earth to Tale World's medieval rags to riches pillaging sim. Find out more and see some fantastic screenshots of the mod below.

The mod's creators have taken almost all of their inspiration from the books, rather than the film trilogy, and the ambition and attention to detail is clear to see in the impressive screens. The war for Middle Earth will kick off shortly after you start a campaign with your chosen race. The territory system will let you help the forces of Mordor or the Fellowship as they strike at each other's strongholds. If you weaken the enemy enough, you can even ride in with an army and take their fortresses. You can download the mod from ModDB now.













PC Gamer
Paradox Interactive
Recently, at E3, we got the chance to catch up with the CEO of Paradox Interactive, Fredrik Wester to discuss the company's recent success with Magicka, Mount and Blade and King Arthur. Wester revealed that 90% of Paradox' revenue is now made through digital distribution sales. He describes the company's lack of reliance on retail as "a release," saying that store chains have "not been good for the creative part of the industry."

Wester told us that "this year we’re close to ninety percent of our revenue being digital. Retail sales are like a bonus for us now. We don’t really need retailers any more and that is a release because retailers have not been good for the industry. They’ve not been good for the creative part of the industry, for finding new cool games."

"People complain to publishers that there are only sequels on the market, but that’s because retailers want to see sequels, because they can do their chart diagrams for how things sell and things like that. So one of the things preventing more creative gaming has been the retail challenge."

"I can only say this now because we’re not depending on them, so it’s really relieving to be able to say that."

Wester told us that Steam is Paradox' main partner, followed by Gamersgate. Paradox has recently had big success with Magicka, which as sold more than 600,000 copies since release, and is set to hit a million sales before the end of the year. The entire Paradox catalogue is currently enjoying a 90% as part of the Steam summer sale. You can grab the lot for $74.99 / £55.
Mount & Blade

Free tunes! Another game soundtrack has been released for download, this time for the standalone Mount & Blade expansion With Fire and Sword, which features music by Jesse Hopkins and Pyotr Salnikov. (The download also includes Hopkins' Mount & Blade: Warband soundtrack.) You can snag it here. With track names such as "Peaceful Travels" and "Eastern Soul," it's a little more low-key than, say, Bulletstorm's all-action-all-the-time tone, and it might make some decent background music for that MMO whose looping soundtrack you're bored silly of.

Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword comes out May 3.
Mount & Blade
Mount and Blade Fire & Sword
Free tunes! Another game soundtrack has been released for download, this time for the standalone Mount & Blade expansion With Fire and Sword, which features music by Jesse Hopkins and Pyotr Salnikov. (The download also includes Hopkins' Mount & Blade: Warband soundtrack.) You can snag it here. With track names such as "Peaceful Travels" and "Eastern Soul," it's a little more low-key than, say, Bulletstorm's all-action-all-the-time tone, and it might make some decent background music for that MMO whose looping soundtrack you're bored silly of.

Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword comes out May 3.
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