Just a quick reminder, since you probably want to get on there as much as we will> be on there. Does that make sense? No. But anyway: sign up for peace of mind, and also access to an MMO before it is finished. The link.
Hot off the news: Metal Gear Solid creators Konami are advertising for “Project engineers for the latest Metal Gear Solid targeted for high-end consoles and PC.” What could this possibly mean?> We brought on our own engineers to decode it, and it seems that could mean the fifth proper game of Snake is headed for the computer machines. Of course we already sort of knew that was happening from way back in 2009, but it’s nice to have it confirmed in internet writing. Unsurprisingly, the game is unlikely to be out until late 2013, or early 2014. So that is some far-away news.
The Flare Path thought he knew almost everything about Operation Overlord, but this week he read something in a book by Max Hastings, that left him flabbergasted. Apparently, in the weeks leading up to D-Day, instead of training, the Axis troops manning the Atlantic Wall spent most of their time planting Rommel’s asparagus>. Max didn’t go into detail, but obviously the famous Generalfeldmarschall was either extremely partial to the speary vegetable, or – and this seems more likely – he was using Heer manpower in some sort of massive market-gardening scam. Was it Berlin’s discovery of this illicit project that caused the Desert Fox to take his own life in October ’44? The official histories say ‘no’, but FP was sorely tempted to postpone coverage of Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear (a new Matrix wargame) and Accu-Feel (a gizmo from A2A that looks set to revolutionise FSX) and use this week’s column to thoroughly examine the matter. (more…)
I’ve spent the last couple of months searching the streets for signs of conspiracy, perhaps a Toynbee Tile or two bills from separate electricity companies who are clearly trying to con me out of every last penny. To resolve the troubled contents of my mind, I took another trip into The Secret World, where my every delusional thought seems quite ordinary in comparison to the oddities around me.>
The humble .nfo file is a business card, instruction manual, and score-setting rap song in ascii form. They’re the files that the piracy scene drops into their releases to claim bragging rights for that particular chunk of nefarious code. So why the hell did Syndicate Developers Starbreeze stick one in the legitimate release of their first-person shooter? Redditor MikkelManDK spotted the file in the game’s directory: it’s there to partly to mock the scene a little — the install notes read: ’1) Insert disc 2) Play ;)’ — and partly to bring the Warez groups into the games industry: Starbreeze’s .nfo asks them to apply for jobs.
This is big news for all SOE games, actually, including EverQuest II, DC Universe Online, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, and Free Realms. PCG points out that SOE are signing a European publishing deal with Germany company ProSiebenStat. According to SOE’s proposals this could mean that SOE customers will no longer be able to play on both American and EU servers, and in fact existing European players are going to be asked to create an account with the new company to transfer characters and continue playing. Of course, people aren’t too happy about that, what with them having relationships with real people outside international boundaries and so forth. The inevitable internet shouting resulted in this response from SOE, indicating that they are “listening”. The upshot of the current proposal would be that Europeans would not be (easily) able to play Planetside 2 with American chums. The RPS Planetside 2 outfit would be divided! Those are tears running down my cheeks.
Just like they did with Take On Helicopters, Bohemia Interactive are going to crowd-source a portion of Arma 3′s bug-testing to the community, as well as just letting everyone have a poke around, with a playable alpha release sometime after E3. Their military sim series has always suffered brutally buggy launches, but with plenty of players poking at it in the months before release, things should run a lot smoother. And by that, I mean a LOT smoother. Gamers will be able to start planning mods ahead of the full launch, and you’ll also totally be able to put ‘Game Q&A Tester’ on your CV. (more…)
If there’s a surprise in the announcement that there’s to be another game in EA’s modern reboot of the Medal of Honor series, it’s that the subtitle “Warfighter” survived basic training: no-one in the development studio giggled, no-one in marketing made this face >:(, John Riccitiello didn’t suddenly come to his senses on the toilet and tell them to ‘drop it and call it “2″‘? Not only is it a redundant mess of a name, but it’s not even a unique redundant mess. I expect Tom Clancy to hold a mock funeral, just so he can commence grave-spinning. So yes, there is a man, he’ll be fighting in a war. Other details are somewhat missing in action. (more…)
UPDATE: My mistake, this is just the alpha labelled as a demo. Oh well, they SHOULD release a demo.
Original lies: We recently mentioned that Fray, the fancy-lookin’ sci-fi combat strategy project, had hit a paid alpha sort of a stage. You can also get a taste without coughing up the greenbacks, thanks to an “alpha demo”. So that’s a portion of the unfinished game, which you can get here. The demo contains two maps, two corporations, and six of the game’s classes, and a whole lot of hex-based strategic brain-challenge.
Time to get your grisled look on. The first ever screenshots of the PC version of Max Payne have appeared. They number three, and Rockstar boasts the PC version will feature,
“gloriously increased resolution and graphical detail in both the epic story and the explosive multiplayer modes.”
See them below.