The massive E3 event is still going on, and DICE, the developer for the upcoming epic point-and-shoot war game Battlefield 3, is showing off the new FrostBite engine used to develop the game. Battlefield 3 will open hostilities on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on October 25. EA also announced today that the game’s beta will launch in September. Remember that you get a VIP pass into that if you picked up last year’s Medal of Honor.
The cloud gaming OnLive service will celebrate the release of the 100th game on the platform at E3 next Tuesday. Red Faction: Armageddon will join the growing list of games that can stream directly from the OnLive servers. The $10 a month play-all-you-want bundle now consists of 60 games, including Homefront multiplayer, Just Cause 2 and Borderlands, and the service now has the backing of more than 40 publishers. All in all, it’s been a pretty impressive first year for the world’s first cloud gaming service, and OnLive is set to grow even further.
Partnerships with companies like Vizio, HTC and Intel ensure that almost any smartphone, tablet and HDTV with an Intel chip will have built-in support for OnLive. To make playing OnLive’s wide range of games easier, there are plans to release a wireless universal controller that will work with any compatible device.
The upshot is that you should be able to stream a game of Just Cause 2 to your HDTV or tablet, and use the wireless controller to play it. The Universal Wireless Controller will be shown at the E3 conference next week.
After successful trials in the US, OnLive will be spreading across the Atlantic, arriving in the UK this Autumn. During E3, OnLive UK Founding Member signups will go live, offering a year of the service free to early adopters. There are plans to spread OnLive to more countries after the UK release. For more information on the service, head over to the official OnLive site.
Before all those fancy Metro 2033 and Crysis, there was The Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion which used to be the epic game with awesome graphic back at its age. Now the success The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim is coming, with dragons and stuff, and according to THQ, it is epic. That’s because the game’s going to be super long wind with 60,000 lines of dialogues!
We already know that Skyrim will have UNLIMITED DRAGONS, and that their attacks will happen dynamically as you explore the world. OPM also reveal that wounded dragons will be unable to fly, meaning you can trap a dragon in a ground fight if you think you stand a chance of winning the fight. Read more…
Been waiting for it for quite some time, and now finally it’s here. Lara manages to go to hell and back in the space of three minutes of footage that make up the first Tomb Raider trailer, which shows her avoiding certain death several times to reach the shores of the ‘explorable’ island on which the game takes place. The CG video above looks incredible, of course, but the screenshots we’ve seen of Tomb Raider so far show that the in-game graphics aren’t a world away from the cinematic. Well, at least we have something to refer to.
Speaking at a recent press event, StarCraft 2 lead producer Chris Sigaty said that “it would be a mistake for us to just put out units to put out units,” adding “will we do that again for Legacy of the Void? I don’t know. It may be that putting out new units for Legacy of the Void is a mistake.”
Sigaty was speaking to us at the first press showing of Heart of the Swarm, for which Blizzard plan to add new units. We asked Sigaty about Blizzard’s golden rule for StarCraft 2 which says that for every unit introduced, something has to go. How would Blizzard manage that with two expansions?
“The golden rule is there,” says Sigaty, “there’s only so much more we can put in. We’re already at the Brood War expansion level number of units right now, so there might be a little bit of wiggle room right there, but not much more.
“It may be that find and replace becomes a reality for a race, or all the races… our intention for Heart of the Swarm right now is to add, but we could take it away.”
Is it possible that we could see well known multiplayer units disappearing as well? Sigaty remains tight-lipped. “Multiplayer is something we’re not locked down on, and we’re just exploring,” he says.
Remember the epic old game Doom? Yes, the original game played on DOS. Now the classic game is getting ported over to… your browser! The port, which quietly popped up on Mozilla’s Developer Network website earlier this week, is glitchy but playable… as long as you’re running Firefox or Safari, that is.
According to the “details” page, the demo was compiled from C to JavaScript with Emscripten and clang. The source code is linked on that page, so adventurous developers could take a crack at improving it.
While neat, the demo’s spotty browser compatibility is a bit discouraging. (Only Firefox really lets you play smoothly.) One of the selling points of open standards like HTML5 and JavaScript is consistent cross-browser support without the need for plugins, yet I can’t help think that, had this demo been done with Flash, it would probably work happily across many different browsers and platforms. Oh yeah, Apple.
Blizzard have released tons of chitinous screens for insectiod sequel Starcaft II: Heart of the Swarm. Hopefully there’s enough inside to whet your appetite, as there’s still no launch date from Blizzard, as usual.
The screens show off two early missions, Charr and Kaldir, the two new Zerg characters, as well as the new Zerg ‘evolution chamber’ upgrade system.
The Dismounted Soldier Training System is a new military sim commissioned by the US government. The sim will be used to train new soldiers as early as next year, and cost a hefty $57 million to make. GamePro report that it’s likely that most of this went on development of the the new technology that will capture soldiers’ movements on a ten foot square pad. New recruits will experience the simulator through a virtual reality headset that will run from a state-of-the-art custom laptop strapped to their back.
The sim is powered by the Crysis 2 engine, and aims to provide a flexible training tool that should ultimately be cheaper than running similar live exercises. Directors running training excercises will be able to mod new missions using intelligence on a target area. This will allow soldiers to move through a mission in virtual reality before attempting it in real life. Once a mission is completed, soldiers receive a score and a report on their actions in the mission. Read more…
The new Batman: Arkham City is coming very soon, and it seemed that you’ll get to play another character besides the Batman. According to the Gamespot preview, you’ll be able to switch between Bats and Cats.
Yes, you heard it right, Arkham City will have Catwoman. Catwoman plays very differently from Batman, relying more on jumping and climbing than grappling hooks and gliding. Meanwhile her version of ‘detective vision’ highlights things to steal instead of clues. None of which answers the question of how she can move like that without falling out of her catsuit.
It leaves the door open for subsequent Batman games to feature more of Batman’s stable of allies. Maybe Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl or Huntress will show up in the future.
Back in February, THQ revealed that the sequel to 4A Games’ Metro 2033 would be more polished than its predecessor yet retain the same post-apocalyptic feel. Now, the folks at Joystiq have gotten a chance to see Metro: Last Light in action. Their verdict? “What we saw assuaged our concerns that what made Metro 2033 special would be replaced with a more generic, but safer, shooter.”
THQ elaborated a little bit about the polish, saying developer 4A Games “rebuilt all of the gameplay systems from the ground up” to deliver “better stealth, better weapons and core combat.” However, the publisher added that it gave the 4A team “complete creative freedom.”
The result, according to Joystiq, is a game with a new, original story that follows where the original left off. There’s enough eye candy to make high-end gaming PCs sweat, not to mention tidier gameplay, improved destruction and dynamic physics elements, and more conventional stealth elements (including some of the automated cut-throat takedowns seen in other games). Weapons do more damage, as well, so the combat purportedly feels “a lot more visceral and deadly.”
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