Thursday, March 11th, 2010 | Posted by Gavin Greene | 1 Comment

Following the success of The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition, LucasArts has announced that the popular point-and-click adventure sequel, LeChuck’s Revenge, will also receive a HD revamp this summer. Coming to Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, PC, and the iPhone, the remake will feature the same features as its predecessor: including a full high-definition makeover, complete voice-over, hint system, and seamless integration of both the new and old versions of the game allowing for players to switch between at will. Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge will also contain some new goodies: including interactive developer commentary and allowing for players to directly control Guybrush in lieu of the classic point-and-click interface found in the original.

Read More »

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 | Posted by Robin Meijer | 1 Comment

Earlier today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, OnLive COO Mike McGarvy revealed that cloud-gaming service OnLive is scheduled for a launch on the 17th of June 2010. The service will be available for PCs and Macs, but will be limited to users in the United States. More information regarding a possible launch outside the United States and the OnLive MicroConsole, which is designed to bypass the need for a computer entirely, will be made available later this year.

The service will require a monthly fee of $14.95, with prices of specific games to be determined at a later date prior to release. Several major publishers, such as Ubisoft, EA, THQ, Take Two and Warner Bros. Interactive, have expressed their support for OnLive and have announced that they will be making games available for the system. New titles that will be available at launch will include Assassin’s Creed 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Metro 2033.

McGarvy has stated that more information will be revealed at the E3, which will take place from June 15 – 17th.

Read More »

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 | Posted by Gavin Greene | No Comments

Globex Studios announced the formation of a subsidiary studio in LA recently, headed by veterans of the recently defunct Pandemic Studios. Former publishing specialist Jesse Taylor will operate as Chief Operating Officer, with former game designer/director Troy Dunniway taking of the Vice President of Game Development mantle and Carey Chico, executive art director back at Pandemic, will be handling Chief Creative Officer duties. The new studio’s main focus is a new MMO property set for the Chinese market.

Read More »

Monday, March 8th, 2010 | Posted by Robin Meijer | 2 Comments

The DRM system recently introduced by Ubisoft for the launch of Silent Hunter 5 and the PC version of Assassin’s Creed 2 has reportedly come under attack by third parties, leaving players unable to to play either game. The new DRM system forces players to maintain a connection to a central server in order to play the game that uses this particular form of copy-protection. With this server inaccessible at this time, players find themselves unable to authenticate their game and as a result, are not able to play Silent Hunter 5 or Assassin’s Creed 2.

Players were informed by means of a set of Twitter messages, found below.

“Apologies to anyone who couldn’t play ACII or SH5 yesterday. Servers were attacked which limited service from 2:30pm to 9pm Paris time”

“95% of players were not affected, but a small group of players attempting to open a game session did receive denial of service errors”

“[...] All servers were up and running but the attacks had the effect of blocking new requests from legitimate users”

“Our servers are under attack again. Some gamers are experiencing trouble signing in. We’re working on it and will keep you posted”

Ubisoft has also stated that despite the problems the authentication servers are currently facing, the method seems to be an effective anti-piracy measures. The company has detected multiple attempts to provide ‘cracked’ versions of either games, but maintains that none of these versions are ‘valid’.

Read More »

Friday, March 5th, 2010 | Posted by Gavin Greene | 8 Comments

Admit it, you missed me.

GLaDOS fans rejoice, for Valve has descended from their Bellevue Washington headquarters via press statement, confirming the existence and eventual release of Portal 2. Sequel to the universally acclaimed puzzle-platformer portion of the company’s 2007 collection The Orange Box, Portal 2 is set to release this holiday season as a full priced, full-length title. While platforms are still unannounced, expect the game to hit the same consoles that Orange Box landed on, making PS3, PC, and Xbox 360 versions likely. More details will be revealed to the public at next week’s Game Developer’s Conference.

Read More »

Thursday, March 4th, 2010 | Posted by Gavin Greene | No Comments

Crytek announced that their immensely popular and flexible CryEngine will be making its way into the 3-dimension, with a full-access presentation of the stereoscopic 3D during the upcoming Game Developer’s Conference (March 11-13).

Read More »

Thursday, March 4th, 2010 | Posted by Gavin Greene | 1 Comment

Interviewed by Forbes magazine in preparation for the upcoming Game Developers Conference, platform manager for social network site Facebook Gareth Davis spoke on the rise and future of the social gaming front. Recently surpassing 400 million active users, the site’s new Facebook Connect platform could be a major game-building platform for major developers.

Read More »

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 | Posted by Robin Meijer | 6 Comments

In the same SEC filing that revealed that Activision was in a conflict with two senior Infinity Ward employees over charges of insubordination, Activision-Blizzard also stated that Blizzard is currently working on multiple sequels in the Diablo franchise.

“Blizzard is currently developing new games, including a new expansion pack to the World of Warcraft franchise , Cataclysm , StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, which will be released with the new and improved Battle.net, and sequels to the Diablo franchise.”

Little more information is available at this time. Blizzard has stated in the past that it is aiming to release games in their core-franchises, including Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo, on a more regular basis. The highly anticipated Starcraft 2 has been split into three separate instalments, of which the first instalment is slated for a release later this year. It is unclear if Diablo III will suffer a similar fate.

Read More »

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 | Posted by Robin Meijer | 3 Comments

Following news earlier today that the CEO and President of Infinity Ward were fired by Activision over allegations of insubordination, Activision-Blizzard has issued a press-release that details the future of the Call of Duty series.

As was announced before, Treyarch is currently working on a new installment in the series due for release later this year. Infinity Ward is currently involved in developing two map packs for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which was released in November 2009.

However, Activision-Blizzard also stated that the recently established Sledgehammer Games, headed by former general manager of Visceral Games, will be working on bringing the Call of Duty franchise to the action-adventure genre. Activision has stated that:

“The company is also for the first time announcing that a new game in the Call of Duty series is expected to be released in 2011 and that Sledgehammer Games, a newly formed, wholly owned studio, is in development on a Call of Duty game that will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre.”

Furthermore, a separate business unit will be established for all Call of Duty-related games. This business unit will be headed by Philip Earl, who currently heads Activision’s Asia/Pacific publishing department.

With respect to the unrest at Infinity Ward, Activision stated that “Activision Publishing veterans Steve Pearce, chief technology officer and Steve Ackrich, head of production, will lead Infinity Ward on an interim basis. Jason West and Vince Zampella are no longer with Infinity Ward.”

Read More »

Monday, March 1st, 2010 | Posted by Gavin Greene | 2 Comments

As if Alan Wake hasn’t kept Xbox 360 gamers salivating for years, the oft-rumored Age of Conan port (hoovering around since 2006) is still coming, according to the developer. In a recent interview with CVG during the release of the PC version’s expansion, Rise of the Godslayer, game director Craig Morrison spoke on the impending console version’s release.

Read More »

Friday, February 26th, 2010 | Posted by Robin Meijer | 1 Comment

Turbine Inc. has announced that since going free-to-play in September 2009, the Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited playerbase has increased to more than one million active users. The game was originally released in 2006 as Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach and required players to pay a monthly fee. The game never managed to achieve mainstream success, and was announced to go free-to-play in the United States in June 2009.

Though the game is free to play, users can still sign up as a subscriber which will give them access to additional content and features. Turbine revealed that transactions in the Dungeons & Dragons Online store are three times as high as the industry average (per player), and that the overall revenue of the game has increased by 500% since it was re-launched as a free-to-play game. In fact, the number of subscribers has doubled since last September, despite the fact that a subscription is now completely optional to players.

The game celebrates its fourth birthday on the 28th of February, and Turbine states that it is “just getting started with more adventure packs, more store items, and other innovative features coming in the major updates we have planned throughout 2010.”

Read More »

Friday, February 26th, 2010 | Posted by Vincent Lam | 2 Comments

In celebration of their 30th anniversary of Missile Command, Atari made a flash-based remake available free of charge at OMGPOP. The remake includes new visuals, online co-op multi-player, boss battles and unit upgrades.

Friday, February 26th, 2010 | Posted by Robin Meijer | 3 Comments

Earlier this month, we reported that DLC would be available for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on launch day. Now, with the release of the game less than a week away, EA has further detailed the content that will be available.

First of all, a content package including two all-new maps will be made available free of charge at launch day. These are part of EA’s “Project Ten Dollar”, which is designed to provide free DLC to the original purchasers of EA products, but for which those who purchase a second-hand copy of the games will have to pay additional fees. This system was earlier implemented in games such as Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2.

The additional maps will be known as Laguna Alta, a map playable in Conquest mode, and Nelson Bay, which will be playable in Rush mode. At a later (currently unspecified) point in March, additional DLC will be released free-of-charge, which will make the maps Arika Harbor and Laguna Presa available in the Conquest and Rush modes respectively.

PC users will receive the content as part of regular game updates. All new copies of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will include a VIP-code that can be used to purchase both content packages. Users without a code will be able to purchase one via the in-game store for the equivalent of $15. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will be released for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in the United States on March 2nd, and in Europe on March 4th.

Read More »

Thursday, February 25th, 2010 | Posted by Gavin Greene | No Comments

The usual routine with porting hit titles across various seas is the outsourcing of region-publishing to local studios for efficiency. Developer Take-Two is taking the more personal road, by opening a branch office of their own in Tokyo, Japan to coincide with the region launch of the bundled Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City DLC. The game will be the first of all future games self-published by Take-Two in the region. No specific release date for Episodes has been confirmed, but given the upcoming PC/PS3 release of the disc, Elder-Geek predicts the Japanese market will received both versions simultaneously sometime after the combined release in the States. The announcement comes after a general reconstruction plan from the company.

Read More »

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 | Posted by Robin Meijer | 1 Comment

Square Enix has released the system requirements for their upcoming sandbox action game Just Cause 2. Apparently, the game will require users to operate either Windows Vista or Windows 7, since the game will not be playable under Windows XP.

Just Cause 2 will utilize DirectX 10, which is not available on the Windows XP operating system. It is estimated that approximately 42% of all PC users still use the nine year old operating system.

The full system requirements can be found after the jump. The game is currently in development at Avalanche Studios and is scheduled for a release late next month. Just Cause 2 will be available on the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Read More »