In the News – 2nd March
Assassin’s Creed 3 will be set in North America during the second half of the 18th Century and the events of the American Revolution. These details and others appeared in the latest issue of Game Informer magazine, and subsequently were posted to NeoGAF.
Dear Esther Releases Today
The indie remake of the cult mod Dear Esther releases today for PC and will be available on Steam.
Dear Esther started as a mod for Half Life 2, an interactive ghost story with randomly generated audio telling a tale, created by Dan Pinchbeck and with a soundtrack by Jessica Curry.
The visual overhaul comes from professional game artist, Robert Briscoe., and the remake of Dear Esther has been supported by the Indie Fund, an investment model which aims to support the growth of gaming and indie developers.
Be Mine – Indie Game Bundle
The Be Mine Indie Game Bundle, from Groupees, is launching for Valentine’s Day and will be available through till the 28th February. This bundle is pay what you want with a minimum price of $1, and 20% of the money goes to Child’s Play.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPSvCqAOMfc]
There are five games in the bundle, and all come with Steam keys: Wasteland Angel, a vehicular combat shoot ’em up from Octane Games, a puzzle-platform adventure called Sideway New York, by Playbrains and Fuel Entertainment, Xotic, an arcade-style first person shooter by WXP Games, Beep, a physics-based platformer by Big Fat Alien, and The Ball, an award-winning action-puzzle game built on the Unreal Engine 3, by Teotl Studios.
There is also a selection of music in the bundle, from: Celldweller, Fantomenk and Damage Vault.
Steam Outage
The Steam services seem to be down this evening, with no reason or explanation given at this time.
A message from @Steam_Support on Twitter states that they are “investigating reported outages”, whilst a post by a community manager on the Steam forum noted that they are “working on getting everything running again as soon as possible”.
Update, 8.55pm: The Steam outage is down to a failure at Valve’s data centre. They are now working to get services restored as soon as possible.
Update, 9.25pm: Steam is starting to come back online now.
Steam Hackers May Have Taken Credit Card Details
Valve have posted a new message from Gabe Newell about last year’s intrusion of the Steam forums.
During their investigation of last year’s intrusion, security experts have learned that the intruders may have obtained a copy of a backup file with information about Steam transactions between 2004 and 2008. This backup file contained user names, email addresses, encrypted billing addresses and encrypted credit card information, but not Steam passwords.
Valve are still investigating the incident.
Blizzard appealing Valve’s use of the DOTA trademark
Blizzard are appealing against Valve’s use of the DOTA trademark, on the grounds that the trademark carries with it all the goodwill generated for the original DOTA mod and Warcraft III, which it was based on.
Valve are currently developing DOTA 2, which will be a standalone game available on Steam.
In the appeal, Blizzard argue that they supported the original DOTA mod, and that it was built using the Warcraft III engine, characters, items, spells, artwork and textures, and that Valve should therefore have no right to use the name.
Blizzard are currently developing their own version of DOTA: Blizzard DOTA, a custom game for StarCraft II.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx1JDEnrVK8]
Like other DOTA-style games, this is a team-based competitive game where each player controls a powerful hero with unique abilities, and must work with their teammates to invade the enemy’s base. More information is available in the DOTA FAQ.
The Skyrim Creation Kit Arrives Today!
The Skyrim Creation Kit is planned to arrive today according to Bethesda’s Pete Hines. This will be a free download for PC users, via Steam.
The Creation Kit features the same set of tools used to create the game originally, and will include new features such as scene editors, dialogue tree tool, and a new scripting language called Papyrus. For those new to modding, Bethesda are also releasing wiki documentation, written by the developers.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU4oAKZE1VI]
As the Kit has been integrated with the Steam Workshop, you can browse or search for existing mods, and comment and rate them, as well as upload your own. You can even subscribe to mods too: the launcher will download and install the latest version of any subscribed mods when you launch the game.
Indie Gala 2 – Quick Overview
I grabbed my bundle of shiny new indie games from the Indie Gala 2 yesterday, adding Greed Corp, Roboblitz, Critical Mass, Fortix 2 and Bunch of Heroes to my Steam library, and to my ever-expanding backlog! So on to trying them out, in no particular order..
Fortix 2 is a reverse turret defense game by Nemesys Games, an indie developer from Hungary. The aim of the game is to capture the castle by capturing the land bit by bit, while avoiding the dragons, cannons, and other monsters..
I tried out the Fortix 2 demo a while ago, and found the gameplay rather easy.. maybe too easy. At the time I resisted buying the game in part due to that, but also because of the backlog.. so I was rather glad to see it in the bundle and have a bit more of an excuse to get it 😉
I’m happy to note that the full game includes more difficult enemies, including Blood Bats which travel along the base line, meaning nowhere is safe! Maps start to contain hazards such as bat caves, which when captured release more bats to plague you.. the added challenge was certainly appreciated!
One small niggle, though.. the game takes your name from your Steam profile, with no option for renaming. Ordinarily I wouldn’t care, but with a character limit in place, it trimmed my name to “Sir CoffeeScam”!
Vanguard Games‘ Greed Corp is a turn based strategy, where you need to find the balance between harvesting the land for resources and preserving it. Each hexagon of terrain has a number of layers which collapse as you harvest the land.. these can also be strategically destroyed to throw enemy units and buildings into the abyss!
Combat between walkers is simple.. the larger force on each hexagon wins.. but when it comes to the buildings, you need to look at the layout of the map before doing anything! Harvesters can be built on any land you own, then on each turn they generate resources out of the terrain they are on, as well as those around them. However, this erodes a layer as well..
You can use these to sabotage your enemy by destroying the land under them; when a hexagon falls, any buildings or units on it fall too!
I only took a quick look at this game, playing through the tutorial to see how it all works.. I’ll be coming back to this one later, and maybe trying out the multiplayer: you can take on up to three other players across a range of maps 🙂
Bunch of Heroes was next: a four-player co-op shooter by NGD Studios. Aliens are invading Earth, and summoning a Zombie army to assist them.. and the Bunch of Heroes are our last line of defense! 🙂
There are four playable characters in the Bunch, each with a different special attack: El Comandante, the Cuban Commander, throws exploding cigars, while Jared Joe, the Quarterback, can make a touchdown for his special move. Captain Smith, the Duke, can call in a bombing run to assist him, and Agent Liu, the spy, can set enemies on fire! To use the special attack, you need to kill enemies and pick up the energy they drop.
There are three modes: Campaign, Survival and Timed Mode, with a few different scenarios. Campaign mode consists of simple missions such as clearing enemies from an area, defending a point for a short time, and rescuing cheerleaders. I found the cheerleader rescue rather funny, as you have to sling her over your shoulder and carry her..
Aside from screaming when you pick her up or put her down, the cheerleader dances at intermittent points while not being carried. At one point I died while carrying her, and found it rather funny when she almost instantly started dancing at my corpse’s feet! 😀
The game is designed for four players, and as there are no AI bots, playing by yourself means being somewhat swamped. After trying the first Campaign, I tried out Survival.. my first attempt was rather brief.. 😉
Roboblitz, by Naked Sky Entertainment, is a puzzle platform shooter featuring a little robot technician who lives aboard a Space Cannon Facility. The Facility comes under attack from pirate robots led by the MegaNOAD, and Blitz has to get all systems up and running in order to fire the Space Cannon while fending off attacks from the various invading pirate robots.
You start off with only your grabby arms and a spin attack, which is fine for dealing with the Pirate Scouts, but ineffective on larger enemies. Blitz can also gather collectible Upgradium, which can be used to purchase new weapons: the first of these is the EMP gun, which stuns enemies for a short time, but other weapons are able to destroy them.
I liked the variety of puzzles, spread across different areas which you can access at will, but I found the controls and movement occasionally quite poor.
Blitz’s item handling wasn’t as accurate as I’d have liked, and in getting close enough to pick some items up, I found myself bumping them away instead. More frustrating was the jumping: in particular, I found jumping into one certain pipe in the Coolant Tower was more miss than hit, with a miss causing Blitz to get stuck on the edge, holding on by the arms. After a few misses in the fan room, and having to go back to try again, this annoyed me enough that I decided to move on to the final game in the bundle..
Critical Mass, a 3d action puzzler by Manic Games Studios! There are four modes: Classic, Survival, Meditation and Rush, but the core gameplay is the same in each.. destroy the mass by creating colour combos of four or more blocks. Simple to understand, but difficult to master! 🙂
I tried Classic first, and quickly realised that this has the makings of an addictive game.. winning a level means proceeding to the next, slightly more difficult level, while defeat means retrying the level. In this mode, the camera zooms in during play until the whole structure shakes and destroys itself.. producing a combo pushes the camera back and gives you just a little more time, while Survival ‘rewards’ a combo by throwing more blocks into the fray. Rush mode times your efforts, with the object to clear the mass as quickly as possible, and Meditation is the calm, thoughtful mode where you can aim for the biggest combos on the board, without distraction.
The bundle came with music as well, and I have to note I don’t really listen to game music outside of the games themselves. However, games without music wouldn’t be the same, so it’s good to see some support for indie music too 🙂
Rexaura – a mod for Portal
Rexaura is a mod for Portal by Mevious, featuring a full sized campaign, unique dialogue, and plenty of puzzles including some new types featuring plasma balls, which you can deflect using cubes, send through light barriers and so on.
You can download Rexaura from moddb. To play this mod, you need to extract the file into your sourcemods folder, and restart Steam.
The author of this mod has previously created another Portal mod: Portal Pro, which can also be downloaded from moddb.
Steam for Mobile Devices
Valve have today announced the launch of a Steam mobile app for iOS and Android!
The free app will allow customers to access the gaming news feeds and check out games on the Steam store, as well as connecting with friends through Steam profiles, chat, and Steam groups.
The app is currently in beta, and you can express interest in joining by signing in to Steam through the app. New users will be rolled into the beta at a later time.