PvP Coming to Diablo III
Blizzard have announced that the latest update for Diablo III, Patch 1.0.7, will add PvP in the form of Duels!
The Secret World Drops Subscription Fee
Funcom’s modern-day MMO The Secret World has now dropped their monthly subscription, with full access to the game via the purchase of the game client.
Minecraft for the Xbox 360
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, 4J Studio‘s ported version of Minecraft, came out on Wednesday, and apparently broke the Day 1 sales records for the Xbox LIVE arcade and becoming profitable within the first hour! Tim won a copy of the game, so he finally had a go.. watching him encounter zombies and creepers was amusing 🙂
I planned to have just a quick go, to compare it against the PC version which I’ve sunk many, many hours into. As usual, I spent my first night up on a pole.. I’ve never been keen on the hole in the ground method! Once I had some resources gathered, it was on to the crafting..
There have been a few changes to crafting, making it a lot easier to use! The system allows you to navigate through categories and then just click on the item you want to make.. and as long as you have the ingredients to hand, the item will appear in your inventory.
More Server Things – Garry’s Mod
When I got my virtual server, the other thing I’d planned was to run a Garry’s Mod server.
In the past we relied on public servers and been at the mercy of whatever admin appearing and deleting our stuff without so much as a word.. somewhat putting me off trying to build anything that takes more than a few minutes.
The first step was installing the Half-Life Dedicated Server Update Tool Setup Program.. what a mouthful 😉
Once installed, it apparently then needs updating (once again I have Tim for an instruction manual).. before running. Garry’s mod requires the Orange Box, so the tool went off to find that as well..
More fiddling checked the tool had updated, and then the server was started!
As it all worked, there had to be some kind of celebration, right? 😉
Sanctum got Updates!
FPS Tower Defense game Sanctum received some updates recently, adding new maps and towers!
Some of these updates are free, both others are via paid DLC..
Annoyingly, I see a lof of moaning on the Steam forums by ungrateful people who expect to be handed more content and not pay another penny.. despite some of these people only having picked the game up cheap in a Steam sale! What they’re missing is that if the devs continue to work on the game, they need to continue to pay their bills and have some kind of income.. and optional DLC allows for this. I’m sure the whiners would absolutely love to go to work for nothing.. 😉
We went for a quick game or two to take a look.. it seemed that Sanctum had took a leaf out of BulletStorm’s book as we had the Penetrator and Violator in the mix, along with the rather interesting Holo and Ampfield ‘towers’, which allowed for more damage to be dealt to mobs.
I especially liked the Holo tower, which we paired with Gatlings or Penetrators.. and with the right positioning, players can shoot through the tower for a damage boost too 🙂
There was also a new weapon.. a Shotgun, which could be used for single shots, or by holding down the right mouse button, all shots could be fired at once for a rather powerful blast! I loved this weapon, but haven’t decided which weapon is best to switch out with. The Assault gun has the grenade alt-fire, while the Sniper allows you to hurt airborne enemies, and the Freeze gun is useful if a pack of mobs seem to be escaping the kill zone.. I guess it has to come down to balance.
Rivals to Steam
Update: it was apparently Valve who removed Crysis 2 from Steam, due to some disagreement over their contract..
Today I see a number of posts on the web announcing that Crysis 2 has been pulled from Steam as EA begin to push their digital distribution store, Origin. The Star Wars game and Alice: Madness Returns are also to be ‘Origin exclusives’.. so we can only assume that other games will follow suit.
I like Steam.
I have easy access to my games library, I get automatic updates.. the Steam overlay allows me to talk to friends, invite them to my game or join theirs, without having to stop playing or mess around trying to find a server that we can all get on. Steam is not without problems, most notably when a new game is released and the servers just can’t cope.. so I like having a few games that don’t rely on it to run.. but that’s all I want.
I picked up Bulletstorm and Crysis 2 from the EA store because of a 50% discount, and in order to have a few games that don’t rely on Steam, and then reluctantly installed Origin.. but now I wonder how long it’ll be before these games will require Origin. I also have Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2, bought on Steam, but if Origin doesn’t fall on its face I guess I’ll soon need to add them there too, if I want to receive updates.
My friends play these games, so I know they’ll also be forced to install and run Origin.. but what when the next publisher decides they want in on the act? A client per publisher? Eww.
I don’t want to run multiple clients to do the job that one is doing now.
It’s going to mean hassle adding the same people to my friends list, hoping I’ll still be able to chat and invite them to games as easily as I can now. I don’t really want to be forced into advertising the latest new client at my friends: “Hey, I bought a game off this company, go and sign up to their website and forum, get loads of annoying emails, download their client, add me to yet another list.. then we can play”.
I can only hope that I’ll still be able to add games to Steam as “Non-Steam games”, at least allowing me access to the overlay so I can still talk to people who refuse to install all the clients I guess I’m going to be stuck with.
What about clients that nobody else installs? A while ago, I was introduced to Green Man Gaming, another digital retailer. I was given a free game, which is why I consented to downloading their gaming client, Capsule. I have launched this client only a handful of times.. I don’t think I’ve even reinstalled it since reinstalling Windows. I’ve not even bought a single game from them despite the fact that they allow you to sell back your games for credit, and despite the fact they have offers on from time to time.. my friends are on Steam, the majority of my games are on Steam, so I find myself barely thinking about Green Man Gaming and Capsule, let alone running it.