Gaming - Page 2081

GDC 2012: The first news off the startling line of this years Game Developers Conference (GDC) is news from Razer, which is very interesting indeed. Razer and Sixense Entertainment have just announced that they have full integrated motion gaming support now built for Valve's most popular titles: Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Team Fortress 2.

Not only that, but future Valve-made games such as Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will support full motion play with Razer Hydra. The news does continue to get better, though. Sixense and Valve have also integrated Sixense MotionCreator 2.0 software into Valve's Steam gaming platform. This does something quite special indeed: it enables backwards compatibility for motion gaming with the Razer Hydra controller to over 250 of the most popular titles on Steam!

From now on, Steam users will receive automatic motion control updates for current, and future games, as well as a new in-game overlay which lets gamers view control maps for the Hydra controller, as they play. CEO and Co-Founder of Sixense, Amir Rubin, says:

Well, well. This would not only make sense for Valve, but for the PC community. Rumor has it that the company behind absolutely huge hits like Half-Life, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Counter-Strike, are working on their own gaming console.

It has been talked about for a while, with Gabe Newell himself even saying "well, if we have to sell hardware we will". That can be taken many ways, but could this be the reason? An actual Steam Box console? Valve have been rumored to be secretly tinkering with gaming hardware for the living room, and having Steam at the center of that gaming device.

This doesn't sound too hard, considering the phenomenal success Google has enjoyed with Android. Within the same interview that Gabe said they'd have to sell hardware, he's quoted:

WHERE WAS MY INVITE, ROCKSTAR?!?! Anyway, the worldwide gaming press have had their first hands-on taste of the slow-mo, gun-toting Max Payne 3 and have some seriously amazing things to say about it.

Rockstar showed them a bit of the game, with the story early on, they find Max and his partner Passos meeting up with the ruthless Comando Sombra gang at a local football stadium in an attempt to exchange cash for the captive Fabiana Branco. However, things quickly turn bad as the deal is crashed by unknown assailants. From there, they're also given a taste of a level where Max tracks Fabiana's kidnappers to the hostile, rain-soaked docks by the Tietê River...

The impressions and quotes? Incredible. Excitement... building... The only thing holding me back is most of these sites give games like Call of Duty: Yet Another Sequel games high scores, but Max Payne is quite close to my heart, please let these quotes be complete 100-percent excitement and truth.

Rumors of Doom 4 being cancelled have once again been shot down by Bethesda Softworks, after All Games Beta publishing some information stating that the game had been cancelled, simultaneously releasing leaked screenshots that originally surfaced on 4Chan.

Bethesda vice president of public relations and marketing, Pete Hines, said to Joystiq in a statement, that Doom 4 is not cancelled and that when they are ready to discuss the game and show it off, they'll let everyone know. All Games Beta opened the floodgates and have now added more screenshots to their gallery, totalling 170 images.

Considering that id's RAGE was not that great, personally, critically and across the world, it would be hard to have faith in this after RAGE took five-plus years to develop. id need to go back to their roots as a PC-exclusive developer and push the envelope with Doom 4 if they want their time in the lime light once more. A PC-exclusive, PC-crushing, crap-your-pants horror game is what we need right now. Doom 4 could re-spark PC's constantly-dimming light.

Ah, Sonic, the memories I have of you are so great. AnandTech have had some hands-on time with the Tegra Zone enhanced version of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II, which was only announced yesterday for NVIDIA's quad-core 4-PLUS-1 Tegra 3.

Cross-platform development of games is important these days, with Sega looking to tap the gamers of XBLA, PSN, iOS and Android for Sonic. The Android port more specifically, saw NVIDIA work closely with Sega to crete a Tegra 3-enhanced version of the game, which is said to mimic the quality one would expect from the console-based ports.

AnandTech said the game "does indeed look very impressive", and had the fast-moving hedgehog plugged up to a 50-inch-plus LED TV. Water and fire effects are said to be pretty much what the console versions look like, but NVIDIA did not have a console on-hand for a side-by-side comparison between the various platforms. Performance-wise, AnandTech reports that the framerate did dip below the 30fps mark a few times, but did not hurt the overall experience of the game.

We still don't know what the next-generation Xbox will be called when it launches, but if we're to believe a short and sweet Tweet from a Crytek developer, then we'll have to believe the Xbox 720/Next/whatever they call it, has the codename of "Durango".

Senior technical designer at Crytek, Sean Tracy, wrote on his Twitter feed (which has now been deleted):

Epic Games are set to show off their next-generation gaming engine, Unreal Engine 4, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week. Epic will unveil a preview version of it's "next-generation game technology" - Unreal Engine 4 to "select licensees, partners and prospective customers during the exhibition" according to its announcement earlier today.

Epic have already teased what is capable from the next-gen engine with their high-end Unreal Engine 3 Samaritan tech demo, with Epic's Vice President Mark Rein saying at the time:

Ah, Angry Birds. Waster of tens of hours of my time, and just today I'm out at the shops and see a constant flow of plush toys that I'm ever-so-tempted to buy. Out today from Samsung Mobile's Facebook page, I noticed a tease of... Angry Birds: Space.

Angry Birds: Space has a YouTube video, above, and teases with "Houston..", "We have a slingshot", then bam - Angry Birds: Space's logo splashed upon Samsung's Galaxy Note that is set to launch soon.

What should we expect? Well, I'm guessing a space-themed Angry Birds game. But will it introduce new things to the game? That's what I'd like to see. Hopefully Rovio don't just expect to continue this franchise by releasing new themes - break out of that usual cycle and change the game up. I'm excited, now I just need a Galaxy Note.

[UPDATE] I've received an e-mail from a reader who has pointed me to a post by Blizzard Community Manager "Daxxarri", where he has a pretty big message that goes against the post below. He says that the game is in good shape, and that he thinks we will love Diablo III when it is released. He also adds that they want you/us/everyone to have high expectations of not only Diablo III, but all Blizzard-produced games. He also adds that if Diablo III wasn't a worthy instalment in the Diablo III series, they wouldn't bother releasing it, adding that that's the way they've always done it.

Take a look at the post here, which should calm not only my nerves, but your nerves, too. Thanks for the heads up, Andrew!

I've felt this for quite some time now, it started at about the time Blizzard were rumored to be working on Diablo III for consoles, but now they're actually coming out and saying that people should actually lower their expectations for Diablo III. Say. What!!! Direct quote from "Bachiok", Community Manager on Diablo III's forums:

The Penny Arcade Report has a pretty juicy review with gaming development god himself, Gabe Newell. In the interview, we don't find out the most importan news to man-kind: the release date of Half-Life 3, but we do find out that Gabe says Valve don'e want to get into the cycle of constantly developing sequels.

Even though that's all they do: Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Counter Strike: Source/Global Offensive, Half-Life 2 (and the Episodes), and more. Gabe also talks about DRM, and says that rather than telling game developers what they can and can't do with their anti-piracy techniques, Newell prefers to show them actual data.