Batman: Arkham City’s Robin revealed
Fansite ArkhamCity.co.uk have spotted the first bit of artwork for Robin in Batman: Arkham City. For now, Robin is only available as a Best Buy pre-order bonus in the US. Hopefully we’ll see him make his way over the pond at some point, or become available to all as DLC after launch. He’ll be playable in all of Arkham City’s challenge maps, and will get two unique ones of his own, called Black Mask Hideout and Freight Train Escape. Robin will fight with his own set of gadgets and will have a different moveset to Batman and Catwoman.
Microsoft says WebGL browser games are “harmful”
Bad news for open standards browser-based gaming: Microsoft’s has said that it won’t be supporting WebGL now or in the foreseeable future.
The announcement was made via its Technet blog site, under the rather damning headline “WebGL considered harmful”.
The development of WebGL is being managed by The Khronos Group, which is also responsible for OpenGL, OpenCL and so on. WebGL is a cross platform API designed to give your browser access to your graphics card and enable hardware acceleration of JavaScript games.
Duke Nukem Forever sequel on the cards? “You will see future Duke IP” says Take Two boss
Take Two boss, Strauss Zelnick has told Forbes that the Duke is not dead, saying “we don’t really talk about it in detail but you will see future Duke IP coming from this company.”
The term “Duke IP” could mean anything from a sequel to Duke Nukem Forever to comic books or a film. “If we can take some of our intellectual property and bring it to another medium in an extraordinary high quality way, that delights consumers and represents an interesting commercial opportunity for us, we will,” says Zelnick.
New info on the Team Fortress 2 Über Update
Activate nerd shivers and/or chills. Team Fortress 2′s official website was just updated to showcase the incoming Über Update, and this looks like the update to be crowned king of all free content updates. Hailed as the “biggest, most ambitious” addition of content in TF2′s history, it’s sure to be a doozy. With the announcement of Mobster Monday items for the Spy and Heavy classes, confirmation of the incoming Meet the Medic video, and a new Payload map, we’re already itching to try out all the new goodies. Check out what’s coming your way when the update gets released this Thursday!
The League of Legends Season 1 championship match is happening now. Watch it with us live!
UPDATE: The match is over! Congratulation to LoL’s first-ever world champs! (whose name has been edited out for the sake of spoilers–go watch the replay videos!)
This weekend’s Sweden-based Dreamhack esports tournament has hosted some amazing matches for all the competitive games, but League of Legends is my personal favorite to watch–and almost 1,000,000 people have tuned in at one point or another to spectate the LoL portion of the tournament.
The finals match starts today at 3:00 PM PST, and you don’t want to miss it! Two European teams, aAa and FnaticMSI will be duking it out for the $100,000 and all the pride, bragging rights, and nerd cred that comes with being crowned the champions of League of Legends’ first Season.
You can watch video recaps, dynamic brackets, and all sorts of other goodies on Riot Games’ website.
League of Legends’ Dreamhack finals will be streaming all day long
Update: Congrats to TSM for taking 3rd place! The Grand Finals between the European teams aAa (against All authority) and FnaticMSI are set to start at midnight in Sweden (3pm PST). Come back and watch the livestream with us on the site!
Consider this something of a public service announcement: if you’re anywhere near a computer with internet access (likely, seeing as you’re reading this), then you owe it to yourself to check out the livestream for the League of Legends DreamHack finals, which is currently (as of 10:45am PST) kicking off the match between aAa and Team SoloMid to determine who takes 3rd place and who’ll be making it to the Grand Finals. With the pro-level shoutcasting and High Definition stream, this is one live event you shouldn’t miss (even if you’re at work—just tell your boss you have some important eSports matters to attend to). Check it out at Riot’s Season One Championship site!
And in other PC gaming news…
Today in the PC Gamer office, deadline excitement was upon us. There was some running around and screaming, but everything turned out fine in the end, apart from the bit when we got invaded by monsters, but you can read all about that below.
Being on deadline meant we had to be EXTRA STRONG in the face of all of today’s interesting news. There was no time to speculate at length about what might happen in Meet the Medic, there was no time to argue about what rooms we’d like to see added to Eve’s Incarna update, and no time to disagree with Vaas’s definition of insanity in Far Cry 3. Instead, we invite you all to have those debates for us in the comments below. Read on for your daily hit of pure PC gaming news.
GRID PC servers closed down, Xbox 360 servers still going
Servers for Codemaster’s 2008 racer, GRID have been shut down, according to a report on MCV. The Xbox 360 servers will keep on running, but Codies have yanked the plug on PC and PS3 servers for the game.
Codemasters cite a “decision by a third party provider” as a reason for the shutdown, saying the third party decided to “decline the offer of an extended contract to continue online play on these platforms,” adding “We thank fans for their support and apologise to those affected by the end of this service.”
The apology hasn’t done much to calm the anger of fans left without multiplayer support. Livid fans are protesting on Codemaster’s forums, and there’s talk of a boycott of Codemaster’s other racing games, like the recently released Dirt 3.
Far Cry 3 dev on game narratives: “almost no-one” can get great performances
The maniacal performance of the player character’s captor, Vaas in the Far Cry 3 demo was one of the most memorable moments of E3 this year. We caught up with narrative director on Far Cry 3, Jason Vandenberghe on the show floor to discuss the art of honing a great virtual performance, and explore the reasons why so many virtual actors end up in “the uncanny valley of performance.”
Eve Incarna update incoming, you’ll be exploring Eve’s space stations tomorrow
The long-awaited Incarna update for Eve Online is set to arrive tomorrow. Incarna 1.0 will add the Captain’s Quarters that will let every pilot wander around their own personal quarters on board any space station they dock in.
Project Zomboid taken offline by pirates, free public demo now available
Developers of the survival RPG Project Zomboid were forced to take the game off their site over the weekend after pirates developed a version of the game that would use Indie Stone’s servers to automatically update their illegal copy, a move that could potentially cost The Indie Stone enormous amounts of money.
In a blog post picked up by RPS, the devs say that “these ‘auto updating’ versions of the game could screw us completely.”
Antec’s halo 6 LED lighting makes monitors better
As a fully paid up member of the glasses-wearing wearing gamers’ club, anything that will allow me to stare at a computer monitor for longer before eye-strain kicks in sounds like a good thing. Which is why I’ll be reviewing Antec’s new soundscience halo 6 LED bias lighting kit as soon as I can get one in.
Red Orchestra 2 dedicated servers detailed, will use VAC and Punkbuster
A member of the Red Orchestra 2 beta team has posted on the Bash and Slash forums confirming that Red Orchestra 2 will support both ranked and unranked dedicated servers. Blues News spotted the post, which says that ranked servers will be monitored by the developers so that those who misbehave can be easily banned.
Valve free-to-play game: “Yes,” it’s being worked on
Valve VP of marketing, Doug Lombardi, has confirmed to French site Barre de Vie that Valve are working on a free-to-play game. When asked if Valve were working on their own free-to-play game, Lombardi simply replied “yes.”
Of course, the first question is ‘which game?’ Valve are known to currently be working on Dota 2, the sequel to Warcraft 3 mod Defence of the Ancients. Dota has spawned many similar unofficial successors. One of these most notable of these is League of Legends, which thrives on a free-to-play model bolstered by micro-transactions. Could Valve be planning something similar for Dota 2? We could find out more in August when Valve appear at Gamescom.
This week’s releases
Hello and welcome to our regular round up of this week’s newly released games in Europe and North America. Wallets at the ready for the shiny new games within.
