PCG US Podcast #280: Not California (+ an interview with Day9!)
This week, Evan, Dan, Josh, and Lucas circle the wagons to address new cyberpunk FPS Hard Reset and 2K’s recent comments that “strategy isn’t contemporary” in light of its changes to XCOM. Josh recalls his pool party-filled time at SOE’s Fan Faire and tells us his impressions on PlanetSide 2, and Evan tells us what a great time he’s having on our new GoldenEye: Source server, tackles Tribes: Ascend, and more!
At the end of the podcast, Lucas sits down with one of PC gaming’s most-loved men, Sean “Day9″ Plott, to talk eSports, why attacking in StarCraft 2 is good, and his favorite card game.
Coming right out of the screen: LG’s glasses free 3D monitor
We’ve seen a couple of announcements about glasses free 3D laptops from ASUS and Toshiba, but LG has gone one better and produced a lenticular display for the desktop.
The D2000 is a 20inch screen with uses a similar technology to Toshiba’s Qosmio F750 3D. There’s a built in web came which tracks the position of your eyes, and adjusts the stereoscopic screen filter to the best position for a clear image. The result should be better than wearing passive 3D glasses, with less blurring around the edge of objects, but possibly not as good as using an active shutter system.
There is one massive downside. The D2000 will be launching in Korea with a price equivalent to $1,200, or £750. That’s a lot of money for only one extra dimension – you can almost buy a TARDIS for that.
Badoing! Razer resurrects rubber ropes for mice
Razer, the peripherals company with a slight track record when it comes to mice, has hired the inventor of the ‘mouse bungee’ to its innovation team. With the result that it’s next gaming accessory will be, um, the mouse bungee.
According to the press release, Ed Larkin invented a simple system for holding mouse cables out of the way while playing first person shooters back in the mid-1990s. I have to confess to possibly never having used one of his devices knowingly – although the very similar ones that were branded with Gamespy logos many years ago were possibly his, and Roccat recently released one which it called an Apuri desktop management system. Ed joined Razer at the end of last year, when a disturbingly similar press release was put out.
The real news is that the Razer Mouse Bungee is now available for 19.99 Euros or a similar number of dollars. It has three non-slip feet and lots of bungee.
Incidentally, I’ll be meeting up with Razer next week to try out a load of their latest gear and pick up a Mouse Bungee and a Hydra motion sensor too. If you have any questions you’d like me to pose on your behalf, note them down below.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution trailer shows Adam Jensen: silent assassin
The latest Deus Ex: Human Revolution trailer concentrates on stealth. Jensen may be outnumbered, but staying unseen is easy in the future, because you can go invisible. And see through walls. And upgrade your boots so they’re completely silent. And eject two angular blades from your forearms so hard you can kill a man silently in less than a second without rumpling your leather jacket.
You’ll have to upgrade your augs heavily if you want to become a master of Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s black and gold shadows, but once you have, there are dozens of opportunities to toy with your enemies. Human Revolution is out on August 23 in the US and August 26 in the EU, in a month that shall henceforth be known as “Augmented August.”
Shootmania in sixth year of development. Nadeo making it “as pure as possible”
Nadeo’s International Project Manager, Edouard Beauchemin has shared new Shootmania details with PC Gamer. We fired questions at him before having “one more go” on the upcoming Trackmania Canyons at Ubisoft’s Summer Showcase. Three hours later, I left the booth.
Shootmania is an ambitious user-driven sandbox of an FPS. Users will be able to create their own gametypes and maps in a few minutes, similar to how the Trackmania community create their own unique courses. I asked Edouard whether Shootmania will feature some form of persistent levelling system similar to the ones featured in most modern FPSs.
It wont. According to Edouard, “A whole experience system could have been implemented into Trackmania, but a game based on skill is more interesting for the people we like to play with. With Shootmania, it’s the same thing. It’s based on skill. There are no RPG mechanics. We want to make it as pure as possible.”
Call of Duty: Black Ops Annihilation release date announced
Thursday July 28 is the PC launch date for the third Call of Duty: Black Ops map pack, Annihilation. The pack will contain four new multiplayer maps and one zombie survival level, set in the lush jungles of Shangri-La. There’s still no official price announcement and it hasn’t appeared on Steam just yet, but going on previous map pack releases, it’ll probably cost about £10 / $15, might be available to pre-order at ten percent off, and there could be a big fat double XP weekend in the days following release to celebrate. Earlier we learned that the Modern Warfare 3 map packs will all be made available to Call of Duty Elite subscribers.
World of Warcraft Real ID Party beta lets friends on different Realms play together
On Battle.net, Blizzard announce that a new World of Warcraft Real ID Party system has gone into public beta. The system will let players on different Realms unite to take on 5-layer normal or heroic dungeons as long as they’re from the same faction. If you can’t form a five man party, the remaining slots can be filled using Dungeon Finder. Blizzard haven’t said how long the beta will last, or whether it will eventually be available exclusively to subscribers, but they have posted more information in the form of a FAQ.
Prototype 2 trailer has gruesome tendril death
Horrible gristly tendrils are the subject of the latest Prototype 2 trailer, which shows new player character, James Heller catching marines, cars and even helicopters in his fleshy web. It looks like a really disgusting version of Just Cause 2′s multi-rope, which let you tie up grunts and attach them to explosive barrels for a giggle. We’ll get to test out Heller’s tendril powers and kick all the helicopters to death when the game comes out next year.
Call of Duty Elite trailer reveals Modern Warfare 3 map packs for subscribers
The Call of Duty Elite beta kicks off today, but what’s in it? The new trailer goes over Elite’s free features, including clans, leaderboards, stat-tracking, video uploading and sharing, weapon performance maps and more. Those who subscribe to the elite version of Elite will get all of the Modern Warfare 3 map packs and will be able to join tournaments to compete for real prizes. The Elite beta will work with Call of Duty: Black Ops until its full release alongside Modern Warfare 3 in November. Earlier today the first images emerged for Battlefield 3′s competing Battlelog service.
Trackmania 2: Canyons price announced. Will be “free to stay”
Nadeo, creators of the Trackmania series, along with the upcoming Shootmania and Questmania title have been speaking to PC Gamer. Edouard Beauchemin is aware of the recent trend in the profitable free-to-play model, but says it’s not the best option for the upcoming Trackmania 2: Canyons.
Speaking at Ubisoft’s Summer Showcase yesterday, the international project manager said: “Free to play is so fashionable at the moment. People come up to us and are like ‘Make Trackmania 2: Canyon’s free to play’ and we’re like ‘No – Trackmania Nations. That’s completely free-to-play. You don’t have to pay at any time. And we’re still looking at 700,000 different people playing the game each month.
Source Engine is “long in the tooth,” say Epic, pitches Unreal to indie devs
Yesterday, Epic rounded off the two day Unreal University event in London, offering a day of free seminars to students and enthusiasts looking to make new games using the free Unreal Development Kit. We sat down with with technical artist and level designer Alan Willard and Epic’s European territory manager, Mike Gamble for a chat about the popularity of the UDK among fledgeling developers, and how it stacks up against popular competitors like Valve’s Source SDK. Their verdict: Source is “long in the tooth.”
Magicka’s buggy launch: “We didn’t know the game was being released”
Wizarding adventure Magicka might have gone on to sell 600,000 copies, but the game had a rocky start. When the game first launched, players experienced bugs that made it basically unplayable in both singleplayer and multiplayer, and it was weeks before it was stable.
At E3 last month, I spoke to Emil Englund, one of the founders of developers Arrowhead Game Studios, and asked him how the buggy launch happened.
Battlefield 3 Battlelog screenshots show stat tracking, friends lists and built in voice chat
Battlefield 3′s Battlelog service is designed to track Battlefield 3 players’ stats, unlocks, XP and kill death ratio over the course of their career. Battlefieldo.com have spotted the now pulled first screenshots of the service on the German Battlefield site, revealing instant messaging features, built-in voice chat and a “join” button to let friends dive straight into each other’s games.
It can be easy to forget how dodgy Battlefield: Bad Company 2′s server browser was on launch. Lengthy load times, slow refresh times, disappearing favourites lists and a hit and miss search function meant getting into a game could be frustrating to say the least. Here’s hoping Battlelog can deliver a smoother experience. You’ll find the four screenshots below, click to see them full size.
Rage trailer is a boomstick tribute
Bethesda have released a new developer diary showing off the arsenal available in id Software’s upcoming shooter, Rage.
If id are known for anything, it’s their guns. They know how to do firearms. The classic id shotgun, a crossbow that fires mind-control darts, a bladed, homing boomerang of death and a hunter-killer spider robot are just a few of the items that’ll be filling your ever-expanding gun rack over the course of the game. Despite all the huge environments and vehicle racing segments that id have shown off before, the team are keen to emphisise that Rage is still a shooter at heart, with no less bloody head shots than you’d expect from the creators of Doom. It’s due out in October.
Don’t know what to play? Add an “I’m feeling lucky” button to Steam
Choice paralysis strikes gamers all too often, especially in the wake of a Steam Summer Sale. Dozens of options are just a double-click away, but all you can do is stare at the daunting list of unplayed games, unable to make up your mind.
No longer: Reddit user benmatth took a page from Google’s playbook and created an EXE that, when run, picks a game from your list at random and starts it up. In our first test on Evan’s PC it ran Arma 2 – which, let’s face it, he was gonna do anyway – but this is a great way to make sure that none of your games feel neglected.
Download it here, give it a shot, and let us know what it runs in the comments!
Note: the program’s only been around for less than a day at the time of this writing, so it might still have a few bugs. On one of our PCs it just crashes every time, which is neither random nor lucky.
Update: Version 4 fixed our problem.
