Super Spring Break Hero SD crosses Trackmania with speedboats and dinosaurs in your browser
This just ruined any chance of me getting work done this afternoon: Super Spring Break Hero. It’s a browser-based speedboat racing game, married to a very simple track editor. You race across the beach, around Jurassic obstacles, and through Sharks, against the clock, or against the ghost of your previous time. Also, you can mow down spectators with a judiciously judged sideways leap.
Once the track is loaded, the controls feel lovely and smooth. Tom hates it because it broke his PC, but don’t listen to him, he’s just jealous because he hasn’t finished his game yet. I think it’s pretty good. Why don’t you try and beat my par time on this track?
(via Simon)
Fallout New Vegas Lonesome Road release delayed
Update: Bethesda US has contacted us to clarify that Lonesome Road will indeed go live on Steam today at 10AM Pacific time. No delay after all!
Whoops! Lonesome Road has suffered a last minute delay and will now be available later this evening. The Fallout New Vegas DLC was scheduled to be on Steam right now. There’s even a post on Bethblog claiming that it’s available, but a search of the Steam store reveals the DLC is nowhere to be seen.
When we contacted a representative of Bethesda for comment we were told that there had been a last minute delay, and that we could expect the Lonesome Road to arrive around “Mid afternoon, West Coast time”, which is late evening to us here in the UK. It’s a shame, but only a minor annoyance, especially compared to Batman: Arkham City being delayed by a month.
Lonesome Road will cost £7.49 or $9.99 when it finally arrives. In the meantime, enjoy the latest Fallout: New Vegas Lonesome Road trailer again.
The game’s industry’s massive fail: where are all the Minecraft clones?
The games industry is usually pretty good at taking a very good idea, and beating the fun out of it until we’re all sick to death of it. We take it as read that success will breed copycats. So here’s a question for you. Minecraft is easily the most successful new idea in gaming in near memory. It was our 2010 game of the year. Mojang have raked in 4 million sales of their brick building game, and it’s still selling. These are numbers that would should make any industry suit sit up and take notice. Why hasn’t the mainstream industry jumped in with their own version?
Firefall will let you kill your enemy’s pets, you monster
In an interview with Shacknews, Red 5 CEO Mark Kern has revealed that Firefall will feature MMO style pets available in game. “When’s the last time you heard about a shooter with pets?” said Kern. “Not only can you get a pet, but we’re thinking that there’s actually an item you can buy in the store to load your gun with special ammunition so you actually shoot the other guy’s pet. Shooting someone’s pet will ‘despawn’ it for a little while.
It’s not clear exactly what advantages this petsecution will grant you, but it’ll certainly annoy the the owner. The first special pet will be available to unlock tomorrow as part of Firefall’s ongoing beta, in a promotion called ‘the crystallite challenge’ and will be based on a character from a Penny Arcade strip called ‘The Merch’. Using a character created as a parody of aggressive merchandising to promote your micro-transaction based game is a daring move but Kern seems upbeat, saying “The Merch is awesome because he’s all about merchandising and he fits with our item-based theme.”
Firefall is slated for release in December. If you’re interested, check out our Firefall preview.
Orcs Must Die! release date announced. Orcpocalypse nigh!
Greenskin hating third person action meets tower defence game Orcs Must Die! will be released on Steam on October 12. The announcement is less than conventional however, with Robot Entertainment CEO Patrick Hudson saying “The slaying hour is nigh upon us. We can no longer restrain the enemy at the gate. We will soon turn the rift defense over to Xbox and PC gamers to beat back the mob and save the Order!” Blimey. We just thought we were going to humorously massacre Orcs with spells and traps, way to up the pressure.
If you’re curious, check the Orcs Must Die! interactive trailer for some Choose your Own Adventure-style fun.
Battlefield 3 beta release date confirmed. Pre-order for early access
Hold smoke grenades! The Battlefield 3 beta will begin on September 29 and run until October 10. Pre-order the game from Origin beforehand and you’ll get early access on September 27. You also get early access if you pre-ordered Medal of Honor. Yes, that Medal of Honor. We predict Battlefield 3 will be significantly better.
If you’re wondering whether you’ll be able to get a playable framerate, check the Battlefield 3 system requirements.
Players who sign up for the beta will also get access to Battlelog, EA’s new social networking system. We’re not quite as excited about that part which will let you track stats and share progress with chums. You’ll also get the option to join the EA Gun Club. That will provide early access to an M1911 pistol and come special badges. When did buying games get so confusing eh?
The Beta will take place on the Operation Metro Map which will have you sharing bullets across the outskirts of Paris, a bombed out metro station and the city streets. You’ll be playing the Rush mode and attacking and defending M-COM stations, just like in Bad Company 2.
For more on Battefield 3 visit the official site, follow @Battlefield, and read our most recent Battlefield 3 preview. The game’s due for release on October 28. Click through for the most recent trailer.
Bata-clang: Batman: Arkham City PC version delayed until November
Well, this has ruined an otherwise lovely day. We’ve just heard from a Warner Bros rep that the PC version of Batman: Arkham City will be delayed. There’s no release date set, yet; it’ll be arriving at an unspecified date in November. No reason was given for the delay to the PC version of the game, which was originally planned to be released alongside console versions on October 18. If we had to guess; making PC games is hard.
What a bunch of jokers.
Talk like a pirate language pack for Steam missed talk like a pirate day. Now available for download.
There’s currently an ongoing community led effort to translate Steam, the Steam store, Steam overlay and Valve’s games to as many languages as possible. That work is ongoing, and you can take part at Valve translation hub.
A side project of that work was to translate Steam to pirate. Because pirates are funny.* That project was never completed, but the work so far is now available for download via the Steam forums.
Nice try, pirate people.
*Apparently.
Crytek to develop Homefront 2. Also, Homefront 2 is a thing now
THQ have confirmed Homefront 2, the sequel to their decent take on modern day combat battlefields. It’ll be out in 2014 on console and PC. And it will probably be quite pretty, given that development duties have been handed over to Crytek, the devs responsible for Far Cry and Crysis.
Mary Poppins was a spy all along: community-made umbrella gun is basically brilliant
Here’s a video of the Spy Umbrella Team Fortress 2 community member Grimboden is working on. Isn’t that absolutely lovely?
2.6GB Battlefield Bad Company 2 patch removes DRM, adds screenshot key. Woo!
The Battlefield blog has revealed a new patch for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 which should land tomorrow. It contains a whole bundle of fixes and performance enhancements, but more notably, it removes the SecuROM DRM from non steam versions of the game. And a screenshot key.
It’s great to see DICE continuing to support their previous game. Check inside for a full list of patch notes.
Gearbox want to know what you thought of Duke Nukem Forever. What did you think of Duke Nukem Forever?
Duke Nukem Forever sold well, apparently. What sales charts fail to measure, though, is the weeping rage of a million disappointed souls, beating their chests and flagellating themselves for believing in the stinking resurrection of the zombified remains of Duke. To measure that, you need a survey.
Gearbox are collecting opinions to discover what you thought about Duke Nukem, presumably for the rumoured Duke Nukem Forever sequel. Personally, I could only force myself to play to the second hour, before binning it. What did you think?
Dota 2 client leaked. Modes, matchmaking, spells and Half-Life 2: Episode 3 info spills over internet
Dota 2 overload! Last night, Valve’s Dota 2 beta got leaked. All of it. A Vietnamese tester just went ahead and dumped the files on the internet without a care in the world. We predict that his/her Valve account is in a sorry state today, but the info is already out, thanks to a post on teamliquid.
You probably saw your first glimpse of Dota 2 at the Gamescom tournament, previously streamed live, but not that much of the modes, characters, sound files, 3D models and spells. You probably didn’t notice the hints at Episode 3 hidden within the code either.
Oh didn’t you hear? The Dota 2 client also contained the first bit of new Episode 3 info since 2007. Let’s go!
Minecraft your Warcraft with this parody video
Minecraft and World of Warcraft combined? Surely such a thing would be the most popular game in the world, no? That’s the thinking behind this clever parody video that was recently posted to Reddit. The video charts the progression of ‘BillyDaMan’ from lowly level one wolf hunter to his first five man dungeon raid. There’s dozens of jokes packed into it, all of them very familiar to anyone who has played WoW for any length of time. My favourite is when immediately after transmogrifying himself to look ‘unique’ two identical characters run past Billy in the background.
Sadly it’s been mostly done through editing rather than a fully fledged mod, so we won’t be getting a chance to actually play Mine of Worldcraft ourselves, just watch it. Still, a man can dream.
FIFA 12′s Impact engine might need a bit of work
The FIFA 12 demo is out now. This year, they’ve added a smart new physics engine, the “Impact Engine”, to better model player collisions. Think of GTA’s hilarious ragdolls, but with more balls. This video, spotted via Reddit, suggests it might need a little bit of work.
What a finish.
