In Simulation: Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog flightstick and throttle
Andy Mahood takes to the skies, race tracks, and battlefields in our monthly In Simulation column to showcase the best that sim games have to offer. This month, Andy test drives the Ferrari of flightsticks and shows how it can take your flight sim experience to the next level.
“Always use the right tool for the job.” Sage advice from my father many years ago, but his words rang especially true this past month when I finally got my paws on Thrustmaster’s latest HOTAS Warthog A-10C flightstick and throttle.Weighing in at almost 15 pounds, the mostly metal HOTAS Warthog is the Rolls Royce of Hands-On-Throttle-And-Stick controllers for current-generation flight sims. It ain’t cheap (the best online price I could find was $350), but if you’re serious about your virtual combat flying, it’s one of the best investments you can make.
Heroes of Newerth director talks about mentoring
As action-RTS Heroes of Newerth prepares to introduce new features and a few surprises at Dreamhack, Director of Operations Brad Bower talked to us about how S2 is developing the game by providing more effective teaching tools for new players.
He explained how HoN’s mentoring system mimics the way we tend to learn games from friends in real-life, and how HoN’s updates will make the client itself a learning resource for new players.
Dev Man Talking: PopCap’s Jeff Green on the little things in game development
Each Month, Dev Man Talking invites a prominent developer to share their thoughts on a particular aspect of the games industry they’re passionate about. This month Jeff Green, PopCap’s Director of Editorial and Social Media, explains how tiny mistakes can massively change the course of game development and how great developers know what their game is and isn’t. Want more Green? He can be found ranting on Twitter as @Greenspeak.
PlanetSide 2 Vanu screens show hovertanks, spaceships, the color purple
Technology’s pretty great. That’s what PlanetSide 2′s Vanu Sovereignty believes, and I’m inclined to agree with them. Well, not in the borderline-nutty “worship a super-advanced ancient alien race” type of way, but these high-tech computing boxes we all love so much sure can draw some pretty pictures. Case in point: these new Vanu screens that SOE has so kindly provided. OK, sure, their fashion sense could be a tinge… er, less purple, but let’s face it: presumably extinct aliens probably don’t have the best eye for what flies nowadays. They can design some damn fine tanks, though. Check out all the screens after the break.
Four steps to recover from MMO account hacking
Everyone who has been hacked can tell you a nasty tale of stolen goods and naked characters. It’s not an experience you’d wish on your worst enemy. Well, maybe that one guy who ganked you for hours in your favorite MMO. Yet the process of recovery doesn’t have to be so frustrating and confusing. In our latest issue we walked you through four steps to help you get back in the game with a smile. Check inside for a full-sized printable page to prevent the “I’ve been hacked” blues.
Click the image below to see the full page.
And in other PC gaming news…
Woo! A Battlefield 3 patch! I’m hoping it fixes my current problem, where I drop through the floor and crash out of the game after playing for around 30 minutes. On the other hand I was also planning to spend tonight testing out some Skyrim mods to update our post, or check out the co-op in Saints Row 3, or try this Batman: Arkham City Onlive demo… Arrrgh! Bloody November! How am I supposed to decide which of these games to play? How is anyone?
Check inside by a selection of indecisive, dithering PC gaming news.
Minecraft’s Notch versus Yogscast: the story so far
Minecon wasn’t quite the Minecraft celebration developer Markuss “Notch” Persson was expecting. In fact, it’s the fallout that followed that’s put it in many gaming sites’ headlines – including Edge’s. It seems Notch and Minecraft-centric video podcast Yogscast had something of a falling out at the show.
Seemingly, it all comes down to Yogscast’s behaviour during Minecon. Notch started subtly without naming names, tweeting: “I’m very sorry about the behavior of the people we won’t work with any more. Celebrity or not, you don’t f-bomb kids.” This was rapidly followed up with, “Yes, Yogscast.”
World of Tanks trailer heralds incoming 7.0 update
Update 7.0 is currently camping out on the World of Tanks test servers, waiting for its moment to explode from its camouflage net and frolic in the wide open fields of the public servers. It’ll bring new maps, including FJORDS (thunderclap), and add tank camouflage and clan tags. There’s still no release date, but Wargaming.net also promise some “tanksgiving” XP bonuses over the next few days. Keep an eye on the World of Tanks website for details.
Batman: Arkham City demo available now through OnLive
Batman: Arkham City is out today in the US, but Europeans will have to wait until Friday to save Gotham. Wherever you live, you can play a free demo of Batman: Arkham City right now through the cloud gaming service, OnLive.
Once you’ve signed up for a free account and downloaded the client simply search for Arkham City in the games list and launch the free trial. It’s limited to 30 minutes, but that’ll give you chance to take control of Catwoman and thrash some burly men with Arkham City’s super slick combat system. Hold down the crouch button while moving for some comedy cat-crawling.
Outerra engine renders entire planets
Those good people at Reddit have pointed us in the direction of Outerra, an indie project to create a new game engine. It pitches itself as a “3D planetary engine for seamless planet rendering from space down to the surface.”
The latest video on the site (above) shows the engine’s impressive water rendering effects, with waves lapping on the shore and and an Orange Tango-shaded sunset. The engine incorporates vehicles and aircraft, too.
Serious Sam 3: BFE is out today, launch trailer gets bloody
Serious Sam 3: BFE will make a Big Fancy Entrance in four hours time. Croteam have broken recent trends by releasing a launch trailer on the day their game actually comes out, which is nice, and the video does a good job of showing just how serious Sam is about this one. He even does a swear, before obliterating a hundred monsters in slow motion with a rocket launcher. It looks like bloody good fun. There’s still time to pre-order it on Steam and Direct2Drive at 10% off.
Codemasters resurrecting Dizzy, egg puns hard to ovoid
It looks as though Codies are bringing back everyone’s favourite sentient egg from the 1980s, Dizzy. Codemasters comms director Rich Eddy has been teasing the announcement on Twitter, linking to a teaser site and the teaser video above. In case there was any doubt that it’s a Dizzy announcement, the video shows a man rescuing a copy of Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk from a warehouse and blowing the dust off the cover. Symbolism!
Eddy says “we’ll name the date for #EggmergenceDay tomorrow.” Hopefully it’ll also be coming to PC. I confess that I only played one Dizzy game, and I barely remember it because I was about five. Did you play the original series? What would you like to see from a Dizzy revival?
DC Universe Online: “700% increase in daily revenue” since going free to play
The superhero MMO has been super-punching above its weight since its shift to free to play with news of a massive bounce in player numbers and profits since the shift. Massively spotted Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley tweeting some quite interesting stats. The superhero MMO has seen a “700% increase in daily revenue” since it relaunched earlier this month.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim patch ties launcher to Steam, breaks tweaks and RAM mod
A tiny patch to Skyrim has disabled many of file tweaks that players have been making to improve Skyrim’s visuals. RPS noticed growing annoyance on the Skyrim forums as players discovered that the popular Large Address Aware tweak that lets Skyrim recognise more than 2GB of ram on 64 bit systems has stopped working since the update.
Battlefield 3 patch fixes crashes, improves performance, improves squad joining
That Battlefield 3 patch we mentioned yesterday has popped up in Origin, adding dozens of bug fixes and balance changes. I doubt I’m alone in skipping to the ‘stability fixes’ section, but there’s plenty more there, including plenty of weapon balancing tweaks.
DICE say they’ve “fixed several crashes when joining MP and Co-Op sessions” as well as visual stuttering on some configs. A few of us in the office have had problems with long, long loading times getting into a game, and DICE suggest that those should be shorter thanks to some general performance improvements.
Good news, too, for hammerhead sharks. The patch has also “fixed multiple problems when using multiple monitors.”
The extended patch notes on Battlelog delve into the detailed changes. Basic features like the ability to join a squad “by selecting a Squad and then clicking the Join Squad button,” and the ability to join empty squads have also been added as DICE start to bring Battlefield 3 up to the level of polish that it should have had at launch. See the full notes below.
