XCOM: Enemy Unknown screenshots get close to combat
Three more XCOM: Enemy Unknown screenshots have appeared on Game Informer, giving us a closer look at Enemy Unknown’s soldier and alien design. As with the original X-Com, soldiers will be fully customisable. Enemy Unknown’s combat engine plans to reflect all of these customisations visually with an engine that will let us zoom extremely close to the action. There’s no sign of the original’s bizarre haircuts yet, though.
First XCOM: Enemy Unknown screens and details beam down
The words “XCOM” and “strategy” together in the same sentence qualify as gentle, genocidal music to PC gamers’ ears, but throw in an “also on consoles” and the violin begins to shriek as the audience looks on in terror. So, is XCOM: Enemy Unknown in for an out-of-this-world bruising? Game Informer dropped the first details, and things actually appear to be looking up. Well, mostly.
X-COM Complete Pack super cheap on Steam and Gamersgate
XCOM: Enemy Unknown was revealed yesterday, a modern remake from Civilization developers, Firaxis. Tremendously exciting news for fans of the classic original, but what if you never played it? Steam and Gamersgate have you covered. You can get the XCOM Complete Pack today for a fraction of its original price. That means you can grab X-COm: UFO Defense, X-COM: Terror From the Deep, X-COM: Interceptor, X-COM: Enforcer and X-COM: Apocalypse for just £2.49 on GG, and £3.05 / $5.09 on Steam. Blimey. There’s just six hours left on the Steam deal. Go go go!
XCOM: Enemy Unknown – a new XCOM strategy game from the creators of Civilization
Civilization developers, Firaxis are making a brand new XCOM game. This one won’t be a shooter, it’ll be a proper strategy sequel. GameInformer break the news with a quote from Firaxis head, Steve Martin, who says that they want “to keep XCOM: Enemy Unknown true to the elements that made X-COM such a revered game while delivering an entirely new story and gameplay experience for both die-hard X-COM fans and newcomers to the franchise.”
It’ll have classic XCOM staples. A global strategic map, turn based combat and destructible environments. As the leader of the global alien defense network, you’ll have to liase with global leaders, keep the civilian population in check and upgrade XCOM’s defensive capabilities. XCOM is back!
Graham is jetting off to see it next week. If you’ve got any questions you’d like us to ask Firaxis, let us know in the comments.
Games of 2012 – Bioshock Infinite
Familiarity in Rapture? Not a good thing,” says BioShock creator Ken Levine, explaining why Irrational Games had to leave Andrew Ryan and his rotting underwater metropolis behind with Infinite. Luckily, the team’s come up with another location that looks just as good: the sky city of Columbia, where a network of dirigibles keeps a vivid chunk of turn-of-the-century Americana aloft. It’s got all the clapboard, Lincoln masks and bunting you could want.
Spec Ops: The Line trailer has dune traps, sandstorms, marines and madmen
Spec Ops: The Line had been lost in the sands until the appearance of last month’s trailers. Here’s another one, featuring more punching, occasional shooting and narration from a suspicious sort in a dark room with a microphone. Where do these madmen keep coming from?
The Gears of War influence is obvious. Beyond the unusual setting, it’ll be interesting to see if Spec Ops does anything new with the familiar cover-to-cover scrambling of the modern third person shooter. The treacherous dunes of an unstable desert city make Spec Ops stand out from the throng, but the early trailers are heavy with the tang of testosterone. We’ll have to wait and see if Spec Ops’ characters do anything to stretch the angry-bro-in-big-armour template. It’s due out next Spring.
Civilization 5 update aims to fix multiplayer, squashes bugs and exploits
It takes plenty of patience to make it to the end of a multiplayer game of Civilization 5, patience often stretched to breaking point by de-syncing games and ponderous AI turns. A new patch has arrived for Civilization 5 brings “significant improvements to general multiplayer stability” and does something fancy to the AI move caching, “improving turn-times significantly.”
Out-of-sync errors should be less frequent and the UI has been updated letting players see details of a game before jumping into lobbies. On the downside, Firaxis have plugged a few loopholes. In a move sure to be welcomed by the confused citizens, we’ll no longer be able to trade cities back and forth to heal them and “generate endless City Strikes.” Aw. Here are the full patch notes, from Steam.
Epic, Bioware, Bioshock Infinite reveals planned for VGAs, new THQ announcement this month
Now that the release armageddon that is November is over, it’s time for everyone to announce some new projects. The next week or so will be bustling with new announcements from Bioware, Epic and THQ, and we’ll get our first look at Bioshock Infinite for a while at this weekend’s Spike TV Video Game Awards ceremony.
First up, Bioware. They’ve been busy teasing a new game from a new studio in the run up to Saturday’s show, with a teaser image and a tiny trailer clip. With EA registering a number of Command & Conquer domain names recently, there’s speculation that a new C&C may be revealed.
Ken Levine on vocal protagonists and the use of silence in Bioshock Infinite
Without giving too much away, a key twist in the original BioShock story is to do with your character being completely mute throughout the game. It was an interesting twist on Gordon Freeman-like character design, and a comment on the game’s key themes of determinism versus free will.
In BioShock Infinite, the protagonist – Booker DeWitt – will be able to speak. In an interview with IGN, its creator Ken Levine explained the decision. “How do you go back and say okay, well you’re that kind of character again after you already had that discussion with the gamer?” asked Levine. “Our response to it was, let’s really place you firmly in the world this time. Let’s give you a story, let’s give you a character to develop a personal story…You’re very active, your story is very active, Elizabeth’s story is very active.”
Spec Ops: The Line trailers return to ruined Dubai, introduce evil flaming doom tower
Spec Ops: The Line has been AWOL for a while. When we first saw it, it was masquerading as a military man shoot featuring gruff soldiers doing war at each other in the bombed out ruins of Dubai. The Line has re-emerged, with a trailer and two montages showing some fire fights. The gruff men remain, and Dubai is still the setting, but there’s a gruesome undertone to the ruins that wasn’t there before. I’m pretty sure the giant evil flaming tower is also new. See footage of the game in action below.
Ken Levine says BioShock movie could still happen
Bioshock’s fathomless setting of Rapture is the stuff Hollywood studio execs dream of: an established IP, a chance to splash out on visual effects, and a Byzantine plot. But the BioShock movie – once attached to Pirates of the Caribbean helmer Gore Verbinski – hasn’t surfaced yet.
Talking to Industry Gamers, Bioshock’s creator Ken Levine stated that the movie is “definitely something that’s still in the conversation”, so it’s not quite dead in the water. “We’d like to have a movie made,” said Levine. “But it would have to be the right one, and we’ve had the opportunity to get it made and unless all the right pieces are in place – it’s hard enough to get a movie made when all the right pieces are in place.”
Bioshock Infinite developer diary makes voice actor cry :(
The second video from the behind the series on Bioshock Infinite gets into the surprisingly intense voice acting sessions behind the E3 demo we saw earlier this year. To get the actor playing Elizabeth to feel sad about the horse that dies in the demo, the actor that plays Booker employs the classic acting technique of being really mean to her until she cries. “That wasn’t Troy just being an asshole, that was me asking Troy to get Courtnee to an emotional place” explains Ken Levine.
Still, everyone, including Courtnee, seem pretty happy with the results. I’ve embedded the full E3 demo below in case you missed it. Remember, real human tears were shed for that dead horse!
Ken Levine: scripting Elizabeth “is the most complicated thing” in Bioshock Infinite
NPC companion, Elizabeth, is set to a vital part of Bioshock Infinite’s storyline. She follows playable tough-guy, Booker DeWitt around the floating metropolis of Columbia, trying to evade the nightmarish Songbird that has kept her captive for years.
In spite of her torrid past, Elizabeth is a playful, funny sidekick. Some of the best moments from the superb fifteen minute E3 demo (above) were Elizabeth’s brief, incidental skits in which she banters with Booker and at one point puts on a giant Abe Lincoln head for a quick impression. According to creative director, Ken Levine, these small acts are the “most complicated” development task for Irrational.
Bioshock Infinite trailer talks storytelling and character in the floating city of Columbia
Ken Levine is joined by the voice actors who play Bioshock Infinite’s protagonist, Booker, and his NPC companion, Elizabeth for the new trailer. The most telling moment comes when the actor who plays Elizabeth, Coutnee Draper, says that she doesn’t know exactly how long her character has been kept captive because Levine hasn’t decided yet. Later, Levine talks about the process of working with the actors, saying that “sometimes they’ll bring something to the role and I’ll change the role,” confessing that “a lot of times I don’t even know what I want.” It’s an interesting insight into Levine’s flexible approach to creating the game’s story, almost as though he’s making it up as he’s going along. It’s a strategy that seems to be going well, the fourteen minutes of footage from E3 were incredible.
Darkness 2 trailer’s evil arms harm armed goons
The latest Darkness 2 trailer shows more clearly the slightly cel shaded, comic-book aesthetic Digital Extremes are adopting for the sequel. The Starbreeze adaptation of the comic series was almost monochromatic, and Jackie’s demonic arm powers needed darkness to recharge. In the trailer above he’s marching through well lit areas with snakey whacking arms on full show, which suggests we won’t have to take as much care and planning to get past all of those gangsters, seemingly quite happy to get into a fight with a demonic enemy wielding four arms and two guns. That’s the trouble with goons. They never know when to run.
