Steam sale targets Ubisoft this weekend
Ubisoft are having a sale on Steam this weekend, with 33% off the vast majority of games in their catalogue. There are also daily deals – until 6pm GMT tonight you can get the Ghost Recon Complete Pack, including every game up to GRAW 2, for £6.24/$7.49.
See below for other highlights and links to our reviews.
Anno 2070 update adds new buildings, increases “probability of tornado disaster”
You know what’s way too easy? Building a city and managing resources when there are absolutely no tornadoes happening. Perhaps realising this, the Anno 2070 devs have updated the game with a patch that increases the “probability of a tornado disaster” and “the interval at which they can occur.” Regular, predictable tornadoes. That is the key to exciting city building.
The latest patch also adds new “ornamental buildings” and makes loads of fixes and balance tweaks. If you wondering whether Anno 2070 is worth a punt, check out our Anno 2070 review. Meanwhile, here’s the full patch list from Steam.
Ubisoft DRM server downtime locks players out of Anno 2070, Driver: San Francisco and more
Recently we mentioned that many Ubisoft games would be unplayable this week because some server shuffling at Ubi HQ. The downtime has started, locking players out of Might and Magic: Heroes VI, The Settlers 7 and Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2. Players who have just bought Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Anno 2070 and Driver: San Francisco won’t be able to activate their games while the servers are down.
According to Ubisoft’s Uplay page, Anno 2070 was one of the few games that was supposed to remain unaffected during the switch-over, but many players can’t launch the game. Our copy of Anno autopatched without a hitch, but when we tried to start it up, we got the error message above. “We apologize for the inconvenience, it seems some of you can’t connect to games announced as playable during migration,” said Ubisoft on Twitter, adding that they’re currently working on a fix.
Players on the Ubisoft forums say that they can’t log into Driver: San Francisco either.
Anno 2070 review
Of all the things to bring a civilisation to a grinding halt, it’d have to be truffles. My fisheries, oil refineries, pig farms and distilleries operate with total efficiency. My surplus goods are loaded into cargo haulers and sold at a premium to the hippies across the waves. Yet I can grow no further. If I want to expand to the rest of my island home, I need to meet a sudden and unexpected demand for lobster dinners.
Anno 2070 is a real-time management sim that tasks you with creating the biggest and happiest empire you can in a future where resources are scarce as a result of climate change. It’s a shift from the historical foundations of the previous games in the series in favour of something socially-minded and forward-looking.
Ubisoft: “Vast majority” of customers never encounter DRM problems
Ubisoft’s finally seen fit to pipe up about Anno 2070′s extremely sensitive (read: prone to detecting minute graphics card changes – not penning tear-jerking poetry) DRM, and well, perhaps no news actually was good news. In short, Ubisoft told RPS that its DRM is functioning precisely as intended. Worse, the publisher really doesn’t see why everyone’s making such a big deal about this.
Ubi DRM activation limits respond to graphics card changes
Ubisoft’s DRM isn’t exactly known for its gentle, loving caress in matters near and dear to PC gamers’ hearts, but the latest tightening of the cuffs seems a bit overkill-ish even by Ubi’s standards. In attempting to review Anno 2070′s performance on a range of hardware configurations, Guru3D made an extremely disappointing discovery: The second the site switched out a GTX 580 for a GTX 590, Anno demanded another, separate activation. On top of that, the game gives you a whopping three whole activations to work with, so think carefully before spelunking around in your machine’s brittle innards.
I’ve fired off a mail to Ubisoft asking whether this is an intentional piece of extra armor plating for its DRM Voltron, or merely a glitch the publisher plans on patching out. Fingers crossed for the latter, though precedent’s not exactly on our side.
Anno 2070 demo arrives, play the first two missions
Upcoming city-building sim, Anno 2070 has a demo! It covers the first two missions, in which you’re tasked with funding and building a hydroelectric power plant at the behest of a tycoon leader. It should provide a gentle introduction to the construction and resource management mechanics, and also give us an opportunity to gawp at the lovely graphics engine (see more of it in these Anno trailers). The full game contains two factions, and will let you extend your cities beyond the shores of your island to the bottom of the ocean. Grab the Anno 2070 demo here.
Anno 2070 trailer is gorgeous, features WAR
The new Anno 2070 trailer above drew a small crowd in the office. Owen’s the only one who’s seen it in action, and we demanded that he tell us whether the city building sim looks that good in real life. “Yes!” he said. “It even looks just as good under that ocean!” NO IT DOESN’T, we asserted unfairly. “It does!” said Owen. “It does!”
According to the trailer, it doesn’t just sit there looking lovely. It has war, too. We’re growing steadily more interested in Anno 2070, and look forward to sucking up all of Earth’s resources when it’s released in November.
Anno 2070 trailer shows Eco and Tycoon factions
The latest Anno trailer highlights the difference between the city-building sim’s two factions. There’s the Ecos, who use sustainable energy sources, floating blimps that clean the air and a smug sense of satisfaction to power their economy. The Tycoons plough through Anno’s luscious terrain with complete disregard for the eco-balance. Their cities are sprawling masses of rust and fumes. They can store the negative products from their enormous factories inside mountains, which is the equivalent of sweeping all your rubbish under a sofa in the vain hope it will one day turn into gold. This never works.
Anno 2070 trailer shows gigantic future cities
This new trailer for Anno 2070 shows off some of the hi-tech cities, which look simply gorgeous. Sadly there’s no shots of the incredible underwater cities, although we’ve seen them in action and they’re equally as beautiful.
We’ll have more on Anno 2070 when it comes out later this year.
Anno 2070 trailer builds cities under the sea
The first screenshots revealed that, for the first time, Anno will be heading into the future. What we didn’t know until Gamescom last week was that you’ll be able to use that future tech to expand your cities beyond the shores of their islands, to the seabed below, where there seem to be lava pits. Rich, tasty, resourceful lava pits. Owen saw the Gamescom demo, and says it looked so pretty it made him fear for his PC. Find out more on the official Anno 2070 site.
Anno 2070 trailer offers a choice of futures
Futuristic city building sim, Anno 2070, offers you a choice. Will you go for ecological technology, or industrial standard factory complexes? Will you choose sustainability and sunshine, or mass consumption and dark shanty towns? Would you like to nurture this bunny, or strangle it with the factory fumes of capitalism? Whichever option you choose, it’ll look really nice. Find out more on the official Anno 2070 site.
Anno 2070 takes city building to the future, first screens out
The Anno series of city building sims have so far been set in the distant past. They involved chopping down lots of trees and building up the most advanced settlement possible out of wood, sweat and tears. The next Anno game will thrust the series into the far future, where there is no wood: only iron, concrete and giant diggers. The first four screens of Anno 2070 are out, and you’ll find them below.
Also: WAT? ANNO IS IN THE FUTURE NOW?
