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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning ‘Teeth of Naros’ DLC releases April 17 on Steam

38 Studios, Big Huge Games, and EA have announced that a new Kingdoms of Amalur expansion, Teeth of Naros, will be released on Steam on April 17. This is the second DLC expansion for the game, and will include the floating city of Idylla, which contains over 20 side quests and “a mysterious new race,” five “enormous new dungeons,” three new Twists of Fate, nine new armor sets, six new shields, and 18 new weapons. As with the previous expansion, Legend of Dead Kel, Teeth of Naros will be priced at $10 or £7.

Euro 2012 DLC on its way for FIFA 12

I sit next to Rich, and every lunchtime he and Graham play FIFA 12 together. I know very little about the game, except that it involves men running around, kicking balls, and then falling over and enthusiastically tickling each other. Be that as it may, EA have announced that its UEFA Euro 2012 tie-in will be an expansion pack for FIFA 12, priced at £15.99 in the UK and delivered via Origin.

Battlefield 3 spectator mode and e-sports features teased by latest Battlelog update

The internet detectives over at MP1st have spotted changes to Battlefield 3′s Battlelog service that suggest that e-sports matches and spectator modes are on their way. Proper match viewing features could be a big deal for Battlefield 3, as they’d make the game’s best moments accessible to commentators, and therefore the wider e-sports audience. There are so many different mechanics in play in a given match that you’d think it’d make for ideal viewing.

Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning review

As with so many longform fantasy RPGs, the troubles afflicting the inhabitants of Amalur can all be blamed on the actions of a single mad gnome. Stupid gnomes.

This time one of them has decided to build a device called the Well of Souls to bring people back from the dead. You, a third-person fantasy hero, are its first and last success.

Syndicate review

Somewhere between the roomfuls of civilians cowering from his indiscriminate firstperson weapons fire, and his best work pal putting bullets into the skulls of an entire train’s worth of helpless innocents, you’d think Syndicate enforcer Miles Kilo would have worked out that his employers Eurocorp were not entirely ethical.

But the silent Miles is either pathologically selfish or as dopey as a biomechanically enhanced brush: he doesn’t care about his company’s inhumanity until it’s directed squarely at him. He just wades through near-future offices, doing the shooty bidding of his bosses, until the story takes a personal turn.

The Secret World Dragon preview

It’s the morning after the GDC earthquake (only 4 or 5 on the Richter scale, but enough to make your correspondent feel like he was about to be thrown out of the bedroom window) and the Funcom crew are having trouble getting their demo kit working. A major power surge ten minutes before we arrived fried half their room, and Ragnar (Torquist, Creative Director) and Joel (Bylos, Lead Content Designer) perform a double-act as cables fly in a back-room. It seems unknown chaotic forces are attempting to prevent them showing us the Dragon introduction to the Secret World, complete with character creation, soul, achievements, lore, and crafting. We suggest they act out the introduction instead. They look at each other, before Joel glances away, muttering; “you really don’t want us to do that.”

The following day, we come back, to find out why. The set-up seems to be working now and the interfering forces (possibly the gods of Chaos, possibly the Lego Batman 2 demo team in the hotel room below) seem to have been temporarily thwarted. The Dragon demo starts running.

Battlefield 3 producer on Battlelog: “We honestly believe this is the right way forward”

We’ve been talking to DICE executive producer Patrick Bach about Battlelog – Battlefield 3’s answer to server browsers. It lets players recruit friends into your squad and specify a server to play on, all from the comfort of a browser window. Once everything is in order, Battlefield 3 loads up you session and waits politely to be clicked.

We asked why DICE opted for the feature (which Graham described as a “ bit mad“) when talking to him a few hours ago: “We look at players when they’re playing a game. Then we try to take that behaviour and turn it into our next iteration.” he told us.

“We could see people were starting the game, loading the map,” says Patrick. Then they would start reading a paper or they look at their watch: they don’t want to be [in-game] during that, they just want the match, and their pre-match activities.”

Origin delivers a broken Mass Effect 2 installer…in Hungarian [Updated]

On Friday night, I suddenly, desperately wanted to play Mass Effect 2. I’d procrastinated all the way up to the release of Mass Effect 3, and finally snapped out of whatever was holding me back. No problem: digital distribution makes the PC the best-suited platform to satiate sudden cravings. ME2 is on Steam, but since ME3 is exclusively on Origin, I figured I’d buy it there so the two games could snuggle up together in my library. That arbitrary decision was a huge mistake.

Behind the scenes of Star Wars: The Old Republic: throwing people at the problem

Building Star Wars: The Old Republic was hard. That was the message from a startling and searingly honest talk given by director of production, Dallas Dickinson and Bioware executive producer Richard Vogel during this year’s GDC. In an hour long session, the pair took us through the production and lessons from a long and gruelling development process that saw Bioware Austin hire huge numbers of developers, outsource much of their art, completely rebuild how their team was integrated, and eventually make strict cuts to game features in a triage process known internally as “The Death Star”.

Richard and Dallas began with the high level goals of The Old Republic: to reach 1,000,000 subscribers, and to innovate carefully, by introducing Bioware’s expertise in storytelling to MMORPGs. Richard explained that they weren’t intending to revolutionise MMOs, just make them better in key areas. “If you offer nothing different, you fail. But we are an MMORPG. We have to have the core MMORPG feel. Our players have to feel familiar as soon as they start.”

The frustrating reality of Medal of Honor: Warfighter

There’s a mounted gun bit in the demo for Medal of Honor that was on display at GDC last night. It’s a spectacular piece of entertainment, a real showcase of what the tech they’re using to make the game can do. You’re driving along on a dingy as waves lash a flooded Thai city. You’re ferrying rescued aid workers to an extraction point where you’re met by two transport helicopters. They hover, and, in a cutscene, your character attaches ropes to the base of the choppers and you’re lifted away into the sunset.

Worried about your Game pre-order? EA suggest some alternatives

It’s troubling time for UK video game retailers, Game. They’ve recently announced that no EA titles will be stocked in their stores after console-only snowboarder, SSX. The sad news applies to Gamestation stores too.

It brings up the thorny issue of pre-orders. Both Game and Gamestation offered exclusive content in exchange for early customer enthusiasm. Now all those DLC codes are getting lost within the internet, like tears in the rain.

As promised last week, EA have made efforts to resolve the situation. Specific websites have been set up with advice on where you can still purchase EA games and bag yourself some exclusive content. Predictably, Origin pre-orders are not affected by the debacle.

Just click the game name to get some advice: Mass Effect 3, FIFA Street, The Sims 3 Showtime, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13. Good luck with it all!

We’re attending The Old Republic’s Guild Summit, what do you want to tell the devs?

A month ago, BioWare announced they’d be holding a summit of The Old Republic guild leaders near their Austin, TX offices to gather feedback from the community and share their vision for the game’s future. Well, my Jedi and Sith friends, the time is almost here.

The Summit takes place on Monday, and we’re going to be there representing our official guild and PC Gamer as a whole. In addition to livestreaming some of the panels here on the site next week, we also want to pass along your feedback to the developers. So let us know what you like and don’t like about TOR, and what you think BioWare should do about it.

Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand review

The Back to Karkand expansion for Battlefield 3 started a war inside my head. On one side, the cynic. On the other, the boy who likes shooting things. “£12 for four old maps, ten old weapons and a few scrappy vehicles?” The cynic scoffed. “Shut up!” the boy cried. “I just killed a tank by shooting a rocket through a hole in an apartment block!” It’s an argument the cynic was never going to win.

The maps are fantastic. But then they should be: Wake Island, Gulf of Oman, Sharqi Peninsula and Strike at Karkand are all Battlefield 2 maps, rebuilt to work with the graphical power and explodiness of the Frostbite 2 engine. The four-year old architecture has been tweaked and iterated upon countless times. They’re finely honed, fair, and consistently deliver great games.