James Bond 24 to adhere to the sort of exploration of 007's
Skyfall screenwriter John Logan wouldn't divulge plot details about the next Bond movie he's writing, but he did tell The Financial Times the sequel will once again lean on Bond creator Ian Fleming's more human interpretation of the character.
“Fleming’s courage in showing Bond’s fear and vulnerability and depression was really interesting and something that a modern audience can accept,” said Logan. “I think Skyfall demonstrated that they want more layers to that character. And those are the layers that Fleming wrote.”
Logan is reuniting with Skyfall cast members Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw for his new play Peter and Alice, which opens this month in London's West End. The play chronicles a real-life meeting between Alice Liddell Hargreaves and Peter Llewellyn Davies, the respective inspirations for Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
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EA Ceases SimCity Marketing Campaigns
The email is directed to EA Origin's LinkShare program affilates, in which the company claims it has "deactivated all SimCity text links and creative and we ask you to please remove any copy promoting SimCity from your website for the time-being."
"To be clear we are continuing to payout commissions on all SimCitysales that are referred, however we are requesting that you please stop actively promoting the game," EA Origin writes. "We will notify you as soon as the SimCity marketing campaigns have been resumed and our promotional links are once again live in the Linkshare interface. We apologize for any inconveniences that this may cause, and we thank you for your cooperation."
For players, SimCity has been a frustrating struggle. The game was unable to cope with server load right off the bat even with a staggered release first in the USA, and then only recently in Europe and Asia. Developer Maxis has promised to address the issue over the weekend, but for now has deactivated certain 'non-critical' gameplay features to help soothe server pressure.
Sever issues aside, however, SimCity is shaping up to be an excellent reboot of the popular city simulation franchise. IGN is yet to review the game due to the on-going problems, but you can read our review in-progress to know our thoughts on the game.
Maxis Apologizes, SimCity Players Get Free Game
In a letter from SimCity developer Maxis, the studio vows to fix their game, and offers up a freebie as an olive branch.
Releasing SimCity has been a bit of a fiasco for developer Maxis and publisher EA. The game simply isn’t working for a lot of gamers, which at first caused EA to disable “non-critical features” in the game. The issues are caused by SimCity’s always-online DRM, causing us to wonder aloud if such an anti-piracy system should be avoided completely. EA has even pulled its marketing for the game.In other words, SimCity is in a bad way, but an update from Maxis’ General Manager Lucy Bradshaw has some good news for eager players who want to get some city-building done.
Bradshaw explains that “the server issues which began at launch have improved significantly as [Maxis] added more capacity. But some people are still experiencing response and stability problems that we’re working fast to address.”
“So what went wrong?” Bradshaw asked. “The short answer is: a lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta.”
“OK, we agree, that was dumb, but we are committed to fixing it.
Bradshaw notes that sever capacity has increased 120% in the last 48 hours, and that “disrupted experiences” are down about 80%. “So we’re closed to fixed, but not quite there,” she admits.
Candidly, Bradshaw also notes that “SimCity is a solid hit in all major markets,” but that “if you can’t get a stable connection, you’re NOT having a good experience.” And so while EA and Maxis continue fixing things on their end, they also want to offer up a freebie (in lieu of giving players a refund).
“…to get us back in your good graces, we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio. On March 18, SimCity players who have activated their game will receive an email telling them how to redeem their free game. I know that’s a little contrived,” Bradshaw admits, “kind of like buying a present for a friend after you did something crummy. But we feel bad about what happened. We’re hoping you won’t stay mad and that we’ll be friends again when SimCity is running at 100 percent.”
“Hang in there,” she concludes here note, “we’ll be providing more updates throughout the weekend.”
New Borderlands 2 DLC Includes New Vault Hunter
During a panel at SXSW today, Gearbox revealed that a new Vault Hunter
is coming to Borderlands 2. In a teaser shown at the panel, Gearbox
teased that "deep beneath Pandora, an experiment has escaped. Bandits
beware, a new Vault Hunter is coming. More mayhem awaits."
For now, additional details (including a release date) haven’t been revealed, though Gearbox franchise director Matt Armstrong added that the content will be part of the Borderlands 2 Season Pass and said that “DLC is announced on a very tight schedule, and I don't think you'll have to wait long until you see that character."
Back in December, Gearbox told IGN that it will continue to support Borderlands 2 with downloadable content, and could even offer an additional content season after the current one concludes. Previously, Gearbox PR and marketing manager Adam Fletcherhinted at “possibilities of incorporating additional characters."
In addition to the three expansions released so far (Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty, Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage and Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt), Gearbox previously released the Mechromancer class as downloadable content. The current season pass includes at least four add-on campaigns.
Source: Joystiq
For now, additional details (including a release date) haven’t been revealed, though Gearbox franchise director Matt Armstrong added that the content will be part of the Borderlands 2 Season Pass and said that “DLC is announced on a very tight schedule, and I don't think you'll have to wait long until you see that character."
Back in December, Gearbox told IGN that it will continue to support Borderlands 2 with downloadable content, and could even offer an additional content season after the current one concludes. Previously, Gearbox PR and marketing manager Adam Fletcherhinted at “possibilities of incorporating additional characters."
In addition to the three expansions released so far (Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty, Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage and Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt), Gearbox previously released the Mechromancer class as downloadable content. The current season pass includes at least four add-on campaigns.
Source: Joystiq
New Tomb Raider PC Patch Offers Stability, Fixes
New Tomb Raider PC Patch Offers Stability, Fixes
Additionally, the patch fixes an issue for some players who were unable to progress beyond the 'boat in the beach' area, and some minor glitches here and there. It should also improve Lara's TressFX a bit.
Complete changelog here:
- Addressed some stability issues on machines that have both Intel and Nvidia graphics hardware.
- Various small UI updates.
- Fix for players being unable to progress related to the boat in the beach area.
- Some fixes for crashes on startup and when selecting Options.
- Some improvements to TressFX hair rendering.
- Fixes for various smaller graphics glitches.
- Fixes related to the benchmark scene and benchmark mode.
To receive the patch, just restart your Steam client and the download should begin immediately.
Let us know in the comments if you noticed any improvements with the new patch. Nvidia apologized to users a few days back for being unable to provide proper support for Tomb Raider with their drivers, citing Crystal Dynamics' inability to ship a final code for tweaking. The company said it will roll out a new driver soon, and while it should smoothe out performance woes, Crystal Dynamics had to improve their code as well for better implementation. It seems they have kept their word, your turn Nvidia!
Mass Effect 3: Citadel DLC Review
A much fonder farewell
Shepard parties like s/he dances. Luckily, there is booze. There is all the booze.
What Is Assassin's Creed: Rising Phoenix?
What looks like a screenshot of an Assassin's Creed project has appeared online via All Games Beta.
The image gives almost nothing away, but given that Ubisoft Digital Arts (the branding on the bottom left) is the company's "cinema creation studio", it could well be a film-related project rather than a gaming one. Assassin's Creed III: Liberation sold well on PS Vita, though, so another Vita game is far from impossible.
The next console entry in the series, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag was announced this week, and we've got oodles of coverage of it. There's also an Assassin's Creed movie in production with Michael Fassbender.
The image gives almost nothing away, but given that Ubisoft Digital Arts (the branding on the bottom left) is the company's "cinema creation studio", it could well be a film-related project rather than a gaming one. Assassin's Creed III: Liberation sold well on PS Vita, though, so another Vita game is far from impossible.
The next console entry in the series, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag was announced this week, and we've got oodles of coverage of it. There's also an Assassin's Creed movie in production with Michael Fassbender.
Dead Space 3 Awakened Developer Commentary
Dementia and cultists reign in Dead Space 3 DLC. But why wasn't this in the main game?
First Details on Richard Garriott's New RPG
Richard Garriott – aka Ultima creator Lord British -- comes across as a
bit of a braggart at first. When he arrived at IGN to show his next
game, Lord British’s Shroud of the Avatar, he started with a history
lesson about himself. The expected eye-rolls instead became enthralled
interest as Garriott detailed how he got involved in development and
what he’s accomplished.
The first boxed version of a video game? Garriott. The idea of
collector’s edition-style swag like cloth maps? Garriott. The reason we
use the word “avatar” to talk about video game characters, as opposed to
its original meaning (which was related to Hinduism)? Yeah, that was
him too. Suffice it to say he’s contributed a lot to the language and
culture that all of us enjoy, and, well, he’s earned the right to brag a
little.
But the boasting Garriott does isn’t merely self-serving, it’s an
attempt to make a whole new generation of gamers – many of whom likely
aren’t familiar with his popular Ultima franchise – listen when he says
he’s making Shroud of the Avatar and wants our help to fund it via Kickstarter.
He wants to realize an RPG world that’s grounded in old-school design
principles like not spelling out quests and permanent choices but uses
online play to create powerful interactions. He wants you to make
decisions not based on a visible morality system, but because you’re so
engrossed in the world that you’re acting as you would in real life.
Out With the New...
The first modern RPG trope Garriott wants to toss out is the initial
class creation. Shroud won’t ask you to read a small description and
then pick a class without trying it, but instead allows you to slowly
tailor your character to your playstyle. For instance, if you’re hours
into the game and want to try alchemy, simply collect ingredients and
start making potions to become an alchemist. Want to be something like a
traditional ranger? Pick up a bow and fling arrows until it’s mastered.
Garriott was quick to state that you won’t be able to become proficient
at everything, and that there will be some sort of limited ability to
redo your skill investments, but the point is that you try things and
see if you love them before committing. This is a bit closer to
something like Skyrim, where you make some initial choices about your
character but then tailor your abilities overtime by using skills you
like.
Likewise, Garriott wants Shroud of the Avatar to challenge you with its
quests, not just lay out the solution. A quest giver might tell you to
search the mountains to the east to find a clue, but they won’t put a
giant blinking spot on your map, and they certainly won’t have a yellow
exclamation point over their head. You also won’t have a modern quest
log, but instead will have to read a journal that catalogs key events in
your character’s story, allowing you to catch up and then decide how to
proceed without merely dumping a boring list of objectives on you. For
Garriott, quests and logs like this promote thoughtfulness and
exploration, something he says is woefully lacking in most RPGs of
today.
...In With the Old
The way you explore the world in Shroud of the Avatar won’t surprise
Ultima fans. When you’re setting out, you’ll start as a larger scale
version of your avatar trekking across the larger world map, like an
overworld map in a NES-era JRPG. When you encounter something
interesting like a village or cave, you can then enter the area and play
through it from an over-the-shoulder third-person perspective, a la
Fable or Dragon Age. Garriott hopes to make virtually everything you
find in this mode interactive, from pianos you can play to books you can
read and more. Granted, that isn’t exactly revolutionary (we’ve all
giggled while flushing toilets in Duke Nukem), but Garriott plans to
make incorporate interactivity into the way players think about quest
design. He compared it to being trapped in a room in real life and first
trying the door, only to learn that it’s locked. Next he said he would
try to take off the hinges, and if that didn’t work he’d look for a wall
he could break. This is the same sort of logic and immersion in the
world he wants to achieve with Shroud of the Avatar.
How the overworld map looks as you explore
Dealing Death
Sometimes a sword is more useful than your wits, and Shroud will have
plenty of opportunities to fight. While you can arm your avatar with
familiar weapons like swords and bows, this is also a world that has
electricity, and Garriott wants to include an arsenal of bizarre
weaponry, such as an air cannon that could shoot bursts of toxic gas, or
a pistol that fires bolts of lightning like a tesla coil.
Just like the rest of Shroud of the Avatar, he wants an underlying
logic to define the mechanics of combat. This is why, unlike every other
RPG in existence nowadays, you don’t have a set of skills you can
actively select. Instead, your character memorizes specific moves they
want to potentially use, building a sort of virtual deck of cards.
During combat, each move is shuffled and comes up randomly, attempting
to simulate the way a person might consider trying a killing blow or
overhead slash in the heat of the moment. The more abilities you
memorize, the less likely they are to come up in a fight, so there’s
also reason to focus.
Choosing Wisely
Whether you decide to fight or think your way out of a solution,
Garriott wants choices to matter. That’s a phrase practically every game
throws around nowadays, but to Garriott this doesn’t mean tossing in a
clear-cut morality meter, but ambiguity. Just like in real life, the
bigger-picture way you know whether you’ve done the “right” thing is how
people treat you after the fact, and the goal is to make a world where
every action you take changes the perceptions of the characters around
you. A woman offers you her wedding ring in exchange for food, for
instance, and if you refuse it your kindness might be subtly
acknowledged by her fellow travelers. Take it? Well, you’d just have to
see for yourself. Shroud of the Avatar doesn’t want to tell you that you
did the wrong thing, just give you an experience that carries on no
matter your choice.
An example of a camp you might find.
The decisions you make won’t always be alone, either. Garriott was
quick to emphasize that the entire game can be played offline, but if
you connect to the game’s severs he wants it to be meaningful. For
starters, this means you can adventure with friends. It also means some
sort of player versus player combat, though he insinuated that it will
always be part of Shroud of the Avatar’s quest design, rather than
something that occurs at random while exploring. And while Shroud is not
an MMO (cities will allow larger groups of strangers to see one
another, but the larger world is instanced), he wants player
interactions and purchasable real estate to shape the world over time.
The version of Garriott’s game being shown is a prototype built in
about six months, but it, along with Garriott’s resume, is enough to
make me cautiously optimistic. With such incredibly lofty goals it’s
hard to imagine that Garriott will accomplish everything he’s setting
out to do, but I’ll definitely be checking out the beta later this year
and the final version in 2014. We could all use a game that shakes up
standard design tropes, and Garriott, with his history of firsts, could
be the one to do it.
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