While every game producer and their mother is dreaming a wet and juicy plan of becoming rich over night, eventually not investing absolutely no effort at all into this, some of the old big houses still hold up to their standards. And I’m talking big standards here, like BioWare and their flawless RPG history. As true as it may be that those brave descendants of Terrence and Philip have gotten themselves into a big brown pile of shit right now, being under the fine “tutelage” of Electronic Arts, we certainly CANNOT expect bad things from them. No, sir.

OK. Now, we all know that BioWare is developing a MMORPG at the moment. And that’s about it, no scoops regarding its story, universe, number of farming bots per server, or other insightful information has been leaked. Many of us suspected, initially, that it would be a Star Wars inspired MMO, based on the Knights of the Old Republic francise. Well... apparently not. According to EA’s analyst report, BioWare is kinda busy right now, with much stuff to do on their hands. Some Mass Effect for the PC, the yet unfinished Dragon Age, the said MMORPG and, the nicest thing I’ve heard recently, a new Knights of the Old Republic title.

Rumor as it may be (yet), we can just hope it is another single-player role-playing game. Other internet sources are busy right now trying to get a confirmation from EA, and while they are at it, we’re just gonna rape Bastila one more time, for old times’ sake.



Kotaku scoop.

Quake 2 was, and will always be, one of the best shooters out there. It doesn’t matter that it’s older than my grandma, or that its graphics are not powered by CryEngine 2 - the sheer amount of gore and fun that it provided was (and still is, mind you), enough to keep me busy time and again.

A good news for those of us meddling with a pink Nintendo DS is the fact that Drunken Coders have finally managed to finish their Quake 2 homebrew port, after being busy with it for quite a while. This version contains all the single-player missions, also retaining some graphical goodies that can be found in the original PC game, like particle support, or ARM7 sound effects system.

As a warning though, the game cannot run on your handheld unless you are the proud owner of some RAM expansion, since Quake 2 has some memory requirements that make the DS bleed. Other info, downloads and pictures with naked asian girls can be found on Drunken Coders’ website. Enjoy the hyperblaster, kids.

For all those five people out there who give a shit about Age of Onan Conan, Gaute from FunCom posted a huge wall of text (100% chance to crit) on the upcoming MMORPG’s official website, sharing with us mortals some juicy details about the game’s progress so far. Here are a couple of his random thoughts:

Prestige Classes - It was a great idea those many years ago before we got into the depth of our character progression, but as we moved deeper and deeper into development and our internal alpha testing we found that the prestige classes were not giving the experience they were supposed to. In fact, the prestige classes were doing the opposite of what we wanted them to do when they got into the mix. It didn't give more variety or more solid character progression, it rather cornered the player. We wanted character progression to be about choice, and not about running down a small corridor to a given end. The end result was something people weren’t used to and upset them too much.

You will excuse me now while I go check the cyb0r status in Goldshire.

Someone is getting either pissed off, or really afraid by the sudden “console” invasion. PC gamers are no longer safe in their apartments, cats and dogs alike are beginning to sense the terror of not being able to randomly press our keyboard buttons exactly in the middle of a raid... More and more producers and publishers are greedily eyeing the console environment, which, let’s face it, has its advantages. Like not having to daily invest millions of yen into new hardware.

That’s why some of the big names in the gaming industry, especially in the PC department (like Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD), decided to announce a strategic alliance at the upcoming Game Developers Conference. This seemingly desperate PC Gaming Alliance is meant to promote our good old hunk of wires, conductors and processors as a TRUE gaming platform. In the face of annihilation. In the presence of a God.

Ah well, best of luck to them. As long as World of Warcraft stays on the PC, they are safe with me.

I distinctly recall Mark Skaggs (ex-Westwood / EA Pacific) dropping the bomb in late 2004, that work on a new Red Alert game had already started at that time, so let's not call this an "announcement". Rather, it's something even better: an unexpected details blowout, incoming very soon in the printed press around the world! So far, the Hungarian PC Guru (going on sale tomorrow, February 14) and the American PC Gamer magazines are the first to have their covers invaded by the red army, paving the way for the moment we've been waiting for, ever since EA "blew it" with Westwood.

Tick-tack...

... the bomb is ticking.

Freshly served with today's announcement of a PC version, here are the first eight Mass Effect PC screenshots we yanked from BioWare's website.


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 Continue reading 'Mass Effect PC Screenshots'...

Holy grenade, NovaLogic is still alive and kicking! I could've sworn they were dead for the last three years (in my eyes for sure), ever since I stopped caring about their increasingly crappy Delta Force games. But maybe - just maybe - taking a huge break will turn out for the best.

For now, it seems that NovaLogic is working on something called Delta Force: Angel Falls (or "Black Ops" according to other reports), as teased on the company's front page; good thing we have CryoCopy to freeze it in place, otherwise it redirects you after a couple of seconds. The splash image has a clear "2008" splashed on it, (mis?)leading us to think that we might be sniping our asses once more by the end of this year. Just like good ol' times. But on what platforms, through what virtual locations, and for what purpose? Such details, sadly, still elude us.


The Delta Force had better be strong with this one!

The rumour of Ace Combat 6 getting a PS3 version pales in significance, compared to the initial betrayal of the series' decade-old PlayStation legacy, by fraternizing with the Xbox 360. Nevertheless, less exciting topics are making the "news" these days, so I might as well fake some interest. So, as the story goes, the British PSM3 magazine published a feature titled "2008 Year of the PS3", which - as shown below - also happens to include Ace Combat 6. An honest mistake? I doubt it. A hazardous speculation? Could be. Anything official? Nope, not yet.

- Super Smash Bros. Brawl sales top 1 million in Japan, making it the fastest selling Wii game to reach that sales figure over there. We should start stocking up on booze early, for when it launches over here (next month?). An insane Wii session is sure to ensue.

- Devil May Cry 4 demo hits 1 million downloads on Xbox Live, through some questionable math (25,000 downloads a day since January 24 isn't even remotely close to 1 million). No wonder Capcom's game owns the UK charts.

- Sam & Max Episode 203: Night of the Raving Dead launched on GameTap today. Tomorrow also on Telltale's website, along with a demo.

- Darkeden free vampiric MMORPG launched by Joymax, along with a new Daden Market (the item mall of Darkeden). From the communique, "players can log in today and slay vampires, fight humans, or crush oysters". Oysters?... Oh, I'm sorry, ousters.

- Need for Speed ProStreet has a new Porsche demo on the PC, featuring the Porsche GT2 and GT3RS cars, and Porsche's Leipzig test track. No use, there can be only one NFS: Porsche Unleashed!

- WorldShift beta up on FilePlanet for 5,000 gamers. "Subscribers only". F.U.

- Dynasty Warriors 6, now armed with the Gold status, will invade US retail on February 19.

- Battlefield, Halo veterans form Tyrant Studios in Seattle, setting out to "change the way games are made" with their combined tyranny experience. I don't suppose their motto is "Liberté, égalité, fraternité"?

- "More churches" in Resistance 2! I loled.

September 7, 2008, to be more precise. This is now the official new (tentative) release date for Spore, as announced in the game's first newsletter, signed by Will Wright, that popped into my inbox just now. Ironically enough, Maxis and Electronic Arts even felt the need to make a special teaser trailer for this "joyous" moment. You can watch it right here on Playkon, but there's absolutely no in-game footage, just the above release date. "Thanks again. You'll hear from us soon", he says. The nerve...


Will Wright's message: "check out our launch date teaser".
(Because it's too fucking infuriating when written down!)