Added: 25.05.2015 20:16 | 4 views | 0 comments


VRFocus - Last week saw Frontier Developments delay the Beta testing for Elite: Dangerous Powerplay, the anticipated third major update to the virtual reality (VR) supported space simulation title. The launch was only pushed back by a week, however, and the developer has now confirmed that the beta will be launching tomorrow, 26th May 2015. Along with this news, Frontier Developments has confirmed some brand new details about the release.

Added: 25.05.2015 18:16 | 6 views | 0 comments


GB: "Theres a certain beauty to chaos. Some games encourage you to work together for the sake of winning but others like the original Killing Floor wanted you to be overwhelmed and outright destroyed. Surviving meant an exceptional amount of skill but dying? Dying meant hilarity and Tripwire Interactive has attempted to further build on this aspect with Killing Floor 2. Along with adding new areas, new weapons and new bosses, Killing Floor 2 wants you to experience failure in an even more grandiose fashion. And the good news is that PC and Linux gamers can do just that now that the game is in Steam Early Access."

Added: 22.05.2015 21:16 | 8 views | 0 comments


The guys of Gaming Boulevard give their first predictions for E3. Along those are Fall Out 4, Zelda, Crash Bandicoot and more

Added: 21.05.2015 14:16 | 5 views | 0 comments


"If I was to come to some sort of neat conclusion for where I think stand alone expansions fit in modern gaming it would easily be as smaller, crazier product that shows off the cool things that a game can do without impacting the main game's tone or message. We already have things like regular DLC packs for expanding on a story or treading similar ground, why waste the chance to really do something different? And as much as I dislike some of the DLC/Season Pass business that goes on I do believe that both game extending Season Pass content and left field stand alone expansions can not only work side by side, but maybe even recruit new fans." - Jay Parnis of BGU

Added: 19.05.2015 9:18 | 6 views | 0 comments


Beneath the Graves is just one of the ghastly environments in Alone In The Dark: Illumination.

Added: 18.05.2015 17:52 | 10 views | 0 comments

LittleBigPlanet is the home of creativity and we have always admired anyone that is able to pour their heart and soul into creating something of their very own. This couldn't be truer of our own community and the vast range of indie developers that have released titles for PlayStation, so this entire month we are celebrating some of our indie friends [...] Via Velocity 2X, Octodad, Thomas Was Alone & Don’t Starve invade LittleBigPlanet 3

Added: 18.05.2015 13:00 | 2 views | 0 comments

Video games have offered us some compelling visions of the future of human habitation. Some seem idyllic, like the glistening arcologies of . Where the cost of policies and the fact that only a few policy trees were mutually exclusive often discouraged switching them mid-game, traits are meant to be managed more actively. Like policies, they will come with unique perks and benefits for your civilization, but they will also fuel different kinds of diplomatic interactions. The development team wants to extend your diplomatic dealing beyond war, peace, and trade agreements, and having complementary traits will be a big factor in determining your options with a given leader. What these traits might be, how you manage them, what kind of benefits you'll see, and how they will interact with each other all remain to be seen.

The Rising Tide will also herald the arrival of four new factions; the only leader announced thus far is Arshia Kishk, head of the Al Falah (pictured at right). As Beyond Earth's story tells it, the Middle East was mostly depopulated after The Great Mistake. In the years that followed, a tenacious group of resilient survivors held on and refused to desert their homeland. When they finally managed to fund a spaceship send forth colonists, it wasn't the cryogenic variety that most other civilizations sent. It was a generation ship, meaning that those who boarded it knew they would never see their destination, and those who touch down at the end of the journey have never set foot on a planet before. The three other factions will apparently have similarly fraught origin stories, and each one of them will bring disruptive new strategies into play.

There are a few other changes that The Rising Tide is bringing to Beyond Earth, though details on them are fairly scant at this point. In order to further enrich and incentivize the exploration processes, you will now be able to find artifacts through resource pods, expeditions, and other means. Whether it's alien in origin or a relic from Old Earth, each artifact will have its own story and its own possibilities. You could keep it as is or combine it into a set, provided you find the others needed, and the rewards might include new perks or new buildings.

Along with the new units developed to accomodate aquatic and amphibious gameplay will be new hybrid units that require a blend of different affinity levels to unlock. Spreading your affinity points around may keep you from unlocking the highest level perks and units until very late in the game, but if these new hybrids are powerful in the mid-game, perhaps it'll be a more viable strategy to play the field. And finally, two new biomes are on their way, including the primordial world pictured above. With so much volcanic activity, I asked McDonough if the environment was going to pose a threat beyond that of native aliens and miasma clouds. He said only that they are "in the process of making each biome more unique, and will share more soon."

There are certainly more questions to be resolved, but even what's been shared so far seems to portend a serious shift in the Beyond Earth landscape. In a panel during the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco this year, McDonough and the other Co-Lead Designer, Will Miller, lamented that they hadn't been bolder in their divergence from the core Civilization formula. The oceanic gameplay of The Rising Tide holds the promise of radically changing the way Beyond Earth plays when it is released in fall of this year, and hopefully we'll get a clearer sense of how it all works in a few weeks at E3.

Added: 18.05.2015 13:00 | 16 views | 0 comments

Video games have offered us some compelling visions of the future of human habitation. Some seem idyllic, like the glistening arcologies of . Where the cost of policies and the fact that only a few policy trees were mutually exclusive often discouraged switching them mid-game, traits are meant to be managed more actively. Like policies, they will come with unique perks and benefits for your civilization, but they will also fuel different kinds of diplomatic interactions. The development team wants to extend your diplomatic dealing beyond war, peace, and trade agreements, and having complementary traits will be a big factor in determining your options with a given leader. What these traits might be, how you manage them, what kind of benefits you'll see, and how they will interact with each other all remain to be seen.

The Rising Tide will also herald the arrival of four new factions; the only leader announced thus far is Arshia Kishk, head of the Al Falah (pictured at right). As Beyond Earth's story tells it, the Middle East was mostly depopulated after The Great Mistake. In the years that followed, a tenacious group of resilient survivors held on and refused to desert their homeland. When they finally managed to fund a spaceship send forth colonists, it wasn't the cryogenic variety that most other civilizations sent. It was a generation ship, meaning that those who boarded it knew they would never see their destination, and those who touch down at the end of the journey have never set foot on a planet before. The three other factions will apparently have similarly fraught origin stories, and each one of them will bring disruptive new strategies into play.

There are a few other changes that The Rising Tide is bringing to Beyond Earth, though details on them are fairly scant at this point. In order to further enrich and incentivize the exploration processes, you will now be able to find artifacts through resource pods, expeditions, and other means. Whether it's alien in origin or a relic from Old Earth, each artifact will have its own story and its own possibilities. You could keep it as is or combine it into a set, provided you find the others needed, and the rewards might include new perks or new buildings.

Along with the new units developed to accomodate aquatic and amphibious gameplay will be new hybrid units that require a blend of different affinity levels to unlock. Spreading your affinity points around may keep you from unlocking the highest level perks and units until very late in the game, but if these new hybrids are powerful in the mid-game, perhaps it'll be a more viable strategy to play the field. And finally, two new biomes are on their way, including the primordial world pictured above. With so much volcanic activity, I asked McDonough if the environment was going to pose a threat beyond that of native aliens and miasma clouds. He said only that they are "in the process of making each biome more unique, and will share more soon."

There are certainly more questions to be resolved, but even what's been shared so far seems to portend a serious shift in the Beyond Earth landscape. In a panel during the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco this year, McDonough and the other Co-Lead Designer, Will Miller, lamented that they hadn't been bolder in their divergence from the core Civilization formula. The oceanic gameplay of The Rising Tide holds the promise of radically changing the way Beyond Earth plays when it is released in fall of this year, and hopefully we'll get a clearer sense of how it all works in a few weeks at E3.