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Broken Age available to all on January 28
Double Fine’s Broken Age: Act 1 is now available to backers of the highly successful Kickstarter campaign. But for those who took a wait-and-see approach, good news, the game will be available to the general public in just two weeks, on January 28. To celebrate, the developer has released a new trailer that shines a spotlight on the game’s second protagonist, Vella Tartine.
Tim Schafer, Double Fine’s President and the Writer/Designer behind Broken Age, is thrilled to return to the adventure genre after all these years:
“It’s been sixteen years since I’ve made an adventure game, almost twenty years since I’ve made a point-and-click, and just shy of two years since I dared the internet to force me to make one,” he said. “Coming back to the genre has been like finding an old jacket in a box in your garage that you haven’t worn in twenty years, but once you shake the dust off and put it on you realize it’s an amazing jacket and it still fits, and once you patch the holes in the pockets it could easily take a spot in your main jacket rotation.”
But Schafer is aware that Broken Age required a bit more than nostalgic memories to create. “In one of the pockets was three and a half million dollars,” he added.
Broken Age: Act 2 will be available as a free download to all owners of Act 1 later this year and Double Fine is working hard to bring the complete game to the Ouya (and other Android devices) and the iOS App Store.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC
Tagged Broken Age
MLB developing R.B.I. Baseball 14 for Spring release
The R.B.I. Baseball series is stepping back onto the field for the first time in almost 20 years!
Major League Baseball announced that its MLB Advanced Media team is hard at work on R.B.I. Baseball 14 and will release the game across “current and next generation consoles and smartphones and tablets” this Spring. If you’ve never heard of MLBAM, there’s a reason for that, R.B.I. Baseball 14 will be the team’s first game development effort. Their previous duty was managing and developing Major League Baseball’s web presence including MLB.com and the websites for all 30 MLB teams.
Little else is known about R.B.I. Baseball 14 as a mostly empty teaser website is all we really have to go on. But with Spring right around the corner (and only 22 days left until Pitchers and Catchers report to Spring Training), we should learn more soon.
The Last of Us, Tearaway, Gone Home lead this year’s GDC Awards
The nominees for the 2014 Game Developers Choice Awards have been announced and The Last of Us, Gone Home, and Tearaway lead the field with five nominations apiece.
The Last of Us and Gone Home will be competing for this year’s Game of the Year award alongside Grand Theft Auto V, Super Mario 3D World, and Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto V are also in the running for multiple awards as each has been nominated in two additional categories.
Other multi-category nominees this year include The Stanley Parable, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Device 6, and Papers, Please.
This year’s Game Developers Choice Awards will be handed out on Wednesday, March 19 at the San Francisco Moscone Center during the 2014 Game Developers Conference. The full list of nominees can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, Mobile, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged GDC 2014, Gone Home, Grand Theft Auto V, Super Mario 3D World, Tearaway, The Last of Us, Tomb Raider
2014 Independent Games Festival finalists announced
The Independent Games Festival announced the finalists for their 16th annual awards yesterday. This year, six titles will vie for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize including The Stanley Parable (Galactic Cafe), Don’t Starve (Klei Entertainment), Jazzpunk (Necrophone Games), Papers, Please (Lucas Pope), Device 6 (Simogo), and Dominique Pamplemousse in “It’s All Over Once the Fat Lady Sings!” (Deirdra Kiai Productions).
The Festival jury found a lot to like about all six of those games as they show up again and again throughout the full list of finalists. You can find the complete list of finalists after the break, including the selections for the Nuovo Award, which honors “Abstract and Unconventional Game Development.”
The IGF Awards will be held on Wednesday, March 19 at the San Francisco Moscone Convention Center, directly preceding the disbursement of this year’s Game Developers Choice Awards during the 2014 Game Developers Conference. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC
Tagged GDC 2014, Papers Please
WWE Network will be available through PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, mobile devices next month
Whatcha gonna do when the WWE Network runs wild on you?
That’s the question Vince McMahon asked today at CES when he revealed the WWE Network, a streaming subscription service for original and classic WWE content.
So what can wrasslin’ fans expect to find on the WWE Network? For $9.99 per month (with a six month commitment), they’ll receive live access to all 12 WWE Pay-Per-View events (including WrestleMania XXX, Summer Slam, Survivor Series, and the Royal Rumble). In addition to the live events, on-demand streaming of Raw and SmackDown replays will be available as well as original shows such as Countdown, WrestleMania Rewind, and Legends House. More details on these shows can be found at the WWE Network official site.
The WWE Network will be available through the WWE app on the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Roku, and mobile devices beginning February 24. Users will also be able to access WWE Network content through the WWE website as well. WWE Network support for the Xbox One and selected Smart TVs will be available this Summer.
Square Enix Montreal’s Hitman game has been canceled
Square Enix Montreal opened in 2011 and its first mission was to create a new game in the Hitman series for next-generation consoles. It looks like that mission is a failure as VideoGamer has surmised that the project has been terminated.
According to the LinkedIn profile of Senior Game Designer Richard Knight, the new Hitman game was to be a “re-imagining” of the character, going back to the roots of the first game, echoing what happened with the new Tomb Raider. However, the news does not mean the end for the bald and barcoded Agent 47. Square Enix Montreal is still in business and has shifted its focus to the mobile games market. And one of their mobile projects is an as-yet-untitled Hitman game that will soon be making its way to a smartphone/tablet near you.
As for a next-gen Hitman game, Square Enix has handed the reins back to IO Interactive, the company that created he franchise. The company plans to focus “resolutely on the future vision for the Hitman franchise” and is already “in pre-production on a new AAA Hitman project.” However, it’s unclear whether that title is the same one that Square Enix Monreal scrapped, or if it’s something completely different.
The Walking Dead Season 2: All That Remains Review: Keeping That Hair Short
Please Be Advised… This review contains spoilers from Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season 1.
When it was released nearly eighteen months ago, the first season of The Walking Dead was met with near-unanimous acclaim. Critics praised the game’s gripping story, deep characters, and heart-wrenching choices. The first season won several Game of the Year awards – deservedly so – and changed the way we look at narrative-driven video games. It even made Warp Zoned’s Apocalypse List for 2012. Having recently finished the first season in a matter of a few days, I can certainly agree with these sentiments. Never before have I been this emotionally involved in a game, and when characters I had grown attached to died, it hit me hard. Lee’s death was just as traumatic to me as it was to Clem, but we both knew we had to move on.
And here we are again, continuing our ride through Hell on Earth, hoping that one day we can find someplace safe, someplace secure. Someplace like home. It’s that hope that keeps us moving, keeps us alive. But after playing the first ten minutes of All That Remains, that hope was completely shattered, and I thought to myself, this is going to be quite the bumpy ride. (more…)
PlayStation Now game streaming service will launch this Summer
Sony has announced that their Gaikai-powered game streaming service for PlayStation platforms will be available in the US this Summer. Officially known as “PlayStation Now,” a closed beta will launch near the end of the month to gather feedback and work out any bugs.
When PlayStation Now does launch, users will be able to stream PS3 games through their PS4, PS3, and Vita as well 2014 Sony Bravia TVs. In the future, Sony’s plan is to expand PlayStation Now’s streaming capabilities to include tablets, smartphones, and other non-Sony Internet-connected devices. Presumably, PS2 and PSone games will eventually be offered through the service as well.
Players will be able to stream games through PlayStation Now as individual title rentals or with a multi-game subscription service. Although which games will be available through the program and when it will be released in territories outside the US is currently unknown.