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There’s few people who didn’t react in some way to the news of the death of comedian and actor Robin Williams. The man was a part of the childhood of many young adults, myself included, and he seemed almost immortal with his jokes and overall positive aura. Among the things he enjoyed was a good game of WoW and thanks to a petition supported by fans of the game and the entertainer, Williams’ legacy will get a chance to live on through this game.
Started shortly after the news, the text of the petition hosted on Change.org says that Williams could be “something of a troll in trade on good days or when anonymity allowed” and that he made many mentions in interviews of enjoying a game of Warcraft III and even built his own overclocked PC systems to game on. The petition was to see if Blizzard would agree to add an NPC somewhere in the game who would perform some of the more memorable and funny jokes that Williams made. Within less that 24 hours, over 10 thousand people signed and Blizzard said yes.
“While a single non-player character in a video game is only a small good thing to come out of a largely negative situation — many cannot help but feel that they’ve preserved a tiny spark of who Mr. Williams was: a gamer, and a character.” wrote petition organiser Jacob Holgate, thanking all those who supported the petition despite other players making negative comments about the idea.
Blizzard confirmed the tribute by a reply to a Tweet from Technical Game Designer, Chadd Nervigg asking if he’d seen the petition yet. They have promised to handle the creation of the NPC with the sensitivity and care needed to pay proper tribute to the comedian.
Microsoft caused a (predictable) eruption of fan rage yesterday when it announced that Rise of the Tomb Raider would be an Xbox exclusive. Never fear though, it turns out that this is just another example of the corporate suits twisting the english language to suit their own needs. Rise of the Tomb Raider is simply a timed exclusive. So, the game will release first on Xbox One and 360, then will come to other platforms at a later date. While this might be irritating, its certainly nothing new in the gaming world.
Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, spoke to Eurogamer about the deal:
“There are certain things I’m just not going to talk about because it’s a business deal between us and then. Obviously the deal does have a duration. I didn’t buy the IP in perpetuity.”
The confusion came from the statements from Crystal Dynamics, developer of the game:
“As you may have seen, we’ve just announced that Rise of the Tomb Raider, coming Holiday 2015, is exclusively on Xbox. “
and Microsoft’s own press release:
“Led by the announcement that “Rise of the TombRaider” from Crystal Dynamics will launch in holiday 2015, exclusively on Xbox…”
While it might be annoying to have the people responsible for announcing these games be so unclear, at this point its just par for the (unacceptable) course.
Well this is the age of remakes and Capcom aren’t going to disappoint, it is time for a remastered edition of a classic- Resident evil. The producers have released an announcement video for Xbox 360 and PS3 and have also released a few details about what to expect:
The original “tank controls” remain, however there is also a modern option where the character moves in the direction of the analog sick. But if you read this and the 16×9 scrolling options and think “no way, I want the original experience,” then good news – all this stuff can be adjusted in-game, any time.
The comparison image below shows off the upgrades to the character models:
EA giving away free games? What madness could this possibly be?
Well it’s true, if you log on to Origin before the 2nd of September you can snag your free copy of Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger. This deal is part of EA’s new drive to promote t Origin. Usually Wing Commander 3 sells for $5, but EA is giving away full games for free for limited periods of time.
Wing Commander 3 was first released in 1994, but the series made recent news when a Kickstarter was launched to support an orchestral recording of tracks from WC3 and WC4. The beloved series was created by Chris Roberts, who you’ll probably know nowadays as the guy heading up Star Citizen.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last five years you will know about the storm of MOBAs like DOTA 2 and League of Legends that have taken the gaming world by the horns. Many of these MOBAs are slow and deliberate games based around something called ‘min-maxing’ where players kill artificial intelligence within the game to earn currency and to level up. MOBAs or massive online battle arenas are interesting games, as most are played from the top-down perspective and instead of aiming skills you select the skill you want to cast. Tome is one such game.
Tome is a new browser based MOBA which already sets it apart from the crowds and Tome tries to change things up even more by taking out a very important mechanic in most of these games which is last hitting. Last hitting is the ability to get the final hit on the AI (better known as creeps) to get the rewards, well Tome has taken that out and instead it shares all of the rewards for killing these creeps between team mates. This mechanic added to the way the characters play makes Tome perhaps the fastest MOBA I have ever played, instead of taking an hour matches take ten minutes, there are also a whole host of other mechanics in the game that we’ll leave for you to find for yourselves!
Tome continues to deliver in the art department as well, even on the lowest graphics settings the game performs well and looks good, it has a punchy and vivid art style with some very subtle undertones that make it pleasing to look at and satisfying to play, this combined with the sound assets which are heavy and often brutal make the presentation of this game easily rival that of bigger, non-browser based games which have their own engines and clients to play.
All in all Tome is a gorgeous game with solid mechanics, a fun character set and it has low demands on your system which makes this free to play game look very promising. Tome is presently in closed beta and is well worth a look. Developer Kixeye are onto a winner here.
Our very own Digmbot is also in the Tome beta, check out his video impressions below:
