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Of course, the tweet doesn’t include a date and none has so far been announced as to when players can expect to see it available. Numbers for the game were high originally upon the game’s launch in 2014, but the flame seemed to quickly cool as players moved onto other games quickly, so hopefully this’ll boost numbers for the sakes of the dedicated core of players who’ve stuck with it this long.
Of course, there’s a reason why Titanfall is coming to Access and that’s because EA want to keep the game in the gaming spotlight enough to make sure that the sequel Titanfall 2 sells well. That game’s due to be shown off at EA Play probably, and is set to release before April 2017.
This means that Origin Access now has seventeen games available through it, with Titanfall joining Dragon Age Inquisition, FIFA 15, The Sims 3 Starter Pack, all the main Dead Space games, multiple Battlefield games, and more. Subscribers pay £3.99 a month for this, so it’s not a bad deal. Too bad it involves EA and Origin…
So, following on from the announcement of an incoming… well, announcement, Blizzard finally revealed what the big deal was. And as we guessed, it’s the next big Hearthstone installment.
Whispers of the Old Gods will introduce into the game a whole bunch of new cards based upon the ancient and powerful beings that sleep under the surface of Azeroth… and they’re not exactly what you’d call merciful gods either. Among the 134 new cards incoming to decks around you will be four Legendaries based on the ‘Gods’ and a number of cards that contain some corrupted and twisted versions of familiar Minions you might have met before.
As with The Grand Tournament there’s a pre-purchase offer for 50 packs of the new cards at a discount, which will also include an exclusive card back. It’s $49.99 or the equivalent for your region to buy these. Otherwise you’ll need to wait until the release in late April/early May to begin adding these new cards to your collection of playable virtual cards.
Also, check out the trailer if you’ve not already caught it. It sets the atmosphere quite nicely…
Almost three years after its announcement, development has stopped on the next iteration of the long-lived MMO franchise.
Daybreak Studios’ president Russ Shanks announced the news on the game’s official site:
I’m writing today to let you know that, after much review and consideration, Daybreak is discontinuing development of EverQuest Next.
For the past 20 years EverQuest has been a labor of love. What started as a deep passion of ours, as game creators, grew into a much larger passion shared by you, millions of players and Daybreakers alike. Watching EverQuest’s ability to entertain and bring people together has inspired and humbled us. It’s shaped our culture and has emboldened us to take aggressive risks with our game ideas and products. When we decided to create the next chapter in the EverQuest journey, we didn’t aim low. We set out to make something revolutionary.
For those familiar with the internals of game development, you know that cancellations are a reality we must face from time to time. Inherent to the creative process are dreaming big, pushing hard and being brutally honest with where you land. In the case of EverQuest Next, we accomplished incredible feats that astonished industry insiders. Unfortunately, as we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun. We know you have high standards when it comes to Norrath and we do too. In final review, we had to face the fact that EverQuest Nextwould not meet the expectations we – and all of you – have for the worlds of Norrath.
The future of the EverQuest franchise as a whole is important to us here at Daybreak. EverQuest in all its forms is near and dear to our hearts. EverQuest and EverQuest II are going strong. Rest assured that our passion to grow the world of EverQuest remains undiminished.
EverQuest Next was an ambitious attempt to evolve the franchise. The first phase of that evolution was EverQuest Next Landmark, which was released as a beta in 2013. Landmark was focused on player creation, letting users craft huge structures and then sell the blueprints to each other.
EverQuest Next began development at Sony Online Entertainment, a corporate cousin to the PlayStation brand that was sold off last year to investment firm Columbus Nova and rebranded as Daybreak Studios.
In an interview with MMORPG, Shanks says that EverQuest and EverQuest II are still in active development. He also says that Daybreak will continue to explore ways to modernize EverQuest and notes the company’s current priorities:
The future of the EverQuest franchise is important to our company and you have not seen the last of Norrath by any means. It’s just as engrained in our hearts as it is for our players. We helped usher in the era of MMOs because we loved the idea of bringing gamers together within the game worlds in massive numbers, and we’ve continued to build on that over our 20-year history. The adventures within the worlds of EQ and EQII continue unabated today, and there is plenty of room for more.
Right now, we are focused on launching Landmark, advancing H1Z1: Just Survive, bringing DC Universe Online to Xbox One players, and launching H1Z1: King of the Kill on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Nintendo rose a fair few eyebrows in technology circles, as well as here at Sanitarium Towers, when it announced the 3D Classics line – classic games from older consoles such as the NES and Game Boy with a 3D graphic upgrade, offering a unique way to show of the power of the Nintendo 3DS handheld. While the idea has its merits, with a number of classic Nintendo titles getting the 3D Treatment – and persuading SEGA to join in and do the same to some classic SEGA titles – it has to be said that there are actually very few titles that have had the 3D Classic treatment.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could take a NES game of your own choosing, and add 3D? If you’ve found yourself thinking that, you may want to check out Geod Studio’s new project, 3DNes – a work-in-progress Unity-based emulator that, as the name suggests, converts NES games into 3D.
Considering the simplicity of NES games, translating them into 3D is actually a difficult task. Unlike SNES games, which have four background layers, NES games have a single layer for the entire background. Imagine a diorama or a board game – everything in the background is printed on one board, while all the sprites – like your character the ground, enemies, items – are all just pieces on top. To allow the entire game to look 3D, 3DNes uses an algorithm that analyses the flat background and cuts it up into the pieces that make it up, then attempts to turn each piece into a 3D Object. The software is even clever enough to turn round objects into spheres or tubes, so for example, a ball will actually look like a ball instead of just a circle.
Exactly how well this works depends on the game in question, with things getting messier as the backgrounds get more complex. Games like my favourite franchise, Mega Man are translated well and benefit greatly from the effect, but games such as Contra or Castlevania somewhat struggle. Perhaps the best-emulated game is the original Super Mario Bros., which the developer admits was the main focus of the emulator and the most tested, which may explain the gap in quality between it and other games.
This having been said, Geod Studio hopes to improve the number of games that work well through subsequent beta releases, with head of the project Trần Vũ Trúc aiming for one-tenth of the entire NES library as his marker for success. He also suggests that there might be the potential for users to individually tailor the emulator for certain games, but is quick to state this is not currently the case, as he wants to ensure there’s “a strong emulation engine as the backbone” first.
At the moment, the emulator exists only online, as a WebGL game playable through the Unity Player. This means it only properly supports Mozilla-based browsers, such as Firefox or Seamonkey. It’s also extremely unstable, particularly when not using a AMD Graphics card, and may fail to go beyond loading the ROM, or even fail to work at all. However, Trần states that future releases of the emulator will be made available as software downloads, so it should only be a matter of time before we all get to try it properly.
Welcome to another update in what’s going on in the world of the gaming Kickstarter campaigns.
As always I’ll start you off with a summary of what’s happened to previously covered projects since last I typed up one of my updates. Most campaigns are in their midpoints right now but a few have begun to wind down or already have done.
We’ll start off with our sole campaign in the last week that has a distance to make up, and that’s VR experience Null of Hope – a project that combined retro gaming feel with the upcoming new VR trend. It has a week to go, but is currently far short of its target and will probably not reach its goal in time unless a lot of promotion is pushed towards a big audience who would back it.
Doing better are both A Place for the Unwilling, a game set within a city that takes cues from Sunless Sea among other games, and MachiaVillain, a haunted house builder and management game. Both have little time to go but also are close to reaching their targets. Seeing as how Kickstarter campaigns usually get a boost in their last few days, there is a good chance both of these projects could see their targets met.
Finally we have some really good news in that Which Friend – which is probably one of the nicer card games I’ve found and covered – has finished its campaign having met target. This was the card game that enabled you to ask which friend of a group would be most likely to do the thing on the card and was aimed at promoting conversation and allowing the group to recall good times spent together so I’m really happy that it met its target.
Also, one more thing to note before we go into this week’s projects – this week is a card/tabletop special. Enjoy!
First up is a board game. About being a cat and making a mess. What could be better?
Taking inspiration from comic Catass, Make a Mess sees you playing as the titular cat of the series as you run around and create the biggest mess you can – without getting caught. The last person standing wins over all and the game can support 2-6 players. There are cat tokens, parent tokens, a die, cards and more included within the game. Give it a go if you’ve ever fancied causing havoc without getting in trouble… at least not with a real person.
Make a Mess has 26 days to go to reach a €10,000 target.
Next up is a card game set within a dystopian universe.
Grafters is described as a “hand-building game for 2-4 players of daring heists and corporate swindles set on the fringes of the Dystopian Universe.” Your goal is to steal as much money from the corrupt government and your fellow players as possible. Each player will start with a hand of 6 ‘Specialist’ cards, and their aim is to use them to recruit more criminals, steal money and protect yourself from theft.
Thirdly we have a tabletop roleplaying game, that the creators aim to have as a free game. Sounds good.
Set within an original universe and with “simple rules that most people can learn” Mythical Might will be an app-based game adventure for Android and iPhone users. Set within a universe that’s seen multiple realities clashing into one, it will be an interactive e-book style game with settings crafted by a Quest Master for people to play.
Mythical Might has a $25,000 goal of which it has made $35 and there are 59 days more to go.
Finally we have a card game for young adults, but one that doesn’t seem centred around drinking for once. Makes a change.
The basic point of GAME OVER is to win by being the last person not to draw a GAME OVER card. The game is played by having the deck of cards face down and drawing until one player is left, while performing the actions on the cards. The game has been finished already, so this Kickstarter is just to enable it can be printed.
GAME OVER has a target of $1,145 CAD with 39 days to go. It has yet to be backed.
