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For those without a key to Hearthstone’s closed Beta are probably frantically waiting right now for the game’s open Beta stage to begin. At Blizzcon it was announced that it would probably begin sometime this month. If you’re one of these people, you’re probably going to be mildly disappointed by the latest update on the game’s open Beta…
“We hoped to get the game into a state where it’s ready for open beta this month, but we’re just not quite there yet” Jason Chayes says in his update to Blizzard’s Hearthstone news page. He states that the latest patch to the game (which made Freeze a little less powerful by bumping up the cost of many spells with the effect) involved some code changes which might yet break the game and that Blizzard would rather make sure the game is as bug-free as possible rather than rushing it out before year’s end to meet the expectation.
If you signed up with the opt-in on the site though, there is good news: Blizzard is now in the process of sending EVERYONE who opted-in keys for Closed Beta, at least if you signed up before the 16th of this month. The closing date for opting-in has been set now as the 7th of January with the company planning to make sure everyone who signs up by that date will get access to the closed Beta at some time before the gates are opened. People sent their keys who don’t claim them will also have their accounts flagged to get access during the first few weeks of January too.
So the game’s open stage has been pushed back, but if you opted-in… go check your e-mails now. And don’t forget the spam folder!
Redstone has always been one of the trickiest elements of the game of Minecraft, there’s a reason people who are good with it are known as ‘redstone wizards’ and there’s recently been a redstone handbook released physically. However there’s being good with redstone… and then there’s being insanely talented with the stuff.
Player ItsJustJumby has achieved the latter with his impressive build: an actual working 3D printer made in Vanilla Minecraft. No mods, no alterations, just the vanilla game. The device makes use of 846 repeaters, 1124 hoppers, 9181 comparators, 10,539 pieces of redstone dust, and 20,103 command blocks and uses your typical standard chest as a blueprint for each individual layer.
Once the button is pressed it takes around a minute and a decent amount of lag before the creeper model is finished. While not perfect it is never the less, bloody impressive. I admire Jumby’s patience!
Some news stories make you smile or laugh, others make you cry or rage. Then there are the elite few that make you go “WTF?” Put this firmly in the latter category.
When Democracy 3 – the latest title in Positech Games’ series of PC-based Political Strategy games – was preparing for its US launch, not one person broke a sweat. The game, self-dubbed “the ultimate political strategy game,” was launched on Steam on October 14, 2013 – as well as a retail game for PC, Mac and Linux – with nobody raising an eyelid to its game-play simulating the career as president or prime minister of a democratic government, the very theme of the series’ eight-year history. So why, in all seriousness, is a “major U.S. advertising agency” refusing to run banner ads promoting the game due to its “political content”?
Cliff Harris, the founder of Positech Games, reported on his blog yesterday that an ad for the recently-released Democracy 3 was deemed by a “BIG game-advertising agency” to be inappropriate to run on a particular website. When Harris asked why, he was told, “We can not promote any politics as this is a sensitive topic.”
Harris was noticeably unimpressed with the response, believing politics is a MUCH less sensitive subject than some of the OTHER things commonly featured in today’s games that go without criticism – as evidenced by the next statement on his blog:
“I bet ads for games like Hitman, or GTA, or games where you get slow-mo closeups of people’s skulls being blasted apart by high-caliber bullets are just fine. But discuss income tax? OH NOES THE WORLD WILL END! It’s stuff like this that sometimes makes me ashamed to be in this industry. Half of the industry wants to be grown up and accepted as art, the other half have the mentality of seven year olds. I’m pretty cynical, but I never expected my ads for a game about government-simulation to be too controversial to be shown (for money no less…).”
True enough. What’s more, the whole controversy smacks to me as discriminating against Democracy 3 rather than a genuine concern. After all, politics in video games is not exactly unheard of – there have been games as far back as the NES era where you played as a president of the United States or leader of some fictionalised land. For example, how about Civilization? A real-time strategy series inviting players to “Build an empire to stand the test of time”, Civilization has a much longer history than Democracy, beginning in 1991 in the DOS computer era and still going 20 years later. The games involve you making decisions on places to build; wars to fight; and even setting diplomatic rules – which makes them also political in nature even if it’s not as obviously signposted. If political content is really as big a problem as this unidentified agency is implying, why has Civilization had a free pass for so long? Here’s hoping common sense prevails – though sadly, it seems to do so less often these days…
Get ready for a visual delight. The latest X Rebirth trailer provides a montage of gameplay action that can’t help but touch the Sci-Fi fan in each of us.
The November 15th release is fast approaching!!
For 14 years studio Egosoft has been synonymous with space simulation games. Starting with the 1999 release of X: Beyond the Frontier to the 2011 release of X3: Albion Prelude (not to mention the numerous notable expansions, the most recent being the 2013 Shady Business expansion), Egosoft has pushed the boundaries of what a space simulation game can be.
But X Rebirth is Different.
All prior X Games before X Rebirth represent the layering upon layering of additional features, many of which were never part of the game’s original design. Responding to the large community of space simulation fans that flocked to X: Beyond the Frontier, the developers at Egosoft obliged the plea for more – more freedom, more ships, more realism, and more things to do. However, even before the 2005 release of X3: Reunion, it had become clear that this development methodology had made the series inherently complicated and unnecessarily impenetrable for any outsider who had not begun playing the X Series games from the very start.
The solution? To start anew.
X Rebirth represents the culmination of 7 years of work redefining what a space simulation can be.
So, onto the X Rebirth Limited Edition Box Version
The additional content for the Limited Edition Box Version of X Rebirth have been finalized!
– Updated Color X Encyclopedia (ebook)
– Art Book of Concept Art (printed)
– Player’s Manual (printed)
– Sountrack
– Bonus Videos
