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And so in this weekend’s most amusing news – Bethesda take unexpected revenge for the leak of gameplay footage on Pornhub… by stealing some of its audience when Fallout 4 released. Really.
In an interview Pornhub vice president Corey Price was said to have told them that the site saw a drop in traffic of around 10 percent since the game launched. Beginning at 5am, the numbers began to drop off, carrying through to 3pm, and starting all over again at 6pm.
“We can’t say we’re too surprised with what happened to our traffic during peak gaming hours,” said Corey Price. “Based on the data, it looks like a huge surge of people decided to indulge in some wasteland wandering by taking the day off of work and school to play, while the rest of the world had to wade through what we assume were the longest hours of work ever in anticipation of some alone time with their consoles.”
It’s not exactly the type of story I expected to emerge from Fallout 4’s appearance at last, but it is quite a testament to Bethesda’s game that it can keep people distracted long enough not to indulge in… other pleasures.
Time for your weekly Kickstarter update, at least as far as the gaming related ones go.
To start off with good news, Wanderer‘s campaign has come to an end and the game was funded $81,216 which meant two stretch goals were also funded to add two bonus character to the game. Well done to Red Cloak Games, and can’t wait to hear more about it.
Otherwise there isn’t much more good news to report. No other previously unended Kickstarters covered in the past have reached their goals, and Quatros Origins has ended theirs far short of their €15,000goal. A whole bunch of the previously covered projects have a long way to go with little time to do it in with Econia, Cold Blooded, Fathoms, Crematory Bot, Super Axe Boy and Dusty Raging Fists all in trouble.
We’ll start off with the weekly card game, and one that’s based around an RPG-esque setting.
The sub-title for this campaign page is “Card Game meets RPG! Explore the cave! Collect power ups! Harass your friends! Kill the dragon in the middle for fame & glory!” which explains its premise rather neatly. The game apparently came about because the developers wanted more than ‘just another “kill the other person” card game’ and is played through the use of three decks – a tunnel deck which determines the routes to the dragon, an Exploration deck that can be either a monster, trap or other card and a Loot Deck which is drawn from if you win combat against a drawn monster card.
Tunnels & Traps is asking for $6,000 of which it has made $115 already with 26 days left to go.
Next up is a single player RPG with some ‘furry’ elements and a low goal to boot.
Furrious’ Conquest sees the titular hero teaming up with a half-dragon, Gofri, to take one DraGula – a villian who has taken control of a city called Dragonia and kidnapped Gofri’s sister. The only problem is the populace of the city is divided between those who support DraGula and those who wish to fight against him but are afraid to do so alone. There’s also a demo of the game if you want to try it out before you back.
Furrious’ Conquest is asking for only $375 with 59 days to go. It has yet to make anything though.
In a world of very similar apocalypse survival games, it’s nice to see unique ones come along every now and then.
Apocalypse Hotel is a game where you have to run a safehouse hotel during the apocalypse, holding off zombies, fixing up rooms to attract survivors to stay and even being able to put on zombie pit fights to entertain your guests. Really. You can also journey out into the city nearby to scavenge supplies, more survivors and can be accompanied by some of your survivor guests or your pet zombie dog when you do so.
Apocalypse Hotel has made £140 of its £2,300 goal so far, with 28 days to go.
This game is a rogue-like actions platformer with a story borrowed from Norse mythology.
Cycle of Tyrfing follows Hervor, the daughter of Angantyr who claims the sword “Tyrfing” from her fallen father. She is led down to Hel by a a demonic figure called Fyulgjir to learn the circumstances of her father’s death. However while Tyrfing grants superhuman abilities to its wielder it also comes with heavy cost to both them and others around them. The fighting of enemies makes use of sword combat as well as magical abilities that can spawn other weapons to use on enemies.
Cycle of Tyrfing has 43 days to go and has made $259 CAD of $20,000 CAD.
Lastly for this week we have a Open World Action-Adventure RPG with a co-op element.
Chronicles of Time can support up to 4 players in co-operative play as they venture into the land of Natrius which once saw complete economic stability until a newly discovered fuel source turned the creatures of the world hostile, leading to the inhabited areas constructing barriers to protect themselves from the wild creatures. Barriers that can only be fuelled by the fuel source that caused the problem in the first place, leading to a vicious cycle. Eventually war came to the land and so our heroes in this game set off to find a way to travel back in time to stop the discovery of the fuel source before it becomes a problem.
Chronicles of Time has made $1,475 of its $5,300 goal with 27 more days to go.
HiRez Studios has been pretty successful with their third person action MOBA, SMITE. The game is headed to its World Championship tournament soon, and recently celebrated 10 million players. As a game that focuses on playable gods and demigods from various pantheons around the world, the characters in SMITE are at once familiar and unique. However, they all fall into one of seven pantheons: Chinese, Egyptuan, Greek, Roman, Hindu, Mayan and Norse. That may be about to change however. Recently, Scott Ghandi who works on the Xbox One side of SMITE tweeted out that everyone should tune in to the patch notes today at 4 PM EST for a special surprise. Along with that rather cryptic tweet, he posted this picture:
Each symbol is the emblem of one of the pantheons currently in SMITE. Speculation, of course is that the giant question mark heralds the reveal of a new pantheon to be added to the game. Speculation about a new pantheon has been going on for months, with Smitedatamining.com claiming to have unearthed references to the Celtic pantheon and Morrigan way back in March of this year. While this is, of course, still speculation, signs seem to indicate big changes coming to SMITE.
I know I’ll be tuned in today at 4 PM. You can catch the patch notes HERE.
In case you haven’t heard yet, Fallout 4 is releasing soon. I know right; they kept that quiet didn’t they?
Anyway, with such a big and very anticipated title releasing some other games are obviously getting into the spirit of travelling and playing in the post-nuclear wasteland. Even if you’re playing car football.
The people who made Rocket League, Psyonix are releasing a little update for the game at the same time as Fallout 4 releases that adds a single new cosmetic element to the game to go with the others you can use to deck your car out before you go flying off walls smashing a giant metal ball about a field: a Vault Boy antenna.
Sure, like all the cosmetic bits it makes no change to your car’s performance but who doesn’t love customising options in games? It’s a freebie to boot, so even if you’re not a fan you still don’t lose anything. Win-win situation all around.
With Fallout 4 now releasing, gamers are beginning to look around to other franchises to hope for sequels from. Yesterday Take-Two reported they were working on some new games in existing IPs, and now Crystal Dynamics’ senior designer, Michael Brinker, has said that he believes there’s a 50/50 chance of a new Legacy of Kain game in this generation.
“It’s a 50/50 chance,” Brinker said. “We have in-house developers who really want to make that game. It’s interesting because people look back at our history and our franchises and see that we have some really great iconic IPs. So gamers wonder; ‘where are they and what are they doing?’ Well we’re always tossing around and talking about ideas [of bringing them back]. It really is 50/50.”
Of course, right now Crystal Dynamics are working on that other major frnahcise Tomb Raider, with the newest game Rise of the Tomb Raider due to launch on Xbox One tomorrow. There’s also a PC version coming, but that’s not until next year. So if we do get a new Legacy of Kain game, it probably won’t be coming soon.
Still, they won’t make it if there’s no demand for it right?
