Fallen Earth Lands on the Mac [Mac]
Somehow the Mac went from gaming afterthought to everyone’s favorite platform in the span of a week. Now the MMO Fallen Earth is Mac compatible, beginning with today’s Beta release of the game.
Icarus Studios, the co-developers of Fallen Earth, have put together a Mac-compatible xScape platform, buit on the open source software Wine. A statement from Icarus said the new platform allows “players to connect to the same live server as PC users with game features optimized for their resident operating system.”
For optimal play, Mac users will need an Intel-based Mac, running Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) or later, with at least 2 gigs of RAM and a video card with 256 MB of RAM. There’s more info inside this FAQ.
Icarus Studios Launches Macintosh Compatible MMO Platform [Official Site]
OnLive Streaming Game Service Going Public June 17th, for $15 a Month [Gaming]
Remember OnLive? The online game service, which renders PC games in the cloud and streams them to any Mac or PC, regardless of its graphics power? Well, it’s coming, for real, on June 17th. It’ll $15 a month, base.
The release will coincide with the E3 conference this year, and will be available to the 48 contiguous states. No word on when the currently running beta will die, or on the full title list they’ll have at launch, but says Maximum PC exie Will Smith:
OnLive is looking much more like a service, than a demo that streams PC games over the net… looked much better this year than last. No blocky compression artifacts.
Which is promising, because to be honest, it looked fine when we saw it in 2009.
CNET’s got a little extra info, including a preliminary games list, subject to change at E3:
Borderlands, Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect 2, Assassin’s Creed II, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and Metro 2033
These are “anticipated” games, and they’re just a sampler. As for the service’s tardy arrival (it was supposed to go public over the winter), OnLive says they just wanted to wait and make the service “better.” [Will Smith]
Microsoft SideWinder X4 Review: Step Up, Son [Review]
First law of gadget recessionomics: Take something you make, which is great, make it ever so less great, and sell it for ever so less money. That’s how you end up with products like Microsoft’s SideWinder X4 keyboard.
The Price
$60 MSRP, $46 retail.
The Verdict
The SideWinder X6 was a marvelous fresh start for Microsoft’s rejuvenated gaming hardware division, designed with a brooding Death Star aesthetic, shit hot jog wheels, and a hot-swappable detachable number pad that can be hooked up to the left or right side. It’s just $20 pricier MSRP (but retail, $12) than the X6, and I’ll tell you straight up, a better deal.
The SideWinder X4 is virtually identical at the core—same basic keyboard layout (including the too-long spacebar), chaos-red backlighting, and laptop-esque throw distance for the keys—but it ditches the most lovable aspects of the X6: the jog wheels and the detachable keypad. Instead, it touts anti-ghosting, so you can mash 26 keys at once and have them all register. Also, it’s got fewer macros total (though really, it still has plenty enough). And a smaller wrist rest.
The core features are solid. It held up to the Twister-style keyboard gymnastics you occasionally have to perform in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and the snap of the keys is on point: Crisp and squishy, like a croissant.
But! The fact remains, its older, more capable brother costs a few nickels more and is well worth the extra scratch. So if you can find the X4 for $20 in a bargain bin in a couple months and need a basic gaming, then it’d be a solid buy. In the meantime, if you’re gonna get a gaming keyboard, step up to the X6. (Personally, I’m waiting for the inevitable X10.)
We’re still suckers for the whole brimstone and fire in space aesthetic (for now)
A solid “basics” gaming keyboard, but why go for basics when it comes to gaming gear?
Software for keyboard is kinda eh compared to Logitech, SteelSeries and Razer
Too many features stripped for such a small price reduction
Old Republic Is EA’s Biggest Ever Development Project [Ea]
According to the man who’s had to write the cheques for the game’s development, Electronic Arts is taking massive multiplayer online title The Old Republic seriously. Very seriously.
Speaking at a Wedbush Morgan Securities get-together earlier today, EA’s Eric Brown revealed that the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO is the “largest ever development project, period, in the history of the company”.
For a company with so many big games in its back catalogue, that’s a big project. To give you an idea on how big, Brown guesses that genre superpower World of Warcraft has so far cost Blizzard around USD$100 million. Considering the average game costs between $20 and $30 million to develop, you can see EA isn’t screwing around on its Star Wars MMO.
SWTOR is EA’s “largest ever” project [Eurogamer]
True Crime Impressions: Finally, Dumpster Kills [Gdc10]
Activision’s True Crime series goes back to the drawing board with a Hong Kong action-adventure reboot, a game that puts the player in the role of an undercover cop, one who knows how to use a freezer door in a fight.
In True Crime, players infiltrate a low level Triad crime syndicate as Wei Shen, born in Hong Kong, Americanized and back in his native land to bust some gangster heads. In the demo steered by developers from United Front Games, we were introduced to Wei Shen as he met with the jacked up Winston, a club going who had a job for our undercover hero.
That job started with a quick drive through the streets of North Point, True Crime’s fictional interpretation of Kowloon. United Front reps pointed out the game’s driving model as arcadey, a design choice likely influenced by the ex-Need For Speed developers on staff.
The streets of North Point, painted green and pink from the flood of neon lights, are busy, but not congested, and the drive to the factory where Shen’s target resided was short.
At this point, we got a good look at True Crime’s hand to hand combat. There were a handful of high flying kicks, but much of the action was standard fisticuffs, not kung fu flick fare. Shen’s moveset looked robust, throwing haymaker punches, snapping limbs and performing some brutal environmental finishing moves.
In one finishing move, Shen lifted up a thug over his shoulders, dumping him into the garbage bin behind. In another, Shen shoved some unlucky punk against a refrigerator, crushing his skull with the freezer door.
True Crime’s combat also includes the use of weapons, like the meat cleaver that Shen picked up from an enemy and plenty of guns. The combat in True Crime appears to be its strongest mechanic, at least from what we saw at GDC, with a surprising level of depth and variety in the kicking and punching department.
After Shen shot, sliced and pummeled a few dozen bad dudes, he caught up with his prey—who may have gone by the name Dog Eyes—took him hostage and attempted to walk him out of the factory, still blasting away at thug with his handgun. Unfortunately for our undercover hero, old Dog Eyes gave Shen the slip amidst some serious confusion.
The mission then branched off into a driving sequence, with Wei Shen chasing a cop car in a hijacked motorcycle, ultimately carjacking that police cruiser with a bad-ass leap, Pursuit Force-style.
The new True Crime, shown in a pre-alpha state, looked promising, if only for the deeper combat and the use of meat cleavers on lowlife criminals. Much of what we’d seen, we’d seen before in other open-world games, but True Crime’s Hong Kong cinema influence is at least interesting and a good base upon which to build an intriguing story.
OnLive Starts Streaming Games On Demand This June For $15 A Month [Gdc10]
PC gaming service OnLive, officially unveiled at last year’s Game Developers Conference, was finally dated and priced at this year’s show. The on demand streaming game arrives June 17th in the United States, priced at $14.95 USD per month.
But wait there’s more! OnLive is comping the first three months worth of service to the first 25,000 qualified people who sign up for the service and promises multi-month pricing “loyalty programs” will be announced closer to E3. OnLive says it also plans to release rental and purchase pricing details closer to E3.
The bad news? OnLive will be launching in the 48 contiguous United States, leaving poor Hawaii and Alaska in the cold.
Keep in mind that $14.95 USD monthly fee does not include the rental and ownership fees associated with actually playing those games. The subscription fee pays for things like “instant-play free game demos; multiplayer across PC, Mac and TV platforms; massive spectating; viewing of Brag Clips video capture and posting; and cloud-saving of games you’ve purchased.” Yeah, don’t toss your PC in the nearest Dumpster just yet.
Additional details on OnLive, straight from DICE, can be read right here.
Waterloo Wasn’t Quite Total War, But It Was Awesome [Total War]
Fun fact: I’m a history graduate, so when a Total War game comes along, I’m normally first in line. Especially when it involves pipes, muskets and rad uniforms, because they remind me not of Napoleon, but of Waterloo. The movie.
I bring this up because, taking place long before motion picture, audio recordings or even photographs, the Napoleonic Wars were a thing whose immediacy is rarely captured. First-hand accounts can tell us of cavalry charges and farmhouse struggles, but not what it felt like to charge down a square of infantry, or what 20,000 dead men on a field smells like.
But Waterloo (the movie) captures it almost perfectly. And as such, I’d recommend it to anyone currently playing Creative Assembly’s strategy game, or even considering playing it. If it can’t get you in the mood to go to war with drums and horse-drawn artillery, nothing will.
The 1970 film seems to be barely-remembered these days, which is a shame, because it’s amazing. Not necessarily for the “story”, or for the performances – though Rod Steiger’s Napoleon and Christopher Plummer’s Wellington are great – but for the scale of it.
Just like Napoleon: Total War (and Empire: Total War before it) impress with the scope and size of their campaigns, Waterloo is a movie that, even today, stands as a Herculean achievement in production. Why? Because of stuff like this:
- Forget CGI. The movie was filmed in the former Soviet Union, and “stars” over 16,000 Red Army soldiers playing the part of the British and French armies. They weren’t just dressed up, either; the soldiers were trained in musket and marching drill, so when on the “battlefield”, they could pass for 19th century troops. Watch the scene below, especially around the 0:40 mark, and tell me you don’t get goosebumps.
- With the movie set in Belgium, but filming mostly in Ukraine, Soviet army engineers went the extra mile to replicate the look of the Waterloo battlefield. They cleared away two entire hills to get the terrain looking similar, then built replica farmhouses, planted Western European crops, laid five miles of paved roads and planted over 5000 trees.
- To film the movie, the production team didn’t just use standard rigs. They used a helicopter, which in 1969 was pretty special. But not as special as the “monorail” built across the entire battlefield by Soviet engineers to allow for long tracking shots.
- Think the breath-taking scenes with the cavalry charges above and below look familiar? That’s because Peter Jackson used them as his muse for the Pelennor Fields battle in Return of the King.
If, like me you’ve got the Napoleonic Wars on the brain at the moment, you need to watch this movie.
You Are A Cat Eating Sushi Playing Peggle [Hot Flashes]
If you enjoy Peggle, felines, and raw fish rolled in rice, the you’ll love Sushi Cat, a game about getting a cat fat enough to activate an automatic door.
Sushi Cat has found the love of his life, but she’s inside a building, and he isn’t big enough to use the automated entryway and gain his heart’s desire. Gaining inspiration from a nearby sumo wrestler, Sushi Cat decides to eat his way out of his dilemma and into his love’s heart.
Sure Sushi Cat is a Peggle Clone, right down to the Sushi Fever at the end of every level, but it could be the cutest Peggle clone you’ll ever come across. It certainly captures the addictive spirit of Peggle, as this post was nearly very late.
Civilization V Preview: Small Changes, Big Differences [Gdc10]
Civilization was never the most realistic game, and those who enjoyed battling against a nuclear-armed Gandhi have not minded. The next one, Civilization V, though may be the most natural one thanks to some crafty tweaks.
Kotaku was shown an early version of development studio Firaxis’ Civ V running on a PC on the first day of Game Developers Conference here in San Francisco. What was shown was a Civ that behaves just a little more like it is in the real world in regards to everything from terrain to the rules of war and international relations. All have been modified to feel more true to life and more rife than ever with strategic potential.
The game is still a turn-based single or multiplayer quest requiring ample brainpower and planning. Like other Civilization games, the player goal is to lead one tribe from the founding of a city to a position of global leadership, via military or peaceful means.
The most obvious difference is the look of Civ V’s terrain. As can be seen in screenshots it, looks more like real Earth. A representative of the studio showing the game said this new Civ’s worlds might look pre-rendered but are still, true to the series, randomly generated. An optional overlaid grid shows that the world is indeed divided into hexagons, a first for the series, which used to chop things up by squares.
The ground looked good, lifted naturally by mountain ranges and cut by rivers. As good as those graphics looked, the game is supposed to be able to run on the widest range of PC hardware specifications supported by the series yet, from laptops Civ fans use on planes to high-end PCs. The current minimum spec Firaxis is hoping to accommodate are 256 MB video cards and dual core processors. That target might change.
A lot of small changes have been made to the core Civ gameplay, tweaks that appear to have major implications. Players get a notification system this time, which alerts them to important new events such as a new bit of research being completed or a scouting party being attacked. Clicking on the alerts that appear on the right side of the screen, when relevant, warps the player to the location of the event.
Advisers are back in Civ V, characters who pop up to offer tips, Rival civilizations are now being programmed to fight with noticeably distinct artificial intelligence styles. (Less consequential to gameplay is the introduction of full-screen animations of rival leaders such as George Washington or Napoleon, set in character specific locales).
New city states appear on the map. These are always controlled by the computer. Players can enter pacts with them, trade with them, or even attack them. This complicates the relationships among the major civilizations, as an America that is friends with Budapest might be drawn into a war if it tries to free a besieged Budapest from the French. The city states were described by one developer showing the game as elements that “are there to make things happen.”
A great civilization’s area of influence used to spread evenly in Civ games. In the new one, a player will see the colored border representing the limits of their people’s reach expand in more realistic ways. Turn after turn, the computer will automatically expand a player’s civilization into areas that have relevant resources, say forest instead of desert, early in the game. Players can spend gold to speed the expansion.
Combat has changed. Players will no longer be able to stack units onto one space and then carry that offensive stack to war. Each unit — which still represents and is depicted by — a cluster of fighters, can only occupy a space on its own. New ranged units can fire from afar (an extra hexagon away for the archers, according to the demo this week). And cities, which now have health bars, can fire back.
A number of other changes may be big or little. It’s hard to say. The developers said great civilizations can now agree to commence a research agreement, instead of just establishing trade or declaring war. The game will now allow easy access to a catalogue of user-uploaded mods. And, as a tease, the developers said there will be surprises as to how non-military ways of winning the game, the standard cultural and technological victories, for example, will be designed.
Civilization V, which appears to be a crafty evolution for the franchise, is set for release on PC this fall. No Mac version is planned for launch, but the producer noted that all Civ games have eventually come out for Apple computers.
Oscar-Winning Duo Working On Ghost Recon Movie [Ghost Recon]
The creators of Logorama – an Oscar-winning short film that featured its fair share of video game companies – will be sticking with a gaming theme for their next work, creating a live-action short for Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon series.
Francois Alaux and Herve de Crecy will be working with writer Tim Sexton (Children of Men) on the 20-minute short, which will serve as a prequel for the upcoming Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
Ubisoft has set aside $8-10 million for the film, which is the latest in the studio’s ever-expanding line of movie projects, the last of which were based on Assassin’s Creed.
“Logorama” duo take aim at “Ghost Recon” videogame [Reuters]
