The Gaming News Thread

[frogbeastegg]

Sword of the Stars II has been announced. No real info yet, just paragraph in a Paradox announcement post and a change to the SOTS forum title on their boards.

Much to the delight of fans of the Sword of the Stars franchise, Paradox announced Sword of the Stars II, the full stand-alone follow-up to the popular space strategy titles. Sword of the Stars II will feature the six races from the original game, as well as its expansions, marking a major step forward in the series’ approach to 4X gameplay. Setting a new standard for the genre, as well as revealing dark secrets of the original series, Sword of the Stars II is sure to please fans of the genre when it is released next year

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

That blurb makes it sounds like it's just SotS Complete or something with all the expansions bundled together. I assume it's not but...

Anyway, excellent news and thanks for the heads up, Froggy.

[johnhughthom]

I'm slowly beginning to hate Paradox, so many announcements yet no CK2.

[Martok]

Sword of the Stars II has been announced. No real info yet, just paragraph in a Paradox announcement post and a change to the SOTS forum title on their boards.

Fascinating; I'll have to keep my eyes on this one.

I've enjoyed SOTS overall, but I find it tends to focus overly much on combat and on little else. I applaud that Kerberos's design was to reduce planetary micromanagement, but the game still feels like too much of a one-trick pony at times. Hopefully the sequel will be a bit more fleshed out.

[drone]

Apparently, UbiSoft wants to go out of business. RPS is reporting that all future UbiSoft PC games will require an constant online connection to play, no offline mode possible. Saved games will be stored on their servers.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010...ays-be-online/

UbiSoft FAQ on the service.

So they will spend lots of money to maintain servers (which are guaranteed to crash on big releases), alienate and frustrate purchasers of their games, and not stop piracy at all. Sounds like a winning business plan.

[Greyblades]

This sounds like they are going to trigger another pirate spike like spore.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Apparently, UbiSoft wants to go out of business. RPS is reporting that all future UbiSoft PC games will require an constant online connection to play, no offline mode possible. Saved games will be stored on their servers.

I liked this comment:

What the *fudge* is wrong with gamespy and that retarded Gerald Villoria comment: “I think the DRM benefits of this approach and the ancillary bonuses (remote game saves, unlimited installations, no CD authentication) will end up outweighing the annoyance of having to log-in before playing” ?

You know, we ALREADY had all these “ancillary bonuses” even before this whole DRM bull*poo* was invented. It’s like amputating the legs of a perfectly healthy person only to put him into a wheelchair and then selling this as “ancillary bonus”. Whatever that guy means by that term.

CR

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Turns out Ubisoft is dumb.

[Meneldil]

Poor guys. I liked their game.

[Crandaeolon]

Penny Arcade might have something to say about this... (link to older comic)

[Xiahou]

UbiSoft FAQ on the service.

Hmmm...

What will happen if I lose my Internet connection when I play the game?

If you lose your Internet connection the game will pause while it tries to reconnect. If the Internet connection is unable to resume, the server will have stored your last saved game and you will be able to continue from where you left off once your internet connection is restored.

There's no part of that I don't love.

[Husar]

Hmmm...There's no part of that I don't love.

Yeah, looking forward to that as well...

[TinCow]

Fallout: New Vegas will be released in fall 2010. Here's the trailer:

[drone]

XBox Live support for XBox v1 games is being discontinued on April 15, 2010 (tax day in the US!). That is all.
http://gamerscoreblog.com/press/arch.../05/gh789.aspx

[drone]

oops, DP

[drone]

Apparently, UbiSoft wants to go out of business. RPS is reporting that all future UbiSoft PC games will require an constant online connection to play, no offline mode possible. Saved games will be stored on their servers.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010...ays-be-online/

An update: PC Gamer got preview copies of Assassin's Creed 2 and Settlers VII with this DRM fail included. They ran some tests, unplugging cables and such.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...35290&site=pcg

We've just received Assassin's Creed 2 and Settlers VII for review, and verified with Ubisoft that the DRM is the same as the boxed product. If you get disconnected while playing, you're booted out of the game. All your progress since the last checkpoint or savegame is lost, and your only options are to quit to Windows or wait until you're reconnected.

The game first starts the Ubisoft Game Launcher, which checks for updates. If you try to launch the game when you're not online, you hit an error message right away. So I tried a different test: start the game while online, play a little, then unplug my net cable. This is the same as what happens if your net connection drops momentarily, your router is rebooted, or the game loses its connection to Ubisoft's 'Master servers'. The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen - all my progress since it last autosaved was lost.

[Greyblades]

They're turning assassins creed 2's pc launch into another spore fiasco.

Edit: oh wait I've allready said that, never mind then.

[Krusader]

Civilization V announced!

Civilization V

RPS blurb on Civilization V

[TinCow]

Civilization V announced!

Civilization V

RPS blurb on Civilization V

It's on a hex grid! A HEX GRID! WOO!

[Krusader]

Supreme Commander 2 demo on Steam.
From what players are saying it seems to be a stripped down/consolified version of SupCom1.

[Meneldil]

Terribad.
I just can't understand how they tried to make an updated version of Total Annihilation and failed in the first place. And then they make it even worse with the second game. That's beyond my mind.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

If you crave some updated TA, Spring just had a bugfix release, I think.

[pevergreen]

The second one is worse?



I thought the addition of the tech tree would make it nice...

[Meneldil]

It's a dumbed down SupCom, which was already a dumbed down TA. And it still lacks any flavor or ambient. Feels even more blank and boring than SupCom1.

[pevergreen]

Thats it, Im getting my TA CD's.

*installs*

[Husar]

It's a dumbed down SupCom, which was already a dumbed down TA. And it still lacks any flavor or ambient. Feels even more blank and boring than SupCom1.

Heh, tried the demo and the commander you play looks like some muppet in a plastic box, actually all the other commanders do, too.
But yeah, it felt like they wanted to make it more like C&C.

[Meneldil]

Heh, that is kind of sad actually. I can't even point out what they made wrong with SupCom1, but it just didn't work out for me. It felt nothing like TA, and the zoom thingy forced me to play with the whole map on my screen, meaning that I'd send squares to attack triangles and so on. It was too slow, too long, lacked a good soundtrack.

[Krusader]

Seems like there's something fishy going on at Infinity Ward, or its just a big hoax:

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/70...aked-Out-.html

http://kotaku.com/5483348/report-str...esident-ousted

[Kekvit Irae]

Seems like there's something fishy going on at Infinity Ward, or its just a big hoax:

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/70...aked-Out-.html

http://kotaku.com/5483348/report-str...esident-ousted

Smells like a publicity stunt. Either that or Activision decided to play their own game of Real Life MW2 Spec Ops.

[drone]

Anybody following the Portal update stuff?

Either Valve has some really bored programmers, or we may be getting a sequel.