Following a tedious but mercifully short-lived disagreement over the use of the DotA name, Valve and Blizzard have come to an agreement. Valve retains full rights to using the title for commercial purposes, while Blizzard may only use the title for its community – whatever that means.
As a result, Blizzard has agreed to rename its forthcoming Blizzard DotA game to Blizzard All-Stars.
Remember on Monday when a domain registration alerted the world to the existence of a thing called The Avengers: Battle for Earth? It was tied to Ubisoft’s servers and initially outed for Fusible. Fast-forward to today: Ubisoft, along with Marvel Entertainment, have made the whole game official.
Now, remember how we were all dreaming that this would be an Avengers game worthy of the more recent film; the same film that made people’s eyes explode from the military-grade awesome that was pumped into them? It’s totally not going to be anything like that! How do we know based on having not actually seen the game in action? It’s being made for Kinect and Wii U only.
Irrational Games’ BioShock successor was supposed to be arriving in October this year. That’s no longer the case, which makes all of us here at NAG very sad boys and girls. Instead, we can expect to shoot holes in things and run around the sky city of Columbia on 26 February 2013.
Irrational bossman Ken Levine broke the news about the delay, but likened it to a similar delay that the original BioShock experienced: “We had a similar experience with the original BioShock, which was delayed several months as our original ship date drew near. Why? Because the Big Daddies weren’t the Big Daddies you’ve since come to know and love. Because Andrew Ryan’s golf club didn’t have exactly the right swing. Because Rapture needed one more coat of grimy Art Deco. The same principle now applies to BioShock Infinite.”
You see, when he puts it like that, the delay doesn’t seem all that bad, does it? Levine also confirmed that BioShock Infinite will not be making appearances at E3 or Gamescom this year because they feel any public appearance will not reflect the final product. Sounds as if they’re making some serious alterations then. Still, if the news leaves you absolutely devastated then head over here to make yourself feel better.
Source: Kotaku
Before we even tell you anything about this most awesome competition, you NEED to know this: to win you must attend the BT Games Midnight Launch at their Fourways Mall branch in JHB on Monday 14 May 2012. There’s no other way to enter. Right, got it? Good, then let us proceed.
BT Games are giving away this awesome prize to one NAG reader. All you have to do to enter is print out the image above, write your full name on the back of that piece of paper, come to the BT Games Fourways Mall Midnight Launch which happens on Monday 14 May from 9pm – 12.30am, put your “entry” into the box which will be inside their store, and wait for the esteemed Editor of NAG to do the prize draw at 11.30pm. It’s that easy. Aaaand you get to meet the NAG staff, ’cause we’ll be there.
Well, that didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would; it seems that Ubisoft’s call for people to do its marketing for them was answered by thousands and thousands of loyal fans. The full gameplay trailer for Assassin’s Creed III is now available for you to ogle – it is pretty spectacular.
The trailer is made up of pre-alpha footage. In fact, it’s made up of three separate internal videos that Ubisoft showed us just over a month ago at the game’s unveiling in London. The three different clips were meant to highlight three different aspects of the game: one of the cities (you can see Boston in the trailer); exploring the snow-covered Frontier; and the Battle of Bunker Hill. Some of the most exciting bits of all three clips have been spliced together to give us this debut trailer.
Assassin’s Creed III is the cover feature for this month’s edition of NAG, so if you want to read all there is to know about the trailer you’re about to watch, then grab a copy if you haven’t already. Hit the jump to get a taste of that Rope Dart in action – I can’t wait to use that thing.
To celebrate the 20th birthday of “the game that started it all”, id Software has released a free browser-based version of Wolfenstein 3D. It contains the original three episodes in their entirety, and lots of blue walls. You can play it here.
Hey, Apogee. “Aardwolf.”
I used to think that putting dinosaurs in your game would automatically makes it awesome. That was a thing, until I played Dino D-Day. The dinos made it better, obviously, but in a similar kind of way to finding chocolate in a bowl of vomit. An oddly pleasant addition, sure, but an altogether horrifying offering.
Thankfully, we’ve got Unreal Engine-powered Primal Carnage incoming sometime in the future, and it hopes to reaffirm my belief in the power that dinosaurs have on gaming. To quote the game’s official site, it’s an “asymmetrical online-multiplayer class-based game of humans versus dinosaurs” – a phrase so beautiful that typing it forced me to let out a few tears. Various class roles will be on offer in the game, allowing you to play everything from stealthy guy/reptile to heavy duty man/rex (and everything in between). If all you really want to do is loose flamethrowers on a pterosaur, there’s that too.
Alpha trailer lies below the break.
Now in its second of six months, our Nintendo Reader Reviews competition is moving ahead but we still need MOAR entries. Our May winner has been published (in the currently available issue of NAG) so now it’s your chance to show us what you’re capable of. In case you missed the entry requirements in the magazine or on our Facebook page, here’s what you need to do by this Friday:
Write a review of 300-350 words on any of the 3DS games listed below. Include a summary of your review (up to 40 words), a few short pros and cons, and a score out of 100. Check it twice and then send it through to nintendoreaderreviews@nag.co.z
List of games, prizes and competition rules after the break…
Late last week we learnt that RTS masters Relic, along with publisher THQ, are bringing Company of Heroes 2 to the PC in 2013. A direct sequel to 2006’s fantastic strategy game, Company of Heroes 2 will see you shifting your focus to the Eastern theatre of war during World War II. You’ll be in command of the Russian army as you attempt to “push back the Nazi invaders and free Mother Russia”.
The game will make use of Relic’s proprietary Essence 3.0 Engine, earlier iterations of which powered previous Company of Heroes and its expansions. According to the official press release, the sequel will see the introduction of Commander Abilities and something else called Dynamic Battle Tactics. We’re guessing these are buzz terms to keep an eye on as development continues.
Line-of-sight will play a much more prominent role in CoH2. Instead of the usual fog of war obscuring your Russian eyeballs, your units will have to have proper line-of-sight on targets, otherwise enemy units won’t appear on screen at all. With continually shifting tactics a cornerstone of the franchise, we’re pretty excited to see what effect these new features will have. You can check out the newly launched and official website here.
In February this year, EA reported having a subscriber base of 1.7 million people for their MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. That figure is now sitting on 1.3 million after just three months. This news comes via EA’s most recent earning statements issued to investors.
EA was expecting subscriber numbers to drop after the first 30 days of the MMO’s release, seeing as all new copies shipped with a 30 day subscription. We’re now almost half a year away and numbers are continuing to decline. That being said, EA’s Frank Gibeau admitted that the 1.3 million active subscribers is made up of “core MMO users”. He went further to explain that the 400, 000 subscriber loss was likely due to the “casual” market deciding to hang up their Jedi/Sith robes after going “through a billing cycle and decided not to subscribe to the game”.
It’s not all depressing news however, as Gibeau reiterated EA and BioWare’s intentions to expand the MMO and increase subscriber numbers. There are a number of developments in the pipeline that are aimed at keeping higher level players around for longer, thereby appealing to Gabeau’s “core MMO users”.
Source: Bothans from Eurogamer (who are still, thankfully, alive)
