Rss XML http://games.mescript.com Tue, 17 May 2011 21:22:22 +0700
Take-Two has announced that BioShock 2 has been delayed.

Following the announcement, CEO Ben Feder told investors he expected it to be released in the first half of 2010. The company had said at the very least it wouldn't appear until fiscal 2010, which begins on 1st November.

"The decision to shift a release date is never an easy one, especially with a product as highly anticipated as BioShock 2," said Feder in a statement. "We felt that it was essential to invest the additional time to ensure that this title will deliver what its fans expect and deserve.

"As a result, we will now be launching sequels to several of our strongest franchises - including BioShock 2, Mafia II, Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption - during the next fiscal year."

Feder mentioned moving to an "improved retail environment" too, which may be an admission that the economic crisis along with crowded Christmas schedule represents big risk to a publisher.

We got our last look at BioShock 2 in late May, scrutinising the brand new multiplayer sections. Head over to our BioShock 2 multiplayer preview to find out more.

The game currently has four lots of developers contributing to it. 2K Marin is top dog, with Digital Extremes working on multiplayer, and 2K Australia and Arkane Studios also involved.
News : www.ign.com

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It appears that StarCraft II will be losing one of the franchise's most popular features. In an interview with IncGamers, Rob Pardo, VP of game design indicated that LAN would not be supported for the upcoming RTS sequel. "We will not support it," he said. Instead, the only multiplayer for the game will be found through Battle.Net, Blizzard's online service that is currently being redesigned. We contacted Blizzard for confirmation and were told that it's true that StarCraft II will not support or feature LAN play at all.

While this might surprise StarCraft fans, particularly those that go to LAN centers for the competition, it's not surprising given that many of the new elements for the game seem to be tied into Battle.Net's tracking mechanics. In many ways, Battle.Net is attempting to provide improved features for players and observers alike. For example, spectators will be able to track a myriad of stats for each player within a match, including their army and economic strength, as well as see a specific build order for every unit fielded within a battle. Other features, like the new replay functionality, seem poised to take advantage of Battle.Net's community functions to upload videos and screens to the service. We covered a number of the new Battle.Net features within our recent multiplayer preview, but that only serves to underscore the point that Mr. Pardo made: StarCraft II won't have LAN support. Word from South Korea regarding their response to the lack of LAN play has yet to come in.

News : www.ign.com

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'Frustrating' not to be able to continue to develop characters from famed RPG series, though.

BioWare has "no regrets" over it's much-loved Baldur's Gate games, but admits it's "frustrating" not to be able to continue to develop the characters it created for the RPG series.

Baldur's Gate, released in 1998 for the PC and published by Interplay, was a high fantasy role-playing game based on the Dungeons & Dragons rule set. Its success spawned a sequel and a spin-off series. The final game, 2001's expansion pack Throne of Bhaal, closed the story arc.

In August 2008, Interplay and Atari settled a long-standing dispute, giving Atari all of Interplay's previous D&D game rights, including the Baldur's Gate license.

Speaking to VideoGamer.com, vice president of entertainment and miscellaneous at BioWare, and vice president of Electronic Arts, Greg Zeschuk, said that the development of the upcoming Dragon Age: Origins, described by the company as "the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate" (head over to our game page for more), was in part due to BioWare's inability to create Baldur's Gate 3.

"The Baldur's Gate and Dungeons and Dragons property is of course controlled by Atari, and owned originally by Hasbro, so it's a complicated, convoluted way of getting there. For us it's more a function of... because we weren't in a position to do Baldur's Gate... hey well let's create our own! That's effectively what this [Dragon Age: Origins] is. It's funny, we took a page from Fallout, not Fallout 3 but Fallout 1. Fallout 1 was basically a game called Wasteland - that was the spiritual successor to Wasteland."

When asked if BioWare would have liked to have made Baldur's 3 if it had had the opportunity, Zeschuk replied: "Maybe. The things we miss more than anything else are some of the characters we created. It's frustrating - like Minsc and some of the other characters we built over the years - not being able to continue to stem that is a bit frustrating. Though, to be fair, we feel like we closed the series.

"There are a lot of video games that - like the original Wasteland - never had a sequel, but there are a lot of games that never actually end. Whatever happens, they're left hanging and fans are like, ah I wish I'd finished it. But because we were able to finish the sequence of games in Baldur's Gate: Throne of Bhaal... it's funny, we were satisfied that we were able to deliver that entire arc. Go 'there it is and that's the story of Baldur's Gate'. We feel like we finished our work at that time."

So no regrets then?

"No, we don't have regrets."

In December last year then Infogrames president Phil Harrison said that Atari plans to revisit the likes of Baldur's Gate, Dungeons & Dragons and Neverwinter Nights (originally a BioWare game), but not in the next 12 months. No mention has since been made of those games.


News : www.videogamer.com

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Following two preemptive reveals, Electronic Arts has officially confirmed the final chapter in the Command & Conquer series.

Electronic Arts has finally officially announced Command & Conquer 4, the next and final chapter in the original "Tiberium series" storyline begun in 1995's Command & Conquer. The game's existence was not-so-subtly hinted at in a customer survey in June, then preemptively revealed via a Twitter update yesterday. After declining to comment for weeks, EA is now confirming the features outlined in the survey, including mobile bases, a role-playing-game-like class system, and persistent experience accrual similar to that of massively multiplayer role-playing games.

C&C4 will depict the final fates of the Tiberium series' two factions: the benevolent alliance of the Global Defense Initiative and the evil paramilitaries of the Brotherhood of Nod. It will be set in the year 2062, when Earth becomes so completely covered with the toxic (yet energy-rich) mineral known as Tiberium that the human race is in peril of extinction. In the face of this threat, the longtime enemy factions join forces against a common foe. EA suggests that this uneasy truce will lead to an explanation of the long-term plans set forth by Nod leader Kane in games, such as Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and its expansion, Kane's Wrath.

Command & Conquer 4 will offer two different campaigns for each faction, which can be played solo or in cooperative mode. In addition, the game will have a brand new, five-versus-five, objective-based multiplayer mode for online play. The unrated game will ship sometime in 2010 for the PC, with no other platforms yet announced. C&C3 was also ported to the Xbox 360 and Mac, while C&C: Red Alert 3 made it to the PlayStation 3.


News : www.gamespot.com

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