Ticket to Ride, the board-game-turned-video-game, may have gained a legion of fans when it shot into the heights of iOS's App Store rankings and surpassed one million downloads, but publisher Days of Wonder is no stranger to making digital ports of its games. Ticket to Ride has been available for play on the web since shortly after the physical board game's 2004 release. Now, both long-standing and newcomer fans alike will be getting a treat, with the release of the first new digital Ticket to Ride map in nearly seven years: Legendary Asia.
Citing games like Megaman, Metal Slug, and Phantasy Star Online as inspiration, Mercenary Kings comes with a pedigree, backed up by most of the team that worked on 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Of particular note is artist Paul Robertson, whose made a name for himself as an evocative and expressive (if not sometimes NSFW) pixel artist.
In patch 1.0.4, Blizzard will be introducing a new gameplay mechanic designed to reform DiabloIII’s endgame, according to a post on their blog. It’s called the Paragon system.
Paragon will do two things: it introduces a new, post-60 leveling system and tweaks the game’s Magic and Gold Find mechanics.
First things first: after hitting level 60, any experience accumulated will contribute to your Paragon level. Each Paragon level comes with bonuses to core stats, roughly similar to what a character would receive leveling normally.
Over the weekend, while most of us where enjoying the dog days of summer and watching True Blood, OnLive was busy filing for bankruptcy, firing its staff, and being rescued by Lauder Partners, a venture capital group.
According to a statement released by the newly-restructured OnLive, the company was placed under an “Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors,” by which an assigned party takes control of a bankrupt company’s assets and debts in an effort to right the ship.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida made the company’s plans for the PlayStation Vita clear: “Our priority right now is definitely to bring more content.”
“In terms of new content and new system and service features, we can add that, and we can work with third-parties to get more,” he continued. “We’re getting a very good feeling when we talk with third-party companies.”
It’s obvious that gaming platforms need to be supported by games and features, but Sony’s line of portables has struggled to buck a reputation as a barren system. To that end, Sony announced a suite of new initiatives to bolster the Vita’s library during their Gamescom presentation.
Not content to sit back while United Front Games develops LittleBigPlanet Karting, Media Molecule announced Tearaway, an adventure puzzle game for the PlayStation Vita, at Gamescom yesterday.
On August 15 (that’s tomorrow!), Valve will be introducing a new cooperative mode to Team Fortress 2: Mann vs. Machine, a Horde variant that pits six players against waves of robotic doppelgangers intent on bombing Mann Co. facilities to smithereens.
Dubbed the Gray Horde, the robot menace mostly consists of regular robot foot soldiers that carry regular weaponry dragging around huge bombs designed to level munitions warehouses. Your job is pretty straightforward, according to Valve’s TF2 blog: “It’s up to you to stop them. And it’s up to a small cadre of Special Robots to stop you from stopping the regular robots.”
By and large, Mann vs. Machine doesn’t seem to stray too far from the Horde mechanics popularized by games like Gears of War 2: players earn cash by destroying robots, which can be used to upgrade weapons and equipment between rounds. Survive every round for even more loot.
For a somewhat absurdist account of Mann Co.’s backstory, Valve has helpfully provided some comic strips to get you squared away. And if you simply cannot wait another 24 hours to figure what our merry mercenaries are up against, here’s a rundown of the rather prosaically named Special Robots.
It’s worth noting that this marks the first time Valve has had to write enemy AI for a Team Fortress game. More importantly, there may be some sweet metallic hats in the offering.
Yesterday, Nintendo released a new, English-language trailer for Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, the fifth entry in the Level-5—developed puzzle series. The trailer introduces young Herschel Layton’s luscious Afro (and an ostensible long-lost love interest), as well as the new adventure’s presumptive antagonist: a masked and winged gentleman in white tuxedo
Remember Me began life as a little-known project called Adrift, in development from Paris-based DONTNOD Entertainment. Its name-change marks the announcement this morning at GDC Europe of a publishing deal with Capcom.
Less than a week after founding Impossible Studios -- created out of the remnants of Big Huge Games and 38 Studios after the latter’s bankruptcy earlier this year -- Epic Games has announced that it has fully acquired subsidiary People Can Fly.
“Now we own it all,” Epic vice-president Mark Rein told Joystiq during GDC Europe. “We had a controlling stake, but the owner still owned a fairly large piece of it. They left, they’re gonna do their own thing.”
