Phantasy Star Online 2 has finally been released in English! Oh, and you can’t play it unless you live in Southeast Asia. Published by Asiasoft, the English version is exclusive to Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Trying to …
Guilty admission: I haven’t played StarCraft II yet. I know, I know – it’s been on my “I really need to get around to that” list since 2010, and I just… haven’t. But if the cool things being done in the Galaxy …
Earlier in the year, Gamespy announced that on May 31st they would cease their online services after nearly fifteen years in operation. While it is always sad to see a games outlet crumble away, what is even sadder is that many games, particularly older titles, relied on Gamespy servers to host their multiplayer functionalities. With a hefty number of games affected by this outage, we decided to check into some of the more popular games which, up until today, utilized Gamespy.Older titles from the Battlefield franchise (Battlefield 1942, Battlefield: Vietnam) look like they're being abandoned by EA. In a statement released by EA following the Gamespy announcement, EA said, "...our teams have been working to evaluate options to keep services up and running. Unfortunately, due to technical challenges and concerns about the player experience, we do not have a solution at this time." However, the newer Battlefield games (Battlefield 2, Battlefield - Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 2142) look like they are getting transitioned over to Origin.
Hi-Rez Studios is holding a special promotion this weekend for their free-to-play MOBA, Smite. This Saturday and Sunday (the 31st and the 1st), any player who logs into Smite will have the full roster of gods and goddesses available to them, regardless of rank or previous purchases. With over fifty gods from Greek, Chinese, Roman, Mayan, Egyptian, Norse, and Hindu pantheons, players who have yet to check out Smite won't want to pass up this opportunity.This weekend promotion follows the recent release of the Roman god, Janus, into the game. As the fifty-fourth god to be introduced into Smite, Janus brings with him the unique ability to create portals through the game's maps, allowing himself and team members to quickly traverse through otherwise solid obstacles. Hi-Rez Studios typically will release a new god every two to three weeks. The god before Janus, the Egyptian god Osiris, released on May 12th.Earlier this year we put together a great beginner's guide/walkthrough to help new players quickly find their bearings within the game. While fifty-four gods may seem like a daunting amount to select from, brand new players to Smite would be wise to first try out some of the more easier to play gods, like Thor, Ymir, Neith, or Anhur. Be sure to check out Smite while the full roster of gods is available to you this weekend.
Eight months after the $3.8 million Kickstarter campaign, Mega Man-inspired platformer, Mighty No. 9, has a fresh gameplay trailer to show off what the developers at Comcept have been working on over the past few months. The gameplay trailer shows off footage from two of the game's levels, as well as a first glimpse of a pair of bosses that players will encounter within Mighty No. 9.Founded by Mega Man designer, Keiji Inafune, Comcept is a Japanese independent game development studio based out of Tokyo and Osaka. On August 31st of last year, Comcept launched Mighty No.9 onto Kickstarter. In just two days the $900,000 was surpassed. The funding campaign on Kickstarter combined with a secondary campaign (for backers wishing to utilize PayPal) raised over $4,000,000 for the development of Mighty No. 9. The influx of financial support guarantees the game's release on the Wii U, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Vita, 3DS, PlayStation 4, Mac, Linux, and Xbox One, alongside the originally planned PC release.Mighty No. 9 has an estimated release date of Spring 2015.
Over the past two years, Battlecry Studios has created quite the buzz around itself. The Bethesda-backed development studio has collected a number of prominent industry figures, notably Star Wars: The Old Republic's executive producer, Rich Vogel as the studio's president. Speculation arose as to the type of game Battlecry Studios would be working on when job offers were listed online, but for two years nothing official was announced —until yesterday.Attempting to precede the E3 hype, Battlecry Studios revealed Battlecry, a free-to-play multiplayer third-person action game where players pick a side in the struggle between the Cossacks and the Royal Marines in a warped historical reality.
So says a report by the Nielsen company (yes, the same one best known for giving the world TV ratings) released yesterday that tracks the habits of gamers in the U.S. ages 13 and up. It found that gaming on smartphones and tablets made serious strides between 2011 and 2013, which shouldn't surprise anyone. What was a little more eye-opening was the percentage of people who self-classify as console gamers who also report playing mobile games: 50 percent, up from 35 percent back in 2011.That doesn't mean that the negative stigma mobile games have in some corners of the overall gaming community has completely gone away. All it takes is a visit to the right comments section when a beloved console or PC franchise announces a mobile spin-off to prove that.
Return of the Obra Dinn sounds nothing like Papers, Please. Lucas Pope's empathetic masterpiece about immigration and war-torn countries was told from the perspective of a customs officer. Obra Dinn, by contrast, is a "3D first-person mystery game" with a 1-bit art style set in 1808.You are cast in a similarly menial position as Pope's previous game. You're the insurance adjustor for the East India Company's London Office. The company wants you to unravel the secrets behind the titular Obra ("pronounced like 'Cobra' without the C") Dinn, a merchant ship that disappeared on its way to the Orient and reappeared years later with no visible crew.