Daily Scoop: March 18, 2015 – OK, I’ll go to the doctor!

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Nicole Kline

I’m still feeling horrible, so I decided to call the doctor. I’ll be going later today. In the meantime, I’m just going to be miserable everywhere forever until I get there. Yay!

But first, let me bring you some deals! At the Humble Store, there are some new sales happening. You can get Goat Simulator for $3.39, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Collection for $14.99, and early access to Godus for $4.99. Over at Steam, the new Daily Deal is Tales of Maj’Eyal for $1.74 . You can also splurge and get a four pack for you and your friends for just $4.99.

There’s also a brand new bundle at Indie Royale – the Mixer 16 Bundle. Beat the average to get Pulstar, FootLOL: Epic Fail League, Residue, 99 Levels to Hell, Mana Crusher, Catmouth Island, Growing Pains, Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory, Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, and Ensign-1. Scoop ’em up!

Just a few t-shirts today, but there are definitely some amazing ones.

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CoD: Advanced Warfare Ascendance Pack coming to Xbox One, Xbox 360 on March 31

Posted on March 18, 2015 by John Scalzo

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Activision has announced Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will receive its second downloadable expansion, the Ascendance Pack, beginning on March 31. As always, Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners will get first crack at the DLC. PC, PS3, and PS4 players will likely gain access to the add-on content sometime in late April or early May. The Ascendance Pack will feature four new multiplayer maps including an alien crash site, an apartment complex down under, a Pauly Shore-less biodome, and a illegal robotics chop shop:

Perplex: Venture to the streets of Sydney and battle through a five-story modular apartment complex. With elevated vantages and tight corridors, Perplex is small-to-medium sized map that fits variety of play styles. Construction drones will shake things up, however, as they shift apartment modules and create new strategic pathways.

Site 244: An alien craft has crash-landed beneath Mt. Rushmore, USA, making for an awesome medium-to-large sized three-lane map littered with extraterrestrial debris. Gain a competitive edge by earning the map-based scorestreak to open an alien spore that enhances your perks and exo abilities.

Climate: Settle in to your dome away from home in Climate… a lush climate-controlled biodome. With a circular layout with a central island structure for teams to fight for control of, Climate keeps the pace of the action high. The tides can turn, however, when the rivers begin to rage and become a treacherous obstacle.

Chop Shop: Discover the seedy underbelly of the unauthorized exoekeleton trade in Chop Shop, a medium-sized industrial complex with a devastating map-based scorestreak: the Advanced Repulsion Turret.

The Ascendance Pack will also add the OHM directed energy hybrid weapon and a brand new Exo Zombies chapter, “Infection,” that finds the four survivors “on the outskirts of the mutant-ravaged Atlas Corporation facility and facing new, never-before-seen enemies.” John Malkovich, Bill Paxton, Rose McGowan, and Jon Bernthal will once again supply their voices to the cooperative game mode.

According to Activision, the first gameplay trailer for the Ascendance Pack will be unveiled on March 29 during the Call of Duty Championship.

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Heart Machine will release Hyper Light Drifter on PC in 2015, consoles may slip to 2016

Posted on March 18, 2015 by John Scalzo

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The good folks at ICXM‘s TIC Podcast recently got the chance to speak to Alex Preston of Heart Machine. The ensuing discussion got right to the heart of why everyone’s excited for Hyper Light Drifter, Preston’s retro-styled action RPG.

But Preston also delivered some bad news. Because of the game’s ambitious scope (backers obliterated Hyper Light Drifter’s $27,000 Kickstarter goal with $645,158 in pledges), it may not make it out in 2015 as originally planned. According to the interview, Preston still wants to release the PC version this year, but the console launch of Hyper Light Drifter will likely be pushed into 2016:

TIC Team: With so many games releasing this year, we know it can be hard to find a perfect time to release.

Alex Preston: We have not yet announced the release date. We have only said 2015 for PC first. Consoles take some time so, for example, Xbox One has a certification process that you have to go through. There are hundreds of things on that list you have to make sure are good to go on that system. It takes time. We’re a small team to do that. We want to get it out the door on PC first and we will give ourselves the correct amount of time after. Sometimes it takes months, sometimes it takes much longer depending on the certification process. It’s all about getting it on the platform as quickly as we can, but doing it the right way. That stuff can be really intense and expensive.

TIC Team: It sounds like we will see it on the Xbox One in 2016.

Alex Preston: It’s possible. We’re trying to get it all out as quickly as possible. We can’t rush the certification process. We don’t want to release a broken game. We don’t want to release a bad game. We’ll take the time that we need to. Those are the realities of it and those are the goals.

After its PC release, Hyper Light Drifter will ultimately be released for the PS4, Vita, Wii U, and Xbox One. However long the game’s development takes, it’ll probably be worth it. A closed beta was held last year for Kickstarter backers and we loved it.

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Battlefield Hardline, Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, Jamestown+, more added to PS Store

Posted on March 18, 2015 by John Scalzo

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Are you ready to play cops and robbers? I hope so, because EA’s Battlefield Hardline is now available to download through the PlayStation Store for the PS4 and PS3. Developed by Visceral Games, Hardline moves away from international conflicts and instead depicts the ongoing war between criminals and cops.

Also available this week is Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, an action RPG from Square Enix that is making its PS4 debut more than three years after it first appeared on the PSP. But in all that time it never made its way across the Pacific, so Final Fantasy fans definitely have something to celebrate. But those fans also have another reason to be happy about Type-0… it comes packaged with a playable demo of Final Fantasy XV.

Jamestown+, a PS4 shooter that takes place on a “17th-century steampunk Mars,” is this week’s Spring Fever selection. And over on the PS3, NIS America has added the roguelike RPG The Awakened Fate Ultimatum to the PS3 side of the PlayStation Store.

Finally, we have to talk about new entries from two episodic games. This week marks the end of Resident Evil Revelations 2‘s episodic release. Episode 4, Metamorphosis, is now available on the PS4 and PS3. But Telltale’s Tales From the Borderlands is still ramping up as Episode 2, Atlas Mugged, was also released for the PS4 and PS3.

More information about all of these games (as well as a few others) can be found after the break. And a complete rundown of this week’s new game add-ons and discounts can be found at the PlayStation Blog.

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Daily Scoop: March 17, 2015 – Jamestown+ is out!

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Nicole Kline

It’s a gorgeous day, both in terms of weather, and because Final Form released Jamestown+ on PlayStation 4 today! This is something wonderful to celebrate, and I can’t wait to enjoy the beautiful weather on the way home until I get there and download the game and play it all night. Oh, and maybe stop to get some takeout or something. All in all it’s shaping up to be an awesome night!

There’s a brand new bundle at Humble right now – the Humble PC & Android Bundle 12! Pay what you want for Tetrobot and Co, Titan Attacks!, The Inner World, and VVVVVV. Beat the average to get Costume Quest and Ironclad Tactics. Pay $10 or more to unlock Shadowrun Returns.

At Steam, the Midweek Madness is a big Cyberpunk Sale! Save on tons of games, like Mirror’s Edge ($4.99), Transistor ($6.79), and Deus Ex: Human Revolution ($3.99), among many others. There’s a new Daily Deal as well, which is Ship Simulator Extremes, on sale today for just $3.99.

There are a TON of t-shirts today, so I hope you’re ready!

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Joe Montana says Joe Montana Football 16 will use Unreal Engine 4

Posted on March 17, 2015 by John Scalzo

joemontanafootballJoe Montana is still the only person talking about Joe Montana Football 16, but the game is looking more and more likely by the day. First announced in July, Montana followed that up with a tweet showcasing a few seconds of a Montana 16 motion capture session in October. Yesterday, Montana came back to Twitter to confirm that the game will use Unreal Engine 4, which definitely challenges the conventional thinking that this is just a mobile game:

EA Sports’ exclusivity contract currently prevents any company from creating an NFL-licensed game for the PC or consoles. However, others have tried to take on the football juggernaut using retired (2K’s All-Pro Football 2K8) or fictional players (Midway’s Blitz: The League II and NaturalMotion’s Backbreaker). Perhaps Joe Montana Football 16 will be the one to finally be a hit with fans. Hopefully, we’ll find out soon.

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As expected, Sony files new trademark application for The Last Guardian

Posted on March 17, 2015 by John Scalzo

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Sony refuses to give up on The Last Guardian. An “administrative error” forced the publisher to abandon the game’s trademark last month, but the US Patent and Trademark Office has confirmed that a new application for The Last Guardian was filed earlier this week.

Like the last time it happened, these trademark shenanigans don’t mean much for the future of The Last Guardian. The development difficulties experienced by Team Ico have been well documented and rumors of a PS3-to-PS4 conversion have been making the rounds for almost two years. So the status of the game’s trademark application is the least of Sony’s worries at this point.

All this news really tells us is that Sony wants to retain their trademark on The Last Guardian. At the very least, that’s a good sign for the game’s future as it indicates that Sony doesn’t want anyone else to make a claim on the name. But until Sony makes an official announcement about the game’s future, this is just another non-story in the eight-years-in-the-making saga that has been the development of The Last Guardian.

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Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions will double in size with free “Evolved” expansion

Posted on March 17, 2015 by John Scalzo

Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions is already the biggest Geometry Wars game by far, but it’s about to get a whole lot bigger. Sierra and Lucid Games have announced the game will receive a free expansion on March 31 that’ll add 40 Adventure Mode stages, a 20-stage Hardcore Mode that eliminates Drones and Supers, and an expanded Classic Mode. A new Drone (Sweeper), a new Super (Detonator), and improvements to the level progression system in Adventure Mode will also be added to the game.

The Evolved expansion will nearly double the amount of content currently available in Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions when it is released for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One players.

Appropriately enough, the update will expand the game’s title to Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved after March 31 as new players will be able to purchase the expansion and the original game as a single download. Its $14.99 pricetag will remain the same.

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