4 GSC continues on Stalker 2 development

So i did mentioned lately that GSC was bankrupt and closed down. Right after that a message appeared saying that Stalker 2 still had a very big chance to be still released.

The Ukraine based developer has now announced that the development of Stalker 2 will be continued after the holidays. In Ukrain Christmas is celebrated on the 7th of January, so most of the company's will hold everything on hold on those 2 weeks, meaning the GSC developers can resume their work after that.

The future of Stalker 2 became unclear when last december they announced that the owner, Sergei Grigorovich, had closed down the studio. Even though the exact reason was not given, people speculated that Grigorovich wasn't satisfied with the progress of Stalker 2. Another explanation was that the developer couldn't find a partner to distribute the console versions. Last one was that the pc version on itself wouldn't revenue enough money. Anyhow GSC Gameworld didn't confirmed anyone of those.

It's still unclear what exactly happened and what caused the reason. Eurogamer mentions that the Ukrainian government took over the company. Of that really did happen we don't know, same goes for other investments.

In the end Stalker 2 hasn't found a publisher yet and there is still no release date, so we'll have to wait. All i know is that i surely hope everything will continue and they bring us yet another stalker game. I love the world they created and i'm sure to play the next edition.

3 Tribes Ascend trailer

I. LOVE. Tribes. Seriously. If i have to name one game, and only one that is my all time favorite it would be Tribes. Not only was it awesome and pretty revolutionary at the time it also replaced my childhood. No other game would be that awesome.

It had vehicles, you needed teamwork to succeed and you had jetpacks. But maybe the best of all.. you could go ski! No not in the snow, but when holding space you could glide down a hill and get to speed. When having enough speed you could glide back up a hill, activate the jetpack and do all sorts of weird movements across the terrain to avoid enemy's or turrets.

Never ever have i been so satisfied to see a tribes trailer. Sure we had Tribes Vengeance but that wasn't made by the official devs. According to some info i already forgot, there are some old Dynamix devs in the Hi-rez Studios. That plus the this week published trailer will keep my smiling and awake all night.

1 Post apocalyptic FPS Ravaged revealed

Ravaged vehicles

Very unknown, or more like not-known, developer 2 Dawn Games is working on Ravaged. A first person shooter online multiplayer game (ahh, those terms will never get boring) heavily influenced by Borderlands and Rage.

Ravaged is the first game developed by 2 Dawn Games and like said its influenced by Rage and Borderlands. The last one is only single-player and the first has co-op. Still not enough they said, give us games like this in multiplayer. So they did. Create a apocalypse game in a desert, have vehicles, with team objectives and a skill system.

Still think its a rip-off? The desert the game takes place in is called... 'The Wasteland'. In the Wasteland you can choose between two sides, either the Scavengers or the Resistance. Although the difference between the two groups is unclear i have some ideas.

The developers hope they can bring it for sale on Steam by spring this year. Before that even will happen the dev's hope to also have a beta-test.

I have absolutely no idea if they can bring it on against the force of already established company's, and frankly the idea isn't very original. But lets hope they can set it off. To give it a positive note, individual members of the team have experience with games like Battlefield, DesertCombat and Frontlines.

4 Microsoft Flight will be free to play

This spring Microsoft introduces Microsoft Flight, a sequel tot he famous Flight Simulator-games. The new version will be freely playable. Microsoft promises free updates for whoever plays via Games for Windows Live.

Although details are still almost unknown, Microsoft announces that this spring Microsoft Flight will appear and that its free to play. Players will be able to fly above and around the Big Island of Hawaii.

Next to the free to play part of the game, players can pay for new aircraft's, area's and free extra options. People who play the game via Games for Live will get some of the free extra's, like a Boeing Stearman, extra missions and access to achievements which can be accessible via a Online Pilot Profile.

Kinda knows where this form of publishing comes from? That's right, Age of Empires Online. Microsoft chooses to play exactly the same concept like it did with that game. AoEO is a free to play RTS that appeared in 2010 as a sequel from the famous PC-games.

But wait, not everything is all sun and long white beaches with blue water. The old flight simulators were known for not being easy. But the publisher announced that for flying the planes only a joystick, x-box controller or mouse is needed. Which raises the question if there is still room for the hardcore players. Microsoft promises that the game is a challenge for beginners as it is for experience pilots.

3 Steam hits five million concurrent players

Online-gaming platform Steam breached a record on 2 January this year with a whopping 5 million people logged in on Steam at the same time. The popularity of Skyrim and the Christmas deals were one of the causes for the record.

The statistic-page from Steam shows that on 2 January 2012 a spike of 5.012.654 users was noted. In the week before the new year this record of concurrent players was already broken several times, but on 2 january the 5 million limit was finally reached.

PC Gamer notices that the ongoing succes for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, wich is the most played game in Steam at the moment, and the christmas deals played a big role in setting the new record. Around Christmas each year Steam offers a variaty of games for almost bottomprices, wich causes for a lot of people to finally buy that game they ought to be to expensive at first.

Steam already exists since 2003 and its gameslibrary nowadays contains 1800 games. The total users from Valve's gameservice lies above the 35 million people.

9 Crysis 2 is 2011's most pirated game

Crysis 2

Crysis 2 is the game that stands number one on the most pirated games list, that is according to info shown by Torrentfreak. As every year ends you get numerous lists of things. Most loved person, most hated person, person with the most tweets etcetera. So why not have a list with most downloaded games.

The game, Crysis 2, got downloadend 3.9 million times and beat every other popular pirated game. The other games you say? From places 2 to 5 we have Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3, FIFA 12 and Portal 2.


Luckily not only PC gaming has its pirates, also the Wii and Xbox 360 have them. Super Mario Galaxy 2 has 1,3 million copies downloaded. On the Xbox 360 its Gears of War 3 who won the prize this year.

I'll give you some lists. Respectively title, how much downloaded copies, plus release date.


Most pirated games on PC:

1     Crysis 2     (3,920,000)     (Mar. 2011)
2     Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3     (3,650,000)     (Nov. 2011)
3     Battlefield 3     (3,510,000)     (Oct. 2011)
4     FIFA 12     (3,390,000)     (Sept. 2011)
5     Portal 2     (3,240,000)     (Apr. 2011)


Most pirated games on Wii:

1     Super Mario Galaxy 2     (1,280,000)     (May. 2010)
2     Mario Sports Mix     (1,090,000)     (Feb. 2011)
3     Xenoblade Chronicles     (950,000)     (Aug. 2011 EU)
4     Lego Pirates of the Caribbean     (870,000)     (May. 2011)
5     FIFA 12     (860,000)     (Sept. 2011)

Most pirated games on Xbox 360:

1     Gears of War 3     (890,000)     (Sep. 2011)
2     Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3     (830,000)     (Nov. 2011)
3     Battlefield 3     (760,000)     (Oct. 2011)
4     Forza Motorsport 4     (720,000)     (Oct. 2011)
5     Kinect Sports: Season Two     (690,000)     (Oct. 2011)

Ofcourse they got their information from public trackers, who knows how much private trackers there are and what the real stats are.

9 Sequal to Minicraft called MiniTale

Minicraft

 

He doesn't really need explanation, Markus Persson aka 'Notch'. Aka the creator of Minecraft. Wich doesn't need introduction either to be honest.

Notch recently gave away his position as lead designer for Minecraft, so he could concentrate on other projects and create new concepts. But first of all he was planning to get a break from it all.

A couple of weeks ago there was a game competition called Ludum Dare. The 'dare' is to create a (free) game within 48 hours. Notch was exited about the competition and long before he did announcements. The game he created was called MiniCraft. It's basically a little Minecraft from a 2D topview and again very addicting. But it was made in a competition, within a deadline, so basically its not allowed to alter any code after.

So the solution? Create another game! See it as a sequel, and better work hours instead of a 48 hour deadline. He's going to call it MiniTale and once he got more info i'll post it asap.

Link to MiniCraft:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/ld48/ld22/index.html