0 Minecon 2012 held at Disneyland, Paris

Thanks to the success of Minecon last year, which took place in Las Vegas, Mojang decided to give it another try.

This year they will take Minecon to the wonderful country of France, in one of the biggest and pleasant amusement parks the world has to offer: Disneyland Paris.

I was going to say 'France and the city of love' but since it's not in the city nevermind. Plus i don't like most french people, sorry. :(

Announcement trailer underneath this line!

2 Enjoy this Cryengine 3 Visual Trailer

I'll just leave this here for you to drool on. As we speak i'm taking my laptop to a more private area so i can be alone with it for the time being.

0 MMORPG Aion is now free-to-play

Okay its been a while back but i wanted to say that another mmo has opened its doors to the F2P world. The originally subscription based mmo didn't do well so NCsoft did the best thing and made it free.

At the moment only the EU version is free-to-play. North-America is still paying for the game, but rumors say that this version will get it's transition to free soon.

The originally German publisher Gameforge will have the task of maintaining the servers. They chose to do it for free because the member count dropped so much it wasn't really bringing anything in. Instead of dropping the whole EU version they did the good thing and made it playable for everyone.

Gameforge and developer NCsoft promise that the new business model will still be supported with patches and new content for the game.

To learn more how to play Aion f2p go to the Gameforge FAQ.

I already played this game when it got released. People who got a subscription somewhere in history will get Veteran status. Other people just get Starters status. For the full features list go here.

0 Utility Vehicle Simulator has almost arrived!

Forget Portal 2 or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. What do you mean Call of Duty? Battlefield 3 you say? I never knew there where 2 other versions.

The game that will blow away our minds has arrived. Well almost. This Friday you can finally spend your weekend with doing something good. Instead of playing those brain-dead shooters you can actually learn something from this game. The plus side of it is that you can already learn your future job.

Yes it's called Utility Vehicle Simulator. You know those games. Harvester Simulator, Police Simulator, Stone Quarry Simulator, Underground Mining Simulator, Construction Simulator, Airport Firefighter Simulator, Ski Region Simulator, Oil Platform- okay i give up. There isn't a week where no simulator game is being released and its getting ridiculous.

But if you do like driving packages to their destination, or suck the sewers clean, or want to know how it is to work for the local town setting up cones or cutting branches from trees, this is your chance. Get it the 23rd of March.

This is their site.  *shrug*

0 Cities In Motion for free.

Whats the catch you ask? Complete a survey made by some students and afterwards Paradox Interactive will give you a free copy of Cities in Motion.

The survey ends on March 31 and the keys will be send by Paradox Interactive a few weeks after, but in my opinion its worth it. It will take about 15 to 20 minutes of thinking and answering.


To be honest i never played this game. But until we wait for the next Sim City to arrive this is in my opinion a nice way to kill that waiting time.

Survey is this way.

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

14 Star Wars; The Old Republic has 1 million players

 I've been playing quite some mmo games in my day. Starting in 2002 with EVE Online, Planetside and World of Warcraft i've been in the beta game for a while. When live i played WoW for several years, now retired i spend my days back in the Eve Universe making a living in a huge sandbox where everything could happen to you or the universe. Back in the WoW days that wasn't my worry, raiding and leveling were enough for me.

Although WoW had different servers all of them contained more than 11 million players. To be honest i have no idea when they hit the 1 million mark after the launch, but as of now Star Wars: The Old Republic has it.

The Source is a bit unclear, but USA Today published a list with facts about the game. It reports that the game now has a million active players, who in total created 3.8 million characters. The average playtime is now at 5 hours per day, wich in total makes up for 28 million play hours. In that time a staggering 2 billion enemy's died.

Want to join the Dark Side? Sure, but don't think you're the only one. A slight majority has the overhand in choosing for the Dark side. 550.00 Sith Warriors against 510.00 Jedi Warriors.

Save travels young padawan. May the force be with you!

11 What if Wheatley had won

Lol. I just laughed my ass off watching this video. Apparantly Wheatley, the 'other' robot in Portal 2 had been nominated in the VGA's (Video Game Awards). It turns out he didn't win, but Valve did make a video about him what he would say if he won the trophy.

In the end The Joker won. Shamefull. The other two entrants were Nathan Drake and Marcus Fenix, appearing in the third games of their respective trilogies. Shamefull. Anyway, here is the video

.

0 New hope for Stalker 2 ?

GSC Gameworld. Not one of my top-developers, but i'm a huge fan of Stalker. Okay so i'll be honest, i've never completed the game. There are three of them and from none of 'em i have seen the end. But still, the games have this special feeling. Not 'spechul', even though all of the games have it shortcomings, but the ambience and how the world was build, felt so good.

So it was quite a shock to hear GSC Gameworld going bankrupt. Tbh i don't care about them, i care about Stalker 2! There is no way another company is going to take the game over. But then again, the first Stalker also didn't go over roses.

So i was glad to hear something. A surprise Christmas present you might say.

“Dear Stalkers: We will not be releasing any official news until around mid January. However there is cause for hope! Good hunting!”

Don't know if i can count it as a suprise, but i'm glad there is at least something. Maybe they will make a new start, i sure hope so. 

4 Play Skyrim smoother

When i first played the game i was flabbergasted. Not just that it was ENORMOUS and AWESOME, but that my pc could run it. I can still remember Oblivion running and my computer was like okay, but meh. So when the game put everything on high before i could even set it up it raised a question, still it's playing smooth like a just shaven head.

Even better though, an unofficial path-maker named Arisu found a solution to a FPS problem other people do have. I did not test it yet, since i live by the 'if it isn't broken, don't fix' term. Bethesda already patched the game so that it would use more then 2 gigs of ram, but still it isn't enough for a lot of people.

What Arisu has to say about it: “It works mostly by rewriting some x87 FPU code and inlining a whole ton of useless getter functions along the critical paths because the developers at Bethesda, for some reason, compiled the game without using any of the optimization flags for release builds.” Also, “They’d just have to add the string “/O2 /GL” to their Makefile”. 

To install the unofficial patch, first you’ll need to grab the Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) from here and extract its contents into your main Skyrim directory. Then, grab the TESV Acceleration Layer from here and dump the DLL file within into [your Skyrim folder]/Data/SKSE/Plugins, creating the latter two directories if necessary. Then, launch the game by running skse_loader.exe from the Skyrim root folder.


I hope this works for you peeps out there. Give me a shout if this made your (Skyrim) life even better.

0 I love Air Buccaneers!

It's probably one of the most weird but fun mods i have ever played. It involves getting an ancient gun, get into an air balloon and shoot the other guys. It's not like a blimp or any such, you are at the mercy of the wind and really act like its a real hot air balloon. Frustating but so much fun.

SEASON’S GREETINGS FROM LUDOCRAFT!

As this holiday season approaches its inevitable highlight and the distinct laughter of a certain fat man in his red overalls echoes in the distance, we here at LudoCraft decided it was time to give our little present to all the gamers around the world. So here it is:

AIRBUCCANEERS HD PRE-ALPHA! FREE FOR ALL!

Yes, AirBuccaneers HD has now reached the Pre-Alpha phase and is available for playing.  It is still work in progress, though, and all your feedback is highly valuable for us. There are still graphics, sounds, features and effects missing, but we hope that it quenches your thirst for buccaneering and plundering for now. 

You can download it from the official site. http://www.ludocraft.com/games/airbuccaneers/ 

4 Terraria on Steam sale

I really haven't found any time to play it. In fact i've been keeping myself from it. The reason is quite obvious: study. But since it's vacation time i'm gonna do it anyway, i'm gonna buy and play it.

And talking about buying, it is now on sale on steam for only € 2,49. So heck why not do it. It wont bankrupt me, or you.

"Dig, fight, explore, build! Nothing is impossible in this action-packed adventure game. The world is your canvas and the ground itself is your paint. Grab your tools and go! Make weapons to fight off a variety of enemies in numerous biomes. Dig deep underground to find accessories, money, and other useful things."

 

Fight unicorns, heck yea!

0 The big EVE changover

So talking about Eve and Dust 514 made me forgot about a newer post about the universe. Lately CCP, the developer of the game has been under fire for a lot of reasons. Trying to get micro-transfers into the game in wich you can buy PLEX (30 days gametime bought by ingame money) wich would mean an unfair advantage. is probably the biggest.

More recently, devs CCP they would be sadly pruning their ranks, refocusing on the core EVE game and trying to win back their fans’ ardour. Part of that involves occasionally notorious senior producer Arnar “CCP Zulu” Gylfason handing his captain position to someone else.

“This has been an incredibly intense time. The EVE team here at CCP has certainly been pushed to the limit and beyond and we as a company learnt quite a few harsh lessons. It‘s been a tough time but I know we will use this as an opportunity to improve, to grow and to mature.

To ensure and facilitate that happening properly I‘ve decided to step down as Senior Producer and Jon Lander, previously the head of our Carbon Technology group, will take the reins while we transition the EVE project into a better and more efficient organization.

Lander, aka CCP Unifex, has been quick to make reassuring noises to the playerbase:

“We are changing EVE’s internal project structure to bring it in line with a product that has nearly 200 people working on it and making sure that everyone is concentrating on delivering a game which has real value for our players. As well as changing the project organization, we will also be spending time on improving our internal tools, pipelines and processes to improve our efficiency and effectiveness for the future.

Finally, we will be concentrating on those features we already have in the game after 8 years of development. Yes, we will be iterating (it‘s not a dirty word) on those features which need some polish, balance, fixes and general love. The releases throughout 2012 will be an extension of the type of release we had with Crucible with the addition of a theme to help us scope and tie the work into a really compelling and coherent package. The first theme is going to be War and everyone is getting very excited about it.”

All in all this means that CCP is getting EVE back into the way it was. They have other projects like Dust 514 and World of Darkness (new MMO) but will get their main focus back on EVE Online, since they realized that is their only income making the business go forward.

As an EVE player i sure hope that all of the news is true. We recently already had the 'Winter update' wich made a lot of improvements and got the game back on path again.

3 Eve Online

Yeah so i play Eve Online. You too? Because if you do, you have a very big chance to get into the beta for DUST 514.

If you have a active account you can sign up now on the official site.

http://eveonline.com 

For months we have observed as fans asked for a Beta date on DUST 514, our PlayStation® 3 exclusive persistent shooter. During that time the DUST 514 team has worked busily on the game, preparing for the moment when the first inhabitants of New Eden descend from the skies to the planets below.

That time is now.

It is with great joy that I can now officially announce that registration for DUST 514: Mordu’s Private Trials, our gated access beta test, has finally begun!

For now, registration is available exclusively to active subscribers of EVE Online who will join the pool of participants that we will be using to allow entry into early testing and special events for DUST 514. Registration for Mordu’s Private Trials does not guarantee entry, but as an active EVE subscriber, you are the first to have access to sign up for the closed beta.

We’re hugely excited to be able to extend this exclusive opportunity to our player community.

Don’t miss out on your chance to take part in this historic moment, sign up now! I will see you on the battlefields of New Eden soon.

CCP_CmdrWang

And the DUST 514 Team

How awesome is that!