New Splinter Cell

Splinter Cell Conviction should be coming out in April. As the following trailer demonstrates, attacking Sam Fischer's daughter is not recommended.

Ubi Soft, always online DRM

Some game reviewers in the UK were playing assassins creed when they noticed that anytime the Internet connection went out their game stopped. Unfortunately, this is not an accident. The new DRM is simple, you must be online the entire time you are playing. Ubisoft's plan is to work everything through ubi.com. You'll have to login and authenticate online to play your game, and also to access saves, which are stored remotely on their servers. If you are disconnected at any time, you will lose everything back until your last saved game and/or checkpoint. And if you don't have a connection available, your out of luck.

We'll see how this goes. Personally it seems to me like their method of fighting piracy is to irritate the people who buy legitimate copies of their games, well see if this actually prevents pirating of the game at all.

I wouldn't be surprised if it failed, and I just don't get why they don't remove it for the Steam and Impulse versions. Lets just say when it comes to the top people at UBI, don't exactly expect a bunch of great thinkers.

Oh, and you also cant resell your game.

The StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Beta Test Has Begun

Via Blizzard press release:

Blizzard Entertainment is pleased to welcome all of our beta testers to the first phase of the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty beta test. You will have an early opportunity to play, test, and experience the online multiplayer aspect of StarCraft II, as well as get a first look at the newly revamped Battle.net.

The new StarCraft II beta forums will be your main source for official news and announcements over the course of the beta test. We encourage you to check the forums regularly and to use them to provide us with feedback and to engage in general discussions about the game with your fellow players. If you ever need help or technical assistance, the Blizzard support website now includes a StarCraft II beta-test section.

We are looking forward to receiving your comments, feedback, and suggestions on StarCraft II and the new Battle.net; let us know what you think via the "Feedback" forums.

Thank you for helping us test StarCraft II. Your participation and feedback is important to us, and will help us make StarCraft II one of the most epic entertainment experiences...ever.

At long last the final phases of development begin....

Gas Powered games announces Kings and Castles

Via press release:

Gas Powered Games announced today that work has started on Kings and Castles, an epic real-time strategy game for the PC and next-generation consoles. This one-of-a-kind experience will let players take on the role of one of three powerful kings who are vying for control of an all-new, original fantasy world.

One thing I find interesting is that via twitter and facebook Chris Taylor wants to give his fans a chance to follow the whole developement process via facebook, twitter, and its Website. It kind of reminds me of Stardock's process, it will be interesting to see if they can sort out the valuable feedback from fans as opposed to the flaming a lot of forums see when people dont get there way. I think its a great approach to try.

Oh, and Chris Taylor gets bitten by a horse. No idea

Left 4 Dead 2...and 1

Apparently Valve has announced that there will be a new left 4 dead campaign in late march. This will feature a meeting up of the original cast and the new one. Also there will be a new "Common uncommon" zombie, whatever that means.

There will also be a new campaign for Left4Dead1

Here are some interesting stats though. As of February 11th:

28,981,249,043 zombies have been shot, bludgeoned, chainsawed and killed — or, for our younger readers, taken to a farm where they can frolic and shuffle around forever.

You read that correctly: 28 BILLION. To put that number in perspective:

* The entire population of the planet has been zombified and killed 4.26 times.

* With the average height of a zombie being 6 feet, if you stacked them end to end they would circle the globe 1,322 times.

* If you placed 28,981,249,043 rulers end to end, they would reach 28,981,249,043 feet in the sky.

In short: That is a bucketload of dead zombies. Nice job, everyone.

Keep on Killin on.

Left4Dead2 Sales and Worms Armageddon

It seems Left for Dead 2 has sold over 2.9 Million copies in retail stores. Unfortunately Valve does not release the number of games sold on Steam, which would be interesting to see.

Now Imagine if the hadn't lost all of those sales due to that petition. That number would probably be 2.90001 million by now.




Also Worms 2 Armageddon will be available for purchasing via Steam. For those of you that dont know, Worms is a turn based strategy game where you play a team of small worms that tries to use excessive firepower to kill other teams of worms. I'd describe it as easy to learn but impossible to master.

Sins of a Solar Empire Diplomacy

Release from Stardock:

The beta for Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy pre-order customers is now over. All pre-order customers will gain access to the final version of Diplomacy this coming Tuesday, February 9th. Ironclad and Stardock would like to extend our thanks to all of the testers who participated in the Diplomacy beta and provided feedback. It's no exaggeration that Diplomacy was greatly changed based on your feedback!

Sweet!!! Ironclad and Stardock really nailed it with this game, possibly one of the best RTS games on the market right now

Star Trek Online

Star Trek Online, the upcoming MMO by Cryptic Studios, may actually deliver Trekkies the ship commanding/planet exploring chance they have always wanted. Actually I have to admit it does look interesting, after it launches tomorrow, if reviews are good, I might even check it out, if reviews are decent.