The official Battle for Middle Earth II website has posted plans of an upcoming patch, stating that it will come out soon.
The patch will include numerous technical fixes, increased de-sync fixes, extensive balance changes, and the additon of 5 brand new multiplayer maps - all new locations to BFME 2, and one of which is the return of a popular BFME 1 multiplayer map - Fords of Isen..2
Gamespot has a preview of the real-time strategy game Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War. Blending traditional real-time strategy with action (when you take control of a hero unit), it promises to break the stale bought-that-played-that feeling most RTS these days have.
Each hero is basically a superunit, blessed with huge amounts of hit points and able to slice through enemy ranks like a hot knife through butter. That’s not to say that you’re invulnerable, though; if you go charging solo into a horde of enemy troops, you’ll quickly find yourself in trouble. However, if you use it at the right time, you can turn the tide of a close battle by taking command of your hero and taking out swaths of the enemy. Heroes generally have a melee attack, as well as the ability to take out a bow and snipe enemy archers and other distant units. Heroes also gain experience the more they’re used, and when they accumulate enough experience you can raise their level by spending glory points. A higher-level hero is not only more powerful, but it also lets you unlock new upgrades for your other units.
S2 Games has extended the deadline for the deal where if you preorder the first-person shooter/real-time strategy combo, Savage 2: A Tortured Soul, you get in the beta trial access to test the game out before it goes final and is released. The deadline is now June 1st, and costs $30 to preorder the game.
“Our decision to offer instant beta approval to those who pre-order Savage 2 has been wildly received,” said Marc DeForest, co-founder and lead designer, S2 Games. “Due to this tremendous success, we want to extend the opportunity for others to be a part of our beta testing phase, which begins in July 2006. Ultimately, we want to give more people a chance to be a part of the beta phase so we can make the best game possible.”
The auto-updater within Age of Empires 3 now has the 1.06 patch available. Information on this patch can be found here.
Massive Entertainment, developers of the great Ground Control RTS series, announces work on World in Conflict, a new RTS featuring a scenario where the Cold War escalated and turned ugly. The game is due around spring of 2007.
Massive isn’t ready to outline specifics about its single and multiplayer modes yet, but says that those who play online will enjoy using the “next-generation Massgate technology”.
“You will not want to wrestle with sluggish and contrived server browsers ever again after trying out what we are doing with Massgate! It really is online multiplayer browsing done right.”
They should rename that to MassG4te!
Now available for download, the DEMO for the new grand strategy masterpiece from award winning game designer Hubert Cater! Combining the ease of play, accessibility and addicting gameplay of the original Strategic Command, Strategic Command 2 Blitzkrieg adds tons of new features including many player submitted suggestions. Bigger, better and expandable, Strategic Command 2 Blitzkrieg is an evolutionary, as well as revolutionary, new grand strategy game.
You can read more about it and get a list of download links here.
With cheating a rampant problem affecting the fun factor of online games, publishers are taking more extreme measures to ensure that respectful gamers get the fun they deserve. Ensemble Studios, the developers of Age of Empire III has been on a banning spree, citing the reasons as being rampant cheating in games, hacked decks, point trading, and idiots being racist in chat channels. If caught, Ensemble removes the account, and deactivates the CD key. We should hear about this kind of stuff more often, there’s no reason why us gamers have to have our fun ruined by cheaters on a consistent basis. Both MMORPG and FPS games are the big culprit, but it looks like RTS games aren’t immune either.
Lots of demos for you to try this weekend, and the latest one is from the Rise of Nations people, with a demo to try out the Rise of Legends game. You’ll have to download 620MB and it comes with a campaign and skirmish mode, and be able to choose from one of three races. Info from the official site:
In Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends™ you lead vast fantasy armies into massive, strategic battles, raise your civilization from a tiny village to globe-spanning empire, and help guide a young inventor’s struggle to unravel his world’s ancient past and unite its people against an unimaginable threat!
S2 Games announced that when they release their upcoming game, Savage 2: A Tortured Soul, they will allow everyone to download the game free, and try out AI practice mode, play the tutorial, and so on. If you want your stats saved, play online, and more, you would have to pay for the game. It’s a great concept, and I hope it works out successfully for them. Savage 1 was revolutionary in many ways, and Savage 2 looks to improve upon that recipe.
“We pride ourselves on being truly independent and basing many of our decisions on how our fans will benefit,” said Marc DeForest, co-founder and lead designer of S2 Games. “By offering a fully functional game as a free download, it will give gamers an opportunity to ‘test drive’ Savage 2 before actually paying for an account and playing online. As gamers, we know we would appreciate that kind of treatment ourselves, so it’s only right that we do unto others.”
The Galactic Civilization 2 forums has a thread where someone mentioned that a large number of torrent sites has pirates asking people not to download the Galactic Civilization 2 torrent to download the full game, in order to send a message to Starforce.
I dont want to post any linkage, but a lot of the popular torrent sites that still host galciv2 are being flooded on the forums and comments by pleas from other pirates to NOT d/l this game, this is pretty much unprecedented afaik. Looks like starforce just opened a big ugly can of worms. Who would think that people would not take something for free just to annoy a company!
Stardock, the developers of Galactic Civilization 2, uses no copy protection in their game, and instead relies on the fact that you need a valid serial number to download updates to the game. It’s certainly an interesting way to go, and according to Stardock, it has proven to be a big success for them.
If you’ve been wanting to try out Lionhead Studio’s god-game, Black & White 2, you can now check out the demo. Weighing in at a hefty 617MB, the demo shows off Land 3 and will guide you through town building and completing lands. Grab it from these mirrors WorthPlaying or 3D Gamers.
2K Games and Firaxis Studios announce CivCity: Rome, a city-building simulation being developed by Firefly Studios, the creators of the Stronghold series. The game is being overseen by Firaxis Studios since it’s a spin-off of the Civilization series. Time to don your toga:
In CivCity: Rome, gamers will recreate the glory of Rome by building a small settlement into a mighty imperial city. Featuring hundreds of buildings including gladiatorial schools, amphitheatres, the circus maximus, legionnaire forts, weapons workshops and much more, CivCity: Rome offers the most detailed look at Roman life ever depicted on a computer screen.
Set for release in the autumn, the first Age of Empires 3 expansion pack gives you the opportunity to command one of three Native American civilisations. Not much in the way of details so far, though there is one suitably sexy screenshot up at Games Radar.
I for one can’t wait for this. I’m nowhere near completing Age of Empires 3 as I tend to dip into it every now and then rather than play extended sessions. In my opinion though I think it’s one of the finest RTS games I’ve played in a long time.
IGN.PC has a new hands-on impression of Supreme Commander, the RTS that looks to reinvent the wheel by putting the S back in RTS. Chris Taylor heads the game, and you may remember him for bringing Total Annihilation to the table, as well as the Dungeon Siege series. From IGN:
In fact, there’s an emphasis on battling for information. Certain devices will obscure your units, and others will reveal locations on the map. You can also spoof troops, making a massive, tactically crucial unit look like just another little guy to the enemy. Or you can do the opposite, making a ragged band of grunts look like an intimidating wave of force; great for misdirection. Since Taylor loves huge robots — who doesn’t — there’s also some massive scaling going on. There are units in the game equal in size to an entire base in a typical RTS. Some are Independence Day-sized saucers with vertical energy blasts that will flatten anything nearby. Others are just huge robots.
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