According to the developers blog, “The Beta will be geographically rolled out, with three different regions planned; US-West, US-East and Europe turned up at slightly different times. Tentatively we are aiming to turn up the first Closed Beta during the week of February 28.” The blog also mentions that applications for the beta have exceeded well over a hundred thousand, so expect typical chances coming out the door for beta invites.
Rift is a new MMORPG developed by Trion Worlds Network that takes players across the fantasy world of Telara, in which a variety of parallel worlds called “planes” converge and often don’t get along. In fact, the core purpose of the game is to defeat invading forces that come through the gates that pop up on the convergence that link the physical lands together. These gates are known as rifts, and it falls to the player to join forces with other heroes to push back the enemies and ultimately close the rift. To do this, a player takes control of an archetypal class (Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, and Mage) and customizes it to match the particular role they wish to play, be it damage-dealer, tank or healer. Players need not join groups when participating in the world PvE against the gates but are rewarded for action depending on involvement, be it through attacking, healing or with buffs.
Just about a month from release, pirates have leaked Crysis 2 to the internet. The leak includes the Campaign, Multiplayer and keys to activate the product for use online. Needless to say, EA isn’t exactly happy with the situation.
According to a UK gaming site called MCV, Activision, the publisher behind Call of Duty, may acquire Take-Two. In case you don’t know, Take-Two have published hits like Bioshock, Grand Theft Auto, and Red Dead Redemption. This would definitely change the playing field for the gaming industry, but it’s not entirely unexpected. Activision merged with Vivendi games back in 2007 in an $18.9 billion deal. This brought both Call of Duty and World of Warcraft under the same publishing house, a powerful combination to be sure.
I’ll put the
link to the full story at the bottom. Seriously, isn’t it about time all these
anti-videogame people came up with some new lines? Not only are they about 15
years late to the point every single time, they just repeat the same, ignorant
argument over and over again.
Also, there
tends to be very extraneous remarks made in these types of attacks against
games that feature violence or gore. For example, in the article below, the
writer seemingly assumes that 9 year olds are going to know what a “gang bang”
is. Isn’t that stretching things a little too far, not to mention the fact that
9 year olds should be nowhere near a game like Bulletstorm. It’s the job of the
parent to control what games their children play, not the government and
certainly not the developer.
Ubisoft
has already hinted at yet another Assassin’s
Creed
game being developed for release later this year. While the real
details are said to be coming soon, Ubisoft
CEO Yves Guillemot has
already revealed that the game will not be on Nintendo 3DS, but will
be a more mainstream title. More information is due out come May, but
we can only speculate that this title could continue the main story
of Desmond Miles and the quest to unlock his ancestors’ murderous
pasts. The end of Assassin’s
Creed: Brotherhood,
the latest game in the main story, sets the series up for another
installment—so it’s likely we will see a continuation very soon.
While
the game is supposedly to be unveiled before this year’s E3, Ubisoft
has refused to release any further information on the future of the
franchise or any release dates for the next mainstream titles.
There’s no denying the unique charm of the previous games and, with
the announcement of another chapter, fans of the highly acclaimed
series are sure to rejoice. Guillemot has also implied in the conference call that this new
game will not be an expansion title either, so we can expect some
fresh content later this year. It will be interesting to see where
Ubisoft takes the game, but given the impressive track record, it’s
hard to imagine the developers slipping with such a great game
franchise.
