Category: Game

The CW star drops by CBS The Flash will make an appearance in an upcoming episode of Supergirl, CBS announced today. Grant Gustin, who plays Barry Allen and his titular alter ego, will appear on a March 28 episode of CBS’ series, but the network neglected to elaborate on further plot details.
The Flash airs on The CW, alongside other DC Comics series such as Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow. Supergirl is CBS’ lone superhero-centric program, although the two shows — along with Arrow, which had a crossover with The Flash of its own in December — share executive producers.
We recap both The Flash and Supergirl weekly. Supergirl aired its latest episode Monday, while The Flash runs new episodes every Tuesday.

EVE’s PS3 FPS goes dark on May 30 Dust 514 will bite the dust on May 30.
Servers for the free-to-play shooter spun off of the EVE Online continuity will close down after three years in play, developer and publisher CCP games announced today. That’s because a development team has been working on another prototype FPS for the PC “using Unreal Engine 4 while harnessing all our learnings from Dust 514."
CCP said it would give an update on this new project on April 21 at an EVE Online fan convention.
"We consider Dust 514 one of the best free-to-play offerings on the platform, but the years have caught up with us," CCP wrote. The shutdown means that a planned 1.3 update to the game will not be released. Players may still play for free until then, but all premium items have been removed for sale. Those who have in-game currency remaining will still be able to use it until the shutdown date.
Dust 514 was a PlayStation 3 exclusive that launched in 2013, and events in it had influence in the larger world of EVE Online.

San Andreas team reunites to make more buildings crumble The big screen adaptation of Bally Midway’s classic giant monster arcade game Rampage has a pair of new writers, according to a report from Variety. Colony co-creators Carlton Cuse and Ryan Condal have been tasked with rewriting the film, which is set to star Dwayne “The Rock" Johnson.
Cuse is best known for his work on Lost, on which he was showrunner and frequent co-writer. His other television work includes Nash Bridges, The Strain and Colony, which is currently in its first season on the USA Network. He also wrote the screenplay for San Andreas, which also starred Dwayne Johnson. Cuse’s Colony co-creator, Condal, wrote another Johnson-led action movie, 2014’s Hercules.
The writing duo are taking over for Ryan Engle (Non-Stop), who wrote an earlier draft of Rampage. Brad Peyton, who also directed Johnson in San Andreas and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, is set to direct Rampage.
Rampage is being developed for New Line. The project has been in the works since 2011. Midway published the original Rampage in 1986; the company went bankrupt in 2009, and Warner Bros. (which also owns New Line) acquired most of its assets.
The original Rampage gave players control of three giant monsters — George the gorilla, Lizzie the lizard and Ralph the werewolf — bent on urban destruction. Johnson is reportedly playing a character who opposes that type of wanton rubble-creation.

Get ready for your fingers to bleed all over again Activision launched a special event in Guitar Hero Live today, and with it comes the return of the franchise’s most notorious track: “Through the Fire and the Flames" by Dragonforce. From now until Feb. 8 at 7 a.m. PT, players can check out the Shred-a-Thon channel on Guitar Hero TV, Live’s online streaming mode, to play five intense songs on a constant loop.
The most familiar of these tracks —€” which include songs by Lamb of God and Megadeth — is "Through the Fire and the Flames." After its introduction to the series in Guitar Hero 3, the song quickly gained notoriety as Guitar Hero’s most intense track.
"Through the Fire and the Flames" became a mainstay on YouTube at the height of Guitar Hero’s populartiy, as players uploaded clips of themselves surviving the nearly 8-minute song; you can check one of YouTube’s most viewed (and not work-safe) videos in that genre below.

"Through the Fire and the Flames" even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2009, after one dedicated guitarist played a near-perfect rendition of the song to the tune of 973,954 points. In his journey to the record books, the Guitar Hero fan claimed to have broken 80 plastic controllers while attempting to conquer the song.
Currently, "Through the Fire and the Flames" and the other Shred-a-Thon tracks are only available to play on Guitar Hero TV. Following the event’s conclusion, however, the Dragonforce song will be available as part of the regular Guitar Hero Live game.
Guitar Hero Live is out on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Wii U. A version of the game is also available for iOS platforms. For more on the game and its TV mode, check out our review.

Get ready to explore the zone of Arcterra and get a bunch of new loot and rewards Sci-fi massively multiplayer online role-playing game Wildstar went free-to-play late last year, but since then players have been left waiting for new content, while developer Carbine Studios has focused on special timed events and holiday celebrations. That will change soon, though. Carbine is preparing a major new update for the game, along with another move to open it up to an even wider audience.
Speaking to Polygon last month, Carbine Studios creative director Chad Moore said the new update will launch in the first quarter of this year, though an exact date is still being pinned down. It will include a new zone called Arcterra, which will be filled with bosses, unique loot and a zone-wide mechanic that’s never been seen in Wildstar before.
As players fight through Arcterra, they’ll run into a series of two-man bosses. Defeating those bosses will slowly fill a bar, which will then summon five-man bosses, and defeating those will summon in massive 20-man bosses. Rewards for participants will improve with each tier, and the faction that does the most each day will open up a special instances dungeon underneath the zone.

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Moore says these “snowballing boss encounters" are a way to encourage group content without making it mandatory.
"You don’t have to do this stuff," he said. "But so many of our players now are at max level, because we’ve had a really loyal group of players that have followed us from the very beginning. Once Arcterra releases, there’s going to be a ton of people in there. Giving them something that they can work on together daily — I think we’re going to see players engage and enjoy this content for a lot longer than we would otherwise."
In addition to the bosses and traditional story quests, the new zone will feature a reward bar that fills up, granting special loot, mounts and costumes. Moore said the idea is for players to be "constantly rewarded for engaging in content."
Another mechanic being added to Wildstar with the update is a new item upgrade system. Players will be able to take armor and weapons that they don’t need, salvage them into special components and use those components to upgrade their currently equipped items.
"It creates a whole new economy around the existing weapons in the game," Moore explained. "If you’re out doing boss encounters in Arcterra and getting a lot of drops, those weapons will probably be high-level. Now you can choose to salvage those for trade skills, runecrafting or item upgrade components. Then you can use those components to make yourself more powerful."

The update will progress Wildstar’s world story forward with chapter two of the game’s Nexus Saga. Titled "Vault of the Archon," this new story instance will be the first in the game to allow a full party of five players, though it can also be soloed like previous story-driven instances if you’d prefer.
Moore promised that Carbine is also far along in prepping the next tier of 20-person raid content, an area called Redmoon Terror. This won’t be ready when the Vault of the Archon update launches, but it will hit test servers around the same time. Wildstar has not received a new tier of raiding content since the game launched in June 2014, so the most hardcore members of the community have been antsy for something new.
"most of the PC games I play, I’ll only play if I can run them through Steam"Finally, Moore revealed that Wildstar will come to Steam, the popular game download service from Valve, this spring. An exact date will be announced soon.
"I’m actually one of those people where most of the PC games I play, I’ll only play if I can run them through Steam," admitted Moore. "I think it’s going to be a really great thing for the game to bring a bunch of new players in."
Speaking to the general reaction to Wildstar’s free-to-play transition, Moore said it has been largely positive thus far.
"Free-to-play has been very successful in terms of getting tons of new players into the game," he said. "But I think the other part of it that’s been really cool for us to see is that pretty much everyone that’s played the game before and now has tried it as a free-to-play game, or even new players, they all feel like our free-to-play model is really fair. We see a lot of comments with people saying it doesn’t feel like a typical free-to-play game, because they’re not constantly being reminded about where they should spend money and how to spend money."
Wildstar can be downloaded and played for no cost from the game’s official website. For more information, you can check out our review from just after launch.

A little earlier than ‘mid-February’ The closed beta for Overwatch will re-open Feb. 9, Blizzard announced today on the Battle.net blog. The beta, which was taken offline in December, was recently bumped from January to a “mid-February" return date.
When it comes back, the build will sport two new maps, a new game mode, a new progression system as well as updates to both private games and character balancing. Blizzard noted that these were key areas it would tweak during the beta’s downtime back in December.
Players can continue to sign up for the Overwatch beta, and those who participated in it previously will again have access. The full game will be available to PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One owners later this spring, and will have additional content offered to players for free post-launch.

Nintendo plans to launch its new rewards program, My Nintendo, and its first mobile app, Miitomo, for Android and iOS in March, according to an investor presentation from Nintendo of Japan.
My Nintendo is the company’s replacement for the shuttered Club Nintendo program. My Nintendo will launch globally this March in 39 countries throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The service will reward members with two types of points: platinum points and gold points.
Platinum points can be earned by logging into Nintendo’s eShop, playing games and visiting Nintendo’s websites. Those points can be spent on digital goods, like wallpapers and themes for Nintendo 3DS. Nintendo described platinum points as being used mainly “for fun."
Gold points can be earned by purchasing content from the eShop. They can be used for discounts on games and software, Nintendo said.
Miitomo, the Mii-powered social communication app that Nintendo unveiled in October, will launch mid-March in Japan. Nintendo expects to roll out Miitomo to other territories in March as well, supporting eight languages — English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Russian — in 16 territories throughout North America, Western Europe, Japan, Russia, Australia and New Zealand. Nintendo said it will be accepting "pre-registration" for Miitomo starting on Feb. 17.

There’s almost too much desert in Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. But there’s also not nearly enough.

For a real-time strategy game series that utilized outer space as its core environment for a decade, it’s weird to open Deserts of Kharak’s campaign for the first time and realize just how much sand you’re going to have to drive through in this Homeworld prequel. The opening narration even emphasizes it. “Our planet is dying," says protagonist Rachel S’jet, who adds that "the desert grows with every passing year."
The characters are motivated only by survival, searching for an "anomaly" that they say will save them from the growing starvation and dehydration that are hurting the population. Their vehicles are land rovers of various sizes, their abilities limited to smoke screens and long-range launchers. It’s so simple and straightforward that the only jarring element seems to be this endless desert.
it’s weird to open Deserts of Kharak and realize just how much sand you’re going to drive through

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But the drastic change in this setting makes sense, not only in terms of the narrative, but also as a way to reboot a franchise whose first installment dates back to 1999 and has been stagnant for years. The history of the Homeworld name is complicated, with the licensing changing hands multiple times before landing with Gearbox in 2013. Besides a re-release of the first two games, there hasn’t been much anchoring the franchise in the public consciousness. Luckily for fans and the uninitiated, the game that would eventually become Deserts of Kharak bridges that gap in time.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is a prequel, but also exists as a stand-alone title. Thanks to a streamlined story and a beautiful, hand-drawn style that emphasizes the emptiness of sand and dust, I never felt at a loss as someone who never played much of the original Homeworld games.
The game is filled with Easter eggs and references that connect the two sides together. For example, main character Rachel S’jet is an ancestor to Karan S’jet, who leads Homeworld 1 and 2. But this mostly serves as a link rather than an important plot point; you don’t need to know future events to understand the story beats. You just need to learn how to drive the Kapisi — a giant production facility that also doubles as a self-sufficient aircraft carrier and battle fortress — and how to strategize your units.

Deserts of Kharak never feels too static despite taking place over one long road trip through the desert where you fight the same enemies, the Gaalesian, again and again. Each level requires its own strategy and multiple steps to clear each objective, and the game drops hints and slowly reveals techniques and systems over time. As the team discovers more technology as they move across the desert, more vehicles and upgrades are unlocked.
I suspect that this could get tedious for more advanced players, but even newer players may find some monotony as well. The Kapisi crawls across the dunes, and the expanse of the maps means your small assault vehicles will take their time getting to an area, but this becomes more manageable as the style of play becomes more familiar.

With just 13 missions that take anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour each (depending on your skill level), the story is brief, although not necessarily lacking. Developer Blackbird Interactive keeps plot on the outskirts of each campaign, allowing dialogue, lore and character moments to book-end battles.
For example, Rachel S’jet is a prime member of your team, and her motivations move the story forward without too many bumps. But there’s not too much to Rachel as a character that is complex or interesting, While her determination allows her to lead a team, it also gets her into situations that make you question whether you should let her out of the Kapisi at all.
More intriguing are the Gaalesians, a desert race that look upon Rachel and her companions’ need to reach space as heresy. The details in their compounds and their clothing, which seem reminiscent of a previously nomadic lifestyle, are more impressive than their place in Deserts of Kharak’s story, where they mainly function as a barrier to the Coalition.

for the most part multiplayer is more of the same

For Deserts of Kharak, it feels like the destination is more important than the journey. The story is secondary to Blackbird’s need to get the Coalition to space in time for the events of the original Homeworld. The "anomaly" Rachel and the others are searching for is ill-defined for most of the game — how do they know it’ll change everything? Why doesn’t the Coalition try and work with the Gaalesian for survival tips? Who knows?
Once you’re done with the story, there’s multiplayer, assuming you have more luck than I did in finding a game. The lobby was usually dead, with a game popping up on the public games list and disappearing just as quickly as it had appeared. Matchmaking was just as useless, timing out before matches could be made.
Once I found a game, there wasn’t much to explore. The campaign does plenty with its desert format, but Deserts of Kharak’s multiplayer offers only five maps — and each map has a particular player limit that only serves to lessen the kinds of matches available. There are a few options in the menu that can change up each round, such as including extra objectives, but for the most part it’s more of the same.

Last summer, developers from around the world spent a few happy weeks living and working together in a cabin in rural Sweden.
They were taking part in an initiative called Stugan (the word means ‘cabin’ in Swedish) which was organized and sponsored by various local developers. A new Stugan is now planned for summer of 2016. The organizers are once again looking for participants, who have a project ongoing, and might benefit from working in a peaceful and collaborative environment for a few weeks. You can apply here.
This month also sees the launch of last year’s Stugan’s first game. Created by Clint Siu, it’s a shape manipulation mobile game, called Prism.
“We couldn’t be happier with the way last year’s Stugan played out," said Stugan manager Jana Karlikova. "We set out to provide a platform to inspire undiscovered game developers across the globe and ended up with an amazing group of teams that not only made huge strides in their projects, but in turn fueled inspiration for some of the industries top veterans across all categories who came to mentor."
You can find out more about Stugan in Polygon’s in-depth feature.

The two are producing their own Mr. Robot-type show Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are about to venture into television once again following a series order from SyFy for their new show, Incorporated.
The series, which is described by the network as a “futuristic thriller," follows young executive Ben Larson as he masks his identity in an attempt to infiltrate one of the biggest corporations in the world and save the woman he loves.
The show stars Sean Teale (Reign) as Larson, and will also include the acting talents of Eddie Ramos (Teen Wolf), Dennis Haysbert (24) and Julia Ormond (Mad Men). Affleck and Damon will act as executive producers on the show, which will be run by Ted Humphrey (The Good Wife).
Incorporated is the latest to join SyFy’s recently rebranded slate of programs, including The Magicians, The Expanse and Brave New World.
Dave Howe, president of SyFy and Chiller, said that Incorporated was the type of science-fiction that "holds up a mirror to the world" and "challenges the notions of the world we live in today."
If it sounds like the type of genre programming made popular by shows like Mr. Robot, that’s exactly what it is. Networks like SyFy have seen what USA accomplished with the type of dark, off-kilter dramas they’re producing and are jumping on board.
Incorporated will air later this fall.