According to a representative from Blizzard Entertainment, a bug in the authentication system, not a change in policy, is responsible for problems some gamers are experiencing with playing StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty offline.

"We're aware there's a bug in the authentication system, as far as the system being able to know that you've logged into the system for 30 days," the representative said. "We're trying to address this problem in an upcoming patch."

Some gamers have reported that they needed to authenticate each time they launched StarCraft II in offline mode, even if they had authenticated within the 30-day window. A post on Battle.net from a customer-service representative said, "The 'offline mode' currently only lasts until the computer is turned off, and then requires a fresh authentication."

Addressing the Battle.net post, the Blizzard representative says, "There's been a miscommunication with the [customer-service] guys-there's no change with the 30-day authentication policy."

The representative didn't want to give a specific timeframe for the patch, saying, "We're hoping to get it out soon. PCs being PCs, we need to make sure we've researched all possible cases."
GamePro staff

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 1:26 PM | Comments (0)

It took a different developer to get it on track, but it looks like Gearbox is going to make Duke Nukem Forever a reality

To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are lies, damned lies, and Duke Nukem Forever stories. The game's been vapourware for over a decade. Leaked screens and gameplay videos from so-called alpha versions occasionally emerge then fade in a muddle of half-baked theories, forum mockery, and fan dismay. When the game's now defunct publisher 3D Realms talk about the game these days, few listen.
Until today, that is.

Yesterday 3D Realms president George Broussard teased gamers with a picture of pigs flying. (In a 2006 1UP interview, Broussard joked the game would be out when pigs flew.) Today, he's explaining what that means. Or at least the game's new developer is.
At PAX Prime 2010, Gearbox (Brothers in Arms, Borderlands) president Randy Pitchford confirmed rumours that his studio has assumed responsibility for the practically mothballed shooter. What's more, he announced it'll be playable -- that's right, playable -- on the show floor.

"People seem to be enjoying the game a lot," reads a dispatch from 2K Games' Twitter feed. "How many [PAX] folks thought they'd leave Seattle having played [Duke Nukem Forever]?"

The game, due in 2011, will be available simultaneously for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows.

"Duke Nukem, the interactive entertainment industry's most irreverent and quoted character of all time, will bring his signature brand of babe-lovin', cigar-smoking, beer-chugging and ass-kicking action as he once again saves the Earth and our babes from hordes of invading aliens," wrote 2K Games in a press statement. "In other shocking news, Duke Nukem Forever will be playable right now for all attendees 17 and older of this year's Penny Arcade Expo at the 2K Booth...giving the first hands-on experience with the game that was originally announced during the tail end of the Clinton Administration."

"All great things take time... a lot of time," said 2K president Christoph Hartmann. "After a hiatus from the video game world, Duke Nukem is back and better than ever. The return of the King from the glory days of shooters will satisfy our patient, die-hard fans, as well as a new generation of bubble gum-chewing, flat top and shades-wearing bad-asses."

"Make no mistake about it -- Duke Nukem Forever is a testament to the era of when shooters were bodacious and fun."

It's been so long I don't remember how the last one ended, but I do remember the multiplayer matches with freeze-rays, shrink-guns, and the helpless terror of a gigantic boot filling my CRT. In DNF, it sounds like the alien pig cops and titanic bosses are back, along with plenty of profanity and anatomical ogling.

"This game puts pedal to the metal and tongue firmly in cheek, among other places," reads 2K's description. "Shoot hoops, lift weights, read adult magazines, draw crude messages on whiteboards or ogle one of the many beautiful women that populate Duke's life; that is if you can pull yourself away long enough from kicking ass and taking names."

If anyone can pull it off, well -- Gearbox isn't faultless when it comes to game design, but they're light years ahead of 3D Realms. Kudos to George Broussard and company for finally stepping aside.

Matt Peckham

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

PlayStation 3 owners will finally be able to watch movies in 3D by October, Sony CEO Howard Stringer promised during his speech Thursday at the Internationale Funkaustellung (IFA) trade show in Berlin.

The work on the 3D software upgrade is now complete, and the upgrade will be done by October, according to Stringer. Users who have a 3D-compatible TV set and PlayStation 3 will be able to watch 3D movies on Blu-ray discs, Stringer said.

Just like the PlayStation 3 gave the Blu-ray format a push, it may now do the same for 3D content and hardware.

For users who want a bigger picture than most TV sets are capable of producing, Sony also announced its first 3D home projector. The VPL-VW90ES will be able to project 3D in 1080p, according to Sony, and will be available across Europe in November.
Mikael Ricknäs

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 2:29 PM | Comments (0)

The final game in the Halo series will introduce a "super epic" single player campaign, more balanced multiplayer action and vastly improved graphics, says Halo: Reach executive producer Joseph Tung.

Due out in New Zealand on September 14, developers Bungie Studios have announced the Xbox 360 blockbuster will be the last Halo game they will produce.

Speaking to media in Auckland this afternoon, Tung said Halo: Reach took players back to the birthplace of the Spartan supersoldier program, started on planet Reach. It would act as a prequel to the Halo series, putting players in control of an elite Spartan soldier known as Noble 6 in a battle against the Covenant alien alliance.

"It's a darker story and story with no Master Chief... Reach is much more boots in the mud, told from the trenches."

Tung said his development team had focused on making Reach the "definitive Halo game" and had gone to great pains to create a game environment that felt authentic. The size and scale of mission areas had been increased, effort had been put into making facial animations and damage effects more realistic, and weather had been more accurately rendered. Maps now also included wildlife and civilians, adding to the game's "environmental appeal", Tung said.

"The campaign is as big if not bigger than any other Halo game but exact play-through time will really depend on what difficulty level a player chooses."

Of course, it's the combat action scenes that most hardened Halo players will care about, and judging by what Bungie is promising, that aspect of the game won't disappoint.

AI has been improved, more difficulty levels have been added and there are a bunch of new vehicles and weapons. For those with a penchant for gore, a new assassination kill style that can be performed at close range is included.

Halo has a reputation for its quality multiplayer mode and a new Spartans vs Elites Versus mode will please fans. The popular co-op Firefight mode, first seen in Halo: ODST, has been tweaked to make it more customisable, allowing gamers to customise right down to exactly what enemies will be included in each wave of alien assault.

"Firefight really is Firefight 2.0. We fully expect the community to go crazy with all the options," Tung said.

For die-hard fans, Halo: Reach includes an upgraded Forge map editor that allows players to create bases or mazes anywhere across a huge sandbox world. Halo 3 players will already be familiar with the Forge, but its latest incarnation allows for greater flexibility and control.

Halo: Reach’s Forge map builder allows map editors to more accurately place map pieces and even turn off normal physics, allowing pieces to be fixed in mid-air without falling.

Posted by James Heffield at 6:37 PM | Comments (3)

Did you play a lot of games this past weekend? Odds are, a group of six Dutch game enthusiasts have you beat, as the team broke the previously-set 40-hour record by notching over 50 hours with Red Dead Redemption.

The team consisted of a half-dozen gamers from throughout the Netherlands, all of whom will share the record as the group decided to finish together. The new Guinness record holders are Sven de Vries, Renzo Bos, Robbie van Eijkeren, Marcel van Waardenburg, as well as brothers Edward and Maykel Leest.

The session, which started at 12:55 PM on Friday in the Netherlands, was played completely on the PlayStation 3 version of Red Dead Redemption. Instead of using wired controllers, the team used a charging device called the TwistDock to keep powered controllers at the ready. The event was coordinated by Vogel's, the creators of the TwistDock.

Dave Rudden

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)

The Auckmageddon LAN tournament is returning to Auckland next month in a bid to bring "a fun and social focus" back to Kiwi gaming, says organiser Richard Patterson.

It has been seven years since the three-day event was last held and Patterson said he was hoping the 2010 edition would prove popular when it kicked off at North Harbour Stadium on August 27.

Auckmageddon would have an R18 bar, DJ's and more of a social focus than the country's largest gaming event, xLAN, which begins on July 9, he said.

"XLAN has quite a serious gaming focus. The main difference Auckmageddon offers is that it it's not all about qualifying for big tournaments. We do have prizes for tournament winners but we are more about gaming for fun."

The event would host solo and team tournaments for people wishing to compete in games including Battlefield Bad Company 2, Defense of the Ancients, Heroes of Newerth, Team Fortress 2 and Counterstrike Source. Winners would take home prizes such as hardware, games and Microsoft Sidewinder peripherals, Patterson said.

Tickets are priced at $85 and will remain on sale until August 22. Auckmageddon currently has 150 registered attendees.

Posted by James Heffield at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)

Motion controllers have grabbed the spotlight at the E3 gaming expo in Los Angeles this week, leaving some hardcore gamers feeling a little uneasy about the future of their favourite hobby.

The much-loved first person shooter genre is rarely catered for on Nintendo's Wii, while complex role playing games and real time or turn based strategy titles don't even get a look in. Many gamers, particularly those formerly of the PC persuasion, will be wondering whether the Kinect motion control system for the Xbox 360 and Sony's Move for the PlayStation 3 are going down the same track.

Kinect (formerly Project Natal) uses an RGB camera, depth sensor and multi-array microphone to let players control gaming action using nothing more than their own body movements and voice. That all sounds well and good, but the system will need to have a high degree of movement tracking accuracy to succeed.

The motion sensing and tracking on the Wii has always been a deal breaker for me -- it has never provided an experience superior to that of a keyboard and mouse on a PC or a conventional controller on the Xbox 360 or PS3. I have not yet had the chance to try Microsoft's system hands, but if it is not vastly more accurate than that of the Wii, it is bound to fail.

To attract the hardened gamers, it will also need to cater to games with a bit more oomph than Kinect Sports, Dance Central and the Kinectimals virtual pet stroking game on show at E3.

The Kinect's main competition, the PlayStation Move, is similar in appearance to the Wii Remote, with the addition of a strange glowing orb on top. The Move controller is combined with the PlayStation Eye to track movements side to side and forward and backwards (some have criticised Kinect for its depth tracking). I got some hands-on experience with the device at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco earlier this year and it's fair to say it has potential to be much more than just a casual gaming gimmick.

The Move maps movements far more accurately than the Wii, but the most impressive element of Sony's effort was the type of games that will be available for it right off the bat. Sure there will be casual table tennis and sporting titles, but the fighting games and shooters should give hardcore gamers a reason to believe motion control isn't all bad.

In games like Motion Fighters players can hold a Move in each hand, allowing the system to accurately track their punches, blocks and even sways (the PlayStation Eye camera can map a gamer's head in relation to the sensors in the orb of the Move controller). By allowing gamers to use the accurate Move controller with a sub controller called the Navigation Controller, which again is very similar in appearance and function to the Wii Nunchuk, Sony has opened the door for shooters.

At the GDC Sony illustrated that using Socom 4, which allowed gamers to target and shoot using the Move and walk around using the mini-joystick on the Navigation Controller. That could already be done on the Wii, but the Nintendo motion control system's huge relative lack of accuracy would let it down.

With all that said, the Kinect appears to be the more groundbreaking system and it's easy to understand why it has been getting more media coverage this week. But groundbreaking or not, the accuracy of the Move, combined with the available titles, makes it the more exciting proposition, at least for hardcore gamers.

Posted by James Heffield at 3:43 PM | Comments (0)

If you've ever dreamed of donning a flying suit and whizzing about in a military helicopter, you'll probably enjoy upcoming Kiwi-made iPhone and iPad game Chopper 2.

The original Chopper reached number one in the paid games category of the US iTunes store, selling more than 300,000 copies. More than 700,000 copies of the free Lite version of the game have also been downloaded.

Majic Jungle Software founder and Chopper lead developer David Frampton said the next edition of the side-scrolling helicopter game would again thrust players into the cockpit as a pilot defending his country against enemy invasion. It featured 36 missions (the original Chopper had 20 missions), improved graphics and moving enemy and friendly forces with "basic but flexible" AI.

"The original Chopper was quite 2D, it was only pseudo 3D. The new game will be truly 3D with a proper physics engine."

The game's missions would open with a short intro sequence to outline the player's objectives, Frampton said. Each mission would take approximately two to three minutes to play through if the gamer successfully dodged enemy fire, but many players would need to replay missions multiple times.

Frampton said he had been developing Chopper 2 for the past year and planned to launch it in July as a universal app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. He had originally intended to have the game ready in time for the US launch of the iPad on April 3 but it was not at the high standard he had hoped for so its release had been delayed, he said.

"I'm pretty happy with the hype around it but I'm a little bit worried that people might be expecting too much. I'm putting in an extra effort to make sure I get it right. I'm really being a perfectionist."

Final pricing for the game has not yet been announced but Frampton said it would be below US$5.

Check out a video of Chopper 2 in action here.

Posted by James Heffield at 4:24 PM | Comments (0)

Blizzard yesterday gave millions of sci-fi strategy fans the news they've been waiting for. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is on its way to a computer near you.

One of the most anticipated real-time strategy game in the history of the genre, Blizzard announced an end date to fans' collective yearning. On July 27, 2010, Blizzard will release StarCraft II in New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Australia, Russia, Mexico, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. That's a near-world-wide invasion of Terran, Protoss, and Zerg.

"We've been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we're excited that the time for that is almost here," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, in announcing the July launch.

"Thanks to our beta testers, we're making great progress on the final stages of development, and we'll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net in just a few months."

StarCraft II is the sequel to the award-winning 1998 title StarCraft. After nearly seven years of development, the war of galactic conquest begins anew. Set five years after the events of Brood War, the single-player campaign of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty will follow the exploits of Jim Raynor and fellow earth exiles (known as the Terrans) as they fight for survival against their own kind, the mysterious Protoss, and insidious Zerg. Subsequent expansions will highlight the other two races and continue the story.

The original StarCraft featured a breathtaking balance between the races, an amazingly-addictive multiplayer system, and a compelling story. With 11 million copies sold, it's one of the most successful games of all time. You'd be a fool to not look forward to the sequel.

By Chris Holt

Posted by James Heffield at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

Pioneering a new game genre might sound like an impossible task but the developers behind Alan Wake reckon they have pulled it off. That's a pretty big claim considering video games have been in production for decades but Finnish studio Remedy Entertainment is standing by it.

In an interview with PC World yesterday, Remedy managing director Matias Myllyrinne said Alan Wake relied on "intrigue and mystery" and was best categorised as a mix between an action game and a psychological thriller.

"Horror has been done lots before. Making a psychological thriller is about doing something that's much more cerebral," he said.

Due to be released on Xbox 360 on May 20, Alan Wake puts gamers in the shoes of a fictional best selling author of the same name as he searches for his wife who has gone missing near the small town of Bright Falls. As time goes on, Wake realises the nightmare he is living is straight out of a thriller novel he has written.

Myllyrinne said the game was controlled in the third person view, had a linear storyline and was cinematically rich. However, that didn't come at the expense of gameplay and gamers could still do a lot of exploring and learning about the game's more minor characters if they wanted to.

Remedy was the studio behind the Max Payne series of games that popularised bullet-time -- a slow motion technique gamers could use during combat to warp time and dodge bullets more easily. In Alan Wake, Remedy had tried to revolutionise the use of light in the same way, Myllyrinne said.

"We wanted to use a constant. With the Max Payne games we used time. We thought that light and dark were two things that resonated with all cultures. Light symbolises safety. That comes to us from religion... and it's also built into our DNA.

"Basically light in Alan Wake is a combat tool for the gamer and a source of safety. We use light to burn away enemies and it's always more effective than a firearm. Anything from the headlights of a car to flashlights can be used. We spent a lot of time working with the lighting and making sure it looked really good."

To ensure scenes in the game struck the right emotional chords with gamers, developers had consulted psychologists and put significant effort into effects and audio, Myllyrinne said. For example, playing the sound of a baby crying in a scene where a tornado was heading towards a house could create a strong emotional response in the gamer, he said.

"Something only needs to be slightly off to make it really disturbing for us. There are a lot of things that you don't necessarily pay attention to... We rely on movie realism and doing things like making it feel dark even if it's not dark [on screen]."

Another area where developers had tried to improvise was with the game's difficulty levels. Myllyrinne said Alan Wake included an advanced "dynamic difficulty" system that could alter how aggressive enemies were as players progressed through the game. That meant the game could cater for players of all abilities, including those with "less dexterous thumbs".

For more hardcore gamers the dynamic difficulty would ensure they faced a challenge for the 8 - 10 hours it took to complete the game, he said.

Posted by James Heffield at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)