Though the Deus Ex 3 teaser trailer is old beans, for the sake of completeness in terms of our coverage, I’ve decided to upload the most relevant screen captures from the trailer to our blog.
Full screen capture gallery with 25 pictures and detailed captions after the jump!
Gamasutra’s Leigh Alexander reports that Namco Bandai, the current co-publisher for Hellgate: London, has announced the game is going to be closed down on January 31, 2009.
Hellgate: London’s launch back in October 2007 was marred with several problems and even denials and gross exaggerations. Though the announcement does not come to us as a surprise, it’s very sad to see a game that was launched as late as October 31, 2007 being closed down so soon. Even Resident Evil: Outbreak stayed up for four years and RF Online for two (Earlier this month, Codemasters announced they had failed to renegotiate the US/EU publishing rights for one reason or another 1)http://www.rf-onlinegame.com/news.php?id=8020).
In an earlier Shacknews interview, Flagship’s Bill Roper said that
We’re working hard on how to end gracefully… I would do a lot of things really differently [in future efforts]. I think that maybe part of the silver lining in all this—and there isn’t a lot in a very dark cloud.
Summa summarum it would seem the story of Hellgate: London was nipped in the bud thanks to the concept of “release now, patch later”. Whether blame for the debacle lands on the developer or the publishers is hard to say, but it’s all rather sad, isn’t it?
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It seems the PS3 version of BioShock was blessed with more than the extra features previously known of, as determined gamers found out upon completing the game. Backing out to the main menu reveals an unlocked teaser trailer for the sequel, now revealed to be titled BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams.
Very little is shown in the brief CG movie, which has been produced in the same style used for the X06 trailer and launch trailer for the original game. We see a little girl, presumably a Little Sister albeit apparently older than in the game, holding a small Big Daddy doll, looking out to sea. Behind her the sand shifts and undulates to rise up in towering shapes that form the buildings in the BioShock logo, which appears looking visibly worse for wear, with barnacles affixed to it. Not all is old and broken, however; a vibrant blue butterfly emerges and spreads its wings.
The latest issue of UK magazine PC Zone is now out in the hands of subscribers, and as promised by the last page of the previous issue, there is an exclusive first look at Deus Ex 3. CVG posted a teaser of the article on their site, no doubt the full preview will surface there in due time. In the mean time we will have to make do with scans of the images from the article which someone has kindly posted on their Flickr.
As you’ve probably realized by now, I’ve grown very attached to following up on the Clear Sky aftermath, gorging myself on new information as it arrives. The company’s intriguing track record combined with early releases is very enthralling…
We’ve heard by now how Clear Sky’s North American release date slipped due to a botched print job, how the game was released in unfinished state, and how some players had patiently sat in front of Steam, counting down its unlock date counter only to discover the game was not playable even after the counter had run its course.
Against this backdrop, it feels like kicking a downed opponent to report that at the time of writing, the game’s multiplayer component is working neither on Steam nor in its ingame browser. This seems to be related, in turn, to the fact that GSC Game World‘s official company website has been down for the past two weeks. The common factor for both issues is, according to a reliable source, that the GSC systems admin is currently on vacation.
While it’s not too rare to have the development team go on vacation right after release – Nabeel reminded me of the BioShock launch – with Clear Sky, nevertheless, it resembles an oversight with the game’s non-Russian audience: Clear Sky was released early in Russia, but the UK launch date and the US release were delayed to the 15th of September. There is a chance the aforementioned issues could have been very well avoided if the staff had stayed on board up until the game was released worldwide.
Finally, the publisher, Deep Silver, cleverly redirects all Clear Sky support over to GSC’s forums, where we’ve all heard how the development team does not read the English forum. Does this mean what I think it means, that the English-speaking player base has no official tech support for the game? If so, what does that even mean, say, under the EU law?