BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

Nabeel Burney 1 Comment

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.

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Deus Ex 3 Exclusive Preview in PC Zone Magazine

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

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.

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Weather Forecast: Clear Sky?

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

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?

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Kaned & Lynched

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Coming off a succesful string of Hitman games and a notch-better-than-its-reputation Hollywood adaptation, the announcement for an all-new IO Interactive IP seemed to make perfect sense; after all, it’s not difficult to imagine the whole of IO staff trying to think-tank up something (anything!!) different after having stared at virtually nothing but the back of Agent 47’s bald head for six years (from 2000 to 2006) straight…

Enter Kane & Lynch, perhaps the most controversial game release of 2007. The game’s launch was mired in a string of negative, integrity-shattering publicity: The Gerstmanngate, falsified review scores, and ultimately one middle-of-the-road game. Kane & Lynch seemed a little like a fish out of water in a post-Max Payne -world.

Then again, our collective gamer memory is very short indeed, and everything simmers down after a while. That is, until GamesRadar butts in with an attempt at handing down the microphone over to IO, in the form of a confessional interview with Game Director Jens Peter Kurup, who gets to express his feelings over the public reception of the game.

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Breaking News: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Though Clear Sky has not fared all that badly in reviews so far – despite complaints of show-stopper bugs and ubiquitous brokenness – scepticism has begun to rear its ugly head in terms of the probability of GSC Game World’s ability to salvage the game with patching, and not in the least because of claims that the game still contains bugs that were already present in the original Shadow of Chernobyl.

The general atmosphere of the GSC Game World forums currently resembles that of launch-day BioShock forums (Nabeel, having been a moderator there, can surely testify): A vocal, angry minority (“Angry Internet Folk”) of customers feel they’ve been grievously wronged by a second failed launch in the row and that GSC should have learnt the lesson by now.

A moderator on the forums has confirmed that the project manager for Clear Sky, Anton Bolshakov, has been fired and replaced by Ruslan Didenko, the main game designer.

Despite the aforementioned shortcomings, a second patch (1.5.04) has already been released for the Russian version of the game. Adding fuel to the fire of confusion is the way version numbers are incremented for the Russian/UK releases of the game (1.5.x) and ROW (1.0x). For instance, the 1.01 patch takes the game to 1.5.03 UK. It is my understanding that both patches break save game compatibility.

I jumped relatively late on the Shadow of Chernobyl bandwagon, and played the game with the 1.0.0.6. patch. In that shape, the game worked well and only suffered from one or two broken quests and bogged-down performance. I’ve decided to take the same route with Clear Sky as I did with Shadow of Cherobyl, namely: Wait.

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