While we have to wait a while longer to play State of Decay 2, developer Undead Labs continues to release more concept are for it. The latest image shows a nice sunset–with a zombie in the foreground.
About this image, State of Decay 2’s art director said, “That one was really a mood piece more than anything. State of Decay has always tried to emphasize the quiet moments and the beauty from a still world. It helps punctuate the moments when things go ….bad.”
You can see the concept art that Undead Labs released in the three previous weeks here, here, and here.
First, the retailer is randomly selecting 1,000 shoppers across its US stores to give them the chance to preorder the hard-to-find Nintendo Switch. All you have to do is physically be in a GameStop store today for a chance to be randomly selected to preorder the $300 console.
It’s the weekend again. Here is a roundup of the week’s top stories and some you might have missed.
THE BIG STUFF:
Rockstar’s open-world action game Grand Theft Auto V continues to sell incredibly well. The game has now shipped 75 million copies, up by 5 million in just three months. The game is on pace to sell better this year than it did last week. Will it ever stop selling? [Full story]
Ubisoft’s new South Park game, The Fractured But Whole, has been delayed again. Originally slated to come out in 2016, the game was initially pushed to Q1 2017. Now, it’s set to come out sometime in Ubisoft’s fiscal 2017-2018, which translates to April 2017 through March 2018. [Full story]
For the first time ever, the annual E3 show will be open to the public this year. That’s right, anyone can buy a ticket to this year’s show. 15,000 consumer tickets will go on sale Monday, February 23. Tickets cost $150 (for a three-day pass) on February 13 and will go up to $250 thereafter. [Full story]
THE OTHER STUFF:
Drawn to Death, the next game from Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe, now has a release date; it’s coming out for PS4 in April. Learn more about it here on the PlayStation Blog.
Here’s a rad trailer for the new Timesplitters fan remake, Timesplitters Rewind.
The next Hearthstone might be themed around dinosaurs, according to a new report. Bear in mind that this is unconfirmed for now–but it sounds pretty cool.
The Golf Club is getting a sequel. Developer HB Games announced The Golf Club 2 this week and it sounds like it’s improving on the sequel in a lot of big ways.
After crushing it on console and PC, CI Games’ Dark Souls-like RPG Lords of the Fallen came out this week for iOS and Android devices. Here’s a trailer:
Here is a wonderful video in which Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto and producer Eiji Aonuma answer 51 rapid-fire questions about Breath of the Wild. Watch the video at Game Informer.
What would Final Fantasy XIV’s UI and menu systems look like presented with Microsoft’s HoloLens? Perhaps something like this–see the cool video at Kotaku.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3–not the newer Infinite Warfare–is holding a Valentine’s Day event. You can read this blog post to find out what’s going down.
Each week we search and gather up the coolest comic book art you won’t see in actual comics. The reason you won’t is because professional artists often draw sketches for fun or commissions and post them on their websites, blogs, and Tumblrs. Some artists even arrange commissions through their sites so be sure to check them out. This is a way to see the artists working on one book draw characters from other comics or publishers.
Todd Nauck posted a couple new pieces on his Tumblr.
Greg Smallwood posted a Winter Soldier commission on his Instagram.
Paolo Rivera posted recent commissions on his blog.
Kris Anka posted new art on his Instagram. The Wonder Woman and Harley ones will be prints available at Emerald City Comic Con.
Chris Samnee posted a classic Logan sketch on his Instagram.
Chris Giarrusso put new art for sale on his website.
Jim Cheung posted recent commissions on his Instagram.
Peter Nguyen posted new sketches on his Tumblr. His commission list for ECCC is open.
Marcio Takara posted more daily sketches on his Tumblr.
Mike Choi posted a Norrin Radd/Silver Surfer commission on his Instagram.
Marvel today provided a first look at Avengers: Infinity War, which started shooting in January. The video starts off by providing a brief overview of the Infinity Stones, before showing off some of the action movie’s sets. Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Tom Holland (Spider-Man), and Chris Pratt (Star-Lord) then share their thoughts about filming, while directors Joe and Anthony Russo discuss some of the story, which sees the Avengers taking on a new bad guy, Thanos.
“Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe that started in May 2008 with Iron Man,” Marvel boss Kevin Feige says. “Thanos shows us why he is the biggest, the best, the baddest villain that we’ve ever had. And the most frightening villain that the Avengers have ever faced.”
Valve shared its views on the matter during a roundtable discussion this week. As reported by GamesBeat, Gabe Newell stated that modders “create a lot of value, and [Valve] think[s] that absolutely they need to be compensated.” He added that the “degree to which they are not being accurately compensated is a bug in the system.”
“The Skyrim situation–well, it was a mess,” Newell said this week. “It was not the right place to launch that, and we did some hamfisted things in the way we rolled it out. But the fundamental concept that the gaming community needs to reward the people who are creating value is pretty important.”
Newell also indicated he believes Steam would offer paid mods at this point if not for the Skyrim misstep. Valve’s Erik Johnson laments the situation, but noted that Valve “got a lot of great data out of that.”
“It was awful to go through, but it gave us a ton of useful information,” he said.
Skyrim’s paid mods were introduced with very little notice. The game had, at that point, been available for over three years, and there was a strong backlash from players. Newell took part in a Reddit AMA in an attempt to explain and defend paid mods in which he said, “Our goal is to make modding better for the authors and gamers. If something doesn’t help with that, it will get dumped. Right now I’m more optimistic that this will be a win for authors and gamers, but we are always going to be data driven.”
“To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities,” it continued. “We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free and paid. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-Strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it.”
To date, Valve hasn’t shared any concrete plans to reintroduce paid mods. Based on what it said this week, though, it only seems like a matter of time before it tries again.
Valve founder Gabe Newell said during a roundtable interview recently that consoles can be like “walled gardens”–and this is not the situation the company is looking for. “We get really frustrated working in walled gardens,” he said, as reported by Eurogamer.
The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 allow developers to self-publish, though of course developers still need to work with the platform-holders to an extent. Asked by Eurogamer if Valve has seen the self-publishing model improve on Xbox One and PS4, Newell said, “We love the PC right now. A lot.”
One of the things that Newell takes issue with for “walled gardens” such as console and iOS is that it can take a long time to get updates pushed out. “When we did the original iOS of Steam App, right, we shipped it, we got a whole bunch of feedback and like the next day we’re ready to do an update. We weren’t able to get that update out for six months!” he said. “And we couldn’t find out why they wouldn’t release it! They wouldn’t tell us. This is the life that you have in these environments. And finally they shipped it! And they wouldn’t tell us why they finally shipped it.
“So for us, while we’re spending all of our time trying to be as tunnel-vision in this loop with our customers, to all of a sudden have this complete uncertainty about doing updates… Like we don’t know how to operate,” Newell explained.
Newell went on to acknowledge that other developers have learned how to be “wildly successful” in the console and mobile space, but Valve is going in a different direction, it seems.
“Our DNA tend[s] to not work well when someone is trying to insert a lot of process between us and our customers,” he said.
A series of new images from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild have come online–and they are pretty spectacular. Posted by Game Informeras part of its March cover story on the game, the images show off things like a fierce-looking lightning storm, enemies that populate the world, and bosses. One of the images shows the merchant Beedle, who returns from The Wind Waker.
Game Informer has some new details, too, such as the fact that Link can get struck by lightning. It’s good idea, then, to remove metal weapons and items when a storm rolls in.
Two Halo 5 multiplayer playlists have been removed. In its latest weekly blog post, developer 343 Industries announced that Arena playlists Triple Team and Shotty Snipers have been removed from matchmaking–for the time being at least–and will be replaced by “rotational playlists.”
“The Halo 5 sustain team is working on more frequent, regular updates to matchmaking including consolidating some of the existing playlists to help maintain a positive player experience,” 343 said. “While it would be great, in theory, to have tons of playlists spanning every possible niche of gameplay, the reality is some playlists just don’t have a consistent enough population to support a good matchmaking experience.
“We know there are players who enjoy the gameplay these two playlists offer but overall each of these hoppers attracts a tiny fraction of the online population and as a result can’t really sustain a permanent position in matchmaking,” the developer added.
As for the new rotational playlists, as the name suggests, these will be playlists that come and go regularly. The idea is to keep Halo 5’s multiplayer “fresh and interesting while also allowing an opportunity to try out new ideas and explore oft-requested additions from the community.”
Starting things off will be Assault, a social playlist. This is basically Assault as you know it, but the one major difference is that the player count is increased to 5v5 and you’ll play on the newest maps.
“Going forward, the team will be building out a variety of rotational offerings in addition to looking for opportunities to inject fresh content into existing playlists,” 343 said. “These decisions will be driven by usage data in addition to fan feedback and generally monitoring what the community is actively building in Forge and playing in custom games.”
343 added that it hopes to be able to give players a heads up about what’s coming in the rotational playlists through a calendar. While that hasn’t happened yet, 343 did confirm the next special playlist, Team Doubles. It comes out next week on Valentine’s Day (see what they did there?).
With the launch of Halo Wars 2 coming up very soon, Microsoft has now made a few more announcements about the RTS sequel.
In its latest weekly blog post, developer 343 Industries answered a lot of fan questions, one of which asked about potential map-making tools. Unfortunately for fans, this isn’t in the works. “We have no plans to release a map editor at this time,” 343 said.
Another big piece of news for Halo Wars 2 from the blog post was the announcement of the game’s complete list of achievements. There will be 57 to collect, worth a combined 1,000 Gamerscore. You will unlock achievements for doing things like completing the tutorial, beating campaign missions (solo and co-op), collecting skulls, and playing Blitz cards, among many other things.
The full Halo Wars 2 achievement list follows below. You can read the full Halo weekly blog post here.
Halo Wars 2 launches on February 21 for Xbox One and PC. It’s an Xbox Play Anywhere title, so buying a digital copy on one platform provides access to the game on the other, including all saves and progress. People who buy the $80 Ultimate Edition can start playing on February 17.
A 1 TB Halo Wars 2 Xbox One S bundle launches on February 17 for $350. It comes with the Ultimate Edition, so you can start playing right away.
