If you were to construct a narrative about the various creative strands at DICE, you’d probably say it all changed at E3 2013. After half a decade spent narrowing their focus to contemporary shooting alone, two DICEs have emerged this week: one in pursuit of past dystopian glories, and another with its head stuck doggedly in the contemporary FPS space.
Executive producer Patrick Bach isn’t about to apologise for the past five years of modern warfare, though. "We have more to do in that genre," he says.
Bohemia have revealed that they plan to launch the next stage of Arma 3’s development, moving the game from alpha to beta, later this month. On the 25 June the Arma 3 client will receive a content update adding new weapons, vehicles, and scenarios to be tested by the game’s early adopters.
Footage of Alien Rage in action confirms a few features referred to in the original press release: it features guns, lots of explosions, and aliens with which to combine the former two features. The video teases at the potential the game has to be a straight-up fun game to blank your mind with at the end of a long day.
It also carries the suggestion that it may be dull as ditch water.
Deadfall Adventures was due to be released at the end of next month. No longer is the case, as Nordic Games has announced the game will now launch 27th September. That's a whole 3 months, 3 weeks and a day away.
Chris Roberts’ return to games has resulted in the highest crowdfunded game ever. Star Citizen has surpassed $10m from a combination of Kickstarter and pledges made through the website directly.
Whoever is manning The Division’s Twitter account has just given hope to all PC gamers (I’m assuming you’re all equally excited for Ubisoft’s plague-centric multiplayer RPG), saying that, while the current focus is consoles, they’re “not ruling out any platforms for the future.”
As we well know, this is code for a PC release is guaranteed.*
Upcoming DLC for The Walking Dead is dated as a mysterious ‘soon’ in the E3 trailer released this week, but Joystiq are reporting that 400 Days is due out in just a few weeks, in July.
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Yes, you! Who else would I be talking to? Blizzard needs you to test out its snazzy new Battle.net desktop client so it can be one step closer to global domination. If you’re interested, I’ve got all the details to sign yourself up. If not, then I’ll just pressgang you.
Speaking to investors earlier today, President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau revealed that the next Mirror’s Edge game would be dropping the original’s linear level structure and opting for an open world instead.
He also hinted that the publisher had “five or six new IPs that are fully owned and we haven't announced yet." The coy bastard.
Along with the news that all of Bioware’s games will be built in DICE’s Frostbite 3 engine, the developer’s general manager Aaryn Flynn says that the work they’re doing on Dragon Age 3’s RPG systems will carry over into the next Mass Effect game and the unannounced game they’re also working on currently.
Meaning we could be in line to see a truly complex space RPG.
Now that’s a novel headline to write these days. After a generation of publishers explaining why they won’t have dedicated servers, we finally get to report that one of the best-looking upcoming shooters - Respawn’s Titanfall - WILL have support for dedicated servers.
The date’s been announced. Magic 2014 - Duels of the Planeswalkers will ignite on 26 June worldwide. It includes a new campaign featuring Chandra Nalaar, a fiery planeswalker out for revenge. The slivers, a hive-mind type creature, are making a return, and are even more deadly than before. Finally, a new game mode is being introduced: Sealed Play. Just like real limited tournaments, at the start of each tournament players will open six random booster packs and construct a deck to do battle with.
Microsoft led the E3 presentation with a lengthy look at the next Metal Gear Solid game, a series we PC gamers have only been able to look on enviously for years now (we’ve had one game ported across with another on the way but it’s been awfully piecemeal). The arrival of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain on Xbox marked a possible arrival for the game on PC, too - previously Sony machines had been the only constant platform of the series.
Speaking to Gametrailers, the series’ creator Hideo Kojima confirmed that the game will most likely be coming to PC, but said that “we have no release date, we are not really looking to do that right now, that’s not a priority.”
As well as the whole not marrying a fish thing we’re also told that a free update for Leviathan Warships has been released. One that adds the silky jazz tone from the trailers to the hardcore tactical action of the game.
If your lust for staking creatures of the night through their dessicated hearts was left unsated by the first Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing then you’ll be glad to know that developer NeoCore are already hard at work on a sequel. The ARPG will see you return to the gothic steampunk city of Borgova to, once again, battle with Dracula and his host of hellspawn.
Trion have broken from the mould of other free-to-play MMOs by choosing to avoid paygates and pay-to-win items. Instead, all the content is available to free players, with only elements like extra character slots and cosmetic items coming with a price tag attached.
It’s a progressive approach, one outlined in a new free-to-play features trailer.
Watch Dogs! Not a command, regrettably, though we could do that all day. Instead, Ubisoft Montreal’s topical, free-roaming Rorschach-’em-up. It tore up E3 last year, and looks set to do the same again with what appears to be a genuinely groundbreaking topsy-turvy multiplayer mode.
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2013 has been a particularly sweet year for PC games. We wanted to know what the best PC games of 2013 have been and would be. Which games will shine most fiercely in the annals of time? What great works has the year already given us, and what is there left to come? Here, for your perusal, is what we came up with.
Here are the 76 best PC games of 2013 (and beyond) — now including a generous smattering of the best PC games of E3 2013. Oh boy.
