This week's playlist has death, intrigue, and cuddly little villagers. Rob's returned to League of Legends where he finds the reward for training hard and honing your skills. Jeremy taken to the streets and rooftops of Dunwall to enact his voyeuristic desires. Matt's discovering the problems of injecting the 80s into a tactical island shooter. And Julian plays the puppet master in indie god game Reus. He also has a problem with his stoats.
Far Cry 3’s homage to the 80s (homage means to pack something out with even more neon, right?) has launched. To mark the momentous release of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Ubisoft have posted this new trailer.
NSFPWVATSON (Not Suitable For People Who Vomit At The Sight Of Neon).
Ubisoft’s latest Far Cry 3: Blood dragon video shows the game’s creative director, Dean Evans, sit down with Terminator actor Michael Biehn, voice of Sergeant Rex Power Colt, to talk about the actor’s passion for the project.
Dean Evans: “What do you think of games? Do you play games?"
Michael Biehn: “No. I don’t, er, I’m here for a pay cheque. Nothing else. I reckon that’s about it.
Dean Evans: “Well you weren’t the first choice anyway but we couldn’t get Kevin Bacon.
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If you’ve read the premise for Blood Dragon, it’s likely your brain initiated automatic HAHAHAH protocol long before you reached the bit about a “rogue cyborg army". If not, and if one of your remaining questions about the game before its May 1 release is, “Precisely how does a cyborg army go rogue?", you’re in luck.
Blood Dragon is a standalone Far Cry 3 total conversion available to download on May 1st. It’s an explosive parody of 80s sci-fi action movies and videogames, a neon-infused send up of the likes of Terminator 2 and Bionic Commando that also pokes fun at modern FPS tropes. It features a silly, laboured tutorial, an overly macho cyborg protagonist, an overbearing AI sidekick and a blacklit island terrorised by giant lizards who shoot lasers from their eyes. It’s stupid, but a very enjoyable sort of stupid.
This morning’s leaked footage of Blood Dragon (now pulled from Youtube), the awesome 80s action movie-inspired expandalone for Far Cry 3, was not the only thing to escape from Ubisoft’s vaults: Russian hackers managed to trick Ubisoft’s digital shopfront, UPlay, into thinking they already owned the unreleased game and allowed them to download it DRM-free.
Somehow, someway, a release-state 15-minute intro sequence for Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon has been filched from an electro-drawer at Ubisoft Montreal and tranferred to the hive mind via a Flash Gordon drive. The video is precisely long enough to confirm that the summer belongs to openly parodic ‘80s-future cyborg commandoing.
Of all this year’s PC-related April Fools’ nonsense, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was surely the most elaborate and far-fetched. Quelle surprise, then, to discover it’s no fool at all, but rather a very real standalone shooter set in an immediately dated 2007 sci-fi world - an “‘80s VHS vision of the future".
A teaser trailer released on 1 April for Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon suggests the standalone expansion to Ubisoft’s open world shooter is to be a 80s pulp action movie homage, inspired by the likes of Terminator, Tron, Escape from New York, and Michael Biehn.
Yes, the date of the video’s release suggests tomfoolery but this isn’t the first we’ve heard of the project, suggesting it was simply a poor choice by the marketing team.
A Brazilian ratings board has awarded an 18+ rating to a forthcoming title by the name of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, suggesting we're likely to see a Far Cry 3 spinoff very soon. Furthermore, a poster on the NeoGAF forums has shared an image that may be leaked boxart for an Xbox Live Arcade release, though it looks very different to the game's other promotional material and looks particulary eighties. Not that that's a bad thing.
Far Cry 3’s latest patch increases the game’s longevity by adding a new difficulty setting and allowing you to reset all the pirate-owned outposts, and significantly improving the system for testing and rating custom-made maps.
Are you ready to hear a fact? The very best games of the last year - even the cross-platform ones - all had their roots firmly embedded in the soft peat of PC gaming. That state of affairs was gently drummed into everybody’s skulls at regular beats during last night’s gaming Baftas, which saw Dishonored, Far Cry 3 and XCOM loaded up with plaudits.
This week's playlist has accounts of two of the PCGamesN staff standing up for what they believe in - their right to flee at a moments notice, leaving the dangerous work of gaming to their heavily armed NPCs/teammates - and the other find that there is a little place in his idyllic homelife for WarFace.
See what we've been up to this past week in the latest edition of The Weekly Playlist.
So I’m listening back to my recording of the chat I had with Crytek’s Cevat Yerli, and there’s a bit that’s all creaking chairs and cleared throats. We’ve talked Warface, free to play and the saving of Vigil. I’ve been impressed by the clarity of vision of a man who talks about the future as if it’s already happened. Now there’s time for one more question, and I’m flipping through my notebook, looking for something I scribbled on the plane.
“Ah," I said. “Mmm. I wanted to ask you what you thought of Far Cry 3".
For a couple of years there, we heard every Ubisoft PC announcement with one ear cocked for the tell-tale staccato thump of always-online DRMs banging away in the deep. But despite nascent talk of boycotts, It was never really a question of Ubi or not Ubi - it was a question of respect.
“Announcing all these partners for Uplay and a wider choice of PC games, it shows our commitment to PC, and we want to improve our relationship with the PC community," said Uplay director Stephanie Perotti.
Ubisoft have unveiled their plans for upcoming patches for Far Cry 3 and they are going to be a massive help for any custom mappers. They will also add a new difficulty setting for singleplayer campaigns, as well as the option to reset all the pirate-controlled outposts. It's quite a nifty bundle of features, all told.
This week's playlist has accounts of two of the PCGamesN staff standing up for what they believe in - their right to flee at a moments notice, leaving the dangerous work of gaming to their heavily armed NPCs/teammates - and the other find that there is a little place in his idyllic homelife for WarFace.
So I’m listening back to my recording of the chat I had with Crytek’s Cevat Yerli, and there’s a bit that’s all creaking chairs and cleared throats. We’ve talked ![Ubisoft “want to improve [their] relationship with PC gamers”. Via Uplay.](http://www.pcgamesn.com/sites/default/files/uplay%20pc%20launches%20ubisoft.jpg "Ubisoft “want to improve [their] relationship with PC gamers”. Via Uplay.")
For a couple of years there, we heard every Ubisoft PC announcement with one ear cocked for the tell-tale staccato thump of always-online DRMs banging away in the deep. But despite nascent talk of boycotts, It was never really a question of 
Ubisoft have unveiled their plans for upcoming patches for Far Cry 3 and they are going to be a massive help for any custom mappers. They will also add a new difficulty setting for singleplayer campaigns, as well as the option to reset all the pirate-controlled outposts. It's quite a nifty bundle of features, all told.
dan512 commented on Why I love Far Cry 3's Vaas Montenegro: the best baddie of 2012