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Dark Souls II Announced

Today, Namco Bandai have revealed the sequel to the hit Dark Souls is being released. The title named Dark Souls 2 is being developed by FromSoftware and is being published by Namco Bandai Games. The game is coming to the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 devices.

What’s most interesting about this sequel is there will be server based multiplayer for players looking to work together in completing the challenges laid out within the game. As for the excruciating challenge to players from a gameplay perspective, Dark Souls II looks to continue that tradition.

Here are some quotes from the developers –

Dark Souls II retains the core essence of Dark Souls while evolving to present new twists and challenges that are sure to please longtime fans and attract new comers to the series,” says Carlson Choi, Vice President of Marketing at NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. “FromSoftware is going to take a very dark path with Dark Souls II; players will need to look deep within themselves to see if they have the intestinal fortitude to embark on this journey.”

“This new chapter in the Dark Souls saga presents opportunities for us to drive innovation in gameplay design, develop an entirely new story, and expand the scope of the world in which the player interacts with the game. We have taken these necessary steps with Dark Souls II in order to evolve the overall experience of the Dark Souls series,” says Tomohiro Shibuya, FromSoftware Director on Dark Souls II. “The entire development team is striving to make Dark Souls II an experience that is fresh while not forsaking its roots in presenting players with challenging gameplay. Our goal is to surprise and delight our fans with new experiences and plot twists while enticing new players to join our dark journey.”

Be sure to check out the age-gated website here for more info.

More Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance screenshots and trailers released

Today Konami provided a nice little media dump in the form of new gameplay video and screenshots for their upcoming title, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The videos can be seen below and are certainly worth checking out thanks to the killer sword action that Platinum Games has devised for the title as well as some customization options players have for Raiden and the screenshots are also found below and cover the same type of enemies shown in the videos.

As for the enemies in the videos, they are named Ray and Mafutisu and they will be encountered once the game is released Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on February 19th in North America and February 22nd in Europe.

Castlevania Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate release date announced

Castlevania will be seeing another title added to its repertoire says Konami Digital Entertainment. Titled as Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate (long title), the game is to be released exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS on March 5th, 2013 in North America.

What can we anticipate to see in this upcoming title? Well, as the title implies the story will begin 25 years after the events of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Mirror of Fate will exclusively look at the mysterious background of Trevor Belmont, the son of Dracul. With the return of Dracula, Trevor departs from his son – Simon – on a quest to enact vengeance on his mother’s murderer, his father. But before he departs from his son, Trevor hands him a pendant containing a part of the Mirror of Fate.

Be sure to stay updated on the latest “Lords of Shadow” news by checking out Castlevania’s Official Lords of Shadow Facebook page.

First Mars: War Logs Trailer Promised Dubstep Free

Focus Home Interactive and Spiders Studio must be very unimpressed with the state of game trailers today as when releasing the first non-teaser trailer for their upcoming Mars: War Logs, they make it a point of mentioning that it is in fact 100% Dubstep free.  Instead opting for the much slower “Feel the Sunshine” that sets the mood on the mostly red dust planet.

The trailer doesn’t offer too much, but it does show off a little bit of some of what the game will hopefully offer in terms of combat.  Showing a little physical, gun, and cyberpunk-style Technomancer ability as lead Roy Temperance faces off against some seemingly low level guards.  While pretty sparse it will be interesting to see how all those combat elements come into play when out and about in the full RPG world of Mars.

Mars: War Logs will let players fill the role of Roy on the water devoid planet to side with the renegades his been labeled as in Spring 2013 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or PC.  Players can check out the first trailer embedded below.

Upcoming Black Ops II patch nerfs SMGs and raises UAV cost

Today Activison has revealed that Call of Duty: Black Ops II will be getting a balancing patch very soon for the Xbox 360 and the PC and right now actually for PS3 users and while a number of things have been fixed up in patch 1.04, the most notable changes are the nerfs to two items in the game.

First all SMG weapons have been given higher levels of recoil when fired from the hip and reduced bullet penetration to reduce the complaints of their powerful close-combat capabilities. Secondly the UAV scorestreak will now require the player earn 425 points rather than the 350 points that were originally needed.

The rest of the patch notes can be seen below.

New Features & Feature Improvements

  • Added support for posting Live Stream URLs to Twitter.
  • Improved audio/rumble responsiveness when hitting enemies with gunfire.
  • Improved overall communication of Double XP when enabled.
  • AAR better communicates how much XP was earned in each match.
  • Added the ability to “View League Teams” from any player’s Playercard.
  • Added the ability to “View Playercard” from League solo leaderboards.
  • Added a number of security system enhancements.
  • Added Hardcore Kill Confirmed playlist to the Hardcore category

Issues Addressed

  • Fixed a rare hang (“Awaiting Textures”) upon loading into maps when joining a session in progress after fresh boot.
  • Game now resets the Care Package for a non-owner if the owner re-rolls the package using the Engineer perk.
  • Players with Black Hat PDA can no longer hack a Care Package faster than the owner can capture it.
  • Addressed an exploit where modified console hackers could maliciously spread infected films to other users.
  • Added a fail-safe to prevent spawn trapping in CTF.
  • Increased sight checks on turrets to improve spawning algorithms.
  • Fixed a number of new UI error messages reported by users.
  • Addressed a number of issues that would cause friendly/enemy color indicators on equipment and scorestreaks to display as the wrong team.
  • Improved overall Theater and Live Streaming stability.
  • Improved film rendering stability and made progression bar more accurate while rendering a film.
  • Addressed issues which prevented some master challenges from being completed.
  • Precision challenge “Wet Work” will now unlock with 10 kills.
  • The wins challenge will now account for all FFA modes when ending a match with a tie (if you are in the top 3).
  • Players that help with the “Synchronized Attack” challenge now get credit for it.
  • Players will not be able to manually take control of their AGR if they die at the exact moment that their AGR deploys.
  • Emblem Editor no longer closes the current emblem when discarding changes.
  • Players using Ghost will no longer be invisible at all times in Custom Games with the mini-map option set to “constant”.
  • Players using Ghost and a Suppressor attachment will no longer appear on the enemy’s minimap while shooting and moving while a UAV is up.
  • The median for the K/D graph in the AAR is set to 1.0 instead of 0.0.
  • Players can no longer get on top of the shrubs in Nuketown 2025.
  • Thermal vision overlay no longer appears using the VTOL glitch.
  • Kills from the explosion on the explosive crossbow bolt now count towards challenges.
  • Counter UAV no longer remains for the rest of the game after a host migration.
  • Clan tag is no longer locked immediately after prestige.
  • Offline profiles can no longer be exploited to join online games when an online profile is also signed in.
  • Multi-team games no longer count as a tie if an entire team quits.
  • Fixed an area in Express where K9 Unit dogs could get stuck.
  • EMP grenades no longer affect the CODcaster HUD.
  • Party Privacy count no longer affects how many bots will spawn in Combat Training.
  • Shadows seen through sniper scopes now render more correctly.
  • Players can no longer stand on invisible collision in Carrier.
  • “Drop Shot” medal is no longer awarded after standing back up.
  • Players can now copy a custom class to the extra prestige slot.

Gameplay Balancing:

Scorestreaks:

  • UAV: cost increased from 350 to 425.
  • Lightning Strike: added 750ms delay

Equipment/Grenades:

  • Bouncing Betty: increased the grace period between trigger and activation by 200ms.
  • Sensor Grenade: increased the range (now 1000 units), frequency (now 800ms between pings), and amount of time (now 6s) that players appear after explosion.
  • Concussion Grenade: decreased movement penalty and turn speed penalty when hit.

SMGs:

  • All: increased hip fire recoil.
  • All: increased max hip fire spread from 4.75 to 5.
  • All: reduced bullet penetration.
  • MSMC: increased recoil slightly.
  • PDW-57: increased recoil slightly.

Assault Rifles:

  • All: reduced idle sway for more reliable long-range aiming.
  • XM8: reduced lethal range of 3-hit kills from 250 to 50 inches.
  • XM8 + Select Fire: increased recoil.
  • FAL OSW + Select Fire: increased recoil.
  • SWAT-556 + Select Fire: increased recoil.
  • MTAR: Made auto aim values consistent with all other assault rifles.

Sniper Rifles:

  • All: increased hip fire spread.
  • All + Laser Sight: increased hip fire spread.
  • XPR-50: increased recoil slightly.

Shotguns:

  • R870: reduced one-hit kill range by 45 inches.

Pistols:

  • B23R: reduced headshot multiplier from 1.4 to 1.
  • KAP-40: reduced headshot multiplier from 1.4 to 1

Laike’s PC Download Deals 07/12/2012

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It’s shaping up to be a great week to be a frugal gamer. Maybe not as great as a Steam sale week, but pretty close.

The Weekend Deal this week are two great indie games. First up is Hotline Miami at %50 off. This top down shooter is reminiscent of an older simpler age in video gaming and is an absolute steal at $4.99 USD. Pick up your copy here. Next we have FTL: Faster Than Light priced at $5.99 USD (40% off regular price). This rogue like space exploration game is great to play in short bursts but be warned, its extremely addictive. I personally supported this game back when it was on Kickstarter and I don’t regret it at all. I highly recommend picking up this game here.

GreenMan Gaming is running a Winter Voucher week by releasing a new 25% off code that will be valid between 1200 GMT Friday December 7th and 1200 GMT Friday December 14th. These can be applied to most titles on the GMG store on top of any sales. Additionally GMG will be releasing daily codes that provide large discounts on many recently released games. Major deals include 30% off Guild Wars 2 Digital Edition, 35% off Hitman Absolution, 40% off Skyrim, 30% off Fary Cry 3, Assassin’s Creed 3, and the Borderlands 2 Season Pass. The most impressive deal will be on Thursday the 13th of December when Chivalry will be 50% off plus an additional 25% if the coupon is used. Check out the full listing of discounts at GMG and the 25% off code here.

GMG is running a few major sales. I recommend picking up Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition at $4.98 USD, Bastion at$4.49 USD, and Hitman: Blood Money, Tropico 3, World of Goo, Defcon: Everybody Dies all at $1.99 USD each. These prices do not include the extra %25 coupon that can be found in the link above. Most of these games should be eligible for the extra discount. These games are a mixed bag of Steam and GMG Capsule downloader, so read carefully. Check out our review of Bastion here.

Get Games is running a sci fi sale with games up to 75% off. Titles of interest include Deus Ex: Human Revolution for Steam at $7.49USD and Bioshock 2 for $4.99 USD. Check out the full sale here. Read our review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution here and our review of Bioshock 2 here.

Finally, GoG.com is running a Myst themed weekend promo, knocking down the price by  %60 for DRM free downloads of the Myst series, Uru Complete Chronicles, and The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition. The Myst series is a video gaming classic that should be considered a must play for every adventure and puzzle game enthusiast. Check out the sale here.

Rayman Legends release date revealed once more

Many people were disappointed that Rayman Legends would not be a launch title on the Wii U and even more were disappointed that the game wouldn’t even be hitting in the console’s release window. In fact, until now Ubisoft had left fans with only a vague “Q1 2013” release window.

Well today the company chose to be a bit more specific with the game’s release date as Ubisoft announced today that the game will be released on February 26 in North America while gamers in the UK will be able to access it on March 1st. Ubisoft also revealed that a Rayman Legends demo will be available for download on the Wii U eShop on December 13.

BioShock Infinite delayed once more until March 26

If you thought that Bioshock Infinite’s release date was finally set in stone for February 26 then you are unfortunately very wrong. Today Irrational Games boss Ken Levine revealed to the media today that BioShock Infinite was delayed once again and will now be released on the PC, Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 on March 26 next year.

Levine went on to say that “The game has to be the best game it could possibly be,” and that the delay was to make sure that everything in the game was polished and bug fixed. While this delay is certainly disappointing for fans, these gamers would likely prefer the most polished experience possible rather than a buggy experience.

Big Boi and B.o.B. Team Up For Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel

Hip Hop icons Big Boi and B.o.B. were originally tapped for the game’s theme song “Double or Nothing.” Now the two artists will be participating in an exclusive Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel pre order bonus at select retailers. The Hit Makers Kit will add a special T.W.O. contract mission that will star Charles “Chuy” Rendall voiced by Big Boi and Anthony “Baker” Barnes voiced by B.o.B. Each character sports weapons and masks designed by their voice actor. “Partnering with B.o.B on the Army of TWO The Devil’s Cartel theme song and inside the game has been a blast and I can’t wait to load it up, hear the song and see myself in the game,” said Big Boi.

Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel is slated for release on March 28th, 2013 for the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360. Check out more about the game here.

EA Mobile News 12/7/12

EA Mobile has two great pieces of news about The Sims on mobile devices. First off, The Sims FreePlay is celebrating their first anniversary with a giant infographic with interesting statistics about the game. Additionally the Christmas content update has been released bringing the 12 Days of Christmas Quest line where players will get into the holiday spirit by helping Santa complete important tasks. Player’s efforts will be rewarded with a secret present on Christmas day. Additionally new activities like fishing and fashion design are now available for Sims to earn extra simoleons. Check out The Sims FreePlay on iOS here, the Google Play Store here, and the Amazon App Store here.

To celebrate the holidays, EA Mobile is knocking down the price of The Sims Medieval to free for a limited time. Grab your copy on the iTunes App Store here.