The Civilization 5: Brave New World is bringing a new ideology system to the game, as well as adding some social policies. A new trailer for the expansion goes into a bit more detail on how these will make it easier to become ruler of the known world.
Good old Rockstar, you can rely on it to offer special edition goodies slightly more interesting than the usual cruft and rubbish that wants to fill your shelves. The developer today announced a Special Edition and Collector's Edition for Grand Theft Auto 5, offering in-game goodies like bonus outfits and vehicles as well as feelies from blueprint maps to a Los Santos cap. Also, everyone who pre-orders any old edition gets a blimp. A blimp!
Firaxis and 2K Games have been busy with Apple's iOS platform. On top of Haunted Hollow, the studio behind XCOM: Enemy Unknown has released another free-to-play game for Apple's mobile devices. This one comes from Sid Meier and ventures to the days of World War I. Sid Meier's Ace Patrol is a turn-based strategy game that mixes in enough RPG elements to make you want to fly beyond the free-to-play horizon.
Randy Pitchford must be pretty happy about this. Borderlands 2 has shipped six million units, and is "on track to become the highest selling release in the history of 2K, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in an investors call attended by Joystiq.
Read more: BioShock Infinite and Max Payne 3 sales revealed »
XCOM has been delayed so often and has changed so drastically that it may be hard to keep track of what the game is. Is it still a FPS? (No.) Is it related to last year's XCOM game? (Not really.) Is it still called XCOM? (No, it's now called The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.)
Don't worry if you haven't been able to keep track of The Bureau's many changes. XCOM as it is today can be best summed up as this: Mass Effect, set in the 60s.
The Civilization 5: Brave New World expansion puts new focus on tourism and culture, including a new Cultural victory that lets you besiege other civs with just how cool you are with all the works of your new artists and composers. A new trailer goes into a bit more detail, including how the masterpieces will bring in the tourists.
You often hear the expression "Christmas in July," but this is the first time I've seen Halloween come in May. That appears to be the case in the latest 1v1 turn-based strategy game for iOS from Firaxis (XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Civilization V) and 2K Games. Despite its odd release window, Haunted Hollow proves to be charming and engaging, even managing to overcome many typical free-to-play tropes.
Sid Meier's Ace Patrol is now available on the iOS App Store, and Firaxis has produced a trailer to show off the game in action. The newsreel presentation shows off a few glimpses of the strategic movements, in-air combat, and upgrades available.
The game is still several months away, but Rockstar Games continues to open the Grand Theft Auto 5 goody box wider and wider. Today, released 32--yes, thirty-two--new screenshots for the game, showing vehicles, Los Santos scenery, and the game's stars is various stages of planning destruction.
These new images come only a week after Rockstar released three new trailers, and revealed details about spending money, and the various abilities of Michael, Franklin and Trevor.
Editor's Note: In part 1 of Grand Theft Auto DNA, we explored how vehicles and driving physics evolved over the GTA series. Today, we discuss the role of sandbox environments like Liberty City and San Andreas.
Playing a Grand Theft Auto game is a lot like observing an ant farm. The AI-controlled citizens of Rockstar North's worlds drive around, obey traffic laws or blow red lights, loiter on the sidewalk to panhandle and gab with friends, and throw fisticuffs after getting into a fender bender at the intersection of Columbus and Jade. I've spent hours in each GTA sandbox just driving around, marveling at how alive each world feels.
The clock has chimed thirteen, blood drips down my walls, I hear footsteps in the empty hallway, and a Dracula is biting my neck, which all chilling omens all indicate that XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Civilization developer Firaxis has now launched its first mobile game. Turn-based spooky strategy Haunted Hollow came out this morning on iOS.
Firaxis Games already has one original iOS game in the works, but the popular strategy developer is releasing a new game with Sid Meier's name attached and it is hitting the App Store next week, publisher 2K Games announced announced today.
Editor's Note: In part 1 of our Grand Theft Auto DNA, we dissect the driving system in GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas, and GTA 4 to understand how driving evolved over the course of those series, and how it should work in the upcoming GTA 5.
In August 2001, Sony's PlayStation 2 celebrated its first birthday with little fanfare. More a glorified DVD player than a hot-ticket game machine, the PS2 lacked a system seller, industry jargon for a game so popular that gamers plunked down hundreds of dollars on a console just to experience that one game. Two months later in October, Rockstar North filled the void with Grand Theft Auto 3, an open-world romp where players could hijack cars, splatter pedestrians, treat traffic jams like impromptu destruction derbies, and wage crime sprees.
Grand Theft Auto 5 doesn't really need a lot of hype to get fans excited about the game, but Rockstar has decided to release not one, but three new trailers today. Main protagonists Trevor, Michael and Franklin each get their own videos showing them conducting business in their own way in Los Santos.
After years of silence, the XCOM FPS has resurfaced as a tactical cover-based third-person shooter known as The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. Yet, in spite of a new perspective and a new title, 2K Games insists that their re-revealed game is not a reboot. Instead, it's simply an "evolution" of the long-in-development game.
"The game has not restarted over and over again," 2K Marin VP Alyssa Finley told Shacknews in an interview. "If you look back at the game we showed in 2010, you'll see some of the same enemies, you can see some of the same teammates. This really is an evolution."
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