First-Person Shooters

Hot off the heels of this past weekend’s PC Gamer Weekender event, Tripwire Interactive has released a brand new trailer for their upcoming first person tactical shooter, Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. The sequel to the smash hit Rising Storm, PC Gamer’s 2013 ‘Multiplayer Game of the Year’, Rising Storm 2: Vietnam will be published by Tripwire Interactive, and is being developed by Antimatter Games, the same team that created the award-winning innovative asymmetric gameplay of the original Rising Storm.

Today’s brand new trailer, Boots on the Ground, reveals the very first in-game footage for Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. The realistic gameplay footage will pull players directly into intense authentic gunplay and visceral first-person action in this brutal recreation of the Vietnam War. Through the lush, but dangerous jungles, to firefights in the streets, across the rolling hills, entrenched deep in the rice fields and even into US Firebases, the environments are as treacherous as they are massive. Choosing sides as either the US forces or the Vietnamese resistance forces, players will experience intense tactical action with up to 64 players in battles, with each force having their own unique abilities and tactical advantages such as Napalm Strikes, Artillery Barrages, surface-to-air missile strikes, traps, ambushes and more.

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam is developed by Antimatter Games and published by Tripwire Interactive for PC and is slated for release in 2016. This title has not yet been rated by the ESRB, but Tripwire Interactive anticipates a rating of “M” for Mature.

Stay up-to-date with the latest Rising Storm 2: Vietnam news and information at the games official website.

Online WWII shooter built in UE4 gives players the power to create like never before

Fallout 4 delivered detailed in-game base building content but lacked the depth of multiplayer. Minecraft gave us an immensely collaborative multiplayer experience but with only very basic building blocks. Imagine a game that combined the best of both. Detailed building content in a collaborative multiplayer environment.

Days of War wants to give players both, then give them the option to make their creations functional in an online WWII shooter.

Everyone has their favorite scene from Enemy at the Gates, Saving Private Ryan, or Band of Brothers: a sniper perched in a clock tower, a hedgerow of artillery in Belgium, the tight alleys of Carentan. It’s great fun to play in these historic settings, but Driven Arts believes it’s just as much fun to build them.

Days of War invites WWII shooter fanatics to join up with their friends and construct their favorite battle scenes, then play them out in the style of classic competitive shooters like Medal of Honor, Day of Defeat, Enemy Territory, and Call of Duty 1 & 2.

The success of Minecraft, Mario Maker, or the base builder in Fallout 4 can all be attributed to player creation being accessible and central to gameplay. It’s given your average player a taste for how fun it is to be a part of building the game you play.

George Rivara, Lead Developer, states, “We’ve seen our friends’ imaginations go wild using the Fallout 4 base builder – building massive and detailed structures just for the fun of it. But after putting in all that hard work into building a base, all you can really do is stand back and admire it. A base is meant to be attacked, and a base is meant to be defended. So we thought, ‘What if we make building as easy as Fallout 4, then give you the ability to share your creations and actually play them with your friends?’ “

“Players will be able to build the same caliber of maps that we can in UE4, without ever entering an engine or tedious editor, lowering the barriers to being a creator. The best creations will be featured to the entire community. But if players just want to design a private HQ for their clan to hang out in and practice on the shooting range, they also have the freedom to do that.” – Lee Snodgrass, Designer

After a decade of players clamoring and even signing petitions for big studios to bring back the classic shooter style, Days of War will be available to for testing this Spring and coming to early access this Summer if successfully funded. Days of War brings with it cutting edge visuals and a powerful in-game player content creation system, all thanks to Unreal Engine 4.

Availability and platforms:
Days of War will join the first batch of shooters built on Unreal Engine 4 in 2016, releasing on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One– Pre-Orders are available now through Kickstarter.

A number of videos are available on the Days of War Kickstarter page. You can find the official Days of War website here.

Independent developer and publisher Rebellion has revealed that the next game in the 10 million selling Sniper Elite series is launching this year for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Set in the immediate aftermath of its award-winning predecessor, Sniper Elite 4 continues the series’ World War Two heritage by transporting players to the beautiful and diverse environments of Italy in 1943.

Covert agent and elite marksman Karl Fairburne must fight alongside the brave men and women of the Italian Resistance to help free their country from the yoke of Fascism, and defeat a terrifying new threat with the potential to halt the Allied fightback in Europe before it’s even begun.

If his mission fails, there will be no Operation Overlord, no D-Day landings, and no Victory in Europe.

True next-gen stealth

Running in native 1080p on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Sniper Elite 4 is the first game in the series built without the constraints of older hardware and aims to deliver the definitive World War Two shooter for a generation.

From sun-drenched Mediterranean coastal towns to colossal Nazi megastructures, daunting forests and giddying mountain monasteries inspired by Monte Cassino, Sniper Elite 4 will offer breathless emergent stealth action and unrivaled sniping freedom across maps many times the size of those seen in Sniper Elite 3.

Key Facts / Assets

• Launching 2016 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC
• Developed and published by Rebellion
• Features dedicated campaign, co-op and adversarial multiplayer modes.

For more info and to view the reveal trailer, head to the new Sniper Elite 4 website.

Just Cause 3: Sky Fortress, the first content pack from the Air, Land and Sea Expansion Pass is OUT NOW for anybody who owns the Just Cause 3 Expansion Pass, with a wide release to follow on March 15.

Sky Fortress contains a brand new set of missions that introduce a new threat – the eDEN Corporation and their huge and terrifying Sky Fortress, with its army of deadly robotic drones. To tackle his deadly new adversary, Rico Rodriguez will use a new upgradeable, rocket-powered, weaponised ‘Bavarium Wingsuit’ fitted with shoulder mounted machine guns and auto targeting missiles – alongside his new ‘Eviction’ personal defence drone and ‘Bavarium Splitter’ assault rifle.

“The new content will fundamentally alter how our players approach the game – we’re really looking forward to seeing how fans adapt to the new Wingsuit,” said Tobias Andersson, Senior Producer at Avalanche Studios. “The new story missions, challenges and gadgets that can be taken into the main game really mix things up, and we can’t wait for players to revisit Medici and start getting even more creative.”

The Sky Fortress pack will be priced at $11.99 / €11.99 / £9.49 whilst the Air, Land and Sea Expansion Pass is available for $24.99 / €24.99 / £19.99. All three content packs will be available before the end of summer 2016 and released one week early to Expansion Pass holders.

More game information available at the official Just Cause 3 website.

Source: Blue’s News

Steam News announces the release of the Windows edition of the Awakening DLC for Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Here’s a rundown on what it offers:

DLC 1 Awakening for Black Ops 3 with all new Zombies and MP content is available now!

The latest installment of Zombies picks up where The Giant left off, as the Origins characters head to Der Eisendrache on a mission to stop the zombie apocalypse.

Go guns up in Black Ops 3 Multiplayer, featuring 4 new maps: Skyjacked, Splash, Gauntlet, and Rise.

• Skyjacked: A reimagined classic that retains the same fast and frenetic gameplay from one of the most popular maps in Call of Duty history.
• Gauntlet: Plays up the core philosophy of Treyarch’s classic three-lane map structure with three distinct environments.
• Splash: Set in an abandoned water park, an imaginative environment with waterslides, a lazy river and a wrecked pirate ship.
• Rise: A Coalescence Corporation construction project catering to a mix of classic Call of Duty cover based combat.

Source: Blue’s News

SQUARE ENIX announces that the Sky Fortress expansion for Just Cause 3 will be released on March 8th for owners of the AIR, LAND AND SEA expansion pass for the action sequel, and that the pack will go on general sale a week after that for those who prefer to buy things after they already exist. They use the occasion to reveal plans to release a patch tomorrow to pave the way for the expansion and also address some issues like long load times and crashes due to memory leaks and other bugs. On a final related note, a new Power of DX12 video from Microsoft revels in the fast adoption of DirectX 12, and reveals a number of titles that will receive makeovers with the new Windows 10 exclusive API, including Just Cause 3. Here’s a recent Sky Fortress trailer, and here’s word on the plans:

SKY FORTRESS contains a brand new set of missions that introduce a new threat – the eDEN Corporation and their huge and terrifying Sky Fortress, with its army of deadly robotic drones. To tackle his deadly new adversary, Rico Rodriguez will use a new upgradeable, rocket-powered, weaponised ‘Bavarium Wingsuit’ fitted with shoulder mounted machine guns and auto targeting missiles – alongside his new ‘Eviction’ personal defence drone and ‘Bavarium Splitter’ assault rifle, all of which can be carried over into the main game.

“The new content will fundamentally alter how our players approach the game – we’re really looking forward to seeing how fans adapt to the new Wingsuit,” said Tobias Andersson, Senior Producer at Avalanche Studios. “The new story missions, challenges and gadgets that can be taken into the main game really mix things up, and we can’t wait for players to revisit Medici and start getting even more creative.”

The SKY FORTRESS pack will be priced at $11.99 / €11.99 / £9.49 whilst the AIR, LAND & SEA Expansion Pass is available for $24.99 / €24.99 / £19.99. All three content packs will be available before the end of summer 2016 and released one week early to Expansion Pass holders.

In preparation for the new content, the main game will also be receiving a new update on Friday March 4th that includes the following fixes:

• Reduced initial loading time and in-game loading screens by 20-50%
• Fixed several memory leaks resulting in crashes
• Reduced a number of random crashes
• Improved streaming of game world
• Some performance optimizations related to hitches and stuttering
• Implemented DLC system in preparation of the Air, Land and Sea packages

More game information available at the official Just Cause 3 website.

Source: Blue’s News

A new patch is now available for Rainbow Six: Siege, updating the tactical shooter to version 2.2. Included are some measures intended to combat cheating, including a ranked kill cam, and the new version also includes spawn kill countermeasures, matchmaking improvements, and bug fixes. All the details are in the Ubi Forums, and here’s word on the anti-cheating stuff from the UbiBlog:

Rainbow Six: Siege is about to become a harsher environment for cheaters because Patch 2.2 is bringing a new wave of fixes designed to deter cheats and exploits, with a special eye toward keeping players from being killed as they spawn. The biggest addition is a “Report” button players can use to flag behaviors they think are suspicious. To help eliminate any confusion about whether an opponent cheated, kill cams are being introduced to ranked matches, letting players see for themselves whether any foul play was involved in their deaths.

Also, tweaks are being made to multiple spawn points across eight maps, in some cases altering scenery to protect Attackers from being immediately killed by Defenders. For example, the Oregon map’s Construction Site now features added fencing and a higher, now-bulletproof wall to keep Defenders from firing on Attackers at the start of the match.

Stretch Goals are now LIVE!

Developer Bulkhead Interactive have announced the eagerly awaited Stretch Goals for the successfully funded World War 2 shooter ‘Battalion 1944’ including responding the community requested British and Russian forces as well as new competitive maps based on the events of D-day. At the time of writing the game is currently 247% funded on Kickstarter with 6 days left to go and Bulkhead have just released a new stretch goal reveal trailer.

For £325,000 the British forces will join the fight with full character sets, animations and cosmetic variation alongside iconic British weapons such as the Lee-Enfeild bolt action rifle and the Sten sub-machine gun. For a further £400,000 the Eastern front will be added to the game, with entire character sets for the The Red Army and German Wehrmacht of the eastern front and will include gritty Soviet favourites such as the PPSh-41, all the way to the Mosin-Nagant used by the famous female Russian snipers of WW2, raising the bar of authenticity and acknowledging the role that women played in the defence of cities like Stalingrad and Moscow and in the destruction of The Nazi Regime in Europe.

If both British and Russian stretch goals are hit, Battalion 1944 will allow players to fight in maps based on both the British and Russian campaigns, expanding Battalion’s competitive map pool to include historical battlegrounds from around the world.

Bulkhead Interactive are also planning on implementing an offline ‘Behind Enemy Lines’ mode, in which players can play competitive maps offline against AI bots and compete for high scores against their friends.

Other interesting stretch goals include; a ‘Currahee Bootcamp’ training map where players can practice or learn the weapon mechanics and movement in an offline environment. A competitive map focused on the events of D-Day, as well as even more cosmetic unlocks and character variation for the main game. For £600,000 the team even aim to add The Pacific Theatre to the game, giving Battalion a breadth of environments to choose from when it comes to competitive map design. The entire list of stretch goals can be seen on the Battalion 1944 Kickstarter page.

Finally, one of Battalion 1944’s most requested features was a single player campaign, which would require a significantly larger development budget. For £1.2 million players will be able to experience events from the allied campaign from the eyes of the soldiers themselves in a fully-fledged single player mode.

“We’ve been closely listening to all the comments we’ve received from the Battalion community, and we’re responding directly through our stretch goals. This was the reasoning behind waiting so long for stretch goals, to give us a chance to listen to our community. We’ve taken the most requested community features and added them to our development checklist with realistic funding goals. This is the sort of money that can help us challenge the modern shooters.” – Joe Brammer, Executive Producer at Bulkhead Interactive.

All the funding received through Kickstarter will be put directly into overall budget of the game. Battalion 1944 was also recently Greenlit on Steam, receiving 18,417 votes from the community to become officially greenlit in just over 1 week.

Watch the Battalion 1944 Final Sprint Trailer here.

More game info available at the Battalion 1944 website.

Eden 3D Editor, Launcher-Based Server Browser, Audio Upgrade, and more

Building towards the Apex expansion, Bohemia Interactive today released a major platform update for their tactical military shooter, Arma 3. The Eden Update features the much-anticipated Eden Editor (3D Scenario Editor), Launcher-Based Server Browser, audio upgrade, and many other improvements. The update is reinforced by a brand new trailer.

The goal of the Arma 3 Eden Update is to enhance the game’s core usability and to cater to custom content creators in meaningful ways:

• Eden 3D Editor – Retaining the beloved simplicity of creating scenarios, the new editor finally adds the third dimension and a lot of desired functionality. More info: Top 10 – Eden 3D Editor
• Launcher-Based Server Browser – Get into multiplayer sessions more easily via better filtering options and Workshop mod support. More info: Top 10 – Server Browser
• Audio Upgrade – A multi-channel amplitude panner and distance-based samples for weapons and explosions add more immersion and fidelity to combat sounds.
• Font – Process information more quickly with a new, easier-to-read in-game font.

In addition to the above, the Eden Update also implements Steam Leaderboards, various scripted system optimizations, parallax ground surfaces, NVIDIA’s HBAO+, and more. The complete changelog (1.56) is available for examination here.

For more information about the Eden Update, go tothe Eden Update webpage - and check out the latest post on the Arma 3 devblog by Creative Director Jay Crowe, in which the Eden Update is further introduced.

The first Just Cause 3 content pack entitled “Sky Fortress” is launching March 2016 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and high end PC and holders of the Air, Land, & Sea Expansion Pass will be able to play it a week before is goes on sale as a standalone download . The new Sky Fortress Trailer is available now.

“If Just Cause 3 is over-the-top action then the Air, Land and Sea Expansion pass aims to stand on its shoulders and reach even higher,” said Tobias Andersson, Senior Producer at Avalanche Studios. “An incredible amount of time has been spent ensuring every new item is fully integrated into the main game and can be used during existing missions. Rico’s new Bavarium Wingsuit will fundamentally alter the core gameplay of Just Cause 3 and we can’t wait to see the crazy stunts that players perform with it.”

Sky Fortress contains a brand new set of missions that introduce a new threat – a huge and terrifying Sky Fortress and an army of deadly robotic drones. To tackle his deadly new adversary, Rico Rodriguez will use a new upgradeable, rocket-powered, weaponised ‘Bavarium Wingsuit’ fitted with shoulder mounted machine guns and auto targeting missiles – alongside his new ‘Eviction’ personal defence drone and ‘Bavarium Splitter’ assault rifle.

The second pack in the Expansion Pass entitled Land Mech Assault will contain another new series of missions that introduce a unique new vehicle that can be carried over into the main game; a heavily armoured mech armed with a gravity gun that allows objects to be picked up and powerfully thrown in any direction. Although the mech is as strong as a tank, it is highly manoeuvrable and agile and behaves unlike anything else in the game.

The Air, Land, & Sea Expansion Pass concludes with the Bavarium Sea Heist – details of which will be revealed in the following months.

More game information available at the official Just Cause 3 website.