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Mythic Lending BioWare a Hand on Star Wars: The Old Republic

Nathan Grayson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:05:38 -0500

With Star Wars: The Old Republic making such lofty claims as being the Death Star to World of Warcraft’s Alderaan, many people forget that the upcoming MMO is actually BioWare’s first. Fortunately, the renowned RPG factory is no longer orchestrating the colossal space opera all by its lonesome. “Yeeeehaw,” we can only imagine Mythic screaming, shortly after the two developers’ recent merger. “BioWare, let’s blow this thing and go home!”

“Oh yeah, without a doubt,” BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk told Eurogamer when asked if Mythic would be lending some of its considerable MMO know-how to Star Wars: The Old Republic’s development.

Moreover, Zeschuk added that the two merged-but-still-somehow-independent companies have a lot to gain from swapping notes – not just for The Old Republic, but for Mythic’s games as well.

“I think we always have lots of opinions to share, Ray and I,” he said. “We've both played Warhammer, and actually I've still been playing it on and off for a while, so I think for us it's not too much a popularity boost as just the fact that we can probably bring perspectives to the table that will be new and perhaps helpful to the guys from Mythic in the same way from an online perspective they can certainly share with us.”

And so, the two companies lived happily ever after, developing games about endless slaughter in pursuit of loot and power. *Sniff* Brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it?

Mirror's Edge

Will Smith — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:45:00 -0500

We love parkour, but next time, please forgo the combat

Here’s the thing about Mirror’s Edge: It’s 85 percent awesome, and we’re as surprised as anyone that the part that’s awesome is the first-person parkour. The running, jumping, and climbing bits are utterly engaging and even transcendent. There’s something liberating about leaping fearlessly from rooftop to rooftop while fleeing from a nebulous anti-freedom force. Unfortunately, for every high you get while soaring through the sky, there’s a painful low in the form of a combat sequence.

And therein lies the rub. The rooftop chases, where the designers were free to build many-pathed courses through the map, are sublime. By confronting the player with a constant stream of risk-vs.-reward decisions—do I take the risky jump to shave some seconds off my time, or the safe jump to avoid death?—and increasing your players speed as she successfully strings together long combos, the game is elevated from the run-along-a-path-on-the-rooftops experience it could have been into something emergent and amazing and wonderful.

And then you go inside. Moving into an office building or a sewer cuts down on the number of potential paths, but even that’s not so bad. The game really falls apart when you stop running from the cops—as an early loading screen tip advises you—and have to start fighting them. Later in the game, you have to disarm and disable your ever-present pursuers in order to open the path forward. This wouldn’t be so bad, except the combat system is maddening at best. While DICE managed to make a spectacular first-person jumping and climbing game, it hasn’t broken the curse of first-person melee combat—we’ve never played a first-person game with good melee combat, and Mirror’s Edge is no exception.

Were melee combat not required to progress in Mirror’s Edge, the game would receive a much higher score. Were melee combat excised from the game entirely, Mirror’s Edge would have undoubtedly received the Kick Ass award.

OTOY Demonstrates Its Server-Side Rendering System

Andy Salisbury — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:11:13 -0500

Sure, everyone’s heard of OnLive when it comes to gaming in the cloud, but few have heard of OTOY.

OTOY is a small company that’s looking to bring server-side 3D rendering to any client. Sure, this sounds pretty standard, but where it differs from OnLive is key – it allows you to play these games from any browser, and any platform with no plugins or downloads. And, thanks to two big partners that go by the names AMD and EA, it could become a reality.

All that’s required of the gamer is a broadband connection and a computer, and you can get games at up to 720p graphics (again, with no plugins or downloads). There’s reportedly also a way to get 1080p graphics, but it’s a bit more intensive.

No word yet on how much this service will cost or when it’ll come to fruition, but it’s looking pretty slick. You can see two videos of it in action here and here.

Image Credit: TechCrunch

Upcoming Casual-Gaming Juggernaut The Sims 3 Pirated Weeks Early

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:37:58 -0500

It would appear that EA’s latest Sims title has fallen prey to the piracy that they so desperately tried to prevent for Spore, and only a few weeks before the game’s official release.

Now, while we won’t officially report on the game leak’s status (because you can’t confirm news like this without engaging in illegal acts), reports have stated that the files are real and working fine. A note included with the torrent is said to read, “Support the software developers. If you like this game, BUY IT!” Seems a like a strange place for morality to come into play, but hey, why not?

Unfortunately for EA the game doesn’t require any type of online activation to play, due to its disc-based copy protection, so pirates will be almost impossible to stop. They have stated on their official site “We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.”

Image Credit: EA

Electronic Arts Sees PC Growing into World's Largest Gaming Platform

Paul Lilly — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:50:54 -0500

What a refreshing change of pace to have a major videogame publisher step forward and not only refrain from ringing the death knell for PC gaming, but to annoint the PC as the platform for games moving forward. That's what Electronic Arts (EA) has done, almost in as many words.

"In terms of distribution, the way we look at a lot of what's happening in the future is, we've got probably a billion PCs out there in the world," said Eric Brown, CFO for EA. "Very rapidly the PC is becoming the largest gaming platform in the world, just not in a packaged-good product."

The comments came during a quarterly earnings call in which EA talked about the digital download market. According to Brown, the online portion of EA's business model is seeing growth by as much as 60 percent year over year.

In a time when it's become vogue to diss on the PC as a gaming platform, EA's comments to the contrary almost makes you forget about the whole SecuROM/Spore debacle. We said 'almost.'

EA Releases Tool to Deauthorize SecurROM'd Games

Paul Lilly — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:03:54 -0500

Good news for Digital Rights Management fans, and particularly for those who take masochistic pleasure in filling their machines with SecuROM-protected titles. Electronic Arts, the company who caused an internet uproar over its custom SecuROM implementation on Spore, has released a SecuROM de-authorization tool.

"Certain EA PC games with SecuROM digital rights management technology allow users to concurrently 'authorize' up to five computers at the same time to play the games, EA states. "Users can then play the game on any authorized computer they choose. If your EA PC game was released after May 2008 and has a machine authorization limit, you can now manage your computer authorizations using EA De-Authorization Tools!"

The De-Authorization Management Tool scans your PC to automatically detect games released after May 2008 with machine authorization limits. You can then download the game-specific de-authorization tool(s) to de-authorize your PC and free up a slot. Alternately, you can skip the scanning and jump straight to the appropriate tool if you already know which games are eligible (see list here).

Thoughts on EA's new tool? Hit the jump and sound off.

Image Credit: EA

PC Mirror's Edge Bounds Over Consoles, Gains Robust PhysX Support

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:07:36 -0600

Mirror's Edge may not be wall-running onto PCs until January, but at least it's sticking the landing. Today, DICE announced that -- if your machine has the cojones to run it -- Mirror's Edge will support PhysX's Newtonian prowess, giving Faith's PC adventure console-eclipXing effects.

"With the NVIDIA PhysX physics engine, the world of Mirror's Edge comes to life with real affects of wind, weapons impact, and in-game movements. Every-day objects within the game become part of the overall experience. Cloth, flags, and banners can now impact weapons and players; ground fog interacts with the player's footsteps; explosions fill the air with smoke and debris; and weapon impacts are enhanced with interactive particles," read the press release.

But how's it look? Well, GameTrailers has a new trailer if you'd like a tantalizing taste of the eye-candy.

So then, MPC readers, now that DICE is sliding a few pieces of realistically billowing cloth under the table, are you cool with the seemingly arbitrary delay? Or is your rage simply too fiery -- fueled by your 143rd run through Mirror's Edge 2D and the completion of ~~our~~ your stark white Mirror's Edge skyscraper case mod, complete with custom Faith action figure?

Mirror's Edge Officially Roof-Running onto PC in January, DLC Too

Nathan Grayson — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:42:10 -0600

Slow and steady wins the race against piracy? That's probably the mantra that came of EA and DICE's recent mind-meld, in which the publisher-developer duo decided to keep lithe heroine Faith from tip-toeing across PC rooftops until 2009 -- at least two months after consolites get their fix.

Now, today, after an almost conspicuously lengthy session of nonchalant whistling and faux-confused shoulder-shrugging, EA has announced a release window for its totalitarian twist on the formula Mario laid forth.

"The PC version of Mirror’s Edge will ship in North America in January 2009," said the press release. But that's not all.

"To keep the action coming after launch, DICE is currently developing downloadable content that will be available at the beginning of the year. More details to be announced shortly."

A late release to keep pirates from affecting sales figures? A spot of DLC to make players think twice about dumping Mirror's Edge in GameStop's used games section? Sounds like EA's really playing things safe with this franchise. It's just a damn shame that we all have to suffer for it.

Actually, "damn" isn't quite potent enough to describe the shame stream that currently plagues this situation. Jump past the break to see a more fitting phrase.

"Mega-damn."