Former Homeworld devs’ Hardware: Shipbreakers gets a stunning debut trailer g21

The debut trailer for Hardware: Shipbreakers, the sci-fi strategy game made by some of the people behind the Homeworld series, shows what can be achieved with just concept art, music and magnificently gruff narration. There's nary a hint of 'gameplay' in this video – which tells the story of a shipbreaker's desire to return home from a mysterious 'graveyard planet' – but it's comfortably the best trailer I've seen all year, evoking the similarly beautiful cutscenes from the Homeworld games. Have a gander below. We don't know much about Hardware: Shipbreakers, other than that it's a "persistent multiplayer" "social strategy game" from Blackbird Interactive, a company made up of former Relic staff, including Homeworld's art director Rob Cunningham and lead artist Aaron Kambeitz. The description on the Facebook beta signup page reveals a little more: "HARDWARE (HW) is a next-generation online social game based on the concept of salvaging resources on a distant, barren planet named LM-27." Next-generation eh? So presumably it's going to be on PS4 or the mythical next Xbox as well. Hardware: Shipbreakers is due out sometime this year, and after watching the following video, you'll wish that "sometime" meant "sometime next week". (Thanks to Kotaku.) The post Former Homeworld devs' Hardware: Shipbreakers gets a stunning debut trailer appeared first on PC Gamer.

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Mod of the Week: Simple Realism for Fallout 3 g21

I'm always excited to start a new game of Fallout 3. The early stages are my favorite: those wonderfully scrappy first few levels where every bottle cap is a fortune, every trashcan a treasure chest. This time around I'm looking for more of a challenge, something to make the early days of my new character, Kurt, even scrappier than usual, but I'm a little daunted by some of the more popular rebalancing mods. Many of them completely overhaul every single element of the game. I'm just looking for something simple. A mod called Simple Realism sounds about right. It doesn't reshape the entire game, it just juices some of the behind-the-scenes math relating to weapons, damage, health, and loot. Perfect. By now you know how Fallout 3 starts, so let's just fast-forward: I'm a baby, I'm at my birthday party, I'm shooting my dad in the butt with my BB gun, I'm bribing my way out of taking the G.O.A.T. test, Butch's head falls off because I'm doing something violent to it, yadda yadda yadda, I've escaped the Vault. Hooray! Pew pew! That's for abandoning me seven years from now, Dad! Pew pew! Now, I'm preparing to heal the various injuries I sustained during my escape. I've got a couple bullet wounds from guards, a few roach bites from saving Butch's Corpse's mother, and my shoulders are probably a little sore from frenziedly beating the Overseer to death with a baseball bat in front of his daughter. Injecting myself with a stimpak, I get to see one of the changes of Simple Realism: my health slowly increases for a few seconds before the injection wears off. There will be no more bringing up my Pip-Boy, injecting myself while the game is paused, and instantaneously recovering health. Health is now recovered slowly, and in real-time, and each stimpack only lasts a few seconds. I head to Megaton, taking a brief moment to stand ankle-deep in the puddle formed by the town's giant unexploded atom bomb. In just a few seconds I've gotten radiation poisoning, which is another feature of the mod: irradiated water is immediately and incredibly hazardous. Why the noisy lunatic praying to the bomb hasn't dropped dead yet, I don't know. I guess he hasn't installed the mod. After selling Moira my collection of Vault jumpsuits, I head back out into the wastes to start some trouble. The Springvale School is nearby and full of raiders, a good place to see how combat has been tweaked. Realism has been tweaked, but surrealism is still intact. Weapon damage has been increased, and shooting someone in the head tends to kill them pretty darn quickly. This definitely smacks of realism, but after creeping through the building and popping raiders in their domes, it seems like it might actually be making the game easier instead of harder. Most of them never even manage to get a shot off at me. Then I step outside and ow ow OW. A raider on a ledge spots me, opens fire, and immediately almost all of my health is gone. Not only do my weapons do more damage to NPCs, but their weapons do more damage to me, which sounds perfectly fair but doesn't really feel fair at this particular moment. I hunch behind some cover, inject a stimpak, and anxiously wait, bullets zinging by my head, as my health slowly creeps back up to tolerable levels. Crouching there as I slowly heal, wondering if the raider will charge me in the meantime, is pretty tense. I actually like this stimpak change a lot. After I finish off the remaining raiders, I head to a nearby overpass and find a few more. I take several of them down, then spot another in the distance. He notices me as well. I also notice he has a sniper rifle. Then I notice I'm dead. Hey man, nice shot. I reload the game, and this time he misses me with his shot but hits the ruined car I'm hiding behind. It explodes. So do I. I'm dead again. Oh yeah. Cars explode pretty seriously in this game. I'd forgotten. On my third or fourth try, I finally manage to drop him with a lucky, long distance pistol shot. I kill the remaining raiders, and I'm excited to find one of them was carrying a flame-thrower. Excellent! I might get to try another feature of this mod shortly: when NPCs are set on fire, they panic and run away, which sounds like some pretty darn realistic behavior. Since I'm out of stimpaks (the mod makes the chances of finding them in stashes quite unlikely) and low on health, I slowly limp back to Megaton (the effects of crippled limbs has been enhanced) and head to the clinic. With stimpaks appearing less frequently in the world, they're more valuable, and thus more expensive, costing 200 caps each. Oddly, the doctor offers to heal me completely for just 100, which should probably be increased. Even more oddly, he doesn't notice as I rob the clinic of every stimpack I can find. You'd think a ragged maniac with a giant fuel tank strapped to his back crouch-walking around the office might make the doctor a little suspicious. I guess the mod doesn't do anything to make stealth more realistic. Ignore me, my odd scuttling, and the opening and closing sounds you're about to hear. Thanks. After selling my collection of refuse to Moira again, I head back out to set some things on fire. A molerat attacks me, I flame him, and sure enough, he flees in a trail of smoke. More molerats approach and it just takes a toot from my flamer to send them sprinting away. Cool! Come back, coward, so I may sear thee once more! I'm keen to see if this works humans, but before I can find one, I stumble upon a Mr. Gutsy robot who is ironically using his own flamethrower to scatter a pack of dogs. Mr. Gutsy, on the other hand, doesn't flee when I set him on fire. I guess robots don't fear the flames the way organic life does. Makes sense. How about a little fire, Tin Man? Rather than trying to burn me back, Mr. Gutsy shoots me with a plasma bolt, which strikes my flame-thrower, instantly breaking it. "My new toy! Nooooo! You'll pay for this, Mr. Gutsy!" is a thing I want to shout but I'm dead roughly a millisecond later from Mr. Gutsy's second plasma bolt. By the way, another thing the mod does is to slow down level progression. For instance, Kurt advanced to Level 2 after escaping the Vault, and currently, Kurt's dead body is still Level 2, whereas in the un-modded game, he'd probably have earned enough XP by now to be closing in on Level 4, and thus perhaps would have survived Mr. Gutsy. Sorry, Kurt! You're probably not enjoying this mod, but I definitely am. Installation: Simple Realism is also simple to install, but there are different installation methods depending on if you have the Mothership Zeta and Broken Steel DLC. Note: you don't need the DLC for Simple Realism, but the installation method is different if you do have it. Rather than try to sum up the various install options, I'm just going to sternly insist you view the Read Me files in the download folders. The post Mod of the Week: Simple Realism for Fallout 3 appeared first on PC Gamer.

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Let’s Reboot… Crimson Skies g21

"Let's Reboot" takes a look back at a classic in need of a new outing or a beloved series gone stale and asks how it might be best redesigned or given a kick up the backside for today's gaming audience. The Rules: Assume a free hand, and a decent budget, but realistic technology and expectations. This week's sacred cow – an air combat game with a heart as big as a zeppelin". See this permanently crinkled forehead, these prematurely silver locks, and this twitchy eyebrow? This is how a person looks when he's spent the last twelve years waiting for a PC sequel to the best light flight game ever made. A chap can do a lot of sighing and head shaking in four and half thousand days. Happily, he can do plenty of pipe-dreaming too. Move those spanners and coffee cups to one side; it's time to unfurl the heavily annotated PC Gamer blueprint for Crimson Skies 2! You look worried. Don't be. We're determined to retain all the stuff that made Crimson Skies Crimson Skies. The player is still a dashing sky pirate, dogfighting dastardly aces and hunting humongous airships in a twisted pre-WW2 world. By drawing directly from the inspirational wellspring – American pulp literature of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s – we're actually hoping the son will be more colourful than the father. HAWX, Jane's Advanced Strike Fighters, Damage Inc… today's frothy flight fare often seems to mistake freneticism for intensity, and physics for frustration. Rest assured, in CS2 you'll never be asked to down fifty bandits in a single sortie. You'll never attempt an Immelmann without a flicker of "Have I got enough speed to make this?' doubt. Because garish HUDs and fussy screen furniture pollute painstakingly crafted period flavour, those that want to fly from a first-person perspective (strongly recommended) will have to rely on panel-mounted instruments and rich audio for mechanical information, and put up with moments when targets disappear behind canopy struts, cockpit rims, and oil smears. Post-release, anyone that goes on the official forum and complains about the lack of a lead-calculating gunnery reticule, bullet-time button, or spin recovery cheat, will be hunted down and hurled into the contra-rotating props of a Hawker Harridan (one of the new Brit planes). Enough of the similarities. Respecting Zipper Interactive's vision doesn't mean replicating it. One of our boldest plans is the ditching of linear mission structure. Drawing inspiration from both Air Power (An obscure yet brilliant fantasy flight sim from MiG Alley master-craftsmen Rowan Software) and the Silent Hunter sub sim series, the follow-up will feature a gloriously replayable go-where-you-like, hunt-what-you-like campaign. Creating a decent seamless North American scenery for use in this mode probably isn't practical (there's just too much topography to model well) hence the decision to move the sky savagery several hundred miles to the south. The Pandora's ravishing new playground will stretch from Miami to Caracas, from the Mosquito Coast to Barbados. Why are Nathan Zachary and the Fortune Hunters now fortune hunting over the Caribbean rather than the North American mainland? Simple. Self-preservation. Since the events immortalised in the original game, the air militias of the disUnited States have grown considerably stronger. Outside of the typhoon season most sensible skywaymen now make their living bushwhacking the freighters and yachts that ply Caribbean air and sea routes. Piracy has returned to its spiritual home. With a bitter civil war raging in Haiti, a huge volcano threatening to blow its top in Martinique, and the recent opening of the Nicaragua Canal, it's a particularly interesting time to be operating in this neck-of-woods. As the Pandora ambles around the strat map, sentient skippers are sure to find themselves getting entangled in intriguing subplots. The Voodoo Vultures, a local pirate outfit, will be a constant threat. The temptation to take sides in the simmering hostilities between British, French, and Spanish colonial powers, increasingly hard to resist. Every dynamically generated ship (air or sea) you hijack will damage your relationship with one or other of the local factions, so, before you rake the bridge or put a torpedo across the bow of that fleeing freighter, it's definitely worth training your spyglass on the rag fluttering above its taffrail. You know how pressing Ctrl+E in most flight sims triggers a bale-out animation and effectively ends your mission? In CS2 things will work a little differently. Because the heroes of pulp air stories like 'The Gorilla of the Gas Bags' and 'Satan Paints the Sky' spend almost as much time out of cockpits as in them, and arsing around in a Just Cause-fashion is endlessly entertaining, the sequel will permit encourage extra-vehicular activity. Port engine blazing on your Balmoral bomber? Activate the autopilot then get out there on the wing with an extinguisher! Need to capture an intact Curtiss Storm Petrel (one of the new American seaplanes)? Tell your co-pilot to get in close, then make the leap! The highlight of the planeless high jinx is bound to be the airship assaults. Warbirds like the STOL-specialising Dewoitine Djinn (a French débutante) can be landed right on top of the game's colossal motherships, allowing aviators to disembark, and gunplay their way down to lavishly decorated passenger gondolas, or rum-scented freight holds. Not for the faint-hearted, boarding isn't a tactic exclusive to players. Anyone that neglects defences (booty receipts can be spent on replacement pilots, repairs, supplies or upgrades) and ventures too deep into the home territory of a rival gang, can expect to find themselves desperately defending their own bridge on occasion. Would it be giving too much away to mention that stealthy nocturnal skyjackings are a Vulture speciality? First-person freedom means you're free to take the wheel of the Pandora, or man one of her turrets during an attack. It also means you can – theoretically – explore every nook and cranny of spectacular new dirigibles like the Fanny Adams (a vast British sugar transport) and the Bacchanalia, a luxury sky catamaran owned by millionaire distiller Ramón Prío. While a few of CS2′s characters, will be familiar to lore lovers, a good portion won't. Byron 'Samedi' Samson (superbly voiced by Don Warrington) the unforgettable leader of the Vultures, should provide some classic comms chatter, as should Aida 'Dusty' Fields (Lucy Lawless) the crop sprayer turned desperado that heads the unspeakably brutal Shrikes. There'll be freshness amongst the flyables and weaponry too. Conventional torpedoes are set to appear in the series for the first time, as is a fiendish form of the parachute mine and an ingenious precursor to the Luftwaffe's Schräge Musik. I've been mentally flying the fleet of new interceptors for a few years now and, if I had to pick a favourite, would probably plump for the Machete Mk II, a converted Spanish sesquiplane favoured by the Vultures. Then again, the bizarre Blackburn Butterfly-Bat, a catapult-launched fighter used for ship protection by the Brits, is also a bit of a sweetie – as you'll discover when Crimson Skies 2 is released in… in… *starts sobbing uncontrollably* The post Let's Reboot… Crimson Skies appeared first on PC Gamer.

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MechWarrior Online will be fully operational by the end of Summer g21

I still haven't seen a single groundhog, but people are already talking about Summer, let alone Spring, like we're absolutely certain it's going to happen. Yesterday, Piranha Games gave us another reason for this damnable Winter to shuffle off and give Spring/Summer their due: the launch (proper) of MechWarrior Online. As revealed at GDC, the stompy multiplayer shooter will exit beta in late Summer, more specifically "no later than" September 21st. Well that is the last official day of Summer. Before its balmy launch, the team are hoping to add a number of new features. Firstly they aim to increase the number of mechs in-game from 8-on-8 to 12-on-12, something that will happen in "the next 60 days". The user interface is also getting a bit of spit-and-polish, which should go well with the revamped community warfare features. You'll soon be able to pledge your allegiance to various houses from the BattleTech universe, including Bungalow, Semi-Detached and… OK, so I'm not exactly au fait with BattleTech. Thanks to Joystiq. The post MechWarrior Online will be fully operational by the end of Summer appeared first on PC Gamer.

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Gorn but not forgotten: Shatner fights his old nemesis in the latest Star Trek game trailer g21

Star Trek: The Reboot 2: The Movie: The Game pulled its Gorns out of its pointy ears the other week, but that was in a silly Making Of video that featured lots of in-game footage of Kirk's famous alien sparring partner, but precious little of William Shatner himself. Sure, he's been replaced by Chris Pine for the recent films/upcoming game, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy a little Shat now and again. Here he is, in the latest trailer, sitting down with an actual Gorn to play a game of Star Trek, before the two inevitably come to blows. This is apparently in advance of some sort of co-operative shooter, but now I'm more interested in a Shat/Gorn fighting game and I won't rest until somebody (Capcom?) makes one. Star Trek the game beams down to the gangster planet known as Earth on April 23rd or 26th, depending on which side of the Atlantic you live on. If you need more William Shatner to keep you satisfied over Easter, here is William Shatner speaking the song Rocket Man. He found a way. The post Gorn but not forgotten: Shatner fights his old nemesis in the latest Star Trek game trailer appeared first on PC Gamer.

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