Thanks to the combined efforts of other people’s birthdays, hangovers and the start of the Premier League season there has been some interesting news that has, until now, escaped our attention. Thankfully a days rest and a Sebastian Larsson volley have proved to be reinvigorating so here are some snippets of news you might have missed throughout the week:
The most heinous of Game Craic omissions comes first: Valve’s confirmation that a new Counter Strike game is on it’s way. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is scheduled for an early 2012 release on PC, Mac, Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network with new maps, characters, weapons, gameplay modes, matchmaking, leaderboards and all of that fancy stuff which you might expect from an update (sequel?) to the most popular online shooter ever. Doug Lombardi had this to say about it:
Counter-Strike took the gaming industry by surprise when the unlikely MOD became the most played online PC action game in the world almost immediately after its release in August 1999. For the past 12 years, it ha
s continued to be one of the most-played games in the world, headline competitive gaming tournaments and selling over 25 million units worldwide across the franchise. CS: GO promises to expand on CS’ award-winning gameplay and deliver it to gamers on the PC as well as the next gen consoles and the Mac.
It’s going to be playable at PAX Prime and the Eurogamer Expo so expect more news after some lucky folk get their hands on it, as it stands only a select few from pro teams have had the chance to test the game. Expect more on this soon.
It’s an usual week when you have so much news coming out of Valve, unfortunately none of it relates to Half Life Episode 3. We do have some leaked screens of Dota 2, which I have included below for your enjoyment:
Not a great deal can be gleamed from them, but they look like a new and pretty version of Dota which is encouraging. There is a $1million Dota 2 tournament taking place at Gamescom next week so no doubt there will be more news to share then.
This weekend is Summerslam, ostensibly the second biggest Pay-Per-View event in the WWE calendar, where John Cena will no doubt be crowned the undisputed WWE champion. Such a momentous occasion called for some Fan Axxess and part of the festivities had THQ announce the roster for the upcoming WWE ’12. Interestingly The Rock appears alongside the usual suspects of Orton, Cena and co. There’s also a nice selection of legends with Demolition, The Road Warriors, Vader, Arn Anderson and Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat. It’s a shame that despite the name change the game looks to closely follow last years Smackdown vs. Raw, personally I think that if they want to release the same game every year with only minor updates they should be looking to ape the N64′s WWF No Mercy rather than Smackdown.
Nintendo never did seem to grasp the concept of online gaming in the same way as Microsoft or Sony insisting they wouldn’t follow suite but integrate online in their own way. And it certainly looks as if they are going to do that as they attempt to put a unique spin on the MMO by filing a patent for the world’s first ‘Massively Single-Player Online Game‘. Gamespot reports that according to the patent application:
Those who want to play games that are more dynamic, not-based on Al and not-pre-scripted like multiplayer games, however, don’t want to ‘deal’ with other people, appreciate the privacy it provides.
It might sound a little odd and anti-social but some of the examples cited actually sound very interesting: where one player might find a pile of materials to build a house the next player to stumble across this area would find the house built by the previous player rather than the raw materials, or the ability to pass messages to people via non-playable characters. No specific games were mentioned but it does sound very Animal Crossing like. I’m looking forward to seeing how something like this could work out.
This week has Gamescom opening it’s doors on Thursday and there will absolutely definitely be news. I am positive of it. We will definitely be seeing Dota 2, Guild Wars, Jagged Alliance Online, Borderlands 2 and loads of other stuff. Rumour has it Starbreeze’s Syndicate game might make a surprise appearance, for this I am especially excited.