The signal from Sir, You Are Being Hunted developer Big Robot is that they are working on a new game called The Signal From Tölva.
The last we heard from Big Robot they had added networked trombones to Sir, You Are Being Hunted. I’m not kidding.
Now, they’ve announced the new open-world FPS, TheSignal From Tölva. Big Robot have ditched the procedural generation when you launch the game in change for pre-procedural and handcrafted artisanal world to explore. This time Signal will be available for macOS and Windows. Last time Sir was available for those as well as Linux. I’ve shot an email off to the plus-sized metal creature asking if they’ll be doing Linux this time as well.
Big Robot have more information about The Signal From Tölvaon their blog. It’ll be pushed out the door next year in 2017.
Quake Champions and the new Prey were announced back at Bethesda’s E3 2016 Press Briefing. Both have new trailers out with gameplay footage during the annual Quakecon gathering. That has become Bethesda’s second conference of the year in addition to the traditional giant LAN party.
I was initially pretty psyched for a new multiplayer arena-shooter Quake from id even if the characters looked to be individualized with abilities specific to each.
The new Doom was a huge surprise, even though the multiplayer wasn’t that hot. Maybe they would do a better job with Quake Champions which appears to be solely focused on multiplayer? Well, it turns out to be a little less exciting because a third-party is developing the new Quake.Saber Interactive worked on 2014’s abysmally buggy Halo: The Master Chief Collection, though who is to say if that was an issue with Microsoft’s 343 or one of the four other studios that worked on the bundled collection.
id software had a great collaboration with a third-party when Machine Games made Wolfenstein: The New Order in addition to the standalone expansion, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood.
I don’t doubt that Saber could put a good game together if the right situation arose. Maybe they just need to work with the right collaborator in id software? If not, well, we’ve still got ioquake3.
Prey has fewer question marks, it’s clearly not related at all to the 2006 FPS from Human Head. Instead, Arkane is making it. Their Dishonored from 2012 was excellent as a first-person stabbing simulator.
Quake Champions will have some kind of closed-beta, presumably for people that preorder, in 2017. Don’t pre-order games. Prey is out in 2017.
I don’t usually post about stuff from comic conventions, but since everyone loves Rick & Morty I’ll make an exception for this one. At the San Diego Comic-Con this year the show’s voice of both Rick & Morty, Justin Roiland, showed a video during their panel of the show’s titular characters reading an actual court transcript from Georgia.
Previously it was only available via a shaky-cam video from the convention by an attendee, but now Adult Swim have posted the footage directly. The language is extremely vulgar and hilarious, so you’ve been warned.
When the original Xbox One was revealed, there was quite the uproar as to its size and design. Microsoft didn’t change the overall shape of the Xbox One S, but what it did change makes it look less like my grandmother’s VCR. It’s smaller, white, and offers an interesting use of textures to various parts of its body. While the holes located at the front of the console appear to be for aesthetics, the holes surrounding its perimeter are obviously for venting purposes as I can spot smaller vents that aim directly into them.
It also finally did away with the infamous Xbox power brick as its power supply has been squeezed into the new console’s body. Without a power brick to weigh it down, the Xbox One S feels more portable than ever when combined with its reduction in size and weight. It also has done away with a dedicated Kinect port, which we’re sure won’t surprise many considering how Microsoft has been slowly steering away from motion-based gaming.
It also displays 4K UHD Blu-ray discs as well as upscaling games and other videos to 4K if you have the appropriate display. It sounds like a good upgrade, until you realize that the other new Xbox, codenamed Scorpio, will be out next year with a healthier tech upgrade that actually has more powerful guts than this Xbox One S.
The virtual arcade of the 80’s and 90’s, New Retro Arcade: Neon, has been released to Windows via Steam for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive HMDs as well as regular displays. New Retro Arcade is a 3D arcade that lets you hook ROMs into virtual arcade cabinets as well as virtual consoles. It also has other attractions built-in like skeeball (invented in Philadelphia!), basketball machines, air hockey, and more. The game supports multiplayer, but ROMs won’t be shared to other players so you’re limited to the attractions. You can also modify the arcade to swap out cabinet artwork that matches the games you install along with changing the other in-game art and music.
I played New Retro Arcade back when it was a tech demo, and there is a free demo available on Steam if you didn’t get the chance. Virtual spaces have always been interesting to me since back in the day my friends worked on an avatar chat system called OpenVerse.
