Simulation

Gaijin Entertainment, the Russian-based game developer with a Japanese-sounding name, has announced a new PC-only game titled Wings of Prey. This game is a WWII military flight simulator with a pre-order page stating the game will be released in December for $39.99. Pre-orders also apparently get into a closed beta test for the game.

Wings of Prey's press release is boasting of its "Authentic World War atmosphere" with over 40 aircraft and over 50 historically accurate missions covering the air war in Europe. Players can also switch between realistic simulation and a pure fun arcade mode. Four multiplayer modes are promised along with leaderboards, VOIP support, friends lists and other features. You can also look for new plans and missions for the game to be released via download in 2010.

[Via Blue's News]

Monte Cristo Games' city simulation title Cities XL has fulfilled its promise on delivering new downloadable content and today owners of the game can now automatically grab the first such content pack via the game's launcher. Every owner of the game will gain access to three new buildings; a high school, a small family farm and an official Ford car dealership (shown above) where your city's citizens can buy and drive several Ford vehicles.

If you are a subscriber to Cities XL's Planet Offer service you can get even more extra content including a set of Old England style buildings, three new maps and three new mega structures (including the Alcatraz prison). You can get more info on that content at the game's official web site.

Just in case you don't want to shoot endless amounts of virtual zombies, Electronic Arts offers you another choice of game that will also come out on November 17. Today they announced that The Sims 3 World Adventures has gone gold and will ship the same day that Valve's Left 4 Dead 2 is released. Besides the US it will also ship to 60 other contries in 22 language that same week.

This is the first of what will likely mean many expansion packs for the latest version of the people sim game. As the title implies, World Adventures takes your Sims to fictional cities in France, Egypt and China. People who register their copy get some extra content including 1,000 "SimPoints" that can be used to download new in-game items from The Sims 3 store. In addition to the expansion a new version of The Sims 3 will ship to stores the same day with added "holiday" themed content.

[Via email press release]

Valve isn't the only company offering surprise sales of its games. For the past few days Valve has been offering Team Fortress 2 for just $2.50 or $2.49 for a couple of hours each day. Now Electronic Arts is offering a special Halloween themed sale (via it's own download store) for The Sims 3.

Yep, the best selling people sim game is available to purchase and download for today only for $29.99. That's a saving of $20 compared to its normal $49.99 price. Not quite as good as picking up Team Fortress 2 for almost nothing but it will save you some money when the first expansion pack, The Sims 3 World Adventures, is released later in November.

[Via Joystiq]

GameTap's latest addition to its premium subscription service is Evil Genius, the terrifically campy super-spy villain sim-strategy game that was released in 2004 from the now defunct Elixir Studios. As we reported earlier this year, the rights to the game have been bought by Rebellion and the UK developer is thinking about reviving the game and others it has bought from the former Vivendi Games.

GameTap has also freed up one of the chapters of the episodic action game American McGee's Grimm. The episode, Master Thief, was a Halloween-themed chapter in the series when it was first released and in honor of the holiday GameTap is making it available for everyone to play for free for the next two weeks.

It's been a long time since SimCity has seen a new numbered release. The latest in the franchise, SimCity Societies, almost completely forgoes the city aspect to forge into new territory for the series. Monte Cristo has taken up the mantle of the city simulation, and began work on the Cities series, which as seen two releases. The first is City Life, which was hammered for lack of content and general poor quality. The second is the recently released Cities XL, which attempts to revolutionize the city simulation genre by including an MMO-styled component. While ambitious and interesting, Cities XL still falls short of the depth and ease of Maxis' defining series, which is a shame, because it has a lot of potential that was simply overlooked or neglected.

Much like they did when they bought the rights to the Tropico franchise and got a third game in the series published, Kalypso Media is expanding yet again. Today they announced that they have acquired the Airline Tycoon rights from the game's original developers Spellbound.

The original game was released way back in 1998 by Spellbound. A number of follow-ups were released adding new material but a true sequel was never released. Now Kalypso Media plans to publish a true Airline Tycoon II game via their own developer Realmforge. It's currently set for release in the first quarter of 2011.

In related news, The Washington Post has a new article on the recently launched US branch of Kalypso Media. The article goes into how the company got the Tropico rights and states that Kalypso has plans to release 10 games in 2010.

Recently the UK-based Railsimulator.com launched its first train sim product Railworks. The product has already spawned a ton of downloadable add-ons via Steam. Now Auran, the team that has been releasing train sims for years, has announced their latest incarnation Trainz Simulator 2010.

The game is slated for a digital download release on November 16 for $39.99 with a retail version shipping to stores on December 1. In addition to adding new routes and being compatible with all content created for the last version of the game (Trainz Simulator 2009), the dev team is hyping the game's use of SpeedTree, the third party development tool that allows for more realistic looking trees and plants in games. Because that what we want in a train sim; better foliage.

It's downright scary (sorry, had to be done) how many new PC game titles are scheduled for release this week. In addition to a number of original games, PC gamers can look forward to trying out the Left 4 Dead 2 demo (if they pre-ordered) and a new retail collection of all of Firefly Studios' Stronghold games:

Borderlands: Gearbox Software's sci-fi first person shooter blends elementes of an action-RPG in the mix as your characters go on quests on an alien world and deal with lots of monsters and enemies. Much has been made of the near infinite number of weapon variations that can be found in the game and the four-player co-op doesn't hurt either.

This week gamers can be a evil Sith apprentice, a ruthless dictator and other roles in two retail releases and three downloadable titles.

Tropico 3: Publisher Kalypso Media revives this sim game franchise that was first started by 2K Games. Developer Haemimont Games created this third title in the series which puts the player in charge of an island nation. Will you be the typical island tyrant or a more benevolent leader? As usual there are pros and cons to both choices.

We've already had a huge response to our giveaway contest where five of our readers will get a Steam download code for Cities XL, the recently released multiplayer city simulation game from developer Monte Cristo Games. However all good things must come to an end and for our giveaway the end is very near.

You still have until 11:59 pm Eastern Time tonight to head over to our contest page, make a comment and then wait patiently to see if we email you back saying, "Hey, you are a winner." Because let's face it; everyone really wants to be a winner.

Monte Cristo Games' recently released city simulation game Cities Xl promises to not only have players build their dream city but also link with thousands of other players in a massively multiplayer "planet" full of of urban areas. Now Big Download is giving our readers the chance to win one of five Steam codes that will give them access to the full game.

As with most of our contests, entering the giveaway is simple:

• To enter, post a comment on this contest page.
• The comment must be left before 11:59 pm Eastern Time on October 18
  
• You may enter only once.
• Five winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• The winners will be sent a Steam code that can be use to download a full copy of Cities Xl (valued at $39.99 each)
  
• Click Here for complete Official Rules. You must be a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec) who is 18 years or older to enter this contest.

Our thanks to Monte Cristo Games for the donation of the prizes. Good luck.

As part of Microsoft's downsizing earlier this year they elected to close ACES Studio, the in-house studio responsible for the long running and highly successful Microsoft Flight Simulator series. Now a new game developer formed by a number of ACES Studios' former members has announced its presence with the promise of creating some kind of sim game product.

The Seattle-based Cascade Game Foundry claims in their initial press release that they will not only "address the significant hole in the simulation market left by Microsoft's recent departure, it will push new boundaries with the latest in cutting-edge graphics, simulation and web technology." What does this mean? The company's Managing Director Kathie Flood is quoted as saying, "Think of SCUBA diving off Hawaii, traversing the Andes, hiking the Great Wall of China ... the possibilities are endless." Ok, we are thinking about it and it sound cool. Whether this team can pull a simulation like this off and make it entertaining is another matter.

Have you ever wanted to have lots of pop artists from around the world sing songs in the Sims "language" of Simlish? Yep, we haven't wanted that either. But we are apparently getting a whole lot of it in the upcoming expansion pack The Sims 3 World Adventures from EA's Maxis studio.

In addition to expanding the people sim game to other locations on the game's version of Earth, the expansion pack will also add a ton of pop stars and groups from around the world singing their song in Simlish. We've already reported on a few of these artists but the final list can be found after the jump:

We all know there are game concepts that are hatched up by development studios that, for one reason or another, never reach the light of day. This week word came down of two concepts for proposed games in EA Maxis' Sim franchise that never were completed.

A former Maxis team member, Ward Moore, posted up a little info and some concept artwork for SimMars, an RPG-style game where the player had to create and maintain a NASA-style Martain colony. Yet another concept was SimCastle, which had the player maintain a castle structure. Both concepts were canceled in favor of The Sims and quite frankly it sound like it was for the best. The canceled projects sounded like more of the same from Maxis while The Sims took Maxis in an whole new, and obviously mega-successful, direction.

[Via Joystiq]