activision posts

Last week, the GoG.com web site began to add classic PC games to its library that are currently owned by Activision. Today they add another game from the publisher to their line-up. It's Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption, the 2000 released RPG from developer Nihilistic Software. One of the game's more unique features is the ability in multiplayer for one gamer to be a kind of Game Master as he or she guides and inflences the other players in their quests.

Also added to the game's library is Dark Fall 2: Lights Out, a 2004 mystery adventure from XXy Productions. Both games can be bought and downloaded for $5.99 each.

So, the career progression in Blur's story mode might not be the most original in the world. But that's easy to forgive when racing in a worldwide tour against unique characters using special power-ups to literally knock out the competition. Blur is expected to release this spring for the PC and consoles.

Download HD Blur Beneath the Hood - 'Story Progression' Video (72 MB)
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There are quite a few PC game download services to choose from but none of them are quite like GoG.com. For over a year now the service, started by The Witcher creators CD Projekt, have offered gamers a way to buy some of the best PC games ever made in a DRM-free environment and with pricing that makes them extremely easy to afford. Over the past year the service has added more and more games and publishers to the mix and even added games that no other download site can (legally) offer to consumers.

As we first reported earlier this morning CD Projekt has has officially announced that GoG.com will begin to offer older PC games from Activision's library of titles. Those titles now include games from Activision's merger with Vivendi Games to form Activision Blizzard. Before today's announcement, Big Download got a chance to ask some questions to CD Projekt's co-founder Marcin Iwinski about this development and GoG.com's future. We even managed to sneak in a question about CD Projekt's next big game project, The Witcher 2.

For the past week, the folks at GoG.com, owned by CD Projekt, have had a countdown clock on their site. Usually such a clock means that a major annoncement is coming up. Now the clock has expired and the truth can be revealed. GoG.com has now confirmed it has secured a deal with publisher Activision to offer a number of their older PC games for download in GoG.com's DRM-free format.

The deal also includes offering older games from the now defunct Vivendi Games. Activision acquired the rights to a number of these games when the company merged with Vivendi Games to formed Activision Blizzard a couple of years ago. The first two games that GoG.com is schedled add to their library of titles from this new publishing deal today are the classic Gabriel Knight adventure game and Arcanum, the steampunk RPG from the now defunct Trokia Software. Both are priced at $5.99 each.

For more info on this deal Big Download got a chance to chat with Marcin Iwinski, the co-founder of CD Projekt. Look for that interview to be posted up later this morning.

Next month's DICE Summit is already looking like it will be an interesting one and this week the show's organizers announced that one of the summit's keynote speeches will be conducted by Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard. Kotick has been something of a polarizing presence in the game industry. While the publisher has been highly successful even in the face of the current economic recession Kotick has been accused by some of being more interested in making money than publishing good games.

So it's somewhat ironic that the DICE Summit organizers state that Kotick's keynote speech will "talk about how creative talent drives the video game industry." Hmmmm. It won't be about driving franchises into the ground? How odd. The DICE Summit is still scheduled to be held in Las Vegas with Kotick's speech scheduled for February 17.


[Via email press release]

Steam has delivered yet another automatic patch update to Modern Warfare 2, bringing with it some more bug fixes and changes for the Infinity Ward first person shooter. There's also been some cheats and hacks that have been dealt with in this latest update.

Some of the changes in this latest patch include normalising the sprint speed for the Care Package, Emergency Airdrop, and Sentry Gun marker grenades. They have also improved the placement of sentry guns and also fixed some player collision issues. The patch has also put in some tweaks to improve the mouse latency in the game. All in all it's a fairly minor update.

We are now less than five months away from what is arguably the single biggest week in the game industry; the 2010 edition of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 as it is usually known. The expo's web site has now gone live for its 2010 version with registration now available for exhibitors, media and attendees to sign up to attend the show which will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on June 15-17.

The web site also shows the expo's current list of exhibitors and at the moment there are a few major publishers that are not on the list. The biggest no show is Take Two Interactive, home of the 2K Games and Rockstar Games brand. We've emailed Take Two to see if they have any plans to attend this year's event. Other current major no-shows include Namco Bandai, Southpeak and NCsoft. It also appears that Blizzard won't be joining its publishing partner Activision at E3 again (they bypassed last year's show) Again this list is still in the early stages and its possible that there will be additions made. It's also possible that companies not on the list will be in the LA area during E3 hosting off-site press events.

Update: Take Two has responded to our email request with their spokesperson telling us, " . . . we are planning on taking part as usual at this year's E3."

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board has been the buffer the game industry has used to keep itself from being regulated by the US government. Now a new survey has shown that the vast majority of parent in the US not only are aware of the ESRB ratings but use them when they purchase a game.

The survey, which was conducted by publisher Activision and The Harrison Group, states that 82 percent of parents who play games are aware of the ratings and 70 percent of them use the ratings when purchasing games. 62 percent of parents do some research before purchasing games for kids. The results are based on online interviews with 1,201 game players and their parents.

PC gamers have been waiting for a while to get an update to the PC port of Modern Warfare 2 and late on Wednesday the Steam site provided that automatic update to the Infinity Ward-developed first person shooter. The patch is mostly dealing with fixing bugs and closing some hacks in the title.

Some of the fixes include keeping people with pirated copies of the game from matchmaking with folks who own a legitimate copy of Modern Warfare 2. There are also some textures hacks that have been fixed and a glitch that let players out of a game's playable area has been dealt with.

A teaser trailer for Transformers: The War for Cybertron released, announcing the first recent Transformers game that isn't based off a movie plot. This trailer extends the original teaser with greater detail, showing the motivations behind the civil war on Cybertron. It's an epic struggle between Autobots fighting for freedom and Decepticons battling for control, and players will get a front row seat as they choose which campaign to play. What isn't revealed is a expected release date.

"Transformers: War for Cybertron features two distinct storylines: the AUTOBOT campaign tells a story of heroism to save their home planet against overwhelming odds, and the DECEPTICON campaign tells a story of an unquenchable thirst for power to control the universe. For the first time in a TRANSFORMERS title, fans will be able to play the game with their friends through team-based online co-op, or go head to head in a variety of intense, online multiplayer game modes. The game features a sci-fi art style that introduces to fans the entire living, metallic world of CYBERTRON, as well as all-new visualizations of the iconic TRANSFORMERS characters in their original Cybertronian forms."

Download HD Transformers: War for Cybertron Reveal Trailer (160 MB)
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