akella posts

Uwe Boll to appear in Postal 3 game

by John Callaham Jun 9th 2009 @ 1:00PM

If you ever wanted to do something awful to film director Uwe Boll, you may get your chance. According to Eurogamer, Boll actually paid for the privilage to have his likeness put into Postal 3, the upcoming next game in Running With Scissors' action game series.

Boll, of course, directed the Postal movie that was released in 2008 and according to Running With Scissors head Vince Desi, "Uwe will be presented as himself and of course you can have fun with him, it's Postal!" Postal 3, which is being co-developed by Akella and uses the Source engine, does not yet have a release date.

Filed under: Culture, Action

This Week in PC Games: May 11-17

by John Callaham May 11th 2009 @ 8:00AM

A WWII naval action-strategy game and a co-op shooter that based on a UT 2004 mod are among the highlights of the new games coming to both stores and via download this week. In addition, you can expect to see re-released game collections such as Civilization IV Complete and Left 4 Dead Game of the Year in stores this week.

Battlestations: Pacific: This sequel to Eidos's 2007 Battlestations: Midway lets players take control of the naval fleets of the US and Japan in this combination of strategy and action genre. You can download a demo of the game right now at Big Download.

Gallery: Battlestations Pacific

Continue reading This Week in PC Games: May 11-17

Filed under: Action, FPS, Strategy, Meta BD

Age of Pirates 2 due out May 12

by John Callaham Apr 20th 2009 @ 7:00PM

Russian-based game developer/publisher Akella loves pirate PC games. It's made its share of them over the years, including Sea Dogs, the first Pirates of the Caribbean game (both published by Bethesda Softworks) and Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales. Now comes word that publisher Playlogic will release Akella's latest pirate RPG, Age of Pirates 2, on May 12.

The game (officially called Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships) is an open ended RPG where players can pick from one of four nationalities and one of three character classes (Merchant, Corsair and Adventurer ). They can embark on the high seas in a series of quests. Missions such as plundering cities, ship-to-ship combat and more. You can get more info on the game at the official Age of Pirates 2 web site.

Gallery: Age of Pirates 2

Filed under: Action, RPG

Postal 3 gameplay video Segways into GDC 09

by Steven Wong Mar 29th 2009 @ 2:30PM

Anyone who knows anything about the Postal series can anticipate some of the creative and crazy things this GDC 2009 presentation video shows. This video reveals some pre-beta gameplay footage of Postal 3. If the game will be anything like its predecessors, it will be an open-world game where players can spontaneously go into a murderous rampage, except this time they'll be do drive-bys from Segway scooters.

Download HD Postal 3 GDC 09 Gameplay Video (89 MB)

Filed under: Downloads, Action, Sandbox, Video

Browse through selection of PC game Christmas cards

by John Callaham Dec 24th 2008 @ 3:00PM

It's Christmas Eve which means if you haven't gotten your Christmas cards in the mail yet..well, you're a tad late to the party. Thankfully there's the Internet which can allow companies to release online Christmas cards for everyone to see.

Our sister site Joystiq has collected a number of game industry Christmas cards they have received in the mail and online. However, their gallery doesn't include everything so we at Big Download decided to collect a few other online Christmas cards in our own gallery. The images come from publisher Akella (promoting their game A Stroke of Fate), American McGee's game developer Spicy Horse, Age of Conan developer Funcom, publisher NCsoft (with cute versions of various game characters) and publisher Paradox Interactive who have not one but three different online cards promoting their upcoming strategy-sim game Majesty 2.

Gallery: 2008 PC Game Christmas Cards

Filed under: Culture

Disciples 3 trailer enters a Renaissance

by Steven Wong Nov 25th 2008 @ 6:30PM

This is the official trailer for Disciples 3: Renaissance, a fantasy turn based strategy game scheduled to release sometime in 2009.

Download HD Disciples 3: Renaissance Trailer (537 MB)

Filed under: Downloads, Trailers, Strategy

Disciples 3 video shows off the elven tower

by Steven Wong Sep 5th 2008 @ 7:30PM

A new Disciples III: Renaissance video released, coinciding with the announcement that Akella acquired all rights to the game series from Strategy First. This relaxing video gives a short fly through of an elven tower, but shows off what fans can look forward to as it draws closer to its scheduled 2009 release.

Download the Disciples 3 Elven Tower HD Trailer (52 MB)

Filed under: Downloads, Trailers, Strategy

Akella acquires full rights to Disciples game series

by John Callaham Sep 5th 2008 @ 8:00AM

Canadian publisher Strategy First released a number of smaller PC games in the 1990's and in the early part of this decade, both from third parties and their own internal development studios. They created the Disciples turn based strategy RPG series and produced two games in the franchise before they filed for bankrupcy in 2004 and shut down their internal development studios. Strategy First announced in 2005 that Disciples III would be handled by Russian developer Akella.

This week Akella announced that they have now acquired the rights to the Disciples series from Strategy First (Financial terms were not disclosed). Akella continues work on Disciples III with a planned release date in the first quarter of 2009. It is not clear if Strategy First will continue to be the US publisher for the game.

Filed under: RPG, Strategy

Village Person to appear in Postal III

by John Callaham Jul 10th 2008 @ 8:30AM

Running With Scissors used Gary Coleman as a character in their last title, the open world first person shooter Postal II. Now it looks like the developer is bringing in more pop culture members to appear in the next game, the Source Engine based action game Postal III. Today they named their first such quasi-celeb, Randy Jones of the original line-up of the 1970s disco group The Village People.

Never afraid to "go there", the game will have Jones' voice and likeness used as a leader of a gay biker gang. This will apparently be the first of a series of celebs that will appear in Postal III which should be on display at Akella's booth at E3 next week.

Filed under: Culture, Action, FPS

New Heavy Duty screenshots emerge

by John Callaham Jul 9th 2008 @ 3:00PM

Russian game developer/publisher Akella is set to make an appearance at E3 next week showing off all PC titles in their line-up. One of those titles is the sci-fi RTS game Heavy Duty and today the company released some new screenshots showing the game in action.

One of the more interesting things about Heavy Duty is that it takes place on a planet that you can zoom out from and even rotate rather than the typical flat maps you see in other RTS titles. You control mech-like vehicles on the battlescape and Akella states that the maps will have deformation aspects that will allow for things like landslides.and sinking of the ground to deform the area. Again we hope to see Heavy Duty at Akella's E3 meeting room next week.

Gallery: Heavy Duty