evolved-games posts

Over a year ago, developer Deck13 and publisher dtp Entertainment relesed Venetica in Europe. The action-RPG game looks like it will be making its US debut soon-ish. A listing on the ESRB web site shows the game as coming to our part of the world for the PC and other platforms via publisher Evolved Games.

What is Venetica about? Set in the 16th century, the game has you controlling the character of Scarlett, a woman who finds out she is the daughter of Death (yes, Death is a physical being in this game world). She has to stop the evil plans of Victor, a man who was formerly Death and who is now trying to take over the world via dark magic arts and creatures.

Last week we reported that the ESRB web site had posted up a new entry for a demolition derby-like racing game called Mayhem. Now Australian's ratings board has revealed that the game from publisher Evolved Games is being developed by Left Field Productions.

The California-based game developer has had some experience with driving games in the past, including its most recent release, the off-road themed SCORE International Baja 1000. That's pretty much all we know about this game but since ratings board for two countries have approved it the game is also likely to be released sooner rather than later.

Combing through the ESRB's web site you sometimes encounter games that you didn't even know existed. Such is the case this week with the reveal via the site of Mayhem, an upcoming driving action game for the PC and other platforms from publisher Evolved Games.

The ESRB's rating description of the game shows it to be a driving action game with "demolition derby" like battles that result in the player getting "mayhem" points to unlock new items. Apparently comic book like captions pop up when the player causes multiple crashes. There's no word on who developed the game nor a release date.

Sometimes when you do some random surfing on the internet you never know what you might find. In our case our surfing revealed a previously unknown fighting action game, Jane's Advanced Strike Fighters, from publisher Evolved Games. The modern military flying game is being developer by Trickstar Games, an Australian-based company made up of former team members of the defunct Transmission Games who previous made two WWII based flying action games (Heroes over the Pacific and Heroes Over Europe)

This new title seems to be a mix of flight sim and action game that takes place in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Azbaristan (yeah its pretty corny) with 16 missions and 30 real licensed military fighters. Look for multiplayer support for up to 16 players and a co-op mode for up to four players. It's due out sometime this summer. You can check out a trailer for the game after the jump:

We've been following the . . . interesting way the PC port of Terminator: Salvation has been sent out to retail stores. It was quickly discovered that the retail version of the movie-based action game had an installation bug that was basically a show stopper.

Publisher Evolved Games, to their credit, quickly announced that those copies of the game would be recalled and that folks who already bought the game would get a replacement copy. Now it appears that Evolved Games is trying again as Gamestop has posted up word on their retail web site that Terminator: Salvation will ship (again) for the PC on June 5. Let's hope they got things right this time.

It's one of the bigger blunders in recent PC game release history. Retail copies of the movie adaptation of Terminator: Salvation had a show-stopping bug that prevented the game from being installed. The game's publisher Evolved Games has already stated they are recalling the unsold defective copies from store shelves with replacement (and presumably working) copies shipping in a few days.

But, you may ask, what about all those folks who have already gotten their defective copies of the game? Evolved has set up a support page on their web site with a toll free number people affected by this issue can call. They state, "They will coordinate the replacement and make sure everyone that was affected by the defective disc is taken care of." Again this is just for the PC retail game version; this install bug has apparently not been an issue for downloadable versions of the game via Steam or Direct2Drive.

On Tuesday we reported that people who had bought the retail PC copy of Terminator: Salvation had their enjoyment terminated when the game would not install from the CD-Rom. Today the game's official message board has posted up word that because of this error all PC retail copies are being recalled and new copies (without the error) are being made to ship to stores.

According to the post, "The new copies will be on store shelves in a few days. A replacement plan for all end users that purchased the defective units is currently being set up. Details to get a replacement copy will be announced shortly. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused the end users that purchased the defective copy." This apparently does not affect any PC version that was downloaded via services like Steam.

The just released movie-to-game adaptation Terminator Salvation has apparently got a major show-stopping bug for the retail PC version of the game. The game's official message board has a long thread full of people who cannot install the game from the CD. Instead they have encountered an error message (-5006:0x80070002) when clicking the .exe file.

This apparently is just for the retail box copies of the game; the downloadable versions that can be found on Steam, Direct2Drive and other locations don't appear to have this install bug. A person who identified himself as a GRIN dev team member posted on the message board "The issue is being investigated, and we will get back to you asap". To make matters worse it appears that the support email address and phone number for the game's publisher, Evolved Games, do not work either.

[Thanks Brad for the heads-up]