huxley posts

If you are like most of us, the economy's quick drop this fall may have left you with a lack of cash to pay for that new copy of Left 4 Dead or Far Cry 2. However if you want to play a first person shooter game for free and don't feel like paying for it there are actually quite a number of free-to-play titles out there that you can download and play right now.

Big Download has noticed a growing trend of first person shooter titles that are already out there, in beta testing or coming up in the near future that you can just download and play. Some of these games do have or will have premium fees or micro-transactions to get more content but all of them can be enjoyed for free without the need to pay a cent. We decided to do a quick round-up of just a few of the current and upcoming free-to-play FPS titles. And remember, the best things in life are free..or so we have been told.

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It's been a long, hard road for the Unreal Engine 3 based sci-fi MMOFPS Huxley. The Webzen-developed game was first announced way back in 2005. Earlier this year it was announced that NHN USA had picked up the US publishing rights to the game and planned on launching it as a free-to-play MMO on their web site ijji.com before the end of the year.

Unfortunately it looks like that's not going to happen after all. Big Download has learned that Huxley's launch has been pushed back for the US market until the first half of 2009. We spoke on the phone with NHN USA's PR rep who said that the development team wanted more time to handle the game's localization issues. Huxley has been in open beta in Korea for the past few months.

Last week we had a feature article that took a look at many PC games that are currently being developed in near secrecy with little to no info on what those games are actually like. However, there also also a number of games that have been fully announced, with screenshots, trailers and more and yet even after years of waiting (and in case of one game over a decade) we are still awaiting those titles to finally be released. These are the games that we have decided to put in our Vaporware Vault.

Sometimes a game is officially announced and can ship to stores inside of a year (in a very quick turnaround, Electronic Arts officially announced Need For Speed Undercover in August and it's set for release in November). Sometime it can be two years between the game's reveal and its appearance in stores. However we have seen games take much, much longer. For example the original Max Payne game was announced in 1997 but wasn't released until 2001. The just released Spore was first revealed in March 2005. Valve's Team Fortress 2 was first announced in 1998 but the final, and much changed, version didn't get released until 2007.

So what PC games are we still waiting on? Quite a few and they come from developers both big and small. Our criteria for inclusion in our list of tardy games is that they must have been officially revealed in 2006 or later and that they are not scheduled for release until at least 2009. Many of these games have had little to no info on their status since their initial announcement. The reasons for their delays are sometimes unknown. Yet they all have one thing in common besides having their release dates pushed back. They all could be terrific games. We begin our feature with the grand champion of delayed PC games, Duke Nukem Forever

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An Open Beta for Huxley, WEBZEN's MMOFPS, has kicked off in Korea, according to Business Wire.

"Huxley is a creative, thrilling and immersive adventure, and we are excited to open the break-through game to the mass public for the first time anywhere in the world," said WEBZEN, Inc., CEO Nam Ju "Huxley combines the unmatched Unreal Engine 3-based first-person shooting action with WEBZEN's proprietary networking technology for an online gaming experience like no other. We are expecting great results from the Korean beta, leading to broad anticipation and excitement for Huxley all around the world."

Hailed as the world's very first massively multiplayer shooter, the open beta phase of Huxley will continue until the game's commercial launch in 2009.

Download the Huxley trailer from Big Download.

We've been wondering for a long time about the status of Huxley, the long-in-development Unreal Engine 3 based sci-fi FPS MMO. The game was first announced by Korean publisher Webzen some time ago but little info on the game has been revealed since. Today there's some movement on the Huxley front, at least in the US, thanks to a press release from NHN USA announcing it will release Huxley in late 2008 for the PC in this country and in Western Europe.

According to the press release the game will be released via NHN USA's web portal ijji.com. While that web site offers free-to-play games, the actual business model for Huxley is up in the air, according to a story at Next Generation. This deal apparently only covers the PC version; a previously announced Xbox 360 version of Huxley is still in limbo in regards to a publishing deal.