piranha-games posts

While the revival of Duke Nukem Forever has mostly concentrated on the single player campaign, the long awaited first person shooter will also have multiplayer modes. The official Xbox Magazine has the first details about multiplayer for DNF (supplied by developer Piranha Games) and the fan site Duke4.net has posted up some (most likely illegal) scans of the magazine's story.

Much like the recent Call of Duty and Battlefield games, multiplayer matches in Duke Nukem Forever will allow players to have persistent stats and leveling up of their player characters. Unfortunately the player cap for the Xbox port is 8 players (it might be bigger for the PC version)
Multiplayer will include access to the jetpack which won't be in the single player campaign. There's all the old favorite weapons from Duke Nukem 3D including the HoloDuke which adds one neat feature; while using HoloDuke your character is now cloaked.

There will be 10 maps at launch and four modes: Dukematch, Team Dukematch, Hail to the King (basically King of the Hill mode) and our favorite Capture the Babe. Yes, it's CTF with the flag turned into a lady who can sometimes freak out while your player character is holding her. The maps will include a revival of Duke Nukem 3D's Duke Burger level, except that the players appear to be miniatures running around in a giant world. A multiplayer demo is planned for release before the game ships in early May.

Over a year ago it was announced that developer Piranha Games was developing a new Mechwarrior game after a hiatus of several years for the sci-fi action game franchise. Now comes word that another developer, MekTek, that helped to bring us a free version of Mechwarrior 4 is developing its own game set in the same game universe.

That game, as revealed at IndieDB.com, is Solaris Assault Tech, a multiplayer-oriented game where the 50-foot mech battle each other in arena-style combat. The game is being developed by using Epic Games' UDK engine tools. MekTek says it is working directly with MechWarrior's owners at Smith and Tinker on this game for a commercial release. The studio has also consulted with Piranha Games, saying, "We learned that our project will not interfere with commercial development as their title is not an Arena game." MekTek hopes Solaris Assault Tech could serve as a commercial expansion to Piranha Games' project.

It looks like Gearbox Software isn't the only developer involved in the making of Duke Nukem Forever. The game's official web site has gone live and shows that two more teams, along with Gearbox and 3D Realms, are involved in the making of the long awaited first person shooter.

One is Piranha Games, a veteran game developer in Vancouver that got lots of attention in 2009 when it announced plans to make a new MechWarrior game (there been no updates on that project since the initial announcement, by the way). The other developer is Triptych Games, a new developer based in Gearbox's home town of Plano Texas and made up mostly of former 3D Realms employees. There's no word on what these two teams will be responsible for in the making of Duke Nukem Forever. In the meantime the site has a link that will let people sign up to join Gearbox's focus testing. That means you might be picked to come to the developer's offices to play test the game.

It's odd that earlier today we reported on the start of the real online NASCAR racing season next week but today word comes through our doors of yet another stock car racing game that has a legendary (some might say infamous) history. Paramount Digital Entertainment, the folks behind last year's downloadable title Star Trek D-A-C, have revealed plans for another high end downloadable game, Days of Thunder.

Yep, the camp classic 1990 movie about NASCAR racing that features Tom Cruise's silliest character name (Cole Trickle) is headed to both the PC and Mac this summer. This is clearly designed as a fast paced arcade game rather than a serious racing sim with four single player modes and multiplayer for up to 12 players. There's an emphais on car damage in this game; take too much on your ride and you will need to pit. And you will either race with or against the cars driven by unseen versions of Cole, Rowdy Burns or Russ Wheeler (ah, Cary Elwes . . . we loved you in Saw). Developed by Piranha Games (the same folks who are doing the upcoming Mechwarrior revival), this title should be available sometime this summer.

Over two years ago MechWarrior franchise owners Microsoft game a mod team called Wandering Samurai permission to go ahead with their free MechWarrior-based mod project for Crysis. Now at long last the mod team has released the first beta for the mod, titled MechWarrior: Living Legends.

Yes, even before the actual official MechWarrior game revival from developer Piranha Games is released you can try out this beta mod which requires the latest version of Crysis, the 2007 shooter from developer Crytek. In the meantime you can check out a launch trailer, which has lots of gameplay footage, from the mod, after the jump.

While developer Piranha Games is working on a revival of the Mechwarrior game franchise, it's looking like the action-sim game series could be getting attention from Hollywood. Our sister site Joystiq, working with unnamed sources, is reporting that a Mechwarrior feature film is in the works.

The movie rights to the franchise are currently owned by The Tornante Company, which is headed up by former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. According to Joystiq the movie version will have a screenplay from Michael Gordon. His previous credits include 300 and this year's G.I. Joe flick. It sounds like any Mechwarrior movie is still a long way from completion but with the financial success of the Transformers films perhaps Hollywood will be more interested in such a project.

PC gamers all over were happy to hear about a revival of the MechWarrior sci-fi action sim franchise earlier this year but now comes word that all may not be all wine and roses with this new version of the series. According to IGN Harmony Gold, the owner of the Robotech franchise, have asked IGN to remove the trailer that was used to introduce the new game series. That trailer has since been released out in the open and has been hosted on a number of sites including Big Download. As of the posting of this article, Big Download has yet to receive such an request to pull the trailer.

According to the story, Harmony Gold claims that there was content used in the trailer that are trademarked by them as part of the Robotech franchise. It's currenty unknown what specific content Harmony Gold objects to in the trailer and there's been no response from developer Piranha Games about this new development.

As predicted in the teaser trailers that were released earlier this week, IGN has now confirmed that a new MechWarrior game is indeed in the works at Vancouver-based Piranha Games but under the supervision of the game's current owners Smith and Tinker. The article is describing the new game as a "reboot" of the MechWarrior franchise and indeed the game is just being called MechWarrior (much like the new Star Trek movie is simply titled Star Trek)..

In an interview about the new game (which doesn't have a release date or even a publisher yet) Smith and Tinker co-founder Jordan Weisman and Piranha Games president Russ Bullock chat at lenght about their plans for the new game which will be firmly in the sim-style of title that the previous PC MechWarrior games were like (no arcade style action here). For your purists our there the game is set around the beginning of the Fourth Succession War in the MechWarrior universe. Features like four-player co-op, possible cross-platform multiplayer between the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game and more are mentioned. The game is also the latest title announced that will be based on Epic's Unreal Engine 3.

All in all it sound like this new MechWarrior will be much like fans of the previous games in the series have enjoyed; a hardcore sim-style experience (gotta keep those heat sinks straight) but with some new features as well. You can check out a proper trailer for the game at IGN's site (and yes, it's supposed to be in-game footage, not a CGI trailer).

Fans have been awaiting a new Mechwarrior game for the PC for years and today a new video hit the Interwebs that suggests that wait may be coming to an end. The 10 second video shows a really big mech-like foot making its presence known on a unsuspecting city street.

So is this truly a teaser for a new Mechwarrior game? We know that Microsoft, who published the last PC game in the series (Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries back in 2002), sold off the Mechwarrior interactive game rights to a company called Smith and Tinker some time ago. That company was formed by Jordan Weisman, who helped to create the Mechwarrior series in the first place when he formed FASA. Voodoo Extreme hints that the developer behind this teaser might be Piranha Games, a Vancouver-based studio who has done a variety of work over the years but nothing quite so high-profile as this. Hopefully we will get more info on this soon.

Update: Looks like IGN will get the reveal of the game early in the morning on Thursday . . . and what do you know; one of the folks who will be interviewed will be Jordan Weisman. Also Voodoo Extreme has added two more teaser trailers to the site that . . . well, don't show that much.