rebellion posts

Sins of a Solar Empire fans who have been waiting patiently for a new game in the space strategy series will be very happy today with this breaking news story. Developer Ironclad Games and publisher Stardock have officially revealed the next stand alone game in the series, Sins of a Solar Empir: Rebellion. Big Download got a chance to chat briefly with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell via phone last week to get the first few details on the game which is described as a stand alone expansion to the original title which was first released back in 2008 and was followed up with two small downloadable expansion packs, Entrenchment and Diplomacy.

Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion will continue Ironclad's mix of 4X turn-based strategy elements with real time strategy space combat, according to what Wardell told us last week. The biggest change in the game compared to previous installments is that there will be two separate factions that players can control; the Loyalists and the Rebels. Wardell told us that each faction will have their own distinct art style and tech trees that will make playing each faction a different experience.

In addition to the new factions, players can look forward to getting their hands on new ships to command including the truly massive Titan-class ships which Wardell told us are the equivalent to the Super Star Destroyer that the Empire uses in the Star Wars movies. The concept art for the Titan-class ship can be seen above this post. Look for other new ships to be added to the game as well. There will be no single player campaign in Rebellion, which is something that fans of the original Sins have been wanting for some time. Wardell told us that Stardock and Ironclad have wavered back and forth on adding such a feature for the game but ultimately decided against it.

While Ironclad and Stardock have not released in-game screenshots yet Wardell told us that Rebellion will have some graphical improvements for the original game's Iron Engine including better lighting and particle effects and support for larger maps. As with the original game and its two micro-expansions look for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion to have diplomatic features alongside the space combat, exploration and

While Wardell told us last week that Stardock's goal is to release Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion by the end of 2010 he added that both Stardock and Ironclad don't plan to release the game until its ready. Like previous games from Stardock, folks who pre-order the full game will gain free access to Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion's beta test builds. Also previous owners of the original Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity will get a discount when purchasing Rebellion. You can check out the full press release for the game after the jump.

Update: We've updated our article to reflect that the discount for Rebellion will apply to Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity owners

As part of its 14 day holiday promotion, the PC download site GoG.com has just launched its second annual screenshot scavenger hunt contest. Starting today and for the next three days the site will replace one screenshot on 5 different gamercards with a holiday-themed screenshot. That's 20 screenshots in total.

That actually sounds fun all by itself but there's more. If you find all 20 screenshots you can email GoG.com with the games that had their screenshots replaced. The correct entries will be put into a drawing. The grand prize winner will get the entire GoG.com games catalog from three of five of GoG.com's publishers (Annuman Interactive, Atari, Rebellion, Strategy First, or Ubisoft). That means the grand prize winner will get over 40 of GoG.com's games for free.

Evil Genius was a fun 2004 strategy-sim game from the now defunct Elixir Studios that put you in the role of a super-spy themed villain trying to take over the world. The game got good reviews but didn't register in the sales department. UK-based Rebellion bought the rights to the game and re-released it as a digital download game.

Now Rebellion has launched a new Evil Genius game, this time for Facebook (in fact the Facebook game launched a month ago but it was only today that Rebellion set out a press release announcing its presence). Evil Genius: WMD is Rebellion's first game for the social networking genre and lets players become their inner Goldfinger by expanding their crime network and bringing in friends to help.

In order to celebrate the official announcement of Evil Genius: WMD, the original Evil Genius PC game is available to purchase via Steam for just $2.50, a 75 percent savings.

Alien vs Predator players can look forward to four new maps packed together in the Bughunt DLC pack, scheduled to release on July 7th. Bughunt includes the maps "Crash Site," "Furious," "Monument," and Tempest. Two of these maps will support Survival mode, where four Marines join together to stand against an increasing horde of Aliens. Additionally, all four maps will feature environmental hazards and all new weather effects. The Bughunt Map Pack will cost $6.99 and can be purchased on Steam when it releases.

Download HD Aliens vs Predator 'Bughunt Map Pack' Trailer (271 MB)
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See how well your system handles all the bloody, decapitating, action of Aliens vs Predator using DirectX 11 graphics. This benchmark tool measures system performance in addition to showcasing all the DirectX 11 features found in the game. DirectX 11 compatible hardware is required to run the benchmark.

Download Aliens vs Predator DirectX Benchmark (303 MB)
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While the OnLive streaming PC game service has yet to confirm a specific game list that it will offer, it looks like one of them will be Aliens vs. Predator. Gamesindustry.biz reports that the game's developer Rebellion has confirm it is working with OnLive to bring the recent first person shooter to the service.

Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley, speaking at an event in London this week, stated of OnLive, " ... there are some very interesting issues there - I don't know how that's going to scale, for example, and we're looking at the technology right now." OnLive is currently scheduled to launch in the US on June 17 and will launch later in the UK and other parts of Europe.

After taking a little bit of a break on big sales last week, the Steam download service is going CRAZY again with a week long sale of Sega published PC games. For the entire week a special bundle of 23 full Sega games and downloadable expansions are on sale for $89.99. Nornally you would have to spend over $400 to get all of the games in the bundle. You can check out the list of all the games and DLC in the bundle after the jump.

Also, every day Steam will put one game on sale for an even deeper amount. Today's game is the recent Rebellion developed first person shooter Aliens Vs Predator. For one day only you can get the game for $24.99, a 50 percent discount from its normal price.

Developer Rebellion's revival of the Aliens Vs Predator franchise brought in solid sales for its publisher Sega. According to numbers from Sega's parent corporation Sega Sammy the first person shooter sold a total of 1.69 million copies (PC and console sales combined) in the US and Europe during the first quarter of 2010.

The news comes as the publisher reports on its latest financial numbers. Sega managed to bring in a profit of 6.3 billion yen for their fiscal year compared to a loss of 941 yen million for the same period a year ago. However revenues were 121.8 billion yen, a drop of 7.5 percent for the same period a year ago. At the moment the only PC game scheduled for release from Sega in the next year is the long delayed RPG Alpha Protocol which will be released in the US on June 1.

It's been know for some time that UK developer Rebellion is in the middle of shutting down its development studio in Derby. However Gamasutra is reporting that there are now accusations that Rebellion is holding off paying staff members from the Derby studio, which worked on the critical and sales flop Rogue Warrior.

Gamasutra states it received an email claiming to be from the wife of a Rebellion Derby developer but who wished to remain anonymous. The email stated, "Rebellion have failed to pay all the remaining Derby employees any wages owed for April, and any agreed redundancy payments for all those who left during April." When contacted by Gamasutra, Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley repeated their plans to shut down the Derby location but added, "We're in the final stages of this process and for obvious reasons I can't comment on individual or unattributed comments."

GoG.com has put the previous two games in the Empire Earth RTS series in its library and today the DRM-free web site has announced that that they have added Empire Earth III to its game line-up. The game was first released in 2007 by developer Mad Doc Software (now Rockstar New England) and publisher Vivendi Games. As we have reported before the Empire Earth franchise is now owned by Rebellion who have announced tentative plans for more games in the series.

Empire Earth III is now available to download from GoG.com for $9.99. Also, GoG.com has announced a permanent price cut on another game, Beyond Divinity, to just $5.99.