section-8 posts

It's time for more trailers for Section 8 Prejudice, and these continue to impress us as much as the previous ones. The first, above, details the intricacies of the Swarm gameplay mode, which pits you and a small team of friends against larger and larger waves of bots. It has a developer commentary, as most gameplay videos do, and gives a good walkthrough of both the new mode as well as all the additions to the Section 8 formula that Prejudice is bringing to the table.

The other two videos, after the cut, elaborate on two things briefly shown in the Swarm trailer: fatalities and overdrive. Fatalities are neat animations that play when you kill an enemy in melee, and overdrive is the incredibly fast sprit that can take out other enemies if you hit them head on. While fatalities are more of a show thing, overdrives are an important part of Section 8 and were that way in the original game as well.

Developer Timegate Studios gave gamers its original sci-fi first person shooter Section 8 back in the fall of 2009, The multiplayer-oriented title got solid reviews but was perhaps overlooked by some gamers at the time. A few weeks ago, Timegate made the surprise announcement for Section 8: Prejudice, the second game in the series that's currently set for release in early 2011.

While Timegate is still keeping aspects of this new game to themselves we did get it's design director Brett Norton to give up some more info on the title including its plans for a full single player campaign, improvements to the multiplayer features and more.

It's the first full day of fall but Direct2Drive is still doing daily sales for its "Summer Ends" PC game download sales promotion. From now until 1 pm on Friday you can get big savings on two PC titles (actually more than two). One of the games is Section 8 from developer TimeGate Studios which is priced for the moment for just $14.95. If you haven't played the game before it should prep you for the upcoming Section 8: Prejudice.

The other game is actually five titles: all five games in the X-Com series are in a bundle and for the next 23 hours you can get them all for just $4.95, which is a true bargain.

More and more we are Microsoft's Games For Windows Live being abandoned by developers who first used the service for things like matchmaking, automatic updates and achievements for previous games. Bethesda Softworks used it for Fallout 3 but Fallout New Vegas will use Steamworks. It's the same situation for the sequel to Kane and Lynch and the next expansion pack for Dawn of War II.

2009's PC port of Timegate Studios' sci-fi shooter Section 8 also used Games For Windows Live for the previously mentioned features. But will the recently announced and upcoming sequel, Section 8: Prejudice, stick with it or switch to something else? Fidget put that question to Timegate's Brett Norton who answered with, "Unfortunately, we can't go into our platform or distribution methods just yet." It certainly would be a surprise if the developer stuck with Games For Windows Live at this point as more and more PC games are moving to the Steamworks platform.

Summer's almost over and Civilization V is just a few days away. Get ready for lots of turn-based action!

• Speaking of Civ 5, you can now get some CivAnon merchandice at the Take Two online store.
• The weekly Mutation gameplay mode for Left 4 Dead 2 is a repeat of Healthpackalypse,
• There's an interesting article on Gamasutra on how Timegate got PC-based dedicated servers to run for Section 8's PS3 and Xbox 360 ports.
• A former Realtime Worlds employee talks about his opinions on why All Points Bulletin failed.
• Two Worlds II now has a release date of October 5.

We found Section 8 to be a thoroughly enjoyable, if slightly flawed, multiplayer FPS. It brought back the Tribes legacy in a big an innovative way, after all. Now there's a sequel, and its name is Section 8 Prejudice. It aims to make everything about the original better: an involving story, more multiplayer options, and more goodies to play with. We're pretty pumped, even if Section 8 didn't do as well at retail as it deserved. After all, there's nothing like a little jetpacking around while blowing apart structures and infantry with futuristic guns, and Section 8 delivered that in spades.

Earlier this week developer Timegate Studios made the surprise announcement for Section 8: Prejudice, the next game in its original sci-fi shooter series. Aside from a trailer showing some action-packed gameplay and a "early 2011" release date little info was revealed about this title.

Now GameSpot has posted up the first Q&A about the game with Timegate's design director Brett Norton. He reveals, among other things, that the follow-up will have a true single player campaign this time rather than it being just a training ground for multiplayer. Norton says the single player mode will have "a fully fleshed-out story and vast amount of custom content." As far as multiplayer you can expect more gameplay modes including Swarm which has you and some buddies on top of a fortress and forced to defend it from waves of enemies. There's still no word on who will be publishing the game although it's possible Timegate could publish it themselves (the PS3 port of the original Section 8 was self-published as a digital download).

The original Section 8 was a solid sci-fi multiplayer-oriented first person shooter that appealed to the Tribes fan in all of us. However developer TimeGate Studios was apparently unhappy with how its publisher Southpeak Games handled the release of the title back in 2009 and last December sued the publisher over claims of unpaid royalties.

While there's no word on the outcome of that lawsuit that isn't stopping Timegate from its announcement today of Section 8: Prejudice, the next game in the shooter series. There's no word yet on specific features for the game but GameTrailers.com has a pretty action-packed gameplay trailer that shows off a lot of new environments and other features. The game is due out sometime in early 2011. You can check out the trailer after the jump:

We really liked what Timegate Studios did with their 2009 sci-fi shooter Section 8 so it was a bit of a shock to learn on this April Fools Day that the developer's next game was going to be a prequel to that title. Furthermore, Section 7: Into Harm's Way isn't going to be a first person shooter but an RPG game.

The game, as you can see from the above screenshot, is very much of an old school RPG. In fact Timegate seems to believe that "linear storylines, pausable combat, mandatory food and drink usage, level-grinding, and inventory management" will make Section 7 special. Or at least give it a quick trip to the bargain bins.

Small publisher Southpeak Games has revealed its latest financial numbers for its latest fiscal quarter that ended on December 31, 2009. Revenues for the quarter came in at $10.1 million, which is lower than the company's numbers of $17.3 million from the same period a year ago. Southpeak had a net loss of $2.6 million for the quarter, which is less than the $1.2 million in net income it received from the same period a year ago.

Part of the reason for the lower numbers was a $3.1 million loss due to a court fight in the UK with CDV. Southpeak is also dealing with another lawsuit filed by TimeGate Studios, who claims that Southpeak has withheld royalties from sales of their recent sci-fi shooter Section 8.