The Glade 4.0

9 December, 2010: Imminent PlanetSide 2 reveal hinted

Sony is preparing to take the wrapper off a PlanetSide sequel, comments from Sony Online Entertainment boss John Smedley suggest.

Smedley told The Escapist, "We have a very big launch coming in the month of March. It's a big first person shooter franchise that we're really happy with."

Might it be a sequel to widely-enjoyed 2003 MMOFPS PlanetSide, the interviewer asked? "Could be. We haven't technically announced it."

Smedley then told the interviewer that he could say that he had "hinted" that the new PlanetSide was imminent.

"This is the farthest I've gone [discussing it with the press] and the PR people are going to shoot me," he added.

We already know that a PlanetSide sequel is in the works. Last year Smedley revealed the follow-up features, "Massive battles on a scale no other FPS will touch. None of this 64 player stuff. REALLY MASSIVE. With much better organisation, and a tight focus on making sure the action is always going on, with awesome graphics."

Smedley also revealed in The Escapist interview why the game won't simply be called PlanetSide 2.

"We don't have the official name for it. PlanetSide Next is kind of the working title," he explained.

"We've learned some lessons with Everquest II - not one of the better moves that we've ever made. We should have called it EverQuest Something. Having Everquest I and II sit on the shelves at the same time, in hindsight, was probably not the the brightest of moves."

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Delayed
Square Enix moves title from early 2011 to April or later.

By Kris Pigna, 12/16/2010

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

While it was originally planned for release in early 2011 (with some retailers listing it as early as February), today Square Enix announced that Deus Ex: Human Revolution will be delayed to instead release in their next fiscal year, which begins next April.

The delay was revealed along with Square Enix's announcement that it's reducing their earnings forecast for the remainder of its fiscal year by a whopping 91 percent. Part of the reason is in fact because they've moved Deus Ex out of the current fiscal year, although Square Enix also cited the "harsh market feedback regarding a key title" -- almost certainly referring to Final Fantasy XIV.

As for the specific reason behind Deus Ex's delay, it's unclear how much of it had to do with simple market strategizing, and how much had to do with the game needing more time. Square Enix cited "weak sales performance of console game titles that have been newly released during the current fiscal year," and that "we therefore have decided to spend additional time to further polish our upcoming game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, resulting in a shift in release timing from our prior plan of the current fiscal year to next fiscal year." This at least seems to suggest it's partly an effort to close their books on the current fiscal year and bolster their next fiscal year instead.

Certainly, the last time we had a look at Deus Ex: Human Revolution (back during GamesCom in August), we already came away quite impressed. Whatever the reason may be for the delay, hopefully it'll just result in extra development time well spent.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is '25 hours long'
Monday 17-Jan-2011 12:46 PM Testers played for six days... still didn't finish

Deus Ex: Human Revolution will take you roughly 25 hours to complete, developer Eidos Montreal has said.

According to the latest issue of PC Gamer UK - which is with subscribers now - the 2011 sequel is now finally playable from start to finish, and it's meant to take more than an entire day to do so.

"So far with them playing about six hours every day, most of them don't complete the game," producer David Anfossi told PCG of the testing team's six day week.

The producer says he's also pleased with initial reaction to the depth of strategy found in the shooter, telling the mag:

"The ones that are more casual gamers, who are used to more 'corridor, cut-scene, corridor, cut-scene' type of gameplay - they play it that way for a while. Then suddenly, there's this new world that opens to them, and they start getting a bit more creative."

For the full six-page exclusive preview, plus PCG's list of the 100 best PC games of all-time, pick up PC Gamer UK issue 223, on sale from Thursday, January 19.

Will the Cobalt Guard make a return? Who can say?!

I can't say enough about how well planned the "breadth, not depth" philosophy for character progression was. For those not familiar with the game, the original design was such that any piece of equipment could be used by a brand new character who'd spent around 20 minutes (if they were rushing) in the tutorial areas. Further advancement of your character was made by allowing you to be certified to use more variety, to give you more versatility, rather than dangling outright more powerful weapons and equipment out of reach of a newcomer. They fell away from this design principle as they added to the game, though, so I hope they have the good sense to realize how instrumental it was to the game's early success, and how it turned people off as they implemented achievement (kill-count, etc.) prerequisites for new equipment.

Will the Cobalt Guard make a return? Who can say?!

Generally, when a game is going to be bad, I can tell. Even a year away from release, I can usually spot a stinker a mile away, as there are certain things that time simply won't fix. Bad design decisions, poor gameplay flow, a lack of creativity. These are all things that jump out and bite games journalists in the face. You hope things will change, but, 95% of the time, they won't.

With "Deus Ex: Human Revolution," I had no clue whether it was good or not until I played three hours of it last week. The last I had seen of it was at E3 2010. What was shown was a very action-heavy demo where the developers spoke about player choice, but didn't do a very good job showing it. In truth, it was a way to show the world that "Deus Ex" could appeal to the "Halo" crowd. As a fan of the previous games, all it did was make me worried.


Last week, I took a trip up to Eidos Montreal to play the first three hours of the game. This, indeed, would be plenty of time to determine whether the last four years of development time was well-spent.

A ROUGH START

To be honest, the first fifteen minutes had me a bit worried. The game starts with an extremely linear prologue with no player choice, no character customization, no nothing. It played like the first level of "Halo: Combat Evolved." Things were popping out, I was shooting them, but that was basically it. Where was the multi-path gameplay I was promised? Thankfully I didn't have to wait long.

After that initial action-packed prologue, the game shifts dramatically. Certain events transpire and the game's hero, Adam Jensen, is forced to get cybernetically augmented to keep him alive. The game picks up six months after the prologue, as Jensen is returning to his job at a place called Sarif Industries.

WELCOME BACK

Suddenly you're in a large, three-level office building filled with people to talk to, offices to break into, computers to hack. Suddenly I was playing a "Deus Ex" game. For fans of the original "Deus Ex," Sarif Industries is your UNATCO. It's entirely combat free (for the time being, at least) and entirely optional.

Your boss radios you and tells you there's something urgent he needs to see you about. Many players will likely bee-line to the boss's office, get the lowdown, and head off on their next mission. That whole process might take 5 minutes. I spent about 40 minutes exploring. Every single NPC had something different to say (usually about them being surprised I was back so soon and trying to ignore the fact that I had metal eyeballs now). Conversations clued me in on possible side-missions which lead me to offices which had computers with emails and passkey codes for other offices which had vents and credits hidden and so on and so forth.

For those that appreciate this sort of deep-dive exploration, "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" will not disappoint. The developers even said that this sort of open environment was small in comparison to some of the city hubs later in the game. If you want to follow just the main mission line, you can. If you don't, you're going to have plenty of other things to keep you occupied. Suddenly I was beginning to understand why this game took more than four years to make.

Amusingly, it was my quest for knowledge that ended up costing me. After about 30 minutes, the boss radioed again to say that I had dawdled too long and that hostages had died. When was the last time a game told you to be somewhere quick and actually meant it? There was no timer counting down, no phony gameplay elements. Urgent in "Human Revolution" actually means urgent, and showing up late will result in repercussions.

Once the hostages were dead, though, there was less of a rush, so a cruised around for another 10 minutes before meeting with the boss. Thus began the first true mission of the game, which showed the real gameplay flow that would exist throughout.

TAKING YOUR TIME

Here's what I'll say: This game is slow. But not in a bad way. Really it just requires more thought, especially early on when ammo is at premium and you don't have very many powers at your disposal. Watch the video at the top of this post and you'll get a sense of the pacing. That section they're showing off? I died about six times. Three guys with pistols in "Human Revolution" can leave you dead real quick, so you really have to use the environment effectively. I didn't.

I had picked a tranquilizer rifle at the beginning of the mission, but the guards kept waking up their buddies when I knocked them out. My plan to attempt the mission without any causalities (something you can do for the entire game, save for the boss fights) was down the tubes at the first encounter, as I ran out of ammo, melee'd a guy to death, stole his pistol and exploded a nearby gas can. So much for my Nobel prize.

The rest of the mission slowly taught me the right way to play this game: Be patient, be thoughtful, look at your surroundings. At almost every encounter, I would notice two or three different ways to handle it (usually right after I had done it the most clumsy way possible). Stealth is always an option, but why not hack a turret against the guards instead? Out of ammo? Hurl a heavy box at someone's head to knock them out. Like any good "Deus Ex" game, "Human Revolution" gives you options.

A TALE OF TWO DEMOS

The number of options really became apparent when I noticed that another member of the press, sitting right next to me, took about half the time I did to get through the demo. It wasn't because I'm terrible...it was because I wanted to take my time, I wanted to try to be strategic with my encounters, to explore every nook, to read every piece of email. If I wanted to run and gun, that option was there (though an easier difficulty level would've been required), but my path took twice the amount of time and I feel like I digested twice as much of the world.

The game is scheduled for five months from now, and there's definitely still work to be done. Apparently I was working off a build that was three months old, and the controls (which did feel a bit swimmy and loose in my playthrough) have been tightened. There's also been another lighting pass which should hopefully clean up some of the starker-looking character models. But, all things considered, these are relatively minor issues compared to the core. The core, I'm happy to say, is "Deus Ex" to a T.