A potential bank holiday scenario: You’re halfway through a long weekend buried face-deep in a monitor, blasting through some games. Then, all of a sudden, your body kicks you out of the digitally enhanced stupor, complaining of aching fingers and a distended bladder. Look, you’re getting older. There’s no shame in that. Luckily, with the WCS Europe Season One finals, due to take place this weekend, Blizzard can help you extend that gaming marathon through the vicarious thrill of watching professionals at work.
Matches begin tomorrow, May 25th, at 12:00 PM BST, and again May 26, at 11:00 AM BST. If you just want to skip to the end, the final is being held at 8:15 PM.
Once again, James ‘Kaelaris’ Carrol and Shaun ‘Apollo’ Clark are on commentary duty, with the event being hosted by Paul ’Redeye’ Chaloner. The winner will receive $ 20,000, while the top five players of the league also advance to the 2013 WCS Season 1 Finals in South Korea, held June 7–9. You can watch the full thing live on the WCS Twitch page, or get the VODs from the ESL.
Here’s the full schedule for tomorrow’s event:
13:00 CEST QF #1 – Dimitry ‘Happy’ Kostin vs. Dmytro ‘dimaga’ Filipchuk
14:45 CEST QF #2 – Dario ‘TheLittleOne’ Wünsch vs. Jong Hyun ‘Mvp’ Jung
16:30 CEST QF #3 – Pedro ‘LucifroN7′ Durán vs. Ji Soo ‘fOrGG’ Park
18:15 CEST QF #4 – Jon ‘BabyKnight’ Andersen vs. Ilyes ‘Stephano’ Satouri
And if you want to get an idea of the sort of crazy strategies being deployed in the WCS, here’s last week’s top 5 plays:
Dust: An Elysian Tail, the side-scrolling anthropomorphic action RPG, has finally been swept from its XBLA home, and blown over to the PC chimney… And yes! I can continue this naff metaphor, introducing Steam as the gust of wind that’s carrying it towards its release later today, when it’ll finally settle on the shelf of… er… damn it. Pushed it too far.
The game follows the titular Dust, his sentient sword, the Blade of Ahrah, and its guardian Fidget as they hack-and-slash their way across the world of Falana.
“Battle dozens of enemies at once with an easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master combat system,” says the game’s description, “take on a variety of quests from friendly villagers, discover ancient secrets and powerful upgrades hidden throughout the massive, open world, and uncover the story of an ancient civilization on the brink of extinction as you fight to uncover your own past.”
This PC release brings an increased resolution, keyboard and mouse support, and more performance options. You can find more details over at the developer’s website.
And now I’m going to bombard you with some more screenshots, because hot damn, does this game look gorgeous.
The thing about humans is, you try and do something nice for them, and then they throw it back in your face by raising an army and going to war. Even innocent things, like building a bakery so they don’t starve, will result in more soldiers prowling the floating island you watch over. Well, at least they can defend themselves from bandits… No, wait, they’re charging head-first into a big Greek mythological monstrosity. The other thing about humans is they’re kind of dumb.
That’s what you’ll have to deal with in Skyward Collapse, the turn-based 4X god game from AI War developer Arcen Games. You play as The Creator, who is attempting to help two warring civilizations thrive, without letting either get advanced enough to wipe out their rival. It’s an interesting twist on the god ‘em up genre, and it’s out now through Steam and the developer’s website.
Each turn you alternate between the two factions, placing down buildings and mythological units in order to balance the scales of an escalating conflict. As such, your biggest antagonist is usually you past-self – who you’ll come to resent as the careless jerk that over-empowered one side, and left you desperately scrabbling to bolster an increasingly crippled faction.
Here’s the feature list, courtesy of the game’s website:
“A turn-based strategic god-game where you control neither faction, but instead strive to maintain the balance of power.”
“Make towns and war as the boardgame-like floating continent continues to construct itself around you.”
“Persuade your minions into doing what you want by controlling the circumstances of their (brief) lives.”
“16 gods, each with unique passive abilities and three active powers, help you further your goals as you pass into the Age of Monsters.”
“Level up your player profile by winning games. Twelve unlockable buildings in all!”
“Straightforward controls paired with an intuitive and helpful interface make this an easy title to pick up… but the strategy runs deep.”
“Multiple difficulty levels let you play a very relaxed game up to a nail-bitingly difficult one. There’s no one best way to win!”
“Co-op multiplayer for up to 8 players.”
Skyward Collapse is currently available at a 10% discount on Steam, selling at £3.59 for the next week.
Every entry in the Construct 2 Touch Jam has now been played and tested on an iPhone 5 to provide feedback for developers to keep in mind moving forward.
The results are a mix of NG judging, user reviews and feedback from the Scirra team (developers of Construct 2). We were also fortunate to expand the prize pool from eight winners to ten!
Any winner who already has a full version of Construct 2 will have the option to pass their prize to a runner-up.
Construct 2 HTML5 Touch Jam Results
1st – $ 200 and Steam key for Construct 2 Business Edition
> Magnetized by rocky10529
Magnetized is an awesome game overall and plays great on both phone and desktop.
2nd – $ 100 and Steam key for Construct 2 Business Edition
> Space Hamster by INTiVA
The controls in Space Hamster take some getting used to on a keyboard but were surprisingly good on the phone. It has great level of polish and felt like playing a native phone app. The HUD layout feels like it was made for horizontal mode but on my iPhone 5 the bottom was slightly cropped. It was still playable and worked well in vertical mode.
Human Invasion is fun and plays great on a phone.
> Hexzul by Blacksmith00
The pattern matching theme in Hexzul is clever and sometimes diabolical. This ran great on my phone and was one of the better phone experiences of the competition.
> Seed (Roan Contreras) by toadfrogs
Seed has some unique concepts, good gameplay progression and a very calming presentation. The intro looked really nice on my phone so I was excited to play, but the framerate ended up being not as smooth as I hoped. Still a nice phone game though.
> The Journey to heaven? by viivoices
The Journey to Heaven was off to a great start but when I got to the part where I open and close portals, my character was off the screen. I switched from horizontal to vertical orientation on my iPhone and this solved it. I believe the game should have been able to resize itself properly for a horizontal orientation. The audio worked and the game played well overall, although the touchable objects were really small. Would definitely play best in a proper horizontal mode.
> The Last Man by MVNight
The Last Man is a fun zombie killer and ran great on my phone. My big suggestion is to move the LEFT / RIGHT control arrows further to the right because right now it’s easy to accidentally hit the back button in the bottom left of the iPhone browser.
> Remember the Dead by TheStoepsel2001
Remember the Dead is a fun combination of matching and zombie killing. It really raised the stakes of a matching game for me. It ran slow on my phone on the first attempt but then ran better after a restart.
> FATIGUE demo by EcoPipe
Fatigue is hard as heck with the spike collision. I was happy to see it ran great on my phone but then it consistently froze at the start of level four. Also it didn’t load up as full-screen on my phone, I had to stretch it to fill the space.
> Module Blue by bryanlo
Module Blue looked simple at first but turned out to be a pretty addictive shooter. It also ran great and played well on my phone, which was exciting. The music worked on my phone but there were no sound effects. It also looks like the particle explosions were disabled, probably for performance. As a shooter fan, I did find myself wanting certain bells and whistles, such as enemy ships flashing when hit and dying with a juicier explosion animation instead of a few particles.
Congrats to the winners! It was hard to finalize this list and I hope everyone checks out the runner-ups in addition to the winners.
Anyone who is interested in uploading an HTML5 game on NG should contact me for access! Access will ultimately be open to everyone.
This post will be continued below with feedback on the remaining entries…
Old Price: $ 49.99 New Price: $ 59.99 A full 250 years after the original Guild Wars, massive upheavals, cataclysms, and globe-spanning events have changed the world of Tyria. Human civilization is in decline. Other races are rising up, taking control over large portions of the world; the balance of power has shifted. The dragons have awoken. GameStop Price Drops – All Platforms
Old Price: $ 34.99 New Price: $ 39.99 Donkey Kong’s smash-hit return to platforming is being rebuilt from the ground up and optimized for portable play on the Nintendo 3DS system. Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D will bring all of the ground-pounding, barrel-rolling, platforming action of the original brought to life with stunning 3D visuals. GameStop Price Drops – All Platforms
Price: $ 19.99 ETA: 9/25/2012 UNLOCK THE MYSTERIES OF PANADARIA. You’ve ended Deathwing’s destructive rampage and saved the dragonflights from extinction. Now you must unlock the mysteries of the lost continent and discover the dark secrets of Pandaria’s past. Explore ancient kingdoms hidden since before the Sundering, plunder vast treasures from the depths of forgotten vaults, and rise to defend Pandaria from the shadow of a long-buried evil — before it’s too late. GameStop Now Shipping – All Platforms
Price: $ 19.99 ETA: 10/26/2010 This is the definitive Grand Theft Auto IV experience – The highest rated game of all time is back in this all new Complete Edition. GameStop Now Shipping – All Platforms
Twitter, in a much-needed move to keep its users safer from cyberattacks, is introducing a more secure login process.
The system, called Login Verification, gives users the option to have a verification code sent to their mobile phone every time they log in to Twitter. After a person enrolls, he or she will be able to enter a six-digit code sent via SMS each time the user signs in to twitter.com. The system is designed to provide a second check on top of a regular password to help ensure only authorized users log in.
The feature, which Twitter describes as a form of two-factor authentication, can be turned on from a user’s account settings page.
The release comes after numerous hacks targeted at companies including the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Jeep and even Burger King.
Hewlett-Packard reported a 32 percent drop in profit for its second fiscal quarter, due partly to slower sales of PCs and servers.
HP’s revenue for the quarter, ended April 30, was $ 27.6 billion, down 10 percent from the same period last year, the company announced Wednesday.
The company is battling to turn itself around after some strategic missteps, but it’s doing so against the headwinds of a shrinking PC market and lackluster economy.
Revenue from HP’s massive PC division fell 20 percent in the quarter, led by a steep drop in laptop sales. Its printer division held more or less steady, with sales down 1 percent, HP said.
Seeing a “404 error” or the Twitter “Fail Whale” can really kill a good online buzz. Those kinds of service outages, though, occur on the Internet on a daily basis, as the latest numbers from Outage Analyzer illustrate.
Over the last five months, there have been 1413 full outages worldwide, or about nine a day, and nearly 8000 partial outages, or 53 a day, according to figures from the free Internet service tracker. A full outage results when a web service is unavailable; a partial outage happens when only some of a service’s users are affected.
The numbers are down from previous reporting periods, says Ben Grubin, director of product marketing for Compuware APM, which operates Outage Analyzer. But if you’re knocked off line for an hour or more, that trend isn’t likely to offer much comfort to you.
While full-service outages get the most attention, a partial-service outage is more likely to occur and affect a limited number of individual web and mobile transactions while leaving others completely untouched, Outage Analyzer explained in its report.
Metro: Last Light will receive a barrage of downloadable content this summer and a Season Pass to go with it, Deep Silver has confirmed.
First up, the Faction Pack and Chronicles Pack are story-based affairs that expand on the Metro storyline, while the Tower Pack adds a unique solo challenge specifically for veteran Metro players.
Following these up will be the Developer Pack, which is geared towards more creative players by giving them some ‘interesting tools’ to explore the game world with.
Faction will be first out the door in June, though release dates for the rest of the DLC have yet to be announced.
Finally, Deep Silver announced that gamers can download the M…
The president of GameStop has confirmed that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One games can be resold at the retail giant’s stores.
Tony Bartel told Forbes: “Both Sony and Microsoft have said games can be resold and that’s exactly what we anticipated. It’s a recognised way to make these games more affordable. All three new platforms understand that.
“As people upgraded to PS3 they traded in their old systems and libraries, which is why Sony made the move to not support backwards compatibility with later iterations of PS3. That’s why the ‘buy, sell, trade’ model works well. It enables people to purchase new games by trading in their old ones. We exp…
The CFO of Electronic Arts has said that the publisher will continue to release software for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 until at least 2017.
As reported by GameSpot, Blake Jorgensen said at the Stifel 2013 Technology Conference earlier this week that Sony and Microsoft’s current-generation platforms will be supported for another four years or so.
Among the PS3 and Xbox 360 planned for this year include Battlefield 4, FIFA 14 and a new Need for Speed game. At least two of those games will be heading to next-generation formats.
EA will talk about its plans for PS4 and Xbox One at E3 next month.
Stay tuned to PSU.com for more details.
Jive Software has eliminated the limit on the number of people who can use its social task management application Producteev for free within a company.
It also added new features to the application, including the capability of assigning tasks to everyone in the company, not just to narrower sets of employees involved in a specific project.
“Now you can scale Producteev across large companies and have your entire network [of employees] all taking advantage of it,” said Nathan Rawlins, Jive’s vice president of product marketing.
Producteev strikes a balance between to-do applications aimed at individuals and heavy-duty, complex project management software designed for project leaders, according to Rawlins.
A survey of U.S. utilities shows many are facing frequent cyberattacks that could threaten a highly interdependent power grid supplying more than 300 million people, according to a congressional report.
More than a dozen utilities said cyberattacks were daily or constant, according to the survey, commissioned by U.S. Democratic Representatives Edward J. Markey and Henry A. Waxman. The 35-page report on the survey, called “Electric Grid Vulnerability,” was released on Tuesday.
The report is in response to widespread concerns that hackers could damage parts of the U.S. power grid, causing widespread outages and prolonged economic effects. Markey and Waxman are members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee, which held a hearing on cyberthreats and security on Tuesday.
Power outages and quality disturbances cost the U.S. economy upwards of US$ 188 billion annually, with single outages costing as much as $ 10 billion, the report said. Replacing large transformers, for example, can take more than 20 months.
New network software from Ericsson is designed to make sure mobile users get the best possible connection when there is both a Wi-Fi and a cellular network available.
The software, which Ericsson introduced Tuesday at the CTIA Wireless trade show, is an enhancement to its platform for mobile operators that use Wi-Fi to supplement their cellular networks. It continuously measures which network will work best for a given subscriber and automatically shifts that user’s connection between the two, the company said.
According to Ericsson, this capability can prevent subscribers from being shifted from cellular to Wi-Fi and then kept on the Wi-Fi network even though it’s slower than cellular in their current location.
Why use Wi-Fi?
Many carriers are deploying or partnering for Wi-Fi networks in order to offload data traffic from their cellular systems, embracing so-called heterogeneous networks. In addition to conserving cellular spectrum and capacity, this can give subscribers better connections when near the Wi-Fi networks, which most often are deployed in crowded areas.
Old Price: $ 49.99 New Price: $ 59.99 
Old Price: $ 34.99 New Price: $ 39.99 
Price: $ 19.99 ETA: 9/25/2012 
Price: $ 19.99 ETA: 10/26/2010 
Metro: Last Light will receive a barrage of downloadable content this summer and a Season Pass to go with it, Deep Silver has confirmed.
The president of GameStop has confirmed that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One games can be resold at the retail giant’s stores.
The CFO of Electronic Arts has said that the publisher will continue to release software for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 until at least 2017.