DigitalBattle.com

Order of War dated

Square Enix has set a North American release date for their first World War II game Order of War, which will be September 22nd. The game is being developed exclusively for the PC. Two campaign modes, multiplayer, Deathmatch and Skirmish are included in Wargaming.net’s upcoming RTS.

A single-player demo for the game has been released recently, titled “Road to Paris”. It’s available on the official website.

I’m looking forward to Order of War; it will be interesting to see how the Japanese RPG giant will handle a World War II game.

Heroes of Newerth debut trailer

I told myself I wouldn’t play this game because I would get addicted, but it looks too good to pass up. Anyways, it’s Defense of the Ancients except a whole lot better from what I’ve heard. Right now, the game is in a beta phase, but a few lucky people have been able to get their hands on a key through a Facebook promotion.

The game is currently being developed by S2 Games, the people behind Savage. No word on a release date, but pre-sale for the game has already started for beta members.

Fat Princess lag and connection failures to be fixed soon

Titan Studios recently posted on their blog addressing some of the key issues with their recent strategy game Fat Princess. Players were reporting instances of significant lag and connection failures, so like any developer should, they’re getting right on the problems. The reason behind the lag is due to a flawed matchmaking system, which may match you with a person with a very high ping to the servers.

The developer claims they already have a fix in testing for the lag issues. As for the connection failures, the patch is currently going through official Sony testings, so we can expect a fix for everything very soon.

Read (Titan Studios Dev Blog)

East India Company demo out

The North American retail release for the real-time-strategy East India Company was today, but Europe will have to wait until the 14th. If you can’t wait for that long, you can grab a demo recently released by the game’s publisher, Paradox Interactive.

The demo weighs in at ~790MB, which isn’t bad considering the game has some pretty intense graphics. You can download it over at FileFront.

A nice little video launch trailer was also released yesterday, so be sure to check that out to decide if the demo’s worth your time.

Demigod demo now available

Demigod has been out for months now and yet we still haven’t seen a demo version of the game. Luckily, Stardock has today announced just that, a demo version of Demigod.

Players will reportedly be able to play through all 4 of the game’s multiplayer modes using four demigods; Regulus, Rook, Sedna and Lord Erebus. However, the only map made available for play in the demo is Cataract.

If you’re a fan of the RTS genre, Demigod is definitely a game you should check out. Head here to snag the demo.

Pong creator turns to Battleswarm

It seems that Nolan Bushnell, the mastermind behind Pong and Atari, is returning to the game scene with his latest title, Battleswarm: Field of Honor.

Bushnell describes this game as a mash-up between StarCraft and Starship Troopers in which players will choose between playing the game as an RTS or an FPS.

Below are his comments on the game attributing its creation to wanting to game with his 5 sons:

They’re all avid gamers and like first-person shooters. The problem is, as you get older, you lose some reaction time, and as a result, I’m getting slaughtered by them. A real-time strategy [RTS] game, however, is more my [preference], a good resource game is what I love. Battleswarm is both an RTS and a shooter, a mash-up between StarCraft and Starship Troopers, if you will. You can switch sides, too, if you feel like an RTS instead of a shooter, or vice-versa.

Sounds pretty awesome, can we get a release date?

Read (USA Today)

East India Company launch trailer

East India Company is an upcoming real-time-strategy game brought to you by Paradox Interactive, the same folks who made King’s Bounty: The Legend and Mount & Blade. The game takes you through a history lesson, as you conquer the East Indies as the role of Governor Director.

The game is developed by Nitro Games and will be hitting North American stores tomorrow, followed by an August 14th release in Europe for the PC.

Halo Wars leaderboards wiped due to Xbox Live issue

Robot Entertainment has recently updated the Halo Wars website notifying us that the majority of data stored on the game’s online leaderboards have been lost.

Below is an excerpt from their posting:

An Xbox LIVE technical issue wiped all Halo Wars Xbox LIVE Leaderboards earlier today. This includes all singleplayer, multiplayer and Trueskill™ leaderboards, as well as all matchmaking data. At this time it’s unknown if the data can be restored, resulting in the Halo Wars Leaderboards being reset to original Launch Day status. The Xbox LIVE team is investigating the cause, and they will provide an update to the situation as soon as possible.

So you mean to tell me that they didn’t have backups of this data? What if this had happened with Halo 3?

Dawn of War 2 ‘There is Only War’ patch tomorrow

The new Dawn of War II patch ‘There is Only War’, which has been in beta testing recently, now has a definite release date. Relic Entertainment posted on the official community site that the patch will be available starting tomorrow.

The developers also released a very extensive changelog, listing all of the improvements the patch has to offer. This changelog details numerous bug fixes and balance changes. These improvements differ from what you’ve seen in the beta, so it’s well worth a look.

Make the jump for the full changelog.

More »

Fat Princess out this Thursday

After an unfortunate delay, we finally have the news that Fat Princess will be hitting the PlayStation Network this Thursday, according to the official PlayStation Blog. This is a simultaneous worldwide release, so North American, European, and Asian markets will all get the game at the same time. The Japanese version, however, is still being worked out.

A nice little interview with developers Chris Millar and Craig Leigh from Titan Studios can be viewed after the jump.

Fat Princess will retail for $14.99.

More »

EA releases Command & Conquer 4 debut trailer

The wait between Command & Conquer: Generals and its successor, Command & Conquer 3, was about 5 years. EA seems to be avoiding a repeat as they have just released the debut trailer for Command & Conquer 4.

RTS fans, don’t expect any actual gameplay footage as the trailer features exclusivly what looks to be just cinematics. However, if you’re following the plot of the franchise you’ll be intrigued to hear that Nod head-honcho Kane makes an appearance in said trailer.

EA has no set release date for Command & Conquer 4 but they hope to have it hit the market sometime in 2010. Will the game have what it takes to oust Blizzard’s forthcoming Starcraft II? We’ll have to wait and find out.

Stormrise review — A complicated mess

The RTS games have been pretty much the same over the years, the same controls, same interface types etc. But it’s only been the same because it works, and the small changes that have refined RTS games over the years have made things better not worse. Just look at Supreme Commander for instance, and the map features it introduced when it was released back in 2007.

However, one cannot say the same about Stomrise, an RTS in a post-apocalyptic setting. The developers, Creative Assembly — makers of the successful Total War franchise — have tried to create something new, most noticeably the camera system and controls. A new control scheme called “Whip Select” was designed for the consoles, however, Creative Assembly tried to carry the controls over to the PC version of the game (which we are reviewing). Bad idea. Very bad idea.

You see, PC is the natural home for RTS games. Sure, some have tried to make console RTS games for ages, but they’ve never matched the PC counterparts — the controls were always slow and never really worked as well as a mouse and keyboard (mostly mouse). If someone would take the sluggish console controls and use them on the PC, some would say it was insanity. Others would simply cry “blasphemy!”. This is exactly what Stormrise brings to the PC, sluggish controls that were meant for the consoles. And a lot of other bad things.

Wait, let’s back up a bit. Here’s the story: A series of firestorms wage over the world and destroys most of it. Some people hid underground and went into a cryogenic hibernation, thinking they’ll just pop back in when things cool down. While others stayed above surface and were exposed to the storms, and eventually mutated and became powerful beings called “Sal”. Yes, “Sal”. This of course sets up the two main factions of the game, which duel it out.

Now back to how much Stormrise sucks: first, it’s not really an RTS, as you don’t have a bird’s eye view, you don’t build a base, and you don’t control a lot of units. You control a group of soldiers through a series of battles, but your view is limited to being a camera just above the units, which in and of itself, is not really RTS. One could even argue that the game would have worked better as a third person shooter with some decent squad features. As for the controls, which I mentioned earlier, well, not only were they designed for a console game, but they also happen to suck on the console game. So when you port something like that over to the PC, it’s so bad that it’s almost funny. For the RTS fanatic though, it’s outright insulting. On top of that, you have a horrible camera system that is worsened by the rather tight level design, where your units don’t have much room to move, especially the bigger ones. This usually forces the camera to get stuck behind a wall or place where you can’t see anything.

I won’t go into detailed gameplay mechanics here, because, honestly, it’s pointless. With controls that are so bad, and with a constant frame rate stuttering, even on a high end PC — the game only runs on Vista and DirectX 10 graphics cards, by the way — and the overall buggy release, it doesn’t really matter what else the game has to offer, it’s still ruined. Oh, and it doesn’t have much to offer, in case you’re wondering.

The Good:
Decent voice acting

The Bad:
Horrible controls
Bad camera
Missing a lot of RTS elements
Buggy
Frame rate issues
Boring story
Downright unplayable at times
Vista/DX10 only

Overall score: 1/10

‘There is Only War’ beta now offline, more fixes and balance changes in launch

The “There is Only War” beta period for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II officially ended yesterday night. Although the beta was scheduled to end on the 14th, Relic Entertainment decided to extend the beta to keep it playable for a bit longer, even though no more feedback would be accepted.

The developers mention that the beta was a success, receiving an “overwhelming amount of community feedback and support.” That being said, the retail launch of the patch will be rolling out soon, except this time with even more bug fixes and balance changes unseen in the beta.

“There is Only War” includes eight unreleased multiplayer maps, balance changes, bug fixes, and a map editor.

Read (Dawn of War 2 Community Site)

50% off all Paradox Interactive games this week

For this week only, Steam will be offering a 50% off deal on every single Paradox Interactive game in their library. The Swedish video game developer and publisher is known for its historical real-time-strategy games, such as the upcoming East India Company.

Among some of the titles currently on sale include King’s Bounty: The Legend, Mount & Blade, and the first two Heart of Iron games. The sale ends on July 26th so if you’re in the mood for a fun history lesson, be sure to check out these gems.

Read (Steam)

Plants vs. Zombies review — casual at its best

PopCap, developers and publishers of some of the most fun and addictive games today — especially when we’re talking about casual games — have released something that is destined as an instant cult classic. This time, they’ve given a new spin on the “Tower Defense” concept, where Zombies are on their way to invade your home, and all you have is a piece of lawn and some plants to defend your house. And what plants they are!

The gameplay is simple: place different types of plants — each with their strength and weaknesses — on the lawn (and back lawn, mind you) and try to stop the invading zombies. However, there are different zombies as well, for instance, some can pole vault over your defenses, while others can dig underground as well. Some can even raise dead zombies from the ground, so it’s always a challenge, and forces the player to mix it up. At the start of each game, you pick your seeds for the plants you want — but you have to chose wisely, as there are only a limited amount of slots, meaning a limited amount of plants you can use on a given level. As you progress, new plants are made available, each with their own special offensive and defensive capabilities, and there are 48 different plants in all.

Despite it being a cheap casual game, there are 50 levels in the game, and as you complete the levels, you get new features unlocked. As far as the enemies go, there are 26 types of zombies, which will give you plenty of challenge. On top of this, there are different modes as well, all in all, there’s more playing time to be had here than in most AAA titles. Granted, the few first levels in the game, actually, quite a few levels in the beginning are fairly easy, and some players might misunderstand the game as being too casual at this point. But keep playing, the challenging levels lie ahead, and they’re even more fun than the easy ones.

Technically, the game feels and looks like an advanced Flash game, but there’s nothing wrong with that, especially since Plants vs. Zombies is only priced at $10. The visuals are cute and suit the nature of the game, the sound effects are fun and the music is very moody and suitable for the game. However, as cute as the graphics are, they are not advanced by any means. For instance, you cannot get a higher resolution beyond 800×600, which is kind of a shame, really. But other than that, the game is smooth and bug free.

All in all, Plants Vs. Zombies is PopCap at its best. If you thought Peggle was addictive, this is a whole new level, and it’s gonna keep you playing for a long time. Definitely recommended to casual and hardcore gamers (who could probably use a little break from all the serious fragging — I sure could).

The Good:
Great fun
Lots of replay value
Cheap ($10)
Easy to get into

The Bad:
First half isn’t challenging
Only 800×600 resolution

Overall score: 9/10