Steam Weekend Deal: 75% Off Penumbra Titles

Giving us a reason to dust off our wallets this weekend, Valve has announced that Frictional Games' Penumbra Overture and Penumbra Black Plague Gold Edition are currently on sale through Steam at a 75% discount. You can buy them separately for $2.50 and $3.75 respectively, or grab both in a package for just $5.00. This hot deal runs from now until June 7th...so don't miss it! :D

East India Company Dated For July

Pinning down an exact release date for us today, Paradox Interactive and Nitro Games have announced that their upcoming RTS, East India Company, will begin shipping to stores on July 28th. Included with the release date news is a two-part video presentation on the game, discussing the different view modes, trading, diplomacy, combat and much, much more! You can check them out via YouTube here (Part 1) and here (Part 2). Cheers!

Ranger expansion pack coming for Elven Legacy in 3Q

Big Russian dev studio 1C: Ino-CO is cooking up a $10 expansion pack for the PC tactical strategy game, Elven Legacy. (If you would like some thoughts on Elven Legacy, go here.)

The expansion pack is bringing another stalwart fantasy icon to the game: the ranger. You play as the ranger Cornelius in the single player campaign, fighting against evil monster dudes, like orcs and skeletons and such.

Released by Paradox Interactive, the expansion back will bring 16 new missions, 3 new heroes, 5 unique artifacts, and 12 new spells to the game.

There is a free demo of Elven Legacy if you want to give the game a whirl - it be downloaded here. The expansion pack is due for the third quarter of this year.

Lionhead's Molyneux promoted to Microsoft Game Studios

Microsoft has seemingly been so pleased with its second-party relationship with Lionhead and its boss Peter Molyneux they've decided to make him first-party, too, heading up Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) Europe.

At MGS he will be overseeing "creative output" of all internal studios on top of Microsoft's third-party studios, meaning leading teams in direction, communication and understanding -- a big job, to be sure.

"The best way for us to make sure our platforms evolve in a way that enables the best creative experiences is to make sure our creative leaders are closely tied into the work that's going on with the platform team," says Phil Spencer, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios. "His role there is to not only help the collaborations and to bring both the thinking from that region back to the platform and Microsoft Game Studios as different things are incubating and being worked on, but the reverse is also true, of taking global knowledge of our platform efforts and different efforts at MGS and help provide context and guidance to those teams."

The news should bode well for the pretty much confirmed title Fable II: We Lost Some Chapters Again, though Molyneux says he won't just be pumping out Lionhead properties:

"What you're not going to see is ten Peter Molyneux games. The value of this role is for someone like myself going in and making those little tiny lights of an idea shine as brightly as possible and ensuring everybody within the organisation clearly understands why we're making those titles, the purpose of those titles and their importance to Microsoft overall. All I'm going to be doing is making sure those lights are as bright as possible. People at Rare and other European studios are super, super bright and creative people and I'll learn as much about design from them as they would from me."

"I'm definitely not going to go in and say 'this is a dumb idea' and 'this is a good idea'. I'm more about making sure they really are doing the experiences they're passionate about. Because passion is really central. That's probably going to involve innovation, I'm going to be pushing them more on the innovation side, especially with project Natal, and saying, 'look, don't think you've got all of your design comforts here any more, let's think of a new way of doing all that.'"

We've already seen a taste of what he has in store for us with the Natal-driven interactive character 'Milo', and can't wait to see what else is planned.

Molyneux will still retain his position as Lionhead boss, presumably by some nature-defying feat.

You have our congratulations at Neoseeker, sir!

Valve Explains Left 4 Dead Sequel Decision

A lot of nerd rage has been vented online over the unexpected announcement of a full-blown Left 4 Dead sequel - Left 4 Dead 2. "Valve is abandoning Left 4 Dead" is the most common complaint, followed by the usual claims that Valve is trying to milk the consumers for more money. Chet Faliszek, one of the project leads at Valve working on Left 4 Dead 2 talked to Ars Technica about the subject. The short version? "Please, don't burn us at the stake just yet. Let us explain!".

"We had some meetings about it, and we all talked about our ideas, and everyone was pretty focused and thoughtful, a lot of the same ideas were happening," Faliszek told me. The team wanted better storytelling, they wanted swamps, and they wanted to include New Orleans. "We wanted the Director to be smarter, but to be smarter it needed more special infected in its stable. For example, the Charger that we see today."

...

"It just became very clear that this was a cohesive, singular statement we wanted to make, not a more slow update t 2235 hing... too much stuff was tied together with too many other things. The Common Infected—now there is destruction in different parts of their body, to ship all the new Common Infected, even with an update, would be a huge thing."

Personally I think that Left 4 Dead 2 promises so much new stuff - new characters, new levels, new weapons, new game modes and more - that it is a full blown sequel and not an attempt to milk the players for a second round of the same thing and this interview tells me that Valve really did think things through before committing to the sequel route. If they actually manage to pull off a way to combine the two games (perhaps allowing the use of old characters in new levels or new weapons in old levels etc.) if you own both titles as well, there is little reason to whine.

Game development costs money and if Valve is putting on the table a completely new set of content - characters, weapons, levels - that just happen to share the key gameplay idea of Left 4 Dead (escape from the zombie horde), charging full price for it as a proper sequel is fine in my book.

Champions Online Screenshots

Rockin' the eyecandy this afternoon, Cryptic Studios has released six new screenshots from their upcoming superhero-themed massively multiplayer online RPG, Champions Online. These latest shots feature some colorful special effects, flying robots and enough spandex to fill an 80's gym locker room. Enjoy:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Champions Online is scheduled for release on September 1st.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Patch v1.5 Detailed

Sure to please fans, CD Projekt RED has announced that they're working on a v1.5 patch for their hit RPG, The Witcher, which will add five new fan-made adventures to the game and remove all DRM, including the disc check! They also let it slip that they'll be releasing a North American "Director’s Cut" update, which I assume will remove all the censored content from the NA edition of the game, but that's just a guess...it's not confirmed. No word on when the update will be coming out, but they promise to reveal more details in the coming weeks. So stay tuned! :D