If you’re reading this, it means both of us survived the madness of E3
and have entered the gloriously lazy period afterwards. Yes, as far as
the game industry is concerned it might as well be July, the month where
no games release and nothing happens. Time to catch up on your
backlog—or dig into the Steam Summer Picnic Sale and fill it out more.
But in case you’re interested in this week’s dribble of news, it’s as follows: EVE Valkyrie
gets a Death Star trench run, Europa Universalis rewards your devotion
with Swedish folk music, and someone built Seinfeld’s apartment in Doom II. This is gaming news for June 20 – 24.
No more climbing
You know what? Let’s start with this week’s best news: Via Eurogamer, Watch Dogs 2
won’t feature any “Ubisoft Towers” a.k.a. those things you climb
up/activate/light on fire in every Ubisoft game to reveal bits of the
map. Coit Tower will be the only tower in this digital San Francisco.
A big thanks to whoever made that decision. It was a cool feature back in 2007 when I played the first Assassin’s Creed, but the Ubisoft Tower has become increasingly ridiculous through the years (finding antennas in The Crew,
anyone?). No word yet on whether Ubisoft will abandon this oft-derided
feature for its other games, but we could only be so lucky.
Beyond time itself
More Ubisoft news: Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still “on the way,” according to a YouTube interview with Yves Guillemot. Whatever. Next thing you’ll tell me The Last Guardian has a release date.
...Wait, it does?
Cover me, Porkins
EVE Valkyrie’s first major content update went live this
week—the new “Carrier Assault” mode, which has you bringing down a
massive ship’s shields before flying into its core and blowing it up
from the inside, a la Star Wars. It’s pretty cool.
Almost like a real demo
Last week Bethesda announced it was releasing the first level of Doom
for free as a throwback to the original 1994’s distribution (first part
free, second part paid). Fancy wording aside, we have a term for this:
“A demo.” But for some inexplicable reason Bethesda said the demo would
only stay up for the week of E3.
Apparently that changed—Bethesda literally wrote on Twitter
“This was initially for E3 week only. But we figured, what the hell.”
What the hell, indeed. I guess it’s a semi-permanent demo now, if you
want to give the new Doom a try.
Keep playing Titanfall
Continuing a trend from various multiplayer games in the past year or so, Respawn confirmed last week to GamesRadar that any post-launch maps and game modes for Titanfall 2
will be free to all players so as to not “split the community.”
Presumably the deficit will be made up by cosmetic items and other such
easily-ignorable stuff. Good on EA for letting Respawn take this tack,
though I suppose it was semi-inevitable after the first Titanfall’s player base cratered.
Stockholm syndrome
Europa Universalis has officially sold over a million copies,
and to celebrate Paradox is temporarily giving away its next DLC for
free. Exciting, right? And that’s when you hear that its next DLC is “a
collection of traditional Swedish songs from the 18th Century.” Fifteen
of them, to be exact.
You can grab the pack on Steam for free from now until July 4. Get ready to rock out to “Movitz tag dina pinnar,” you plebe.
That bass line
Custom-built Doom II maps and Seinfeld—it’s like a perfect storm of ‘90s nostalgia up in here. A fellow named Doug Keener’s gone ahead and rebuilt Seinfeld’s apartment in Doom II. Check it out below: