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CCP have announced today a new Eve Online related project; Dust 514. The information we have so far is that it will be primarily a console release, includes FPS, RTS and MMO mechanics and interacts directly with the PC spearhead – Eve Online.

The Kotaku news post attached the following images:

The interesting part is the direct interaction with Eve Online, maybe this has something to do with the Walking in Stations ongoing development? The above pictures sure could point to that. Read the GamesIndustry.biz article for more, all will be revealed officially at CCPs fan-fest in October.

Update: I found this;

Ever stare longingly at our fabulous banner, and wish you could have a similar, higher resolution, image plastered across your chest in the form of a T-shirt? Well, you’re in luck. Alongside a stellar line up of random designs I’ve thrown on a t-shirt, you can buy the official Thoughtshake T-Shirt. All proceeds are going straight into my pocket, and by extension into this site by giving me the money to keep buying games to review, talk about and ignore on my Steam Games list.

The final day of the TF2 update news has come and gone, and so the update has been released. The last bit of news told us that we would be getting a CTF version of Sawmill, the inclusion of CP_Yukon from the community as an official map, and many new features and fixes. Hit the read more bit under this to find the full changelog, and stay tuned for some impressions of after-update play.

New Content:

* Added King Of The Hill game mode.
* Added custom animations played by the losing team during the post-win state. They are moved into third person camera to enjoy them.
* Added lots of new hats.
* Added koth_Viaduct.
* Added ctf_Sawmill
* Added community map Arena_Offblast
* Added community map Cp_Yukon

Additions / Changes:

* Added “Auto Reload” option to the multiplayer advanced options.
* Clip-based weapons that reload a full clip at a time can now have their reloads aborted by firing.
* Pistol now fires at a fixed rate, not based on the speed at which you press the firing button.
* Added a color blind option to add a Jarate icon above enemies who are busy accepting a terrifying existence where they have no dignity.
* Significantly reduced the amount of network traffic being sent.
* Capturing the flag in a CTF game mode gives the entire capturing team 10 seconds of critboost.
* Sappers attached to a teleporter automatically place another Sapper on the other end of the teleporter, if it exists.
* Engineers wrenching a teleporter will repair the other end as well, and remove Sappers from both if they exist.
* Disguised Spies no longer trigger On-Hit effects (like the Blutsauger’s heal).
* Removed self-inflicted minicrits. Fixes Jarate’d Soldiers/Demomen having ineffective rocket/grenade jumps.
* Added an item panel to the spectator cam that shows non-standard items being carried by the player you’re spectating.
* Added an “Inspect” key that allows you to look at items being carried by your team mates.
* Backpack improvements:
– Added drag & drop to move items around. Item positions are maintained on the backend.
– Added multi-select, allowing you to delete multiple items at once.
– Added a new key to the key binding page that opens your inventory directly to your backpack.
– Fixed mouseover panel being incorrectly position when the backpack first appears.
* Cloaked Spies standing in valid backstab positions no longer raise their knife.
* Added current map name and gametype to the bottom right of scoreboard.
* Added class icons to tips on the loadout and loading screens.
* Improved visuals around flags when they’re being carried by a player.
* Improved critboosted visuals, making it much clearer when an enemy has critboost.
* Updated the loading panel to show the game type under the map name during level transition.
* In-game chat dialog now supports full Unicode characters.
* Added BLU main menu background.
* Added response caching for some server queries to help reduce the CPU load from DOS attacks.
* Teammates no longer block friendly radius damage. Prevents nearby teammates causing rocket/grenade jumps to fail.

Map Changes:

* Update PLR_Pipeline
– Increased the starting advantage in the third round if a team has won the first two rounds.
– Fixed carts not continuing to the second round if they’re capped at the same time in the first round.
– Fixed being able to shoot pipebombs over the starting gates in the first round.
– Fixed being able to open the doors in the first round before the setup time was finished.
– Fixed players getting stuck in some doors.
– Fixed players being able to get onto rooftops and out of the map boundaries.
– Fixed other minor bugs and exploits.
* Update Arena_Sawmill
– Fixed DirectX8 bug where some models would not be visible.
– Fixed exploit with building teleporters outside of the map.
* Updated CP_Granary
– Made a few changes to improve balance based on competitive community feedback.

Item Reworks:

* The Force of Nature
– The enemy knockback now only `works in close range and behaves more like the Pyro’s air blast.
– Enemies cannot be juggled by the FaN’s effect.
– The self-knockback has also changed to respect the firer’s view angle. Looking up while shooting will no longer propel the enemy upwards.
– Knockback is now scaled by damage done.
* The Sandman
– A Scout will receive 1 point for stunning an enemy and 2 points for a long range stun.
– Stunned players now take 75% of all incoming damage instead of 50%.
– Übercharged players can no longer be stunned.
– Heavies spinning their mini-guns will continue to spin when stunned (whether the left or right mouse button is pressed).
– The minimum distance to stun a target has been reduced.
– The negative attribute has changed from “no double jump” to “-30 max health”.

Fixes:

* Fixed various issues around layout & presentation of items inside the Backpack and “X is carrying” item dialogs.
* Fixed an exploit that allowed players to work around sv_pure.
* Particle files are now protected by sv_pure.
* Fixed critboost effect getting stuck on when you die while critboosted.
* Fixed Timer HUD element backgrounds not being the correct color if you change teams during waiting for players.
* Fixed a couple of issues with the way critboosts affected The Huntsman and the Spy’s knife.
* Fixed an exploit where you could reload The Huntsman faster than intended.
* Fixed Heavy “civilian” exploit.
* Fixed a set of exploits using the DXSupport config files.
* Fixed r_screenfademinsize and r_screenfademaxsize exploits.
* Fixed sentries firing at a fully cloaked Spy if they’re still the closest target.

Community requests:

* Added a HUD element for hybrid CTF & CP maps.
– Supports 1 or 2 flags, and any number of CPs.
– Mapmakers need to place a “tf_logic_hybrid_ctf_cp” entity in their map to enable it.
* Added custom kill server log text “train” and “saw” for deaths caused by these environmental hazards.
Format: “%s” committed suicide with “world” (customkill “%s”) (attacker_position “%d %d %d”)
* Added new “medic_death” event for server logs
Format: “%s” triggered “medic_death” against “%s” (healing “%d”) (ubercharge “%s”)
– healing is the amount the Medic healed in that life
– ubercharge (1/0) is whether they died with a full charge
* Added “func_respawnflag” trigger entity. It will remove & return the flag if a flag carrier touches it, or if the flag falls into it.

The Team Fortress 2 Update continues, with a new game mode announced today alongside a new map. The new game mode is King of the Hill – a multiplayer mode which is surely familiar to anybody who plays multiplayer FPS games. Essentially, one team takes hold of a point, and has to stop the other team from taking it away from them. There’s a timer of three minutes which counts down for the duration of your teams’ occupation of the point, and the same for the other team. Essentially, the first teams’ timer to reach zero wins.

With this news comes the announcement of a new map, this time set in a snowy setting, specifically designed for the new mode along with the arena maps Sawmill and Nucleus which have been modified for the new mode.

Just look at it. That’s a mod of Wolfenstien 3D! Peoples are still making damned fine mods for a 17 year old game! Check out more of the mod at the website.

Well here’s an odd little distraction – Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood arrived on Steam yesterday. I’d not heard anything about it, but the cheap price of £5.24 (25% off the normal price) and the rather nice simplistic art style persuaded me to drop the money and give it a go. Obviously, from the Steam description it wasn’t going to be the most subtle of games, but was it worth the money?

FL:BoB is essentially a game made up of a defend the objective level that you might find in any other Third Person Shooter – You are told to keep the town hall in a desert village safe by killing everything that moves towards it. That is, essentially, the entire game. There only seems to be one level (despite the steam description saying “A broad range of difficulty and levels with action-packed fun for both casual and veteran players!”), and it’s pretty much the same every time you play. Obviously, there are different difficulties available, and a set of Steam acheivements which you can pretty much breeze through in one or two plays through (except a couple of harder ones which I haven’t attempted yet).

There are a number of weapons, and that number is 5. There are a number of different types of enemies, and that number is 3. And there are chickens which you can shoot for some unknown reason. That is, essentially, the entirety of the game. So rather than continue this review, I’ve decided to look at the game elements as if the developers were trying to say something about the war in the Middle East, which they clearly weren’t. It could be a stretch.

This is very clearly an anti-war game. It might seem like the extensive death and fast pacing glamorise war, but look deeper and you can see an intricate web of ideas the developer has included to get their point across about the war in the Middle East, and the US army in general. First of all, the setting; It seems at first as if you are attempting to save a number of civilians who are barricaded inside a town hall from an entire Rebel army. This is all very clear cut – killing civilians is wrong, and whatnot. However, the game introduces a social commentary on the war which might not be apparent at first.

To begin with, the game seems to criticise the US’ approach to the war in the Middle East by including the shootable chickens. ‘What?’ I can hear you say, ‘How can chickens be used to portray the military tactics of the United States, the the flaws contained therein?’. Well, it’s quite simple. The game actively encourages you to shoot the chickens around the village without any thought as to why. So, should you succeed in ‘saving’ the civilians in the village, you have effectively wiped out their food supply and means to survive. This is directly comparable to the US tactics in the Middle East, the game seems to be saying, and we should do something about it.

The game also criticises what it views as a hugely bloated military spending budget, by giving the player access to vastly powerful, and frankly unnecessary guns and equipment which are poorly suited to the situation. For example, the game allows the player access to “personal air-raid support” as they put it, exemplifying the overspending on the military. This is compounded with the ability to call in supply crates via plane at any time, and the fact that the player is actively encouraged to waste ammo on shooting chickens. This certainly is a damning view on the war that the game is taking.

The criticism of the war does not end there, however. The developers went even further, and made the enemies you will be fighting very similar in appearance to yourself. While some may think this is simply the developers trying to avoid a racism row, an educated eye will spot the developers pushing the idea that the people you are shooting are just like you. They too have families, dreams and hopes, and your entire purpose in the game is cutting those potential friends down in a hail of bullets, rockets and bombs. For shame. The player on the other hand, can take a barrage of bullets remarkably unscathed. This could be attributed to the similar nature of all video games, but I see beneath that, to the developers saying ‘You see? America can take the violence, but these poorer countries cannot. You’re destroying what you seek to save.’

Finally, the developers even put little criticisms into the environment for the socially aware player to pick up on. In the background of the map there is an oil pump, working tirelessly throughout each round, reminding everyone exactly what the US stands to gain from wars in the Middle East.

Well done, Foreign Legion, you’ve acted far more bravely than I could ever hope to. Well done.

(*Disclaimer* I obviously don’t believe that the developers put these criticisms into the game, nor do I wholly believe the criticisms made. It was a joke.)

[Edit] As was pointed out in the comments, I didn’t really say whether it was worth purchasing. I’m still not entirely sure, but if defence missions are your thing it might be worth a pop. Otherwise, I’d give it a miss.