Originally released back in 2007 the Half-Life 2 Mod Minerva created by Adam Foster, enabled Adam to land a job at Valve, and has now been updated ready for its launch on Steam.

The Half-Life 2 Mod Minerva mod will be arriving in steam late morning in the west coast timezone (PDT) which is eight hours behind the UK.

T he Eurogamer website explains: "Minerva captured plenty of attention back in the day for being a rare high-quality – "arguably Valve-quality”, wrote Foster in an email to Eurogamer – storied single-player mod for Half-Life 2. It requires Half-Life 2: Episode One to play, but once you have that, there’s nothing to pay.

The name Minerva refer ... Read more »

A new AI character is about to join the cast of Bioshock Infinite, according to a 2K artist whose CV mentions he’s been "providing animation and R&D for a new AI companion character”.

No mention yet as to who it might be, and all traces of the slip have been scrubbed away from the offending LinkedIn bio, but if the same coin-sniffing and item scroinging AI routine as Elizabeth’s holds true, the smart money’s on Jeremiah Fink.

Source Superannuation

Monaco, basically Ocean’s Eleven in indie video game form in case the name is unfamiliar, has already recouped the $100,000 investment which allowed it to exist in the first place. Investors Indie Fund, including the likes of Braid creator Jonathan Blow have a history of backing games that make their money back quickly after launch, having helped bring Antichamber, Dear Esther and more to the market. A Humble Store pre-order promotion helped Monaco make it even faster.

"For me the most significant thing about the early success with regards to Indie Fund is that it shows that there are many ways of approaching funding, from crowdfunding to investment models like Indie Fund, to personal loans – I know a number of devs that have taken loans from other devs – to the traditional publisher model,” Monaco dev Andy Schatz said. "More opti ... Read more »

Steam and the App Store as well as XBLA before them might have put indie games on the map, but it’s now the tiny studios and independent developers who are making platforms, not the other way around. Nintendo seems to have realized this by dropping the vast majority of its requirements for indies to get onto Wii U, but it’s Sony who is receiving most praise from indies for its forthright submission process and communication with developers.

"It feels like at this point Sony kind of gets the notion that they are not a necessity,” according to Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail. "They are not a requirement for an indie developer to be successful. If Sony doesn’t want to play ball, people can go to a number of other platforms and be successful on those. We can go to Steam, we can go to iOS, we can go to any of th ... Read more »

Eve Online EVR has been developed in Unity for the Oculus Rift, and has been created by CCP Games, the developer behind Eve Online and Dust 514.

Eve Online EVR a first-person, multiplayer dogfighting game set within the Eve Online universe and has been specifically designed for use with the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.

Eve Online EVR is still in the very early stages of development and Eve Online executive producer John Lander explained to PC Gamer : "6v6 instanced combat is ... Read more »

If you have been patiently waiting for the new Wii U 3.0 update to arrive bringing added speed to the consoles menu and navigation structure, you will be pleased to learn that the update has now rolled out and is available to download.

The latest Wii U 3.0 update brings with it a number of new features including a new standby function to "download and install software while the system is powered off” and automatic background installation of eShop downloads.

The welcomed speed boost within the Wii U 3.0 update can be seen in the video below when returning to the menu home page, and other new features are listed below:

Sad news for employees of Electronic Arts. The company sent out an "organizational update” today notifying the public of another round of layoffs. They didn’t give any specifics, but it looks like Electronic Arts is having some tough times, and a lot of re-organization is going on. Hence the layoffs.

 
According to Kotaku, Electronic Arts has let go of as much as 10% of its workforce. The video game publisher didn’t comment on this, but 10% is probably about 1,000 employees. That means less people working on great games and of course tough times for those who are layed off.

We hope that the company can get it together and keep more people working.

Source Slashgear

The Nintendo Wii U has been suffering in sales figures, but nonetheless, Nintendo has announced a new spring update recently with additional improvements. And Nintendo still owes Wii U users their Virtual Console. Now we have news that classic SNES RPG Earthbound will be available later this year, as well as the other Virtual Console launch titles for the Wii U.

 
Other classic titles from the NES and SNES platforms include F-Zero, Super Mario World, Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong Jr., Excitebike, Ice Climber, Kirby’s Adventure, and Punch-Out II. These SNES Virtual Console titles will be priced no higher than $8, while NES VC games are $6, tops.

Great news for fans of classic games. This should make Wii U fans happy.

Source ... Read more »

If you are looking to upgrade your graphics performance and have deep pockets, you might interested to learn that the new Radeon HD 7990 ahas now launched for $1000 and will be available to purchase in the next couple of weeks.

The Radeon HD 7990 is capable of providing 8 terraflops of processing power, which is over twice at the graphics power of the Radeon HD 7970, and a massive four times that of the new next generation PlayStation 4 gaming console.

The Radeon HD 7990 is equipped with 6GB of GDDR5 RAM, PCI Express 3.0 support and a new cooling system and can handle almost any current game at 4K Ultra HD resolution with the detail settings max’ed out. Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general mana ... Read more »

I think that most of us love the Ratchet & Clank games. You probably thought they would be great movies. Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games thinks so too, which is why they announced an animated film is currently in production.

 
The Ratchet & Clank movie is scheduled for a 2015 release and will star several of its most loved characters in a 3D film. The movie is being written by Insomniac’s TJ Fixman, who has been in charge of the writing for recent entries in the Ratchet & Clank series.

The film will look back at the duo’s beginnings and will use Insomniac’s knowledge of the series to create a "deeper, more meaningful story.” The voice actors who play Ratchet, Clank and Qwark have been confirmed.

Source ... Read more »