Basically the only sort of strategy games I like are city builders, so I was interested in the playtest for El Dorado: The Golden City Builder, which casts you as the leader of an ancient Mayan-ish city. The playtest is only the prologue, but the eventual goal is to take over the Yucatán peninsula, and if nothing else it's refreshing to see a city-builder that doesn't feel overwhelmingly European. It also has a complicated system of religion. Whereas in a similarly polytheistic game like Zeus, the gods would turn up to stomp on buildings and/or bless them, at fairly large intervals, in El Dorado I was getting a home immolated every few days. Building shrines that have an area of effect, and that require resources to run and protect your town, is its own supply chain in El Dorado. This is a very interesting idea that I liked.
City Of Heroes' community-run private server gets official license from NCSoft
04.01.2024 - 21:09 / rockpapershotgun.com
Super-powered MMO City Of Heroes closed down in November 2012, but in recent years it has been revived by industrious fans via privately-hosted servers. While those servers allowed caped crusaders to continue roleplaying, the caveat was that they could be shut down at any moment by the most dastardly supervillains of all: lawyers.
That should be less of an issue in future. One of those community-hosted servers, Homecoming, has been granted an official license to operate by City Of Heroes' IP owners NCSoft.
"We’ll have much more to share on this in the coming months, however right now we’d like to make a few things clear: Your accounts and characters are safe," says the announcement by the Homecoming team. Access to the game and its server will continue to be completely free, too, with support coming via player donations.
The Homecoming team will continue to develop new content for City Of Heroes. They've previously added a new Archetype (basically a class), called the Sentinel, as well as new powersets and new stories and missions.
Homecoming is just one of many fan-run servers, and as the only one to receive an official license, its leaders are now hoping to consolidate the community under a single home. To that end, they're "forming a new leadership group" called the City Council which will consist of Homecoming's current development team and "representatives from the other servers we have been working with."
They're also looking to recruit more volunteer developers and Game Masters to help with its operation, and plan on registering as an NPO - a non-profit organisation.
City Of Heroes was developed by Cryptic Studios and launched in 2004, the same year as genre titan World Of Warcraft. Cryptic sold the IP outright to publisher NCSoft in 2007 and several of the game's development team transferred to a new studio, Paragon. Paragon Studios continued to maintain City Of Heoes until the closure of both the game and the company in 2012.
It was an also important game in the pre-history of Rock Paper Shotgun, as one of the few that all four founders played together in the years before the site launched. If you want to read Kieron "comics" Gillen write about the making of City Of Heroes, that's a thing you can do.
If you're interested in playing City Of Heroes in 2024, there's a Getting Started guide on the Homcoming website, which includes download links for the launcher and instructions on creating an account.
Robert Downey Jr. proves we didn’t run out of real movie stars, we ran out of real movies
For years now, pundits have been declaring that movie stardom is dead. Everyone from Jennifer Aniston to The New York Times seems to have agreed that we simply don’t make ’em like we used to.
RoboCop: Rogue City Gets New Game Plus in Latest Update
Developer Teyon has released a new update for RoboCop: Rogue City, bringing a much-awaited new feature to the game—New Game Plus. With the release of the update, players can now play through the entire story mode of the game again with all of their previously-unlocked skills and Auto-9 upgrades.
RoboCop: Rogue City gets new game plus as part of a content update
Teyon has announced that RoboCop: Rogue City is getting a content update that will include new game plus, a new difficulty, and an Auto9 skin. It’s available now on PC, with the console versions getting it tomorrow.
RoboCop: Rogue City Now Has A New Game Plus Mode
Fans were surprised with the release of RoboCop: Rogue City. The game has grown a following, and while you might have finished the game already, the developers are giving you another reason to replay the game. If you’re itching to once again roam the streets of Detroit and take out the criminal scum, then check out the New Game Plus mode. It was unveiled earlier this month that the developers wanted to launch a New Game Plus mode soon. Today, we’re finally getting that mode with developers explaining what you need to do before it triggers.
RoboCop: Rogue City Gets New Game Plus
RoboCop: Rogue City just received a major update that adds New Game Plus as well as a new, harder difficulty.
TapNation acquires UA Hero
Mobile developer and publisher TapNation has acquired the AI-powered platform UA Hero.
This Resident Evil 2 Remake no-damage run from AGDQ 2024 is a must-watch
Speedrunning is, from my own outsider’s perspective, an impressive effort in constantly chasing new goals. At first, runners might try to simply finish a game as fast as possible. Then, they might try to fully finish it, or complete certain objectives, or hit credits with limiters on themselves. It’s that last bucket that CarcinogenSDA’s run of Resident Evil 2 Remake at AGDQ 2024 falls under.
Lovecraftian horror game The Sinking City is back on Steam nearly four years after a huge publishing dispute
Lovecraftian horror game The Sinking City is now back on PC storefronts following a dispute with its original distributor.
Quake remaster gets official Slave Zero X mod
Zigurrat and Poppy Works have released a free add-on for Quake based on the upcoming game Slave Zero X. More than just a beefy slice of marketing, Slave Zero X Episode Enyo is a mod that serves as a prequel to the main game’s narrative.
Cities: Skylines 2 dev says it has seen "a growing tendency of toxicity" in the city builder community, asks players to "be kind"
The developer of Cities: Skylines 2 has noticed "a growing tendency of toxicity" amongst its players and has asked the community to "be kind."