Unofficially reported three weeks ago, Feral Interactive today officially announced Batman: Arkham Asylum for the Mac. The game will be released on Thursday, October 13th, 2011.
Developed by Rocksteady Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment with DC Entertainment for game consoles and PC, Batman: Arkham Asylum features an original story by Paul Dini, Batman writer and five-time Emmy Award-winner. Batman: Arkham Asylum pushes the envelope for action, adventure and superhero games, delivering a dark, atmospheric and entertaining adventure.
In Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman finds himself trapped inside the confines of Gotham’s psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane, Arkham Asylum. The Joker has set a trap for The Dark Knight and has conspired with the deranged inmates to destroy Gotham. Gamers will move in the shadows, instigate fear amongst their enemies and confront The Joker and Gotham City’s most notorious villains including Harley Quinn, Bane, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy and Scarecrow, who have taken over the asylum.
This unique, dark and atmospheric adventure game puts players right in the action as they take the role of The Dark Knight and use a wide variety of moves and gadgets to foil The Joker’s demented scheme. Adding to the authenticity of the game are veteran animated Batman voice talents Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy, who reprise their roles as The Joker and Batman respectively
Batman: Arkham Asylum for the Mac will retail in North America for US $39.99, £29.99 (inc. VAT) in the UK and €34.99. (inc. VAT) throughout Europe. It will also be available online for direct download from a variety of digital partner sites worldwide including Feral Interactive and the Mac App Store. It’s available for pre-order now through Feral’s online store.
Minimum system Requirements include:
- Mac OS X 10.6 or later
- 2.0 GHz Intel Mac
- 2 GB RAM
- 256 MB or better graphics card (The following graphics cards are NOT supported: NVIDIA 7xxx series, ATI 1×00 and Intel GMA series.)
Feral Interactive has today announced that critically acclaimed Action-RPG video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution will be released for the Mac in winter 2011/12. Developed by Eidos-Montreal and published by Square Enix for game consoles and PC, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a prequel to the legendary Deus Ex.
Set in 2027, Deus Ex: Human Revolution immerses players in a world where amoral corporations market biomechanical modifications that blur the boundary between man and machine. The player controls former SWAT commander Adam Jensen who has been forced to undergo cybernetic augmentations after a terrorist attack on Sarif Industries, the biotech company where he works as security chief.
To find those responsible, the player must explore the full potential of Adam’s augmented body and develop it to suit their playing style. Every situation can be approached in countless different ways, either by focusing on one of the four pillars of gameplay – combat, stealth, hacking and social – or by deploying an artful combination of all four. As they progress, players will be able to “purchase” new augmentations or upgrade existing ones to manipulate Adam’s body into their perfect machine.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution has received praise from many critics for the open-ended nature of the game and the weight of conversations on the outcome of events. Judgments made by the player in whether to upgrade, hack a computer, or hide in the shadows rather than open fire have a direct impact on future gameplay.
Feral has stated that pricing, system requirements and a more precise release date will be announced later this year. However, this marks a different strategy in marketing for Feral, who previous to this tended to announce games very close to the intended release date. The release date for this game could be around three months or closer to 15 months (Feral assured me it would be Winter of 2011 or 2012), and yet we have learned about the game now. We definitely look forward to more tidbits of information, from screenshots and trailers, to interviews and maybe even developer diaries, to keep us drooling while we wait.
In the meantime, you can get more info about the PC version at the official Deus Ex: Human Revolution site and their facebook page.
Feral Interactive today announced the immediate online release of DiRT 2. Citing the need to provide compatibility improvements with 10.7 for the delay from July, DiRT 2 for Mac is available for direct download now.
DiRT 2 promises to take racing on the Mac to a whole new level. Nine locations across the globe include 100 separate racing events in eight different racing disciplines. Players can race in the Malaysian rainforest, the desert roads of Morocco, and the streets of Tokyo to compete in a variety of contemporary sports racing styles including three special ESPN X Games.
Players have access to a multitude of cars that they will be upgrading over time, such as the Mitsubishi EVO X, the Subaru Impreza STI, and the Colin McRae R4. All the vehicles can be set-up to suit the driver’s experience and racing style and with variable difficulty levels the game can be tailored to suit the skills of the individual. A career mode will bring players from rookie to Pro-division to the All-Stars. Additionally, DiRT 2 includes multi-car and solo races in head-to-head competitive online play.
A unique feature of DiRT 2 is the Flashback. This will allow racers to repeat the last few seconds of their drive and get the chance to correct the mistake that may have cost them the race.
DiRT 2 for the Mac retails in North America for US $39.99, £24.95 (inc. VAT) in the UK and €29.95 (inc. VAT) throughout Europe. The game is available online for direct download from a variety of digital partner sites worldwide including feralinteractive.com and the Mac App Store beginning today. The retail boxed version of the game will ship on Thursday, September 15th and is available to pre-order now through Feral’s online store.
Final system requirements include:
- Mac OS X v10.6.7 or later
- 2.0 GHz Intel Mac
- 2GB RAM
- 128MB or better graphics card (The following graphics cards are NOT supported: ATI X1xxx series, NVIDIA 9400, NVIDIA 7xxx series and Intel GMA series. The NVIDIA 320M and Intel HD 3000 video cards require 4GB of system RAM.)
Time to finish up our series of interviews from PAX Prime 2011, so we’re skipping this week’s weekly podcast to post up a few more PAX iGame Chat podcasts. First up is a great interview with Travis Baldree of Runic Games chatting us up about Torchlight 2. We talk about the changes between this multiplayer game and the original single-player, Torchlight, released 2 years ago.
We also talk a brief bit about where the plans for the MMOG are, and when the Mac version will be released.
Riot Games has made an official announcement canceling the Mac beta for League of Legends, according to a post on Inside Mac Games.
League of Legends is a session-based fighting game with no persistent world to explore. Combat occurs in the Fields of Justice, where you can choose from a variety of Summoners to do combat with. In May of 2010, Riot Games announced a collaboration with Transgaming to bring the game to the Mac.
However, since that time they have found that creating parity between the PC and Mac under very short update cycles to be more difficult than they thought. From the post:
Over the past 13 months we have been working with another company on a Mac version of LoL. We have been silent because both companies have been exploring every possible avenue to ensure the Mac version is up to Riot standards. So far we have been unable to ensure a consistent quality bar across platforms. At the heart of the issue is our rapid update cycle, where we make regular balance changes and content updates. We currently develop on the PC, but since the plan was for the Mac to share servers, we believed that a Mac version that was frequently unavailable was not up to Riot standards. For that reason we have severely limited the number of participants in Mac testing.
The beta has shut down as of September 6th, and those who participated in the beta program and purchased products from the store were able to request a refund. You can read the post for more details.
To be honest, we are not all that surprised about this. When we were at PAX, we asked the folks at the Riot Games booth about the progress of the Mac client. The response we got were “deer in the headlights” looks. None of them knew what we were talking about. One of the head marketers stated they would get back to us. Now we know why they didn’t.
Aspyr has released a big patch for Duke Nukem for Mac. Included within the update is cross-platform multiplayer, so you can play with your PC friends.
Cross-platform multiplayer is a big request in most multiplayer games for the Mac, so it’s great to see it finally arrive for Duke Nukem. Other updates include the ability to carry 4 weapons during single player, the addition of blood effects on surfaces behind enemies when shot, and enabling a VAC anti-cheat system. Numerous bugs and exploits were also fixed, and you can find the full list here.
Aspyr says that the patch should automatically download and install upon launching the game via Steam.
Slitherine has relaunched their award winning strategy title BBC Battle Academy with a new name, new content, and a Mac version.
Inspired by an original online game concept devised by the BBC, the game has more than 30 battles in a range of theatres of war from the North African desert through D-Day to the to the snowy Ardennes mountains where the Allies battled to repel the final German offensive. Originally named Battlefield Academy when first launched in August 2010, Slitherine faced a copyright infringement suit with EA regarding the name “battlefield”. Having reached a settlement, Slitherine is apparently eager to move forward and make up for lost time.
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Valve has opened the doors to trading in-game items and game gifts with the official launch of Steam Trading. Right now, gamers can trade items from Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, and Three Rings co-op adventure Spiral Knights.
Steam Trading started its life with a four week beta, during which time over 1 million items and game gifts were traded. Although at launch only three games are available to trade items from, Valve is working on getting more games from third parties in the coming months.
Here’s how it works: Any game you’ve purchased from the store as a gift, or received as an Extra Copy, can be traded to other users. They can be used to trade for other Gifts, or for items in Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, or Spiral Knights. Valve has also added a new checkout option to the Store when purchasing a gift so you can save it for trading or sending later, to support users who want to save games for trade fodder.
Contrary to what you might think, this doesn’t include used games. The Steam Trading FAQ specifies that only games that have been bought as a gift and never played can be traded. Once the Steam Gift is opened and added to your game library, you won’t be able to trade it again.
Valve is working on privacy settings right now, so your Steam Gift Inventory may not be visible to others. But the rest of your inventory will obey your preset privacy settings.
Support for Steam Trading has been added to the Steamworks SDK, so game developers can add Steam Trading directly into their games as well.
In the same Steam Client update that houses the Steam Trading, Valve also included a new Friends Tagging feature. You can right-click on any friend and select ‘Tag As…’ to choose a category for them. Friends can be tagged in multiple ways and will then show up several times in your friends list, once for each tag.
Tripwire Interactive has been readying Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad, for release on Steam for some time now. Built on the Unreal Engine 3 (UE3), Red Orchestra 2 focuses on the Battle of Stalingrad and the surrounding operations, both German and Russian, from July 1942 to February 1943. The game will include multiplayer, co-op, and solo modes.
Developers of the Killing Floor (previously released for the Mac), we were happy to see that Tripwire just received an ESRB rating of M for Red Orchestra 2 for both Windows and Mac. However, when we asked them for an update about the Mac version, we were told that there was no ETA due to issues around UE3 Mac support.
This is not the first time that we’ve heard that Mac support for the UE3 engine is dragging. UE3 has been released for Windows PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and even iOS and Android. But not yet for Mac, even though the site still lists Mac support coming. It’s also not the first time that Epic has made a promise to Mac gamers that never materialized. We’ve not yet heard back from Epic regarding the status of the Mac version of the UE3 engine, but will update the site as soon as we do.
In the meantime, Tripwire is “looking at alternatives”. Though no details were given, we can certainly guess that one that might be investigated is using Cider. As more information about Red Orchestra 2 is released, we’ll let you know.
Meanwhile, we’ll just pray that UE3 for the Mac will come out before UE4 is announced.
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