The endlessly delayed XCOM shooter, not to be confused with the recent turn based revival, has undergone something of an overhaul.

Re-announced this afternoon as The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, it will no longer be a first person game, but rather a squad based third person shooter. As reported by Destructoid, the revamped title will retain its Wonder Years setting and serve as an origin story for the series. The announcement was accompanied by a live action trailer offering a brief glimpse at what appears to be extraterrestrial tech.

Players will take on the role of William Carter, a government agent drawn into an conspiracy involving political tensions between the world’s great powers, as well as the small matter of alien visitations.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is set to arrive on PC in August.

Source: Destructoid

After its Kickstarter funding drive for a Defense Grid expansion pack barely scraped over the line last year, the prospect of a full sequel seemed rather remote. After all, a full Defense Grid 2 was offered to the expansion’s Kickstarter followers as a ‘stretch goal’, but fell almost $750k short of the mark. End of story? Not quite.

Hidden Path Entertainment today revealed that its dream project is very much alive and well. In a press statement as magnanimous as it was shrewd, the studio attributed its funding triumph to its fans. “The excitement, involvement, and passion that the community displayed around Defense Grid directly helped us engage an investment partner and make DG2 a reality.”

The sci-fi tower defence sequel will feature new towers and enemies, as well as adversarial and cooperative multiplayer. User generated content will also play a part.

Hidden Path is aiming to release Defense Grid 2 in the first half of 2014.

It’s been a big day for Dota 2 fans, with Valve announcing a major tournament and issuing a substantial list of updates.

Technically still in beta, this MOBA fantasy sequel has already attracted a large audience. The International will take place from 6-11 August in Seattle, which also hosted last year’s competition. The roster will consist of 16 teams, with 13 to receive direct invitations and three to battle it out in qualifying events. A prize pool is yet to be announced.

Competitors will doubtlessly use the three month lead up to The International to acclimatise themselves to the range of adjustments announced today. Valve’s full patch notes follow:

GAMEPLAY

• Enabled Drow and Tusk in Captain’s Mode (Tournament Version)
• Enabled Bristleback, Slark and Skywrath Mage in Captain’s Mode (Latest Version)
• Brewmaster: Fixed primal splits not always starting with the correct unit selected.
• Skywrath Mage: Fixed hitbox being too small.
• Slark: Fixed Shadow Dance giving Slark flying vision.
• Slark: Fixed Shadow Dance granting passive bonuses to Slark illusions.
• Slark: Fixed an issue causing Shadow Dance’s passive modifier to not update in the UI, despite being active.
• Slark: Fixed Dark Pact continuing while Slark is dead.
• Slark: Essence Shift counters on both Slark and enemy heroes will show the total duration ( i.e. the time that the most recent stack will expire.)
• Slark: Fixed a number of incorrect spell interactions with Dark Pact.
• Slark: Fixed a number of horizontal movement ability interactions with Pounce.
• Troll Warlord: Fixed Berserker’s Rage bonus damage not being applied as base damage.
• Tusk: Fixed Frozen Sigil not affecting magic immune units.

ECONOMY

• All Defense 2 War Dogs are now Vintage quality.
• Dota 2 Vintage quality items can now be traded on the Steam Community Marketplace.

WORKSHOP

• Added HUD Skins to the Workshop Importer.

PERFORMANCE

• Reduced CPU usage for rendering

Source: PC Gamer and Valve

Given its reputation, you wouldn’t think there would be a huge amount of interest in invading hell. It’s not exactly prime real estate. Nevertheless the team responsible for Alice: Madness Returns has deemed this to be an excellent premise for a game. According to developer Spicy Horse, Hell Invaders (thankfully just a working title) is a hybrid of real time strategy and collectable card games .

The brief press release for Hell Invaders notes that it “features actual card battles rather than two cards ‘fighting’ on a table”. While it’s nice to know that combatants “actually have 3D representations”, it would be even nicer to know if this has any sort of practical ramifications. As it stands, it may be nothing more than a cosmetic interpretation of the underlying gameplay.

Hell Invaders is slated for release in Spring.

Free-to-play and single payment MMOs have been popping up on Steam for a while now, with games like The Secret World, PlanetSide 2 and The Lord of the Rings Online among the more prominent inclusions.

These titles will soon be joined by a range of ongoing payment games, with Valve today announcing that players “may now sign-up for, manage, cancel or renew game Subscription Plans at any time, online directly through Steam”.

The first game to benefit from the new arrangement is Darkfall: Unholy Wars from Greek studio Adventurine SA. A violent fantasy saga with a strong focus on PvP battles, it is the direct sequel to the developer’s 2009 release Darkfall Online.

This could be considered an ‘against the grain’ initiative in light of the industry’s gradual shift away from subscription MMOs. Perhaps the creator of Dota 2 hopes to utilise the system for a new or emerging game type?

Source: Steam

The co-creator of turn based strategy classic X-COM has praised the Firaxis reboot, describing it as “great”.

His high opinion of the 2012 release notwithstanding, Julian Gollop was also willing to share some of his issues with the game in a GDC interview with PC Gamer. “If there’s anything that’s a problem with the game, it’s that you can be playing it for quite a while without knowing that you are actually completely screwed and you should have stopped and started again.”

Gollop also felt that too much of the action was predetermined. “I would not have accepted anything less than pseudo-randomly generated maps, he said. “I guess my original game was a bit more simulation-ny and the new game is a bit more board game-y.”

Conceding that his own approach may not have been as successful this time around, Gollop again emphasised that he felt that Firaxis had done a “really good job”.

Source: PC Gamer

If you delayed picking up Skyrim because you suspected a special edition would pop up at some stage or other, your patience has been rewarded. Bethesda has a long history of repackaging its hits, meaning that today’s announcement of The Elder Scrolls V: Legendary Edition probably won’t come as much of a surprise.

The new release will include version 1.9 of the core game, which recently added a withering new difficulty level, removed the level cap for some skills, addressed some stability issues and fixed a range of persistent bugs. The collection will also include DLC instalments Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn.

The Elder Scrolls V: Legendary Edition will be available in Australia from Thursday 6 June. The PC version will retail for $49.95.

One of the  industry’s largest businesses appears to be undergoing what is euphemistically known as ‘restructuring’. According to Kotaku’s sources, the publisher of mega hits like Battlefield and Mass Effect may be terminating as much as 10% of its total workforce.

As reported by Game Informer, multiple sources within the company have indicated that EA is winding up its Partners program. Under the Partners initiative, EA has distributed a range of third party titles, including Crysis and Left4Dead. EA is also said to be closing two of its development teams, casual gaming specialist PopCap Vancouver and Quicklime Games, best known for its work on the Need For Speed series.

EA has thus far proved to be less than forthcoming regarding the extent of the layoffs, conceding only that it has been forced to make “some difficult decisions to reduce the workforce in some locations”. We have requested more detail from EA and will update this story should we receive it.

Source: Kotaku and Game Informer

Nvidia programmer Miles Macklin is working on a new PhysX solution that could transform the way water behaves in games.

In a video posted by GamesHQMedia, Macklin has used a new Position Based Fluids technique to realistically model the ebb and flow of liquid as it rushes around static objects like columns or reacts to external stimuli like contracting walls. Perhaps most critically, the video accurately demonstrates the way a small body of water will behave in the presence of rabbits and werewolves. The demo is running on a GeForce GTX580.

Noting that existing methods are “computationally expensive”, Macklin is aiming to create a more efficient real time solution.

Macklin is no stranger to the world of games, having worked for LucasArts, Rocksteady and Sony in recent years.

Source: Miles Macklin (Thanks Zak)

Middle Earth is set to expand with developer Turbine announcing that it will soon add Helm’s Deep to the already sprawling fantasy world.

The game’s fifth major expansion will not only allow fans to visit the titular valley, but also to participate in the gargantuan battle featured in the climax of J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary novel The Two Towers. Helm’s Deep will feature a range of new quests, some involving key figures such as Aragorn and Éowyn. Long time players will also be pleased to hear that the level cap is increasing from 85 to 95.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Helm’s Deep is scheduled to launch in spring. Turbine hasn’t seen fit to share any screenshots as yet, so for the time being we’ll have to make do with this (admittedly rather handsome) logo.

Source: LOTRO

Married couple Leonard and Sylvia Ritter (better known as German micro studio Duangle) have issued a new teaser for Nowhere. The clip itself doesn’t offer a great deal of insight into the structure of the game, but Leonard describes it as “a procedural single player, open world, sandbox game” in which the player is a “floating sentient orb”. While past videos have depicted environments that appear bulbous and organic in nature, the latest takes place in an abstract cityscape.

Duangle won’t commence a formal beta until 2014, but interested parties can grab a copy of the alpha build by pre-ordering at the official website. In addition to keyboard and controller support, Nowhere will boast compatibility with the Leap Motion gesture based system. While the developer is yet to receive its Oculus Rift SDK, it hopes to incorporate this emerging VR technology as well.

Source: RPS and Duangle

After a brief diversion into tower defence with Rock of Ages, ACE Team is returning to its first love with Zeno Clash II. With the long awaited sequel’s release just days away, the Chilean studio is ramping up the hype with a gameplay packed video. The six minute clip also highlights some of the game’s new features, such as the emphasis on carefully aiming punches and executing well timed counterattacks.

The original Zeno Clash was among the more offbeat first person action games of its era (or indeed any era). Just how weird was it? Suffice to say it was weird enough to earn a place in Toby McCasker’s recent Bizarro World feature on truly bonkers first person shooters. Given that one of the combatants in the new trailer sports a rather prominent beak, it’s probably fair to say that the sequel is heading in a similar direction.

Zeno Clash II is set to arrive on Steam on 30 April.