Things have gone from bad to worst and then to even worse than that for Rhode Island-based 38 Studios, the game studio owned by former pitcher Curt Schilling. After over a week of negativity surrounding the studio and its outstanding loans to the tune of $75 million, yesterday the studio laid off the entire staff of nearly 400–288 of them based in Rhode Island and another hundred at the Maryland-based subsidiary Big Huge Games.

If that’s not bad enough, it turns out that several employees of the now-staff-less studio were told that they may be stuck with second mortgages from the houses they thought the company sold for them when they relocated to Rhode Island.

According to sources who spoke to Polygon, “One former employee said they discovered this week that their Massachusetts home, which they had been told was sold last year, actually hadn’t been. The bank contacted them this week to ask why they [sic] mortgage wasn’t being paid.”

This unsettling development seems related to the company’s relocation program when it moved from Massachusetts to Rhode Island–after being offered $75 million of Rhode Island’s money. According to Polygon, if 38 Studios used state money to pay for mortgages or finance homes, the company might have violated its agreement with the state of Rhode Island. So for some employees–who already haven’t been receiving pay since May 1st–this is just salt being poured on an open wound.

But how did this all happen? Just a few months ago, 38 Studios released the Big Huge Games-developed Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning to critical acclaim and over 1.2 million copies sold. Despite all that, Amalur needed to sell at least 3 million copies to break even. The company ended up defaulting on its loan from the state when it failed to make its scheduled $1.125 million payment to the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation on May 1. From that point, things just continued to slide further and further downhill.

So now here we are, a developer of a successful game has laid off its entire staff, shutting down not only 38 Studios but also Big Huge Games, not paid its employees for almost a month, and possibly mismanaged the handling of the selling of their homes. So far Curt Schilling has stayed relatively quiet about this whole situation. His only comment about the layoffs was this tweet: “Thank you to everyone sending prayers and well wishes to the team and families of 38 Studios.”

In a show of solidarity and fellowship, members of the game industry took to Twitter to create the hashtag “#38jobs” to inform former 38 Studios employees of other game developers and publishers that are hiring. It’s nice to see that in the midst of all this awfulness, the industry is able to come together and try to help out those hurt by this situation. I hope all those who lost their jobs from this debacle land on their feet. Even if 38 Studios fades away, they should be proud of the work they did with Kingdoms of Reckoning: Amalur.

[Source: Polygon, Joystiq]

Over the weekend, I spent approximately three hours farming the materials and the 150,000 gold required to enter the secret level in Diablo III. It was kind of a pain, but it was completely worth it to be able to send three of my friends in utterly free of charge, and enjoy it with them before most of it was sufficiently spoiled.

Because most of the guides I’ve found aren’t particularly concise in their directions, and provide spoilers to boot, I’m going to make a completely spoiler-free guide on how to access the secret level itself.

1) The Basics: you need five reagents to build the staff to access the secret level, in addition to the recipe to build the staff itself.

The recipe is found in Act 4 near the very end of the game, so I suggest beating the game on Normal (you should be around level 30), then clearing all of these areas with your high-level character. It will be much easier to do so.

2) Act I:  The first item is the Black Mushroom. You can find this on the first floor of the Cathedral in Act I, but it will not spawn every time. Take the Cathedral Gardens waypoint and walk left towards the Cathedral, falling down into it as normal. Put on your fastest movement gear/passives/skills and run around until you find a Black Mushroom growing on the floor.

If you don’t, quit the game and hit “resume game”, repeating the process. It took me around 10 runs to find it, so don’t give up.

3) Act I: The next item is Leoric’s Shinbone. This is one of the easiest items to grab, but one of the least likely to spawn. Take the Leoric’s Manor waypoint in Act I. When you enter the Manor itself, you’ll be greeted with around 30 minions.

Run past or eliminate them, and head to the first door on your right. At the end of the room you’ll find an unlit fireplace. If you can click on it, Leoric’s Shinbone will pop out. If not, leave the game, and resume to try again.

4) Act II: Wirt’s Bell is the easiest to get.

All you need to do is find Squirt in Act II at the Caldeum Bazaar near the South-West tip of the town. Buy the bell for 100,000 gold.

5) Act II: Liquid Rainbow is next. Enter Act II and take the Path to the Oasis waypoint. Go completely south until you find a shack with Zaven the Alchemist near it. If he doesn’t spawn, leave the game and resume until you find him.

Once you save him from attack, enter the Mysterious Cave. In this cave, you may find the Mysterious Chest on either the first or second floor. It’s not a guaranteed spawn, so keep leaving and resuming until you find it — if Zaven doesn’t spawn, you have to try it again.

6) Act III: The Gibbering Gemstone in my opinion is the hardest piece of the puzzle. Take the The Bridge of Korsikk waypoint in Act III and go up to reach the Fields of Slaughter. In the Fields of Slaughter, one of two caves can spawn. The Icefall Caves or the Caverns of Frost. You want the Caverns of Frost — if the Icefall Caves spawn, leave the game and resume to try again.

If you spawn the Caverns of Frost, enter it and find a unique enemy called Chiltara. It’s a cat-like unique purple creature. Kill it to obtain the Gibbering Gemstone. This took me around 20 attempts to do, so be prepared.

7) Act IV: Finally, the plans are within your grasp. Enter Act 4 with the Gardens of Hope Tier 2 waypoint. Clear the one room required and fight the second boss (to avoid spoilers, it’s the one fought right before Diablo in a circular arena).

The boss will randomly drop the plans.

8 ) Once you have the plans, give them to the blacksmith to gain the ability to craft the Staff of Herding for 50,000 gold.

9) Take the staff in-hand and go to the very first town in Act I (New Tristram). Go out the right gate and head North until you reach a left-bend — head up the road and you will see the ghost of the Cow King. Talk to him to enter the crack in the ground, and enjoy the secret level!

In Nightmare Mode, you’ll need the Nightmarish Staff of Herding. Buy it from Gorell the Quartermaster in Act 4, and you’ll be able to craft the Nightmarish Staff with the original staff and 200,000 gold.

Remember Hawken? That indie mech game that went free to play? While we’re still quite a bit away from it’s December 12th release, the PC cloud streaming service Gaikai has locked up a deal to demo the game in the near future. If you’re not familiar with Gaiaki, it’s basically a demo service similar to OnLive, in that it streams the game to your browser/PC with hardly any hardware requirements.

Of course, it’s not a good way to test and see if the full game can viably run on your machine, but at least it’s something. Keep your eyes peeled for PlayHawken.com.

[Update - I experienced this part of the game myself, and can safely say that as long as the Templar is your follower officially, you should be ok on this one. I personally waited until my companion was level 13 before testing this just to be sure, in case there was a certain low level range this could trigger in]

Without resorting to any spoilers, this PSA is fairly simple. Whenever you obtain a Templar follower in Diablo III, do not equip him with a new shield. In fact, don’t equip him with anything just to be sure.

Eurogamer is reporting that this issue apparently is restricted to the Demon Hunter class (wouldn’t you know it, my favorite class), but just in case, I wouldn’t recommend trying it with any class if you value your playtime.

If you engage the glitch, you’ll not only be booted out of D3′s servers, but you’ll be unable to re-enter them until Blizzard pushes a fix. An absurd workaround is noted by some users, consisting of creating a new Power User Windows account, and attempting to log in that way.

Blizzard is investigating. As a temporary workaround it suggested players not give the Templar any gear until after they have accepted him as their follower through the user interface pop-up.

[Eurogamer]

Amazon is reporting today that Diablo III is their most successful PC game ever in terms of pre-order sales — which is quite a big deal for both Blizzard and Amazon. Even though various parties across the internet are claiming to boycott the game due to contentions with Blizzards “always on”  single player DRM, and issues with “dumbed down gameplay” compared to Diablo II, it looks like Blizzard is going to be fine.

Even though the above reasons are certainly a valid excuse to abstain from a purchase, there are also a number of people who don’t plan on playing the game just because it’s “Activision”. Here’s a message for everyone who’s going to ignore Diablo III, even if it turns out to be a good game, in favor of Torchlight II because it’s “indie”: why not try both?

[Joystiq]

PixelJunk fans, unite! As of yesterday, PJ Racer, PJ Monsters, PJ Eden, and PJ Shooter are all on sale for $1 on the PSN. If I had to choose one game for you to buy out of the lot, I’d easily say Monsters, but you can’t really go wrong with any of them (particularly Eden, which I think is extremely overlooked).

In addition to their classic line, two of their newer games are on sale as well: PJ Shooter 2 and PJ Sidescroller are $5. All of this lasts until May 18th, when their brand new PixelJunk 4am launches. This sale doesn’t personally effect me, as I already have all of their games. They’re just that good!

According to a source that spoke to Siliconera, “Sony Computer Entertainment is recording a teaser for a future Killzone game” that apparently will take place after the events of Killzone 3. The rumor hints that Visari’s daughter–seen briefly in Killzone 3‘s opening cinematic–will be a feature character in the future game.

Siliconera’s source also revealed the dialogue for what appears to be the game’s opening political diatribe, a staple of the Killzone series.

My sons and my daughters, today we take the first step toward our imperial future.

For years, this once-great nation has stagnated in the shadow of its enemies. Governed by scoundrels who flaunted the ideals established by my father, these traitors… these enemies of our race have diluted and exploited the triad of Duty, Obedience, and Loyalty.

This regime, this corrupt regime, has been dissolved. In its place does rise an era of stability and strength. A time of opportunity born from a promise that we shall return our people to their proper sphere of dominance.

If the rumors about Visari’s daughter taking his place are true, this could be an interesting direction for the series. Personally, I think it’s interesting that they are bringing up the triad because it shows that the developers might be showcasing the series’ lore and backstory a little bit more–something I’m all in favor of.

[Source: Siliconera]

Another year, another humongous list of MMOs to sift through. Right on the heels of Blizzard’s own Diablo III, worldwide Korean MMO TERA is on a mission: to tear you away from whatever MMO you’re playing now, and earn the right to collect your subscription fee at the end of every month.

At first glance, TERA‘s main selling points are beautiful landscapes, controller support, and action oriented gameplay that forces you to manually aim your attacks, as well as block and dodge enemy assaults. But how well does it work? Is action-adventure gameplay viable for an open world MMO?

As previously mentioned, without hesitation, the biggest draw of TERA is easily the combat system. While other dungeon crawler titles such as Phantasy Star, Vindictus have adapted a less traditional method of combat, those games are heavily instanced: full action combat isn’t exactly a stand-out mechanic in open world MMOs. Immediately when you boot up the game, you have the option to utilize native 360 and PS3 controller support, as well as your typical mouse and keyboard MMO staple.

Imagine conflict in your favorite action RPG, from Amalur to Dark Souls — that’s basically how combat works in Tera. Although it isn’t as nuanced or twitch as those few titles, it does get fairly deep the more you level up, as you gain a number of different skills that both complement, and literally chain off one another. On the screen is a small reticle, which allows you to aim all of your attacks despite what direction the camera is facing.

I ended up choosing the Warrior class, and using a 360 controller: to my surprise, the experience translates perfectly, as it felt like I was playing a typical console action title.  It also helps that my class lends itself incredibly to a controller, given that it isn’t your prototypical manifesation of “MMO Warrior”. TERA‘s Warrior is actually more akin to a rogue, opting for quick movements and attacks — the Lancer, Slayer, and Berserker classes are more slow and deliberate in terms of melee interaction.

By pressing the back button, I was able to map pretty much everything I wanted to every button on the controller. My setup uses LT to initiate conversations/pick up items, “A” to jump,  “LB and RB” to change my list of skills, “X, Y,” are mapped to attacks, and “B” initiates an awesome Spider Man-like evasion flip.When I hold LB, RB, or LB+RB, I can switch to different pages of skills, and use those by pressing A, B, X, Y, or LT/RT with the aforementioned bumpers held down.

Using a 360 controller is great for leveling, but will it be viable long term? While I can’t imagine using a controller at end-game for serious raiding, TERA does make concessions to potentially make the tactic feasible. For instance, it is possible to deliberate choose certain attacks and combo them into other attacks, meaning you don’t have to list every single skill on your controller map. Not only does this help for end-game controller fans, but it’s also a really fun way to help more casual fans not get overwhelmed by a large amount of skills.

TERA also makes a number of concessions for people who don’t normally play MMOs. For instance, you get your first mount for free once you reach level 11 — no questions asked. Typically in MMOs, you have to wait until at least some point in mid-game (around 20 or later) to have the right to pay a ton of in-game gold for a means of travel — thankfully TERA lets you start chugging along fairly easily. Flight paths (nodes which are used to easily travel across the game’s world) are also significantly shorter than most MMOs, as they have a Star Wars “warp speed” type clip that expedites travel across long distances.

Keep in mind though, that at it’s core, TERA is very much a traditional MMO. It has the holy trinity of classes, people can steal your quest items and kills, and quests progress fairly similarly in regards to 90% of the MMOs on the market, in that they consist largely of a number of fetch/kill quests. Thankfully, TERA manages to stay engaging because of the combat system: a testament I’ve seen many players also reiterate through in-game chat. Because you are consistently involved in combat, it never quite feels like a grind — group bosses are also much more exciting given the fact that you basically have to constantly move around.

While I haven’t embarked in my first instance/dungeon (the first one is level 20), there is (thankfully) a dungeon finder tool readily available in the game (take notes, TOR!). As far as group composition goes, things are fairly traditional in terms of the “holy trinity” (tank, healer, DPS). Lancers are generally agreed upon as the “main tanks”, but Warriors can evasion tank as well, provided they’re skilled. Mystics and Priests are on heal-duty, and everything else is DPS. As a Warrior, I’m looking forward to trying my hand at tanking, but for now, I’ll keep leveling and reporting my thoughts.

All in all, TERA can be a great distraction from whatever MMO you’re playing now, whether it’s TOR, Rift, LOTRO, Aion, WoW, DCUO, or anything else. Provided you have open mind towards the decidedly anime aesthetic, TERA‘s combat system alone might be worth the price of entry.

Bethesda finally let the cat of the bag: an Elder Scrolls MMO is in the works.  The game is set to center in on the story of Molag Bal and his quest to overtake Tamriel. Lead developer Matt Firor has stated that they are on track to create “the best MMO ever made — and one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise.”

Personally, I’m pretty excited to see what they can do with Tamriel, because outside of Arena, this could potentially be the first time we’ll ever see the world of TES in it’s entirety. I’m really excited to see the Summerset Isles, and all of Morrowind, not just the portion of it they featured in the third Elder Scrolls game.

The game will be developed by Zenimax Online Studios, meaning Bethesda will still be perfectly free to keep working on Fallout 4 and another Elder Scrolls game down the line. Bethesda has also announced the game will be compatible with both PC and Mac platforms.

The latest Korean MMO has just dropped in the US — TERA Online. Combat is done in an action oriented manner, forcing players to dodge enemy attacks while launching attacks of their own. To supplement this action approach, the game has support for traditional controllers in addition the typical keyboard and mouse setup. Standard MMO tropes like the healer, tank, and DPS trinity exist,  as well as the inclusion of a traditional quest system, world encounters (BAMs), and instances.

In addition to the aforementioned gameplay elements, the developers have also adapted a version of Eve’s PLEX system, which allows for a currency called Chronoscrolls to be purchased by players for real cash. Chronoscrolls can be subsequently sold or bought on the action house, as dictated by the player economy — using them will net you extra game-time. In case you’re interested,  expect more TERA coverage from Gamer Limit in the coming weeks.

Yesterday we reported that DTP Entertainment AG was filing for insolvency, placing Ronimo Games’ Awesomenauts in potential jeopardy. Fear not! Today, despite the publisher’s financial situation, Ronimo Games announced that Awesomenauts will launch as planned on PSN and XBLA.

Tomorrow the game will be available for free for PlayStation Plus subscribers while everyone else will have to wait until Wednesday, May 2nd. Awesomenauts is a 2D MOBA-style game that has an “80s cartoon” aesthetic. It’s a May miracle!

It looks like the cat is out of the bag: Nintendo is perched to release the “Midnight Purple” version of the 3DS on May 2oth, alongside of Mario Tennis 3D.

This is the fifth new color for the 3DS. The unit will retail for $170, and sadly will not ship with the Ambassador games. In what seems like a missed opportunity, I wish this iteration was called “Eggplant”, and shipped alongside of Kid Icarus: Uprising.

Nintendo 3DS Gets a Royal New Color on May 20: Midnight Purple
April 30, 2012

Just as lilacs and hyacinth bloom throughout the spring, so too a new color is blooming for the Nintendo 3DS system. Midnight Purple gives the hand-held a royal new look. The new color will launch May 20, the same day Mario Tennis Open becomes available.

The Midnight Purple Nintendo 3DS, offered at a suggested retail price of $169.99 in the United States, becomes the fifth color in the always-stylish Nintendo 3DS color palette, joining Cosmo Black, Aqua Blue, Flame Red and Pearl Pink. Now fans have another option to customize the look of their systems to suit their individual styles and personalities.

Nintendo 3DS lets users enjoy games and videos in 3D without the use of special glasses. Mario Tennis Open adds to the strong library of Nintendo 3DS games, which also includes Super Mario 3D Land, Kid Icarus: Uprising and Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir. Fans also can check out 3D videos on Nintendo Video and access new and classic downloadable games in the Nintendo eShop.

Remember that Nintendo 3DS features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information this and other features, visit http://www.nintendo.com/3ds.