Relicnews: the definitive source for all things Relic

Relic’s first console title is due to hit shelves March 14th! Well, at least according to THQ’s news mail out.

The pre-order special is up and running. Check out The Outfit’s pre-order page. Pre-order from one of the shops and you get a The Outfit faceplate for free.

That means I’ve got like 2 weeks to go out and snag an Xbox 360! OH GOODIE!

Sumgai edit: Check out my sexy Outfit360. Retailers should have the faceplate in their stores now, so go out and pre-order it!!

Ohhhh Beta Preview of The Outfit up at Gamecloud. They don’t cover the Multiplayer, just the Single player, and they have apparently nothing but good to say about it.

Let’s face it, Steven Spielbergâ��s film Saving Private Ryan was a direct influence on the Medal of Honor series and indirectly inspired other WWII shooters. The differences in The Outfit, however, are apparently immediately when you play the initial pre-rendered cut scene. No serious narration and no fauve newsreel footage here. The Outfit is pure comic book and pulp fiction action as you are introduced to the three main US Army characters.(JD Tyler, Tommy Mac, and Deuce Williams) blowing up stuff, including lots of Nazis. The storyline is pure comic book as well as the three heroes are tracking an evil Nazi officer who likes to burn women and children in churches. Naturally he’s going down via this WWII version of The A-Team. Overall it was nice to be able to play a WWII game and not be hit over the head with how serious everything is.

Review here. Enjoy!

Team Xbox has a 720p and 480p version of the latest Outfit trailer up on their website.

Go check it out.

Thanks to Allen over at Relic for sending along this tidbit.

Figured you guys might like to check these out. These are developer Xbox 360 faceplates that members of “The Outfit” team got for working on the project (people who preorder the game at specific locations will get them too!). I got to say working on The Outfit was a rewarding enough but these faceplates are icing on our cake!

I hope you think they are cool as we do!

Here's the shot he sent along...

IGN posted some new information about the upcoming Outfit demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The multiplayer demo will be released on March 3rd. The demo will feature the full eight players on Estate Assault with the Strategic Victory gameplay.

Also the latest Outfit trailer is up in their video section. Go check it out.

Thanks to Outfit forums on Xbox.com for the heads up!

The World Cyber Games has announced the titles for the 2006 competition, and Dawn of War: Winter Assault is among them.

The World Cyber Games Committee today announced the eight titles that will serve as official games for the 2006 World Cyber Games. The six PC games and 2 console games includes: StarCraft: Brood War (PC); Warcraft3: Frozen Throne (PC); Half-Life: Counter-Strike 1.6 (PC); Warhammer 40,000: Winter Assault (PC); FIFA Soccer 06(PC); Need for Speed: Most Wanted (PC); Dead or Alive 4 (Xbox 360) and Project Gotham Racing 3 (Xbox 360).

These will serve as the official events at the 2006 Grand Final in Monza, Italy this October. Organizers are particularly excited by the inclusion of Project Gotham Racing on the Xbox 360 since the Grand Final event will be held at the world famous F1 Autodromo in Monza, known throughout the racing world as the premiere racing facility on the Formula 1 circuit.

In addition, the Counter-Strike competition has been changed from Source to 1.6 to facilitate better operation of tournaments leading up to the Grand Final. This move comes as a result of player feedback on the World Cyber Games website following last year’s successful event in Singapore.

You can discuss this on the forums.

Those of you familiar with the our advertising hating attack moderators or the new auto-thread locker, might enjoy this bit of confusion. A prominent member from the Relic Forums and HW/HW:C community from times long past started a General Discussion post about his site related to a new game, “Sins of a Solar Empire“. Apparently some old HW:C (Barking-Dog) devs work at Iron Clad Games, makers of this new product. Anyway, the autolocker’d been locking recent threads about the game, and when Momoguru posted about his fansite (because other “Sins” threads had been autolocked), he was struck down by the GD moderators (I’m not a GD moderator and I got angry email for it? How’d THAT work?). One of the old threads has been re-opened, so go see what all this fuss is about.

Check out Momoguru’s site here.

(Wouldn’t it be great if THQ let Relic go back to Space RTS games? I wonder if Relic even wants to? Ohhh maybe some Battlefleet Gothic + Dawn of War similar to the new Empires at War Star Wars game that’s coming?)

There’s a new developer diary up on The Outfit’s official website. This one’s titled A Cinematic Experience…

It’s an important choice here at Relic that cinematic content should look and feel like the rest of the game. Many games feature highly finished rendered and lit cinematic sequences that often have the unfortunate effect of pulling a player out of the world of the game completely, something we wanted to avoid with The Outfit. Besides, as an Xbox 360 title, we’re creating worlds that look just as good as the TV shows I was working on just a few years ago!

More Outfit news…

Gamespot posted their multiplayer impression of The Outfit. Gamespot were impressed with the improvements that were made since E3 last year. Here is a quick snip,

The gameplay mechanics in The Outfit work well with the game, offering a welcome array of options. At the top level you’ll find your hero’s unique weapons and squad-control features. Following that you’ll see the destruction-on-demand mechanic, which lets you summon any number of different assists, ranging from vehicles you can drive, weapon emplacements you can man, air strikes you can call for in order to clear out foes, or reinforcements you can request when the need arises by using points you’ll earn through combat. Finally, you’ll have the options for close-quarters melee combat when the need arises. It’s a good mix of options to make use of during battle, and most work well. We’re not entirely sold on the vehicle handling, which isn’t as responsive or intuitive to use as we’d like, but we approve of the idea behind the vehicles.

Also offered in the article is a video interview with Relic’s Adrian Crook and Jeff Brown. Go check it out. According to Adrian, the release date for the Outfit is going to be March 14th.

IGN posted their multiplayer impressions from a press event that Relic and THQ held yesterday. Tal Blevins and Chris Roper from IGN were there to get a feel of multiplayer and participated in an Outfit Tournament with other members of the gaming media. The article also stated that there will be a downloadable demo available near the time of its release. Check it out,

We jumped into the first round of the tournament and, after a bit of practice, Chris and I were using the DoD menu like champs. It’s quick and easy to call in items and reinforcements, and while the punch of a tank or the added defense of a good turret is a necessary part of the game, you can also use the drops themselves to your advantage as you can literally kill your enemies — or be killed yourself — by incoming item drops, which plop in via parachute. We actually used this tactic effectively at least once to destroy an enemy vehicle that was attacking one of our bases. I positioned a vehicle drop over where the opposing vehicle was, and my incoming tank crushed our opponent’s half-track.

This game just looks better everyday…