May 15, 2013
The Button Man and the Murder Tree
An all-new Wild Cards story
May 14, 2013
Shall We Gather
When one world brushes another, asking the right question can be magic…
May 8, 2013
Fire Above, Fire Below
The dragon below our city has died. What is to be done?
May 7, 2013
We Have Always Lived On Mars
They've never seen the sky. Or the sun. Or the stars. Or the moons.
Rockstar’s recent barrage of Grand Theft Auto V footage and news is what has the gaming world buzzing this week, as the masters of sandbox gaming return to the West Coast to tackle Los Angeles, a.k.a. Los Santos. After a half-decade of development, the GTA series returns in 2013 to satiate your basejumping, jet flying, tank driving, rampaging needs. So what do we now know about GTA V, aside from the freshly launched trailer above?
In what may turn out to be one of the biggest steps forward for Linux in recent history, Valve has launched a beta version of Steam for Linux, along with a catalogue of over two dozen games currently available for the open-source OS, headlined by Team Fortress 2 and Serious Sam 3. Several months ago, Valve head Gabe Newell made the development of this project known, portraying it as both a preemptive and precautionary move to guard Steam against the potentially closed platform of Windows 8. This week, Steam for Linux became a reality.
Fake coughs are starting to echo in offices around the world as Halo fans everywhere prepare for Master Chief’s return this upcoming Tuesday. The impending release of Halo 4 marks the first time a developer other than Bungie has made a major contribution to the Halo canon. So how did developer 343 Industries handle Microsoft’s most expensive video game ever, to date? Early reviews hit the net just yesterday and, well... see for yourself.
Last night’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon brought about the debut of a new, Hollywood-powered Halo 4 trailer. Produced by David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and directed by Tim Miller (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), the new CGI/live-action hybrid trailer provides a few hints as to plot direction and also teases the series’ new big bad – after all, Master Chief can only kick Covenant butt for so long until he requires a change of pace.
This past week saw the release of Dishonored, an FPS/RPG hybrid developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks, and early word indicates a critical verdict of awesome. Gamers take on the role of a framed royal guard on a quest for vengeance in a plague-ridden, whale-powered steampunk dystopia called Dunwall, loosely based on Victorian-era London (if that locale alone doesn’t sell you on this game, we give up). The true allure of Dishonored comes not from the quests you must complete, but from exploring the vibrant, beatifully realized torment of a languishing city.
The striking image above comes with the Ubisoft press release that announces five downloadable content packs for Assassin’s Creed III. Three of the DLC packs will be single-player episodic content exploring post-Revolution history “as it could have been.” Namely, what if George Washington fashioned himself a tyrant instead of a president? It’s an intriguing romp into an alternate America. Evil George Washington is so much more interesting than yet another zombie mode.
As the October 30th release date approaches, Assassin’s Creed III is definitely one of the biggest games of the fall season. Never huge fans of the franchise ourselves, we have to admit that this installment looks like madcap, badass, gorgeous fun and the timeframe (and the historical research) for the story really makes it stand out.
In other gaming news: CliffyB leaves Epic Games! And watch the first episode of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn.
Seattle, Gilded City of Utilikilts, was once again host to thousands of gamers for the annual PAX Prime convention. Thus far, there have been no reports of controversy or rampant sexism, just a ton of cosplay and an exciting batch of new games from some of the industry's biggest (and smallest) studios.
And we got to play some of them.
Kratos is back, and surprise, surprise—he's still angry. We here at Tor.com got a hands-on preview of God of War: Ascension live from the floors of PAX Prime 2012 in Seattle this past weekend, and we're happy to report that SCE Santa Monica Studios has successfully brought something new to the table for the franchise's latest installment in the form of multiplayer gameplay.
[Ever wondered who would win in a fight between Theseus and Achilles?]
In an interview with Eurogamer earlier this week, Warren Spector—creator of such gaming classics as Deus Ex, System Shock, Thief, and (some of) the Ultima series—threw down the gauntlet to fellow developers, including Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney and id’s John Carmack, challenging them to shift the focus of the gaming medium from the easy aim-shoot-kill mechanic to (among other options) the considerably more difficult characterize-engage-sustain mechanic.
Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo III has, in many ways, been somewhat of a disappointment since its launch mere months ago. Despite the fact that the game shattered many a modern-day sales record, critiques have been pouring in since the day the servers opened—many of the negligible variety, but just as many with validity. Blizzard appears to have taken this criticism to heart, and plans to roll out a mammoth patch in about a month’s time to address some concerns.
So what are some of these notable issues that plague Diablo III? The list is long.
Earlier this week, footage from the once highly anticipated Half-Life 2 mod, Black Mesa: Source, leaked online before being quickly vacuumed back up by copyright claims. The perpetually-in-development mod — long thought to be vaporware — ambitiously intends to recreate the original Half-Life using the Source engine. Its recent, seemingly unintended re-emergence may serve, at least, to re-ignite hope of its completion amongst the Valve community.
Windows 8, in all its mobile-revolution promotin’, touch-screen totin’ glory, is due to hit PCs everywhere in late October, and represents a major departure from previous Windows iterations in several respects, including interface and, in what promises to be a hot-button issue for game developers everywhere, a closed platform designed to promote the use of Windows apps. Valve and Blizzard execs took the past week as an opportunity to chime in and explain the potentially hazardous landscape Windows 8 could present for gamers, as well as the possibility of the rise of Linux.
Mobile games such as Angry Birds, Plants Vs. Zombies, and the Infinity Blade series have been around for some time now and have firmly established their niche in the wide world of video games. Indeed, modern mobile games have a lot going for them: they’re fun, they’re pretty, they can be played for a minute or an hour (likely the former, based on the average American attention span), and they’re relatively affordable. Given this, one might assume that mobile gaming is settling into a peaceful co-existence with traditional gaming.
Earlier this week, Rockstar released a couple of new screenshots for Grand Theft Auto V, but not much else by way of news or details, leaving GTA fans chomping at the bit for more information. Since the game’s announcement trailer last November, Rockstar has pulled the curtains shut on its development, with all news drying up to a slow trickle. The silence surrounding the game strongly suggests that the kerfuffle raised earlier in the year by developer’s resume stating a fall 2012 release may indeed have been for naught.
In honor of Silver Age comics, we present to you: 60’s Robin (circa Adam West Batman) and the Dark Knight versus Bane. Enjoy.
Variety (yes, yes, we know. Of all the gaming sources...) reports that Rocksteady’s next Batman game will depart from the dark, Nolan-esque stylings of the fantastic Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, and instead revisit DC’s lighter, somewhat goofier Silver Age comics for their next project, perhaps even recounting Batman’s very first encounter with Joker. Word is we can expect Batman’s various other DC compatriots, circa the Justice League, to appear in this game, as well.
So what has everybody been buzzing about in the gaming world for the past few weeks? Naughty Dog’s new post-apocalyptic title? Planetside 2? 38 Studios’ collapse? Some rising indie developers?
Nope.
Story after story has been making the rounds online about men treating female gamers, professional or casual, like so much dirt. Shocking, we know. The gaming community is filled with misogynist assholes? News at 11. Take your pick of stories.
This past week, Epic Games developer Cliff Bleszinski (known more commonly in the gaming community as CliffyB) ruffled some feathers during an interview discussing the upcoming Gears of War: Judgment by claiming that “in this current console generation . . . we’ve taken a lot of steps to grow the audience and . . . [modern] games have become more linear and easier, so it feels like a lot of quick-time-events.” While recent throwback games such as Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls may beg to differ, the point he raises is an interesting one, and worth consideration.
[Click if you’ve ever wanted to toss your controller through your TV.]
Microsoft both giveth and taketh away the biggest gaming news story of the week, as leaked Xbox 720 documents found their way online briefly before being quickly pulled earlier this week. However, as we all know by now, once something is on the Internet, it is never truly lost. There were questions as to the validity of the documents, but industry word on the street pegs them as legit. Let’s get to the good stuff — what will Microsoft’s next-gen console offer the gaming community?
It should come as no surprise that the respective braintrusts behind Valve Software’s Steam, one of the pioneers of online game distribution, and EA’s Origin, a newer (and frankly, thus far inferior and user-unfriendly) entry into the marketplace, are at odds with one another, both competitively and philosophically. Origin head David DeMartini fired a shot across the bow recently, claiming that Steam’s frequent 65-75% off sales “[cheapen] intellectual property,” and while these sales “certainly [work] for Valve, [they] may not work as well for the publishing partners who take on the majority of that haircut.”
Upon being asked to elaborate, he explained: “If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that, to sell a whole bunch of stuff at a low price. The gamemakers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we’re not trying to be Target. We’re trying to be Nordstrom.”
E3 2012 came and went this past weekend in L.A., carrying in tow a plethora of new games and devices to suck our wallets dry and while away our precious spare hours. While there’s no way we’d be able to discuss all (or even most) games covered at E3 this year without taking over the entire front page of Tor.com, we have culled content for the sake of manageability, and touched base here with only those franchises and games that pique our specific interests, including Halo 4, Gears of War: Judgment, Watch Dogs, God of War: Ascension, Assassin’s Creed III, Sleeping Dogs, The Last of Us, and more.
[Click to get up-to-speed with all the games you’ll be playing next year.]
