May 22, 2013
Super Bass
Is Gian’s love for the Summer King stronger than his hate?
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?
A few weeks ago, IGN took a stab at highlighting a few of the best vendettas in video game history. While a few inescapable classics will make almost any list largely based on tradition and recurrence (see: Nintendo and Sega’s brand-defining characters), we decided to highlight a few of our own favorites this week and volunteer them into the discussion.
Last month, we witnessed the end of one of gaming’s most iconic studios, LucasArts, at the hands of Disney. This move left the status of the developer’s Star Wars franchise as an unknown. Well, no longer. This week, EA announced their acquisition of the Star Wars license and assured fans that the future of the franchise in gaming is safe. As to whether this is good or bad news... well, that depends on your perception of EA.
This week saw the release of three new trailers for Rockstar’s latest offering—Grand Theft Auto V. As the veteran developers begin to ramp up the release of information in the months leading up to GTA V’s September launch, they’ve allowed fans to progressively learn a little more about the game’s three protagonists, each of whom is featured in their own new trailer. Meet Michael, Franklin, and Trevor—Rockstar’s latest cast of miscreants in the GTA franchise.
Bethesda finally drew back the curtain on their latest project this week, and fans of the survival horror genre should be very, very happy. Shinji Makami, creator of the Resident Evil and Dino Crisis franchises, is returning to his survival horror roots with his new game, The Evil Within, in hopes of steering a genre he sees as slightly off-course back in the right direction.
Most fans of 90s gaming are well acquainted with developer LucasArts’ (technically known as Lucasfilm Games at the time) early adventure gaming classics: The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. This week, Ron Gilbert, creator of the Monkey Island-verse, opened up on his blog, Grumpy Gamer, about what he would like to do if he were ever to make another Monkey Island game—mandatory reading for gamers pining for the company of Guybrush Threepwood and the Ghost Pirate LeChuck.
A series of reports claiming that the next-gen Xbox, codenamed Durango, would have an always-online requirement recently made waves around the gaming world, prompting many gamers to outrage and frustration driven by lessons seemingly unlearned from the launch fiascos of always-online AAA titles such as SimCity and Diablo III. It has certainly been an eventful week for Microsoft, to say the least—ranging from initial reports, to outspoken employees, to a firing, and now to a conflicting report. Let’s take a look back.
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LucasArts, one of the most influential and important development studios of gaming’s formative years, is no more, thanks to Disney. The studio was best known for its iconic and visionary games of the 90s and early 2000s, such as Grim Fandango (a personal favorite), the Monkey Island series, and of course, the Star Wars series, including such classics as Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and Rogue Squadron.
[Click to learn the fate of 1313 and future Star Wars games....]
Jonathan Blow, the creator of wildly successful Xbox Live game Braid and one of today’s star indie game developers, threw his backing behind Sony this month, announcing that his new game, The Witness, will be available on the PlayStation 4 before becoming available for the next-gen Xbox. But he didn’t stop there: Blow went on to state that the new Xbox “is not strictly about games,” which is the main reason he threw his backing to Sony.
Lost in the furor of Sony’s PS4 launch, Microsoft’s potential Xbox 720 launch, Valve entering the console market, and the long shadow of Apple looming over all, is speculation that next-gen console games may in fact come with a next-gen price, setting the standard video game launch pricepoint at $69.99—a hefty 17% hike over the current launch pricepoint of $59.99. Thus far, industry leaders have avoided discussing specifics in terms of pinpointing future prices, but this evasiveness may in and of itself be cause for concern.
Electronic Arts’ SimCity launched—kind of—earlier this week, to much initial fanfare. While many bemoaned the game’s use of always-online DRM, anticipation was high for the return of EA’s classic world builder, especially due to developer Maxis’s implementation of multiplayer, allowing gamers to cooperate with or sabotage their friends’ cities to fulfill challenges. Then launch day came around, and disaster struck—best exemplified by the screen above, courtesy of perhaps the most fitting review of the game on the internet by Jonathan Cresswell.
File this one in the “Well, that was predictable” category. There are heavy rumblings in the gamingverse that Microsoft is set to unveil the Xbox 720 sometime in the near future. While the gaming giant is currently playing it coy, IGN did a little digging and discovered the registration of a few potential Xbox event websites, to which Microsoft declined to respond. Community scuttlebutt pegs the big reveal to be happening sometime in April.
Let the rumors and speculations come to an end. In a spectacular and lengthy press conference last night, Sony finally unveiled the PlayStation 4 live in New York, and revealed that their next-gen console will be released in time for the 2013 holiday season. In addition to confirming the speculated hardware specifications (which essentially give it the graphical and processing power of a high-end gaming PC) and the console’s increased emphasis on social networking, Sony announced a few of the major titles that will be coming to the PS4 at or shortly after launch.
Aliens: Colonial Marines launched earlier this week, and early reviews are... well... not good. Despite the early promise the game showed when we previewed it at PAX a few years ago—a few of the cool things going for it included storyboarding with Ridley Scott himself and the power of creating a true, canon sequel to Aliens—something clearly went horribly wrong somewhere along the six year development curve. So, what happened?
Naughty Dog turned the third-person adventure genre on its ear in 2007 with the release of the first game of the Uncharted franchise, Drake’s Fortune. In 2011, the developers announced they were taking a break from Uncharted and its charming protagonist, Nathan Drake, to pursue a new, darker project—and thus did we learn of the development of The Last of Us. Last year, Naughty Dog showed an exclusive playthrough to long lines of diehard fans at PAX 2012. This week, as the game nears completion, reports have surfaced of the first hands-on play sessions with reviewers and, well, our most anticipated game of 2013 is sounding spectacular.
The impending release of BioShock: Infinite has developer Irrational Games slowly lifting the veil on game details and information, the latest of which is a sitdown with IGN to discuss the major themes of their latest game. The BioShock universe has never been one to shy away from literary grandeur—most notably, the first game’s exploration of choice and Objectivism springs to mind—and Infinite is no exception. So what themes are Irrational tackling with the floating city of Columbia?
While the image above hearkens to a simpler time in console competition, the modern day battle is no less heated between contemporary industry giants Sony and Microsoft. What will the next generation of consoles bring to the table? We received a small taste late last week when plans leaked detailing the processing power, control scheme, and graphical output of Sony’s next contribution to the field—the PlayStation 4, code-named Orbis.
As we return from a holiday full of catching up on the year’s best and revisiting Skyrim via Dragonborn (an excellent DLC, by the way), gaming finds itself once more a part of the discussion in a serious debate. The events of Newtown set off age-old arguments on age-old issues—from the mouths of a defensive NRA, an outraged media, and a nation searching for answers. As video game violence once more became a hot-button issue, the industry responded this month with varying perspectives.
The arrival of December can only mean one thing—the battle for game of the year is at hand. Spike’s Video Game Awards initially began ten years ago as an awkward, me-too kind of affair—a flailing attempt by a desperate TV station to cash in on the rise of video game popularity, no doubt perceived as a passing fad at the time. However, in the decade since the debut of the VGAs, something unexpected happened—they gained credibility, after a fashion, becoming home to game premieres, trailer launches, and developer presence. This year’s VGAs air tonight, so we ask, which game will emerge at the forefront of the industry this year?
When the Halo franchise changed developmental hands, one of the questions gamers everywhere were left with was: what would Bungie do next? Well, thanks to IGN and an ad agency document leak, now we know. Let’s talk about Destiny.
In a matter of of days, one of the most iconic RPGs of the late 90s/early 2000s makes its return to the gaming scene. With Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition (BG:EE) set to hit the marketplace on November 28th, Tor.com recently had the opportunity to speak with the man behind the magic—Beamdog head and BG:EE creative director Trent Oster—about a range of topics, including Baldur’s Gate II and III, development delays, and the state of modern PC gaming.
[“No, we’re not mercenaries. We just carry weapons and kill things for the joy of the experience.”]
