More Than Just a Port? How DEUS EX Is Making The Most Out of The Wii U

There was some speculation about a possible Deus Ex: Human Revolution Wii U port back when we reported on the Deus Ex film. At this point we now know the name Deus Ex: Human Defiance is attached to the CBS film project.

An Amazon posting now lists the an enhanced Wii U version of the 2011 cyberpunk RPG action game called Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director’s Cut (via Joystiq).

Like most of the Wii U ports this game will feature “a multitude of improvements, features, and additional content,” while promising to be the “ultimate” DE:HR experience.

Continue reading “More Than Just a Port? How DEUS EX Is Making The Most Out of The Wii U” »

Bastion Developers Unveil New Sci-Fi RPG, TRANSISTOR (We’ve Watched the Trailer 7 Times So Far)

Bastion developers Supergiant games has unveiled its newest project, Transistor. You can check some screens and the debut trailer below (via AGB).

Transistor is a sci-fi themed RPG where players will take on the role of a young woman who gets her hands on a powerful weapon after being attacked with it by a group of assailants.

“Now she must fight from street to street against forces that will stop at nothing to recover the weapon. During the course of the adventure, players will piece together the Transistor’s mysteries as they pursue its former owners.”

Continue reading “Bastion Developers Unveil New Sci-Fi RPG, TRANSISTOR (We’ve Watched the Trailer 7 Times So Far)” »

24-Year-Old Gamer Immortalized in Total War: Rome 2 Before Losing Battle With Cancer

This past summer a 24 year-old by the name of James was the very first person to go hands on with Total War: Rome 2 outside of the development team at Creative Assembly in Horsham, UK. At that point, even the press had only seen the game in action.

James got to tour the studio back in July as part of a program that the charity Willow set up called the Special Day Initiative.

The program is designed to enrich the lives of terminally ill people by setting up remarkable opportunities like this one. James and his brother got the chance to see the developers creating the game, play an early pre-alpha version of the game and even offer suggestions to the team.

Continue reading “24-Year-Old Gamer Immortalized in Total War: Rome 2 Before Losing Battle With Cancer” »

Don’t Fall For These Fake GTA V “Free Beta Tests”

Don’t be fooled by all those Grand Theft Auto V beta sites, they’re fake.

Not only has there been nothing officially announced for a GTA V beta, Rockstar will most likely never have a beta anyway.

There are a bunch of fake websites and Facebook pages claiming to have GTA V beta access–they don’t.

Continue reading “Don’t Fall For These Fake GTA V “Free Beta Tests”” »

February Wii U Sales Troubling For Nintendo; Dead Space 3 Is Best Selling Game of Month

The inauspicious tale continues for Nintendo, as Wii U sales were in the 64,000 range (fewer than XBOX 360 or the PS3 have ever been in their history). The Wii U sold 57,000 a month before, but January was a “5 week month” and had the holidays to boost its numbers.

This comes on the shoulders of the announcement the Vita outsold the 3DS in Japan, selling 63,000 units. Perhaps the spike in sales was in anticipation of the PS4, but it is most likely a result of the price drop put on the handheld. All and all, it provided another tough break for Nintendo.

Nintendo wasn’t alone, however, the U.S. video game sales as a whole fell 25% in the U.S. for the month, with EA’s Dead Space 3 taking the top spot, and the consummate best seller Black Ops 2 coming in second. Continue reading “February Wii U Sales Troubling For Nintendo; Dead Space 3 Is Best Selling Game of Month” »

Saints Row 4 Coming August 20 + New Debut Trailer

Saints Row 4 will drop on August 20, 2013 in North America, publisher Deep Silver announced today (via Polygon). The company also released the title’s debut trailer, you can check it out below.

Saints Row 4 will come to current generation consoles and PC this summer. “From the Crack House to the White House, The ball-busting next chapter in the Saints Row franchise, is starting a party in your pants this August,” the new trailer’s description reads.

Continue reading “Saints Row 4 Coming August 20 + New Debut Trailer” »

The Phantom Pain Mystery Gets Even Weirder

In an interview last night with GTTV’s Geoff Kieghley, CEO of supposed Phantom Pain developers Moby Dick Studios said that a new trailer for the game will be showing later this month at GDC in San Francisco. The supposed CEO, Joakim Mogren, also said that there will be a full reveal of the game at that time.

Mogren, seen below, appeared with his face almost completely covered in bandages much like the Big Boss looking character shown in the debut VGA trailer.

At this point, if it wasn’t already, this is pretty obviously some kind of an elaborate ruse Mr. Kojima has set up. For a full breakdown of all the speculation pertaining Kojima’s attachment to the Phantom Pain project check out our previous coverage here.

Continue reading “The Phantom Pain Mystery Gets Even Weirder” »

Al Qaeda May Have Just Made The Worst Video Game In the History of Space and Time

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Apparently there’s two choices when you join Al Qaeda. Either sign on for that inevitable kamikaze mission, or enroll in the organization’s brand new game design course.

Apparently some budding jihadists have managed to cobble together some software skills and programming languages and make angry video games: in this case, it’s those damn French, who managed to snipe a bunch of AQ’s militants in Mali last month. Continue reading “Al Qaeda May Have Just Made The Worst Video Game In the History of Space and Time” »

Sniper Elite 3 Announced: Coming To Current, Next-Gen Platforms and PC

Rebellion and publisher 505 Games have announced Sniper Elite 3 for current and next-gen platforms. SE3 is scheduled to launch sometime in 2014 (via Eurogamer).

Earlier this year a press release on the game stated that it was coming for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

With today’s more vague description of “current and next-gen platforms,” some are speculating that there may be a chance we see a Wii U version. Today’s announcement stated that the game would also be coming to PC as well.

Continue reading “Sniper Elite 3 Announced: Coming To Current, Next-Gen Platforms and PC” »

This Refurbished (and Awesome-Looking) Portable Atari 2600 Can Be Yours (for $1200)

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How much would you figure the most expensive Atari 2600 is worth? If it helps, the rarest and most expensive 2600 game, one of two boxed copies of Air Raid,  sold late last year for $33,433.

So maybe ebay seller retro_mood will get the $1240 he’s asking for this extremely rare, portable Atari 2600, Continue reading “This Refurbished (and Awesome-Looking) Portable Atari 2600 Can Be Yours (for $1200)” »

Gearbox Teases New Borderlands 2 Melee Class and Level Cap [Video]

Gearbox and 2K have officially released a teaser trailer for a new upcoming character class.

The trailer is called the Borderlands 2: Mayhem Approaches Teaser and depicts what appears to be a large brute style melee class.

Polygon had cam footage from the trailer debuting at SXSW but Gearbox has now released the trailer so we can really get a good look at it. Gearbox’s Jonathan Hemingway and Matthew Armstrong hinted at this sort of thing when they mentioned publicly about really wanting a melee focused character.

You can watch the character class teaser below.

The teaser’s text reads, “Deep beneath Pandora…An Experiment Has Escaped…Bandits Beware…a New Vault Hunter Is Coming.” Which is followed by this image:

“WARNING! SUBJECT EN ROUTE TO PAX EAST!”

The trailer says we will be gearing more about this new class come PAX East on March 24 during the Gearbox Software panel. Gearbox will also be bringing new information on the Borderlands 2 level cap increase.

While all three of the Borderlands DLC add-ons are part of the game’s season pass, the game last character class, Mechromancer will run you $10 and is not included. There is still more DLC coming for the season pass but we are unsure if this newly announced class is part of it or not.

Check back later in the month as Gearbox said there will also be other Borderlands 2 news announced during this year’s PAX East.

Borderlands 2: Mayhem Approaches Teaser:

“Gaming Under the Influence” Combines Gaming, Drinking and Live Fun, Airs Friday Night

As the video game industry and culture has continued to grow, gaming has grown from interactive entertainment to a spectator sport.  Numerous leagues and streaming websites now feature live streaming broadcasts of almost any video game in the world, ranging from major competitions to walk-throughs of popular titles taking place in a gamer’s living room.

Gaming Under the Influence aims to change the rules and bring video game competition out of the the living room.  Taking place every Friday night from O’Malley’s Liquor Kitchen in Chicago, GUI brings television production quality to the table as participants take part in a combination of video game competition and drinking games.

“A couple years ago, I toyed around with the idea of doing something different than a ‘stream’,” said GUI‘s Jared Hoffa.  ”I play a lot of games, but I can’t sit and watch someone play games on Twitch. It bores the hell out of me.” Continue reading ““Gaming Under the Influence” Combines Gaming, Drinking and Live Fun, Airs Friday Night” »

The Return of Road Rash: Creator Is “ready to do another one” With Kickstarter

The co-creator of Road Rash Dan Geisler is considering Kickstarting a reboot of the game (Reddit via CVG).

A Reddit user, kybobs, posted the question “Why hasn’t this game resurfaced?” with the image seen below.

Within a few hours Geisler made an appearance saying, “It hasn’t resurfaced because I was burned out after Road Rash 3,” he said, “But I’m ready to do another one now. I just needed 20 years off.”

“I’m ready to make a better one now. I miss playing it too. If there is enough interest, I’ll do a Kickstart on it. BTW thanks for the post. Dan Geisler, programmer/co-designer Road Rash 1, 2 and 3.”

Geisler dropped a link in his response with a picture of himself holding a dated piece of paper that reads, “Hi Reddit!”. He also provided a link to his LinkedIn profile to show they matched.

He mentioned that the idea would be to render the game out in 3D but still maintain the “2.5D” graphical style of the originals.

At this point EA still owns the rights to the franchise, “Road Rash was my baby. I will need to talk with EA to get the rights. But I dont think they have a lock on motorcycle combat anymore,” Geisler said.

If that doesn’t fair well, he said he would create a spiritual successor to the classic franchise that is rooted in the same mechanics. “We dont need no stinking rights! Motorcycle combat? Yeah, we can do that. Thanks the the encouragement,” said Geisler.

The last we saw of the series was 1999′s Road Rash 64. EA was asked about a possible reboot of the game back in 2011 where Labels president Frank Gibeau said regarding Road Rash, “we can’t just put them on new tech with the same gameplay from ten years ago, we’ve got to have something new.”

There was also a rumored Road Rash project in development at EA Warrington that never got released (via Eurogamer). Check out the concept video for it below. 

And the Best School for Game Design Is…

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Thinking of being a game designer? Forget Los Angeles and New York — according to a study in The Princeton Review, The University of Utah and its Entertainment Arts and Engineering Program now officially ranks as the top game design school in the country. This past week, their undergraduate program beat out USC, RISD, Ringling, and 148 more of the nation’s top-rated colleges for a #1 spot.

If you’re considering getting a Master’s, their graduate program didn’t fare badly either, placing at no.2.

Continue reading “And the Best School for Game Design Is…” »

Museums vs. Game Designers: Are Video Games Truly Art?

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After decades, the debate over whether video games deserve any kind of acknowledgement in the art world is still raging.

2013, however, marks a bit of a turning point in the ongoing battle: New York City’s MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) has officially acknowledged both gaming’s place in the art world, as well as their own pointless reluctance to do so — while a legendary game designer, of all people, believes they can never be worthy of being called art. So who’s right and who’s wrong? Continue reading “Museums vs. Game Designers: Are Video Games Truly Art?” »

New Dishonored DLC: The Knife of Dunwall DLC Features Stealth-Focused Powers and New Districts of The City [Gallery]

Dishonored has some new DLC coming in April. The second DLC for Dishonored is called the Knife of Dunwall and, like we reported previously, will feature Daud, the super natural assassin and the Whalers.

The DLC was rumored to be titled “The Other Side of The Coin” when info leaked on the PS3 trophy list.

Bethesda Softworks announced today that the Knife of Dunwall DLC will be available worldwide on April 16 for 800 MS Points on 360 and $9.99 on PC and Playstation 3. We have some screens of the upcoming DLC in the gallery below.

Continue reading “New Dishonored DLC: The Knife of Dunwall DLC Features Stealth-Focused Powers and New Districts of The City [Gallery]” »

Boy Scouts of America to Award New Merit Badge — for Game Design

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As of this year, The Boy Scouts of America will enact a new series of steps to allow for a new merit badge: game design.

Scouts will now even be able to choose the specific genre of game they want to play — such as, for instance, role playing or action game design. Continue reading “Boy Scouts of America to Award New Merit Badge — for Game Design” »

Gaming Industry Launches PSA Campaign To Improve Reputation With Parents

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Four months after the Sandy Hook massacre, the gaming industry is trying its best to regain footing with parents — not only in Newtown, but in cities across the country. Along with freshly raised concerns that video games could very well be a catalyst for real-life violence, the Obama Administration’s ‘gaming task force’ continues to investigate the link between the two further.

Don’t think of it as damage control so much as ‘a re-education campaign’, consisting of public awareness advertisements, delivered both televised and literary format. But will it do any actual good? Continue reading “Gaming Industry Launches PSA Campaign To Improve Reputation With Parents” »

‘Space Hulk’ Brings Space Marines and Aliens To Your Computer And iOS

With Blizzard Entertainment’s first StarCraft II expansion releasing today, perhaps it is a pertinent time to take a look at a less high-profile title releasing later this year from the property that helped inspire StarCraft. We’re talking about Full Control’s upcoming Warhammer game, Space Hulk. Continue reading “‘Space Hulk’ Brings Space Marines and Aliens To Your Computer And iOS” »

Activision Brings Micro-transactions (and Bacon Camo?) into Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Activision has announced today that it is introducing microtransactions to Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 on the Xbox 360. As much as the very mention of in-game transactions scares us, Activision is promising that the game will not become unbalanced and that there is no pay-to-win system in place here.

Activision has renamed its microtransactions, to Micro Items and refers to them as “little luxuries” that will in no way negatively affect the game. The Micro Items will be available starting tomorrow March 13.

Continue reading “Activision Brings Micro-transactions (and Bacon Camo?) into Call of Duty: Black Ops 2” »