2012 is officially the year in video gaming that confused the hell out of me. It took me far too much time and research to even really remember what came out this year, and of the AAA titles I could remember off-hand, none of them came to mind without serious caveats. Far Cry 3 grew too tiresome too quickly, Diablo 3 came...
Mass Effect Movie to be Based on the First Game, With the Script Already Written
I’m waiting for the day when a video game movie comes out that does for our genre what Spiderman did for the comic book film world. While thankfully everyone’s favourite German boxer Uwe Boll seems to have gotten out of the video game film industry, there still hasn’t been a single good or even passable movie based on a game...
EA (Kind of?) Announces Battlefield 4
Battlefield 3 was one of EA’s biggest tent-pole releases last year, with a little over two million sales worldwide, as well as numerous accolades from the game critique crowd. So it was a foregone conclusion that another Battlefield title would be put into development, that we’d hear about its announcement in a huge splashy Game Informer cover, and promptly proceed...
Rockstar Vancouver is Closing its Doors
It’s been a really hard couple of weeks for the Vancouver gaming scene. A few scant weeks ago our fair city lost one of its premier development houses with the closing of Radical Entertainment’s doors, and now less than two weeks later one of the most high-profile names in town, Rockstar Vancouver, are also shutting their doors. The developers of...
Radical Entertainment is Shutting its Doors [UPDATE]
The last twitter update from Radical Entertainment, just nine hours ago, reads “Did you know that we have a Radical Facebook page? http://ow.ly/bz5kC Head over NOW & LIKE it for a behind-the-scenes look at our studio! ” which would make the rest of what I’m about to say almost comical if it wasn’t so depressing. Announced by Kotaku earlier today,...
Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut has Been Released, but Does it Solve the Game’s Ending? *Spoilers*
I made it a daily game in early April to trawl through various gaming forums, reading the constant, vocal, and in some ways almost creative outcries against Bioware and its perceived mangling of the ending of what was supposed to be the preeminent trilogy of this console generation. While it’s generally ridiculous to expect anything but angry noise from the...
The Lingerie Football League is Getting a Video Game
And you people thought video games were misogynistic. Boy, I bet you all must feel silly now, huh. Announced earlier this week, and straight from the “I have to laugh because otherwise I’m going to cry” news bag, game developer Yuke’s (known for the creation of such luminary titles as WWE 13 and Rumble Roses, which I believe is one...
E3 2012: The Ubisoft Conference
It was at about the moment where they showed off Rayman: Legends, their third of three games they had brought out at the press conference that made me say “Damn I want that game” when I realized that Ubisoft was having hands-down the best conference of the day. I don’t know what’s going on. Everything’s turned upside-down. The list of...
E3 2012: The EA Conference
It’s slowly dawning on me that this may be the E3 year that’s not about games or hardware. Gaming is now a service industry, with platforms and software coming in secondarily to that all-important, ever-financially-viable service provision. And no one seems to be as on this as EA. While there were some interesting games shown, it felt like everything else...
E3 2012: The Microsoft Conference
The lines have opened, the starting gun’s been fired, and with the conclusion of Microsoft’s press conference we are officially underway. Well, technically E3 proper starts tomorrow, but that’s just being nitpicky. But, yah, Microsoft just had themselves a conference. And I took notes! A lot of them, in fact, though most of which would likely be inelegant to say...
Jason Rubin, the Man behind Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter, made President of THQ
With much of THQ in the past months sounding like it’s actively on fire it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the company is doing everything in its power to pump fresh new ideas into their business. Which makes yesterday’s announcement that Jason Rubin, the man behind such seminal classics as Way of the Warrior (as well as some other,...
Borderlands 2 Box Art Released, Warning for the Safe Use of Imaginary Handguns
While the details of Borderlands 2′s ridiculous collectors editions have already been made public, it wasn’t until today that the box art was unveiled to the gaming public, which can be seen below. It’s keeping the same style and aesthetic as the game, while also building on the idea from the original cover, and I rather like it. Borderlands 2...
With a Title Like “Dark”, It Kind of Has to Involve Vampires
Announced earlier this week, German studio Realmforge with some assistance from Kalypso are creating a stealth-rpg vampire romp, titled Dark. Set to be released in early 2013 for the PC and Xbox 360, Dark pits you, an angsty angry vampire with nothing to lose (all of that may not actually be true, but come on look at the image...
Xbox Internet Explorer Rumoured to Have Kinect Gesture Support
The Xbox 360 looks to be getting one step closer to being a “one-size-fits-all” media box, with news that Internet Explorer 9 is being brought to the console, though the even more interesting story looks to be the experience will be largely driven by Kinect gestures and voice controls, a la Minority Report. While developers have stated that you will...
Microsoft May be Developing a Controller that can Tell Who’s Holding It
Straight from the “Damn, Wouldn’t that be Cool” files, a patent made by Microsoft for a controller which can detect the variable hand pressures of whoever’s holding it has just been accepted. Since everyone holds a controller just a little bit differently, this patent, if put into effect would, create a controller that could consistently tell who was holding the...
The Shootout: BioShock Infinite delayed, Microsoft strikes Inside Xbox
This week in the news Shootout, we find out that we won’t be playing with Infinite this year and Microsoft has officially pulled the plug on the Inside Xbox series. Early this morning we received an email with a message about the upcoming powerhouse BioShock Infinite. “A MESSAGE FROM KEN LEVINE When we announced the release date of BioShock Infinite...
Black Ops 2 Reveal: Dishes, Ghosts and a Surprised Cat.
So there I was, waiting impatiently to see this big reveal for Black Ops 2 game from TreyArch and I must admit I should have just done the dishes or something a little more productive than waste that 2 minute segment of my life. Frankly, I am full of sarcasm and cynicism towards this reveal (if you haven’t already noticed). It’s not...
Skyrim DLC “Dawnguard” Announced
After hinting about it earlier this week on their twitter account, Bethesda Game Studios has come out and officially announced the first DLC package coming to Skyrim, called Dawnguard. Though little is known about the story or background for Dawnguard, what is known at this time is that it will be arriving at some point this summer, and that it’ll...
A New Cold War – Call of Duty: Black Ops II Announced and Dated for Nov.13
Just when I think I’m done with the Call of Duty series, they manage to say something I can’t help but get excited about. While we all knew that another Call of Duty title was a foregone conclusion this holiday season, and that developer Treyarch was almost certainly working on a sequel to 2010′s bestseller Black Ops, there’s still something...
Game Of The Year Editions – Too Much, Too Soon
Today, Naughty Dog announced that the Uncharted 3 GOTY edition will be coming out soon with all of the proper incentives in tow. The crucial part about this plot is the space in between their retail release and the GOTY edition. I’m not against the GOTY antics at all, in fact I own quite a few GOTY titles based purely on the...