Ham Of Legend
By Jim Rossignol on February 9th, 2012.
Having poured many fevered hours into the release version of Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning I can now ask you not to judge it entirely on its weak, wonky demo. Have a read of my review, and then mix the two experiences together to create a potion of critical insight +3.
Here’s wot I think.
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By Craig Pearson on February 2nd, 2012.
Being famous nowadays is mostly a challenge. Instead of being recognised for hard work, you’re recognised for being recognisable. Getting in the position to be recognised, just known, is more important than talent. Which makes The Sims 3: Showtime an interesting critique of current celebrity culture: if becoming a star is now a gameshow, it takes a game to show that the correct way of doing it is being talented and working hard.
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By John Walker on February 1st, 2012.
I’m not sure whether Channel 4′s The SuperMes is an extremely extensive advert for The Sims 3, or an arch criticism of the nature of reality television. Either way, it’s a man commentating over edited footage of the game, in an attempt to create a Big Brother-style narrative. You can see the first episode, spotted by Gamasutra, below.
By Jim Rossignol on January 30th, 2012.
We’ve already had a taste of Kingdoms’ blank stares and fighting-game type combat in the demo, but a new trailer shows much more of the world, and rather fancy it looks, too. It shows how the stories are told, as well as showing off some of the more impressive locations. There’s some emphasis on the side-quests, and it promises “secrets” scattered across the landscape, presumably to remind folks that this is an open-ended RPG like those other ones.
The game is out February 7th in North America and February 10th for the Kingdoms Of Europea.
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By Jim Rossignol on January 27th, 2012.
Bioware’s white-hot marketing plasma has congealed into a glistening multiplayer combat trailer for Mass Effect 3, which you can see below. In the excitable two-minute sequence, Super-Shep and his surprisingly humanoid alien friends get stuck into a good old clobberin’ session. There are quite a few explosions, and the footage is basically designed to show how while one player is shooting the enemy, another can be stabbing it, or blasting it with a grenade, or using their mutant brain energies to turn it into a far less lively version of itself. That’ll learn ‘em, eh space fans?
Mass Effect 3 will be teleporting star-credits directly out of your wallet on the 6th, 8th, 9th, or 15th of March, depending on which part of the lumpen crust of the planet Earth you are tethered.
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By Jim Rossignol on January 21st, 2012.
Not the best quality video, for some reason, but the chaps at Evil Avatar spotted a Bioware trailer showing off Mass Effect 3 single player and talking to developer Mac Walters. I’m not sure if this was the video Bioware intended to release as it seems to cut out at the end there. I’ll have a look around and see if there’s a fuller version. Oh: there’s a full version on GTTV.
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By Alec Meer on January 20th, 2012.
38 Studios/Big Huge Games’ promising but awkwardly-named RPG Kingdoms of Ham Sandwich: Baconing is only three weeks away now, and you can treat your EYES and EARS and FINGERS and WHATEVER OTHER ORGANS YOU USE TO PLAY GAMES WITH to a fairly sizeable Amalur demo from the Steams right now. So far it’s content I already played for a preview a while back, but it’s well worth a look yourself, to grasp the tone of the game (exposition-heavy fantasy wibbling, I fear, but generously the cutscenes are skippable), the look and the slightly weird-feeling controls, as well as exploring the different playable races, the beard-tastic character customiser and the first touches of combat/skill specialisation.
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By Alec Meer on January 16th, 2012.
Funny thing, The Old Republic – while I’m still not entirely sure whether I like it or not (here I am wrestling with its inherent single/multiplayer duality over on Eurogamer, incidentally), what it has successfully done is restore my appetite for MMOs. I thought that urge was dead in me since the great binge of 2006-2008, but no, there the old hunger for virtual globe-trotting is again. So, hellooooooo Secret World. I had barely a lick of interest in you a few weeks ago, having plonked you square in the “oh, another one” bracket, but now I hopefully wonder if you can meet my dark needs as well as doing something new’n'smart. Let’s take a peek at your gruff British Illuminati and see how I feel.
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By Jim Rossignol on January 13th, 2012.
You know, I didn’t bat an eyelid at the Mass Effect/Dragon Age pre-order crossover stuff, because it seemed like a random lark within Bioware games. Not so! And not limited to the preemptory pounds, either. EA look like they’re going to try the cross-pollinatory approach across a bunch of their other games, too, starting with Mass Effect and Kingdoms Of Amalur demos. We mentioned this briefly yesterday, but there’s now a video (below) detailing precisely what you’d be getting for playing either game’s demo in the other game. This could be some clever meta-commentary on how trad sci-fi and fantasy settings are basically two sides of the same coin, of it could be a mad marketing ploy dreamt up to shift more units: YOU DECIDE!
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They were making this game a long time ago.
By John Walker on January 12th, 2012.
James Ohlen is a senior creative director at BioWare, and has spent the last six years working on Star Wars: The Old Republic. We spoke to him to find out how he thinks the launch has gone, how the game is being received, and what we can expect to see in the first update, due next week.
By John Walker on January 12th, 2012.
Next week’s update for Star Wars: The Old Republic is to be called Rise Of The Rakghouls, and plans to add some major new content to the game, focusing on story-heavy features. Senior Creative Director James Ohlen explained to us in an interview we’re posting very soon that along with “a lot of bug fixes and modifications”, there would be the titular new story-focused flashpoint, as well as expanding Karagga’s Palace to have five times as many bosses (five). And this is just the first of many updates they’re already working on. March promises a new planet, warzone, operation, guild banks… And then there’s the updates they’re already working on for next year. You can see the accompanying trailer below.
