Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You might recall that last year I talked to Cryptic’s Jack Emmert about the MMO he called “an old school Western tactical RPG”. It’s Neverwinter, a game that also, apparently, marks a new direction for the studio. You can see some of the fruits of that new direction over on the official site, and also in the teaser trailer below.

Looks like a fantasy action-RPG to me! Yes sir. The most interesting aspect of this, of course, is that Cryptic are planning to let people come up with their own dungeons, with their own fictions, to be installed in the world. If they pull it off it could be a genuinely interesting spin on the way these kinds of games work.
Read the rest of this entry »

That’ll be the initially Asia-only game being developed by Chinese outfit Netdragon. Toy-makers Hasbro (also responsible for brands such as GI Joe, My Little Pony and Nipple Torture Adventures In The 28th Century) revealed in their latest money hat conference that they’ll be releasing the game in the US and Europe too. There remain no details, other than a tiny JPG that just might have enough hints of red and blue to suggest Optimus Prime will appear in the game. In fact, I am willing to say right here, right now that the most well-known Transformer of them all will appear in an upcoming Transformers game even though that has not been confirmed. Yeah, crazy huh? I’m a daredevil, me.
Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps massively multiplayer city-building/tycoonery is going to become the next big sub-genre – the natural future of all those management games that quietly earn a lot of money from non-traditional gamers. We’ve got Cities XL incoming in a few weeks, for better or worse, and now toymakers Hasbro are taking a crack at something very vaguely similar with Monopoly City Streets. Clever bit: it’s based around Google Maps, it’s designed to be one giant game that runs until the end of Janaury 2010, and in theory every single street in the world can be purchased. It’s the World’s Biggest Game Of Monopoly, apparently. Hah. It’s not as big as the game of Monopoly I’ve just thought of.
Read the rest of this entry »