Review Roundup 2/23

Heavy Rain

"A video game can encompass a multitude of experiences, transforming gamers into the heroes of intergalactic wars or the saviors of underwater civilizations. While the settings and scenarios may be different, most titles use similar gameplay vocabularies to immerse and entertain us. Concepts like shooting the bad guys, leveling up your character, and acquiring new items are so pervasive that they have been inextricably woven into most players’ definition of what it means to be a video game. Heavy Rain forces you to reconsider that definition. It is barely a game in the popular sense of the word, but Quantic Dream’s masterpiece makes groundbreaking strides in storytelling and character development, demonstrating that interactive entertainment still has a deep well of untapped potential."

Napoleon: Total War

"Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “One must change one’s tactics every 10 years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.” The talented team at The Creative Assembly would be wise to heed the words of their latest game’s namesake. Like the European conqueror, The Creative Assembly’s signature blend of turn-based conquest and real-time battle ranks among the elite in its field, but as Napoleon: Total War demonstrates, persistent legacy issues have started to weaken the game’s standing."

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing

"Some say that landing second place in a race is simply being the first loser. When you’re Sonic the Hedgehog, however, ranking right behind your long-time rival after over a decade of poorly received titles is a big achievement. Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing is a blatant Mario Kart rip-off, but the hedgehog’s emulation actually executes parts of the kart racing formula better."

Metal Slug XX

"This is nearly an exact port of Metal Slug 7, which released in late 2008 on the DS (read the review here). However, XX corrects the DS version’s ultimate sin of lacking Metal Slug’s trademark two-player co-op. Sure, it’s only local, but I’ll take it."

Risen

"I love the PC version of Risen. In many ways, it's the game that I've been waiting for Gothic creator Piranha Bytes to make for years. It's undeniably European, and may turn some gamers off with its unpredictable difficulty and general disregard for player convenience. It's also relatively polished, toning down the design's ambition to reasonable levels and immersing players in an internally consistent fantasy setting as well as any game to date. This tale of an ancient power waking under the earth, the struggle of two factions, and the little people of society trying to deal with it, is a treat to explore. Charting your shipwrecked castaway's path through the world is as entertaining as it is unlike the genre-standard clichéd ragtag group of unlikely heroes saving the world."

Hands-On With Borderlands' General Knoxx

Yesterday we were surprised to find out that the third DLC add-on for Borderlands, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, was only one day away from launch (for Xbox 360 owners, at least). Usually Gearbox announces its release dates weeks in advance to whip Borderlands fans up into a frenzy for new content. Sometimes a surprise launch can be construed as a sign of weakness, that the developers have a reason to get it out onto the market before anyone has a chance to criticize it. That's not the case with General Knoxx. Boasting an area twice the size of The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, an increased level cap, new vehicles, dozens of new enemy types, and a new class of weapons, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx is the biggest Borderlands DLC yet. And once I began playing it, I quickly found out it’s also the hardest.

General Knoxx is Gearbox’s attempt to give fans everything they’ve asked for, so it makes sense that it starts with a greater emphasis on story. The new DLC starts where the main game ended. After you opened the vault and destroyed the giant whatever-that-thing-was, Atlas’ military branch, Crimson Lance, began taking over the planet. To accomplish this, Crimson Lance put up barricades on all of the highways to prohibit travel. This angered Moxxi, who returns from Underdome Riot as your ally and a source of missions.

The Atlas Corporation has also put a bounty on your head, as well as all of your teammates. As if the inhabitants of Pandora needed any more of a reason to kill you, the new bounty also attracts squads of Lance Assassins, deadly female ninjas with glowing neon swords that fall from the sky inside giant rockets. In other words, it’s just another day on Pandora.

Why is Brick's bounty so much higher? That's...size discrimination!

I encountered my first squad of Lance Assassins while helping Scooter track down the pieces for one of Knoxx’s new vehicles, the Monster. The Monster seats two players and has both a machine gun and a rocket launcher that shoots multiple heat-seeking missiles. Before I managed to get the vehicle up and running though, I was blindsided by ninjas, who move faster than any other enemy type in the game.

I should preface the rest of my exploits with a few caveats. Being a preview build, Gearbox gave me a character to play as – a level 50 Brick – whom I had no prior experience with. I also had to rely on a handful of guns I had never tried before, instead of my personal weapons cache. Worst of all, I was playing by myself – not exactly the optimal Borderlands experience.

These facts are not to excuse my suckitude, but rather to reinforce how important multiplayer has become in Borderlands. Whereas at launch Borderlands’ co-op was a fun and well implemented feature, at post 50 levels having a strong team and skills and weapons you're comfortable with is a necessity. Trying to play through General Knoxx alone was not only extremely difficult, but extremely frustrating. But more on that later.

I managed to punch through the first group of ninjas without too many problems (though each of the later groups I ran into sported a more-than-formidable boss). After I finished the Monster, I headed down the highway.

You'll spend a lot more time driving in General Knoxx than in the main game

The size of the environments in General Knoxx are impressive, though the parts I saw were mostly barren and looked the same as the desert areas from the main game. Giant mines are embedded in the landscape, and there are a lot more enemy vehicles on the road, but otherwise there wasn't much to look at. After checking out a small shanty town full of the familiar bandits and psychos, I made my way up a dilapidated on-ramp to check out Moxxi’s home. As the video at the end of this article shows, just getting to the front door was a challenge in and of itself.

Hands-On With Borderlands' General Knoxx

Yesterday we were surprised to find out that the third DLC add-on for Borderlands, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, was only one day away from launch (for Xbox 360 owners, at least). Usually Gearbox announces its release dates weeks in advance to whip Borderlands fans up into a frenzy for new content. Sometimes a surprise launch can be construed as a sign of weakness, that the developers have a reason to get it out onto the market before anyone has a chance to criticize it. That's not the case with General Knoxx. Boasting an area twice the size of The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, an increased level cap, new vehicles, dozens of new enemy types, and a new class of weapons, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx is the biggest Borderlands DLC yet. And once I began playing it, I quickly found out it’s also the hardest.

General Knoxx is Gearbox’s attempt to give fans everything they’ve asked for, so it makes sense that it starts with a greater emphasis on story. The new DLC starts where the main game ended. After you opened the vault and destroyed the giant whatever-that-thing-was, Atlas’ military branch, Crimson Lance, began taking over the planet. To accomplish this, Crimson Lance put up barricades on all of the highways to prohibit travel. This angered Moxxi, who returns from Underdome Riot as your ally and a source of missions.

The Atlas Corporation has also put a bounty on your head, as well as all of your teammates. As if the inhabitants of Pandora needed any more of a reason to kill you, the new bounty also attracts squads of Lance Assassins, deadly female ninjas with glowing neon swords that fall from the sky inside giant rockets. In other words, it’s just another day on Pandora.

Why is Brick's bounty so much higher? That's...size discrimination!

I encountered my first squad of Lance Assassins while helping Scooter track down the pieces for one of Knoxx’s new vehicles, the Monster. The Monster seats two players and has both a machine gun and a rocket launcher that shoots multiple heat-seeking missiles. Before I managed to get the vehicle up and running though, I was blindsided by ninjas, who move faster than any other enemy type in the game.

I should preface the rest of my exploits with a few caveats. Being a preview build, Gearbox gave me a character to play as – a level 50 Brick – whom I had no prior experience with. I also had to rely on a handful of guns I had never tried before, instead of my personal weapons cache. Worst of all, I was playing by myself – not exactly the optimal Borderlands experience.

These facts are not to excuse my suckitude, but rather to reinforce how important multiplayer has become in Borderlands. Whereas at launch Borderlands’ co-op was a fun and well implemented feature, at post 50 levels having a strong team and skills and weapons you're comfortable with is a necessity. Trying to play through General Knoxx alone was not only extremely difficult, but extremely frustrating. But more on that later.

I managed to punch through the first group of ninjas without too many problems (though each of the later groups I ran into sported a more-than-formidable boss). After I finished the Monster, I headed down the highway.

You'll spend a lot more time driving in General Knoxx than in the main game

The size of the environments in General Knoxx are impressive, though the parts I saw were mostly barren and looked the same as the desert areas from the main game. Giant mines are embedded in the landscape, and there are a lot more enemy vehicles on the road, but otherwise there wasn't much to look at. After checking out a small shanty town full of the familiar bandits and psychos, I made my way up a dilapidated on-ramp to check out Moxxi’s home. As the video at the end of this article shows, just getting to the front door was a challenge in and of itself.

Review Roundup 2/23

Heavy Rain

"A video game can encompass a multitude of experiences, transforming gamers into the heroes of intergalactic wars or the saviors of underwater civilizations. While the settings and scenarios may be different, most titles use similar gameplay vocabularies to immerse and entertain us. Concepts like shooting the bad guys, leveling up your character, and acquiring new items are so pervasive that they have been inextricably woven into most players’ definition of what it means to be a video game. Heavy Rain forces you to reconsider that definition. It is barely a game in the popular sense of the word, but Quantic Dream’s masterpiece makes groundbreaking strides in storytelling and character development, demonstrating that interactive entertainment still has a deep well of untapped potential."

Napoleon: Total War

"Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “One must change one’s tactics every 10 years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.” The talented team at The Creative Assembly would be wise to heed the words of their latest game’s namesake. Like the European conqueror, The Creative Assembly’s signature blend of turn-based conquest and real-time battle ranks among the elite in its field, but as Napoleon: Total War demonstrates, persistent legacy issues have started to weaken the game’s standing."

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing

"Some say that landing second place in a race is simply being the first loser. When you’re Sonic the Hedgehog, however, ranking right behind your long-time rival after over a decade of poorly received titles is a big achievement. Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing is a blatant Mario Kart rip-off, but the hedgehog’s emulation actually executes parts of the kart racing formula better."

Metal Slug XX

"This is nearly an exact port of Metal Slug 7, which released in late 2008 on the DS (read the reviewhere). However, XX corrects the DS version’s ultimate sin of lacking Metal Slug’s trademark two-player co-op. Sure, it’s only local, but I’ll take it."

Risen

"I love the PC version of Risen. In many ways, it's the game that I've been waiting for Gothic creator Piranha Bytes to make for years. It's undeniably European, and may turn some gamers off with its unpredictable difficulty and general disregard for player convenience. It's also relatively polished, toning down the design's ambition to reasonable levels and immersing players in an internally consistent fantasy setting as well as any game to date. This tale of an ancient power waking under the earth, the struggle of two factions, and the little people of society trying to deal with it, is a treat to explore. Charting your shipwrecked castaway's path through the world is as entertaining as it is unlike the genre-standard clichéd ragtag group of unlikely heroes saving the world."

The Secret Armory of General Knoxx Dated

2K Games and Gearbox have officially announced the launch date for the third Borderlands DLC add-on,The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. For Xbox 360 owners, it's tomorrow.

PS3 and PC owners will have to wait until Thursday to check out the addition, which Gearbox is claiming is twice the size of The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. If that’s not enough to entice you, General Knoxx will also pack a new class of “ultra-rare/kick-ass” weapons, and new vehicles – including one that four players can ride in simultaneously (finally!). The add-on will also bump the level cap to 61, and include “almost 30 new villain types,” which will feature beefier AI. Not only does it sound like the biggest DLC pack yet, but it also appears to be made up entirely of requests from the community.

This is the part of the story where we’d say that all Borderlands needs now is an actual story, but according to Gearbox General Knoxx picks up where the original game ends. Could this DLC pack a plot worth remembering? We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out, but here’s hoping we can actually enter the titular secret armory this time around. Until then, check out the new screens below and let us know what you think in the comments secti

DICE Talks Bad Company 2

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is just about a week away from launch and we’ve got a couple of exclusive bits for you leading up to it. The game’s executive producer, Karl-Magnus Troedsson, was on hand recently to talk a bit about the game and what it’s been like moving from the first game to the second. We’ve also build a Bad Company 2 launch hub that you can check out for tons of content including previews, videos, screens and much more. So check out the hub and check out the new video interview below.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Launch Hub

Filed under: News, EA, interview, DICE, Bad Company, Battlefield, Bad Company 2, bfbc2

Disney: Epic Mickey Could Arrive On PS3, 360

If you’ve had your eyes peeled on Game Informer since the site’s relaunch, you’re already very familiar with Disney Interactive’s upcoming Epic Mickey (check out our Epic Mickey hub page for tons of features). While originally touted as a Wii exclusive, word has surfaced from the Las Vegas DICE summit regarding the title going multi-platform at some point in the future.

"The key mechanic [in Epic Mickey] is an ink and paint mechanic", said Disney executive Graham Hopper, regarding the game’s intrinsic link to motion control.

"We have a very large audience base that has Wiis in their home", he continued. Graham also said "that's not to say that we won't go to other platforms [in the future].

Considering both the 360 and PS3 are getting motion control this year, it seems only natural that Disney would consider releasing the game for the consoles. Further strengthening this possibility, Hopper goes on to say "If we started it six months ago we would have potentially thought differently about it." He's likely referring to the developments of Project Natal and Sony's motion control here.

It’s no secret that the Wii’s third-party “hardcore” titles haven’t done so well in the past. Could it be that Disney sees exclusivity on the console as a losing situation? What do you think?

Source: CVG

Darksiders Spawned From Kid's Stuff?

David Adams, general manager at Vigil Games, and creative director Joe Madureira took the stage at DICE and talked about developing Darksiders, taking it from concept to retail release.

Starting out, they had little in the way of concrete ideas, aside from a vague concept of wanting to make an action adventure game in the spirit of a Ratchet & Clank. Original character art showed off a lighthearted young elf, a character who could channel energy and tame beasts. The next revision, tentatively named “robot arm kid,” had a bulkier character with a mechanical arm that could be deployed similarly to the one in the Bionic Commando games. At that point, the team realized that they were skewing their designs too young.

Stepping back from the kid-friendly space, the next character sketches took on a more mature appearance. One version had a huge sickle, another wielded a tribladed weapon and yet another character had four arms—two held firearms and another carried a skull-emblazoned sword.

Internal discussions led to the concept of incorporating the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse into the fledgling project, which made it easier to discuss with people unfamiliar with the project. Pitching the idea to various people made Adams and Madureira realize that they might be onto something. Originally, the game was going to be focused on Death, but War won out. Early versions included miniguns and a variety of equally huge swords.

Even though the game had taken a mature turn, Vigil didn’t abandon some of the original ideas. While the team of four tweaked gameplay, they turned to Ratchet & Clank as an inspiration for effective controls. A special focus was placed on playability from an early stage, so potential publishers would be able to get a sense for how the game felt and played. As Adams said, art could be added later, but if the game wasn’t fun to play no amount of graphical polish would make it better.

Publishers looked at the small team and dismissed the possibility that Vigil would be able to deliver a console game. Madureira says they were told several times to think about cell phone games. They were skeptical when they approached THQ, because they only thought of the publisher as a company that worked on wrestling games. Fortunately, they were wrong.

After getting a deal with THQ, they doubled their staff to eight. Adams joked that everything they did seemed to make their lives harder, from developing their own tech to staying so small. By the third year of development, Madureira says the team was finally expanded to a point to where they were able to actually work full steam ahead. THQ’s support was instrumental in those early days, he added.

If you'd like to see more on the history and development of Darksiders, check out our Afterwords and Creating Darksiders' Protagonist features.

The[Crafty]Gamer: Joey Fernandez (Embroidered Patches)

This week The[Crafty]Gamer features Joey Fernandez, who has created some incredibly detailed embroidered patches inspired by popular video games. Check out this post to learn more about the effort that goes into designing and assembling patches, and take a peek at his work.

Full name: Joey Fernandez

Age: 30

Hometown: Peru

Occupation: Student

Tell us about your work. What’s the inspiration behind it?

It started a long time ago. Like any other kid in the world, I had favorite superheroes (one of them was Captain America), or just loved to watch a lot of cartoons on TV and play video games. I always wanted emblems for my clothes, uniforms and other stuff, but unfortunately they weren’t available in the market at that time, well at least not for me. When I was 17, I started to work at a friend’s shop making backpacks. That's when this all started. I became interested in the field that in the following years I learned how to operate embroidery machines and consequently the art of digitizing. I now make and customize my own stuff (clothing and accessories), and try to help people with their embroidery projects.

How much time does it take to create each patch?

Well, each patch is unique and the time it takes to create/make each one of them can easily vary from 10 minutes to weeks of work. The embroidery process has several steps, but let’s focus on the two most essential ones: digitizing and embroidering.

This article about embroidery digitizing pretty much explains what digitizing is:

"An embroidery digitizer must have an artist's creativity and problem-solving skills. A digitizer's canvas is the computer monitor. The keyboard and mouse are the brushes, and the embroidery digitizer's pallet is the embroidery software. However, the digitizer's work is not confined to a computer screen. Knowledge of fabric types and the push-pull factor of each is also required. The embroidery digitizer also needs to know about needles, thread, and stabilizers and, perhaps most importantly, must creatively expand the boundaries of machine embroidery."

Once work is digitized, a computerized machine equipped with needles, sensor, knives, bobbins and threads will take your digitized design and independently stitch the patch. This step requires supervision to avoid any flaws, with stitching tweaks required in the end to perfect the finished product.

Is your work up for sale? If so, where and how much?

Yes it is, and prices will depend on the nature of the work. You can find my stuff at very affordable prices from $3 to $12. If a customer wants something special, then the price can be over $20. I also have a website that you can check out. Fortunately, a few years ago I found Etsy.com and started to sell my patches there. I think their fees are, well, they are better than the rest. I also have some of my work listed on eBay and it sucks because, let me tell you, they rip small sellers (like me) off. Not cool!

Any other information you’d like to share about yourself?

I am a guy with a life like any other person, but I like to invest my spare time on what I like to do. I have been digitizing for over 10 years. I know my work and I know how things work in the mainstream world of collectibles (embroidered iron-on patches). I know how mass production is managed. The manipulation of resources in order to increase production by decreasing quality is something I am not partisan of. That is something you will notice in most of my work, manifested through the use of color blending, gradients, and other techniques.

My favorite video games are Super Mario World, Contra, Tetris (I love Tetris). I think I should make a patch of it. If you don’t see one of your favorite video games in my work gallery then let me know!

I have several projects for this year, one of them is to make custom cases for the many electronic devices out there: iPods, Nintendo DS, PSP, etc. I really hope to do that. It is just a matter of finding the supplies I need.

The[Crafty]Gamer has officially moved from the Editor Blogs section to the Features section. We are regularly looking for new entries, so if you'd like your work featured, please send me an e-mail to express your interest and I will follow up with details: annette@gameinformer.com.

The Game Informer Show Episode 17

This week's Game Informer show kicks off with some discussion of a title that's sure to be on many people's year-end lists, The Odd Gentleman's The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. This XBLA and PC downloadable title combines elements of 2D platforming with cool time manipulation and cloning elements to create a truly unique experience. Host Matt Helgeson, Joe Juba, and Phil Kollar all stop by to discuss their feelings about the game.The second segment centers around the relaunch of Aliens vs. Predator. In this segment we have a debate featuring Andy Reiner and Ben Reeves, who wrote GI's controversial review of the game. We wrap things up with some scuttlebutt from Microsoft's X10 press even. Tim Turi and Dan Ryckert, who both attended the conference, give us some hands-on impressions of some of blockbuster titles, including Fable 3, Dead Rising 2, Alan Wake, and DLC for Left 4 Dead 2.

The multiplayer beta for StarCraft II is in full swing, and I've been spending every bit of free time plugged into my Command Center. It's far too early to make any judgments about balance or get a reading on the eventual face of the revamped Battle.net interface, but the beta tell us many things regardless.

Cynical types would have you believe that StarCraft II is little more than a unit overhaul and a graphical refresh of the original game. While it's true that many core mechanics carry directly over to this sequel, once you dig past the top layer, the gameplay has several substantial differences.

The interface remains largely similar, but a few tweaks make a lot of difference. The twelve-unit selection cap is gone, making managing large forces less frustrating. Multiple buildings can be selected (and hot-keyed) at once, allowing for easier production management. Flying units have a small tracer displaying their relative position on the ground. Simple abilities can be set to auto-cast, à la Warcraft III. In sum, all the small changes bring StarCraft II up to modern RTS standards while retaining the small-scale micromanagement philosophy that defines the franchise.

The factions are even less symmetrical than they used to be, with their signature abilities further integrated into their play styles [see following pages for faction-specific breakdowns]. More units, more abilities, more counters, and new map features diversify the gameplay from match to match. It'll take some time to familiarize yourself with the dozens of strategies that each faction can employ. Add mixed-race teamwork, and the possibilities explode.

Also taking into consideration the Battle.net relaunch with its integrated social networking features and supposedly improved matchmaking, StarCraft II isn't doing anything to disappoint so far. Nevermind the delays; if the game improves as much for release as it has since the last time I saw it, the wait will be worth it and then some.

Ubisoft's Michael McIntyre Talks About The Prince's Return To Form

Considering that the 2008 reboot of the Prince of Persia series offered up a totally new art style and protagonist, many were surprised when news broke about the next direction the series was taking. Rather than continuing with the new approach, The Forgotten Sands takes gamers back to the time following 2003's The Sands of Time. This means you'll once again be relying on your time-bending abilities to save you from that spike pit rather than the ethereal hand of Elika. A magic dagger isn't the only thing the Prince is packing this time around, however. You'll actually be able to control the forces of nature to assist in your quest. Check out the video below to see my interview with level design director Michael McIntyre about this return to form for the POP series.

DICE 2010: What Happens In Vegas..

DICE Summit 2010 is well underway and several Game Informer editors are out in Vegas reporting on all the latest news and updates. What happens in Vegas will be posted here for your convenience, starting with the most recent news posts. Check in regularly for all the latest posts or click here for the DICE 2010 Feed.

EA's Schappert Admits To Mirror's Edge, Dead Space Failures
John Schappert, chief operating officer at Electronic Arts used his time at DICE to talk about 20 years of technology transitions in the gaming industry. Aside from the obvious technological advances, Schappert says that one of the big changes is the number of gaming platforms and the difficulty in tracking data on such a fragmented marketplace.

Gearbox's Randy Pitchford On Perfection, Motivation
Gearbox Software’s president Randy Pitchford started off the last day of DICE with a deeper look at his studio’s philosophies and strategies.

Uncharted 2 Grabs 10 AIAS Awards
Well it looks like the AIAS is reinforcing what the rest of the industry has been saying since its release as Uncharted 2 has walked away with a stellar 10 awards this year. As is the tradition around here, Jay Mohr took the stage to host the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards at DICE 2010. While the results definitely favored Naughty Dog's action/adventure game, other big winners included Batman: Arkham Asylum, Scribblenauts and Modern Warfare 2. For those of you who don't know, the AIAS awards are peer voted, meaning that the developers are picking the winners. Also honored this year were David Crane with the first annual Pioneer Award. Doug Lowenstein with the Lifetime Achievement Award and Mark Cerny was inducted into the Hall of Fame. See the full list of winners below.

Alan Wake Dev On Living With Delays
Matias Myllyrinne wrapped up today’s DICE lectures with a presentation about the long-delayed game, Alan Wake. The Remedy Entertainment president spent the bulk of his presentation discussing some of the reasons why development has taken such an extended period of time.

Brian Reynolds Talks About Harvesting Players
Zynga’s Brian Reynolds focused his DICE presentation on social gaming, which was clearly a topic on the minds of many this year. Zynga, in case you don’t know, is the company behind the ubiquitous Facebook games Mafia Wars and Farmville. Farmville now boasts more than 31 million daily users, according to Reynolds, which isn’t half bad considering that the game was developed in about five weeks. Of those users, about three to five percent of players pony up a little cash for the experience. While he wouldn’t give up any specific financial details, he said there was a reason why people are starting to take this revenue model seriously.

Kotick: Partnering With Harmonix Could Have Been Profitable
During his presentation at DICE, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick talked about missed opportunities for the company. One such misstep was failing to explore options with Guitar Hero co-creator Harmonix.

Ultima Creator Says Game Stories Have Been Failures
The father of Ultima, Richard Garriott, made some very strong comments about the state of story-telling in games at DICE. Not only does he believe he’s written some of the best interactive dialogue in games, but he also thinks most other story-writing attempts have failed.

Bobby Kotick Traces His Roots, Announces Indie Game Competition
Activision Blizzard’s always outspoken CEO, Bobby Kotick, took the stage at DICE and used his time to talk about the early days of his involvement with the company. Anyone looking for him to make provocative statements left disappointed. Instead, the assembled audience heard a humble Kotick speak candidly about why he does what he does.

Jaffe: Calling All Cars Was A Mistake
Back in 2007, a downloadable PSN game entitled Calling All Cars was released. The game combined elements of Twisted Metal and NBA Jam’s gameplay, while glazing it with a cartoony veneer. Looking back, designer David Jaffe says it was a “mistake.”

ESA’s Legal Counsel Breaks Down Gaming Regulation
During his DICE presentation, Ken Doroshow, the Electronic Software Association’s senior vice president and general counsel, took the opportunity to talk about some of the legal challenges facing some of the gaming industry.

Professor Jessie Schell Breaks Down Social Media In Gaming
Jessie Schell, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, kicked off today's DICE schedule by talking about the importance of social media in the gaming landscape.

Disney: Epic Mickey Could Arrive On PS3, 360
If you’ve had your eyes peeled on Game Informer since the site’s relaunch, you’re already very familiar with Disney Interactive’s upcoming Epic Mickey (check out our Epic Mickey hub page for tons of features). While originally touted as a Wii exclusive, word has surfaced from the Las Vegas DICE summit regarding the title going multi-platform at some point in the future.

Disney Kicks Off DICE, Drops Possible Name For Sony Motion Controller
The 2010 DICE Summit officially kicked off with Disney Interactive Media Group president Steve Wadsworth's keynote. After AIAS Pres Joseph Olin opened things up, Steve took the stage to discuss the company's digital content strategy, the economy's affect on the games industry, and new trends in technology that are changing the way consumers view and buy media.

Keep checking into GameInformer.com for the latest news coming out of DICE 2010.

Exclusive Video Of MLB 2K10 Gameplay

Readers of my blog have gotten a chance to see my firsthand impressions of MLB 2K10 for the last seven days, and now you can check out nine minutes of exclusive video. Take a look at the video below to see my beloved Cubs take on the Mets. Any jokes about the Cubs will be met with an immediate ban.

Afterwords: World of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King

We normally publish our Afterwords interviews shortly after a game is released, but with MMOs, that concept doesn't quite make sense. These games continue growing and changing until...well, until another expansion is released. With the recently-completed patch 3.3, Blizzard's hit MMO World of Warcraft has finally reached the conclusion of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. We figured this would be a good time to check in with WoW game director Tom Chilton about some of the decisions made in the expansion.

Read the full interview to find out what hero classes almost got chosen to be added instead of death knight, whether or not we'll see any other new content before the Cataclysm, and how Blizzard is preparing for that next expansion.

I wanted to begin with a sort of “state of the union” question. How is Blizzard feeling as you wrap up the Wrath of the Lich King content and move toward the next expansion?

We’re feeling good. As far as wrapping up Lich King content goes, I’m happier with the way the Lich King fight and all of Icecrown leading up to it has turned out compared to anything we’ve done in the past. It’s quite a bit more epic than what we did with Illidan. It’s a cooler climax than Naxxramas back in the day pre-Burning Crusade. I’m happy with how that’s come along. In general, it’s been an awesome expansion. I think players have been pretty excited about it.

With as many death knights as there are in the game now, I sometimes forget that they weren’t there at one point. As the first hero class, death knights were a huge addition to World of Warcraft. What was the process like for introducing this new character to the game, and how difficult has it been to balance them?

Definitely a difficult process. Obviously a lot of that is because of the balance complexities that get introduced by creating a new class. We always knew that we wanted to add more classes to the game, and we had a variety of different ideas for what classes to do. With Burning Crusade, we felt that it was a little too early to introduce a new class. With our second expansion, it seemed like good timing.

When we knew that it was going to be a Northrend-based expansion, we started thinking about character classes that would make sense within the context of the expansion. Among those were the death knight, necromancer, and the runemaster, a character class from one of the Warcraft RPGs, pre-World of Warcraft. Those were our primary contenders.

As we fleshed out the concepts a little bit, it felt like the death knight had more going for it than the other two. It was going to work out better both in terms of how well it fits with the Lich King expansion and also in terms of how it fills some extra need in the game. Obviously, you can make the argument that there still aren’t enough tanks around based on Dungeon Finder queues, but I think it helped. There are people out there playing death knight tanks.

So you do still plan to introduce more hero classes at some point in the future?

It’s a possibility. We have that idea in mind still for the future. We know that we probably would not be able to support introducing a new class with every single expansion, just like we probably wouldn’t be able to support having new races with every expansion. It’s a good candidate for the future, but exactly when that will be or what expansion it might be in or what class it might be is too early to say.

Wrath of the Lich King also brought some graphical improvements to the game. I know you’ve always tried to keep a balance between looking good and being able to run on a wide variety of computers. I’m curious about how you’ve maintained that balance during Wrath of the Lich King, and, particularly as you move forward with an expansion that’s going to be re-doing visuals on a lot of the original game world, if you expect the system requirements to keep climbing.

I can’t speak for sure as to the final system requirements for Cataclysm. It’s too early to say. There’s a possibility that they could go up a little bit, although we would still be talking about machines that are many years old being able to run it at this point. We try to make sure that we support older machines, and we’ll continue to do so. But an older machine today is less old than an older machine when WOW first shipped or when Burning Crusade shipped. If you make that assumption that the system requirements will creep up a little bit, there’s more we can do visually, but we’ll see.

We know that we’re going to introduce things like the improved water. Water’s been one of those things that we’ve never been entirely happy with ever since the original version of the game. It’s what we were able to do with the system requirements that we were satisfied with at the time. As technology advances, it gets easier to do a better job at that kind of thing. We’re pleased so far with how that’s been coming along.

Like you mention, a lot of the old world will also get a facelift, not only for new technology but also for new techniques. Our tools and our level designers have just got better at making the zones. They’ve been doing it for a long time. They have a better idea of how to do things that look really awesome efficiently.

You added dual specs into World of Warcraft during Wrath of the Lich King, and various hybrid classes received some buffs. It seems like in some ways Wrath of the Lich King has made things tougher for pure DPS classes, just in terms of how much harder it is to get into random groups without a healer or a tank spec. And in a lot of cases, hybrid classes that are specced for DPS can do just as much damage as pure DPS classes. Do you think that’s an issue at all or something that will require more balancing?

It will always require ongoing tuning, although to be honest, we’re pretty happy with the way that balance works out right now. There’s not much question in my mind or the minds of our class guys at this point that the pure DPS classes do have an edge when it comes to straight DPS. They have the higher potential as far as we’re aware and anecdotally as far as our experiences in the game go. We have tried to tune classes like rogues and mages and warlocks and hunters to be a notch higher.

That can vary quite a bit from player to player just depending on their gear relative to the gear of the people that they’re playing alongside and just their individual skill as a player or even their connection. A player with a slower connection is inherently going to have a little bit of a disadvantage compared to somebody with a faster connection. Some of those things can confuse the results and sometimes give players the impression that their class does less than it should for being a pure DPS class.

But all things being equal, as far as those other variables go, we feel pretty good about where that is right now. There are some adjustments to be made. I definitely wouldn’t say that it’s perfect. If you’re talking about raid DPS, I could see bringing up warlocks a little bit, at least in certain scenarios. There are encounters right now in Icecrown where they shine because of the ability for DOTs to keep on doing damage even when you’re not fully active as a player -- when you’re having to run around or you’re stunned or whatever. So there are still some advantages to being a warlock.

All in all, there’s still some tuning to do, but it’s pretty close to what we want. We’ve been happy with the general philosophical approach of getting the hybrids to where they’re close to the DPS classes when it comes to DPS roles. Otherwise, those specs just turn into joke specs.

Well, my main is a mage, and I was just thinking that if you guys wouldn’t mind throwing in some sort of tank spec for me..

Yeah... [Laughs] Like the Gruul’s Lair fight in Burning Crusade.

There’s been some interesting PvP experiments going on in Wrath of the Lich King, in particular with Wintergrasp, which tried to introduce more world PvP. Eventually you had to go in and change it so that Wintergrasp now resembles something a bit more similar to what people are used to with Battlegrounds rather than open-world PvP. What are your feelings on the various iterations of Wintergrasp? Do you think it was successful? Are you planning to do another Wintergrasp-esque PvP zone?

I’d characterize Wintergrasp as a middling success in that in my mind it’s a clear improvement in terms of large-scale world PvP over what we had prior to Wrath of the Lich King. But it’s definitely not at the point yet where I would say it’s the awesome pinnacle of world PvP. There are a lot of issues, like what you pointed out. It brought out so many people that we had a really hard time supporting it on the servers. The player concentration was brutal. That’s something we want to continue to improve on in the future, at least with our new PvP zones. I don’t imagine that Wintergrasp will stay very populated after Cataclysm, so I don’t think it will be a problem in Wintergrasp itself.

In terms of the overall feeling of being a single person in a really huge battle like that – there were ups and downs to that part. If you’re undergeared as a PvP character, you still have a chance to contribute through vehicles, so that’s kind of cool. At the same time, there could be more depth and more to the vehicle gameplay itself to make that more interesting in the long-term. There was definitely some success as far as rewards go. The concept of Archavon and his buddies generally speaking was cool. It’s cool that a PvE instance opens up as a result of world PvP, and it’s cool that it’s tuned so that pick-up groups can get together and do it. After they win Wintergrasp, people can form up into a raid and dive right in to do that content. I also think the Wintergrasp rewards, the trinkets and various offset armor pieces, were successful. So there were definitely some highlights, some ups and downs to it.

One of the things we need to do a lot better is making it a live PvP zone in-between battles. We had this vision for Wintergrasp that when the battle wasn’t going, it would behave a lot like the Elemental Plateau in Burning Crusade. Back in Burning Crusade, players would go there to farm their primals, and there would be spontaneous world PvP that happened as a result of that. But that didn’t really play out in Lich King the same way that it did in Burning Crusade. It just turned out that farming for elemental fire in the Lich King wasn't as central to the game economy as it was in Burning Crusade. As a result of that, Wintergrasp PvP didn’t play out as we had imagined.

In Cataclysm, we’ve got that idea for Tol Barad, which is our new Wintergrasp-like zone. In-between battles, it will behave like the Isle of Quel’Danas, in terms of being a core daily quest hub. On PvP servers, it can have that same kind of spontaneous PvP that people had on Quel’Danas back in Burning Crusade, which a lot of people enjoyed.

Wrath introduced zone phasing, which allowed for more story-driven questing. Personally, I was a huge fan of how that system worked. But I know as the game progressed and people hit level 80 and cleared out their Icecrown quests, a lot of players struggled with some of the end-game quests that require grouping, because phasing closed them off to other people who had passed that quest already. Do you think the phasing system turned out well? Do you have any plans to change it in the future?

The phasing system was a huge advance in our overall ability to deliver quests that feel dynamic and story-driven. We’re really happy with how that came along relative to pre-Lich King. It definitely needs more polish. It’s exactly like you say. It’s really hard to share quests when there’s phasing involved. There’s awkwardness when you’re in a group with somebody who’s in a different phase than you.

For Cataclysm, we have high hopes to polish that experience and make it easier to share quests that involve phasing. We’ll have to see. We have work slated on that stuff, but I don’t know how much we’ll get done or how far we’ll get into that. It’s definitely on our list of things to try to address in Cataclysm.

The main plot arcs for Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King have involved wrapping up plot threads left over from Warcraft III. Of course, you’ve introduced some unique stories as well, but the focus of those expansions have been very much on these Warcraft III characters and stories. Do you feel like you’ve delivered properly developed final acts to these stories for fans of Warcraft who wanted to see how they played out?

I think so. Like I mentioned earlier in the interview, we did a better job of it with the Lich King than we did with Illidan. When it comes to the Lich King, we’ve done a really good job of closing that story while making it feel like players are a part of it and get to experience it first-hand. We gave him a fitting end. There are other characters from Warcraft lore that we continue to take advantage of.

Obviously, we’re digging up Deathwing for Cataclysm, so that should be big. Deathwing’s interesting in that he’s not a character that a lot of World of Warcraft players have prior experience with because he was in the earlier Warcraft games and not really the more recent ones. He’s a very central figure to Warcraft lore, but he’s not one that’s as well-known as the Lich King or Illidan, since they were Warcraft III main characters. But players will learn a lot more about Deathwing. They’re going to see that Deathwing is cool and different in his own ways and certainly super-duper epic.

Clearly you guys have learned a lot about story-telling in MMOs. I agree that the shift between original WoW and Burning Crusade and then Burning Crusade to Lich King was pretty huge. But it seems like in the future of WoW, as you say, you’re going to have to go for – not necessarily stand-alone stories, but you’re certainly drawing on stuff that more recent fans of the Warcraft franchise won’t be familiar with. Are you nervous about that?

I’m confident that we’ll be able to build up new characters and storylines. Part of that is because we’ve become better at it. If we were looking at ourselves five years ago, I think I’d have a lot less confidence that we’d be able to build up new characters that were as compelling as some of the Warcraft III characters. But as we’ve become a lot better at doing things like the in-game cinematics and even just the intro cinematics for the game and the way we make our quests more cohesive and let you interact with major characters on a more frequent basis, I think we’re better at developing those characters within WOW itself than we were before.

With Deathwing, you’ll see a good level of support for him in the intro cinematic. The intro cinematic for Cataclysm will help players understand what’s going on with Cataclysm and who Deathwing is and what his deal is. We’ll also have in-game movies like we did with the Lich King that will help players understand him better. At the end of the day, I think he’s going to feel very familiar, very real, and cool.

As part of that effort to introduce this new villain, do you think you’ll end up using more in-game cutscenes than you ended up using in Wrath of the Lich King?

It’s hard to say whether or not we’ll literally do more of them. We certainly plan to use them, but as far as exact number of them, it’s too early to say for sure. We have plans for in-game movies like that. We may end up doing more of them or maybe less. We’ll do whatever number of them seems right for the needs of the game. We don’t try to just conjure up opportunities to make them. We make them when we feel like it would really contribute a lot to the storyline.

Making end-level content more approachable has been another big change for the game. It’s easier to get more powerful badge gear, you created the Dungeon Finder tool, etc. I know there’s always been that hardcore versus casual debate that rages on the WOW forums, where some people hate that stuff and some people love it. How do you feel like the general feedback among WOW players has been?

The general feedback has been positive. We definitely plan to keep going in the direction that we’re going right now. We’re really happy with the Dungeon Finder. I’d like to find a way to extend that at the very least to 10-person raids at some point in the future. There are a lot of complexities with making that work, but anything we can do to alleviate the annoyances or pains associated with players having to arrange their own groups would be great. Being able to extend that into raiding would be awesome if we could do it.

We also have plans to continue making PvP more accessible also. It’s interesting that in Burning Crusade our raiding game was extremely hardcore, and in a lot of ways the PvP was a lot more casual player-friendly. Through the course of Lich King, those have flipped around. A lot of that is just because of the development in our PvE game. We had really aggressive development in solving the problems that we saw in PvE in Burning Crusade as far as making PvE more accessible and easier to get into and more rewarding. Almost simultaneously, PvP either stayed the same or got more hardcore in some ways.

Those flipped roles in Lich King, and we really want to balance them out better than we have before in Cataclysm. We want to continue to advance on that front with PvE, and with PvP we really want to make sure that it feels better-balanced against PvP as far as how much effort it takes to organize stuff and how much reward you get for your time and effort spent.

I wanted to ask one question about the 3.1 patch specifically. This is the patch that introduced the Ulduar raid. That seemed like a strange break in the main Lich King storyline. I know that Hodir had an extensive and interesting questline in Wrath of the Lich King, but the focus for all the other raids was a little more directly on the Lich King himself. How early into the Wrath of the Lich King process did you decide that Ulduar would be the first content patch? Did it concern you that you might be taking attention away from the main villain of the game?

Not much. I agree that they feel a little too disconnected. There is supposed to be a tie-in between Yogg-Saron (the boss of Ulduar) and the Lich King, and that’s how that was supposed to make sense – through Yogg-Saron’s manipulation of world events. I don’t think that was obvious enough to the players. It’s hard for them to draw that connection even though theoretically that connection exists. In the planning stages, that wasn’t much of a factor for us, because in our minds that connection existed and was clear. We just didn’t do a very good job of expressing it.

From an execution standpoint, or even from a philosophical standpoint, it’s okay to have content that’s a little bit of a break from what else is going on. If you look at Onyxia, that’s kind of a break. Obviously, we did her as part of the five-year anniversary as a retro look back. But it’s okay to have content like that that’s a little bit tangential as long as the main story arc continues to progress and make sense and it doesn’t feel like we’ve abandoned the main story arc.

More than anything else with Ulduar, I think it was just bigger than it needed to be and more hardcore than it needed to be. Those were the biggest lessons for us along with making the connection to the main story arc clearer if there’s going to be one.

For the final question, there’s been some rumors going around and I wanted to clear them up. You guys have wrapped up the main Lich King storyline. Icecrown is out there, which you guys have said is the final major raid for this expansion. But there are some rumors that there might be another content patch of some sort before Cataclysm releases.

That is a possibility. We can’t say for sure at this point, but we are looking into the possibility of having a boss in the Ruby Sanctum, which is another part of Wyrmrest Temple. It’s a little too early to have a lot of details on that, but I wouldn’t characterize it as a huge chunk of content. It’s not a patch 3.4 or anything.

Not a whole raid, but maybe just a smaller boss instance?

Exactly. I think of it more as an extension of patch 3.3.

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom

Video game villains these days all have an endgame – some elaborate plan involving unwitting pawns and world domination. P.B. Winterbottom comes from a simpler time, where cartoonish capers and a diabolical moustache were all one needed to become a pinnacle of infamy. Winterbottom lives in an age when pie thievery is a deplorable offense, and insults like “buttwit” are the height of vicious wordplay.

While The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom draws its antiquated antihero and silent film aesthetic from a bygone era, the game doesn’t feel remotely outdated. On the contrary, its devious puzzle design, entertaining writing, and striking artistic style earn Winterbottom its place as one of the best downloadable titles since Braid and Castle Crashers.

Players control P.B. Winterbottom, a notorious pie thief who has obtained the ability to manipulate time to create clones of himself. Fitting in with the old-timey movie theme, you’ll record your actions, generating a P.B. doppelganger who performs the recorded sequence in an endless loop. This concept is at the core of every puzzle, governing P.B. and his temporal copies as they filch pies across the game’s five levels. It sounds simple, but when you’re managing several clones in a multi-pie gambit, things get delightfully tricky.

Once you master the basics, the game switches things up by adding a fresh set of conditions or restrictions. Sometimes P.B. needs to nab pies in a specific order. Sometimes only your clones can collect pies. Sometimes your clones are evil and kill you on contact. These twists on the formula aren’t just to make things complicated; by periodically changing the rules, developer The Odd Gentlemen has ensured that you aren’t just reusing the same tricks on an escalating scale. The variety makes every puzzle feel like a unique hurdle, making the experience satisfying without feeling bloated.

Since Winterbottom is a 2D puzzle game involving time, it invites comparisons to Jonathan Blow's hit downloadable title, Braid. However close they may sound in concept, don’t make the mistake of assuming Winterbottom is just Braid in a different skin. It has its own clear identity, forged not only by distinctive puzzles but also by the charming writing delivered via interstitial poems and “hints” at the bottom of the screen (which quickly devolve into blatant antagonism). Complementing the quirky language is a stylized black-and-white Victorian setting. The union of the two is ultimately what makes the whole silent movie motif come together so successfully.

While I had a great time working my way through Winterbottom’s bizarre world, as I neared the end, each success was met with a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment. Most scenarios are clever and fun to solve, but the puzzle design never gets a chance to bare its fangs. I’m not saying the game is easy; the challenges still require plenty of brain bending. However, the game never throws down the gauntlet with any “you expect me to do what?” situations that push the mechanics to their limit. This left some of the final scenes unsatisfying – though they are cool in other ways I won’t spoil.

The entire quest will probably take most gamers between three and four hours to complete, which could be an issue for some people. If you’re one of them, I encourage you to stop whining. The greatness of a game isn’t decided by length. The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom impresses with its puzzle design, offbeat humor, and sheer style. Hopefully P.B. has more hijinks in his future, because I already miss the ol’ buttwit.

Afterwords: World of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King60

We normally publish our Afterwords interviews shortly after a game is released, but with MMOs, that concept doesn't quite make sense. These games continue growing and changing until...well, until another expansion is released. With the recently-completed patch 3.3, Blizzard's hit MMO World of Warcraft has finally reached the conclusion of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. We figured this would be a good time to check in with WoW game director Tom Chilton about some of the decisions made in the expansion.

Read the full interview to find out what hero classes almost got chosen to be added instead of death knight, whether or not we'll see any other new content before the Cataclysm, and how Blizzard is preparing for that next expansion.

I wanted to begin with a sort of “state of the union” question. How is Blizzard feeling as you wrap up the Wrath of the Lich King content and move toward the next expansion?

We’re feeling good. As far as wrapping up Lich King content goes, I’m happier with the way the Lich King fight and all of Icecrown leading up to it has turned out compared to anything we’ve done in the past. It’s quite a bit more epic than what we did with Illidan. It’s a cooler climax than Naxxramas back in the day pre-Burning Crusade. I’m happy with how that’s come along. In general, it’s been an awesome expansion. I think players have been pretty excited about it.

With as many death knights as there are in the game now, I sometimes forget that they weren’t there at one point. As the first hero class, death knights were a huge addition to World of Warcraft. What was the process like for introducing this new character to the game, and how difficult has it been to balance them?

Definitely a difficult process. Obviously a lot of that is because of the balance complexities that get introduced by creating a new class. We always knew that we wanted to add more classes to the game, and we had a variety of different ideas for what classes to do. With Burning Crusade, we felt that it was a little too early to introduce a new class. With our second expansion, it seemed like good timing.

When we knew that it was going to be a Northrend-based expansion, we started thinking about character classes that would make sense within the context of the expansion. Among those were the death knight, necromancer, and the runemaster, a character class from one of the Warcraft RPGs, pre-World of Warcraft. Those were our primary contenders.

As we fleshed out the concepts a little bit, it felt like the death knight had more going for it than the other two. It was going to work out better both in terms of how well it fits with the Lich King expansion and also in terms of how it fills some extra need in the game. Obviously, you can make the argument that there still aren’t enough tanks around based on Dungeon Finder queues, but I think it helped. There are people out there playing death knight tanks.

So you do still plan to introduce more hero classes at some point in the future?

It’s a possibility. We have that idea in mind still for the future. We know that we probably would not be able to support introducing a new class with every single expansion, just like we probably wouldn’t be able to support having new races with every expansion. It’s a good candidate for the future, but exactly when that will be or what expansion it might be in or what class it might be is too early to say.

Wrath of the Lich King also brought some graphical improvements to the game. I know you’ve always tried to keep a balance between looking good and being able to run on a wide variety of computers. I’m curious about how you’ve maintained that balance during Wrath of the Lich King, and, particularly as you move forward with an expansion that’s going to be re-doing visuals on a lot of the original game world, if you expect the system requirements to keep climbing.

I can’t speak for sure as to the final system requirements for Cataclysm. It’s too early to say. There’s a possibility that they could go up a little bit, although we would still be talking about machines that are many years old being able to run it at this point. We try to make sure that we support older machines, and we’ll continue to do so. But an older machine today is less old than an older machine when WOW first shipped or when Burning Crusade shipped. If you make that assumption that the system requirements will creep up a little bit, there’s more we can do visually, but we’ll see.

We know that we’re going to introduce things like the improved water. Water’s been one of those things that we’ve never been entirely happy with ever since the original version of the game. It’s what we were able to do with the system requirements that we were satisfied with at the time. As technology advances, it gets easier to do a better job at that kind of thing. We’re pleased so far with how that’s been coming along.

Like you mention, a lot of the old world will also get a facelift, not only for new technology but also for new techniques. Our tools and our level designers have just got better at making the zones. They’ve been doing it for a long time. They have a better idea of how to do things that look really awesome efficiently.

Special Edition Podcast: Irrational Games

In this special edition podcast, we chat with some of the key staff members at Irrational Games about their major influences and sources of inspiration.

You'll hear from Irrational's creative director Ken Levine, director of creative development Joe McDonagh, and art director Nate Wells as they explore topics ranging from architecture to Reservoir Dogs.

After you've heard what they have to say here, be sure to stop by irrationalgames.com to check out the studio's own in-house podcast, Irrational Behavior. If you're still hungry for more, stop by our hub page for more stories about Irrational Games.

March Cover Revealed

Rockstar Games is known for its ambitious projects, and L.A. Noire proves that the company’s reputation is safe. While the rumblings about the game have been heard for years, our world exclusive cover story is the only place you’ll be able to get concrete information on the gritty crime epic. Over the course of our 10-page feature we look at the game’s astonishing reconstruction of 1947 Los Angeles and learn how the team took on such a massive undertaking. We also talk to the team to see L.A. Noire’s groundbreaking facial-animation system in action, and learn how it might change the way we look at games from now on.

Some of the other features in our March issue include a look at the status of some of our favorite old franchises, previews of some of the Independent Games Festival nominees, and a guide for parents interested in parental controls. We also grill Platinum Games’ director Hideki Kamiya on Bayonetta, dig into the legal battle over Duke Nukem, and check out some of the hottest tech around. If you’ve been wondering why Polyphony Digital seems to operate without deadlines, Sony’s head of internal development, Shuhei Yoshida, explains why the company cuts the Gran Turismo 5 developer so much slack.

Sequels to Mass Effect, BioShock, and Battlefield: Bad Company get reviewed in the March issue of Game Informer Magazine, along with Dante’s Inferno, Aliens vs. Predator and many more.

Subscribers will be getting the March issue soon, and it will be hitting newsstands shortly afterward.

March Cover Revealed

Rockstar Games is known for its ambitious projects, and L.A. Noire proves that the company’s reputation is safe. While the rumblings about the game have been heard for years, our world exclusive cover story is the only place you’ll be able to get concrete information on the gritty crime epic. Over the course of our 10-page feature we look at the game’s astonishing reconstruction of 1947 Los Angeles and learn how the team took on such a massive undertaking. We also talk to the team to see L.A. Noire’s groundbreaking facial-animation system in action, and learn how it might change the way we look at games from now on.

Some of the other features in our March issue include a look at the status of some of our favorite old franchises, previews of some of the Independent Games Festival nominees, and a guide for parents interested in parental controls. We also grill Platinum Games’ director Hideki Kamiya on Bayonetta, dig into the legal battle over Duke Nukem, and check out some of the hottest tech around. If you’ve been wondering why Polyphony Digital seems to operate without deadlines, Sony’s head of internal development, Shuhei Yoshida, explains why the company cuts the Gran Turismo 5 developer so much slack.

Sequels to Mass Effect, BioShock, and Battlefield: Bad Company get reviewed in the March issue of Game Informer Magazine, along with Dante’s Inferno, Aliens vs. Predator and many more.

Subscribers will be getting the March issue soon, and it will be hitting newsstands shortly afterward.

Special Edition Podcast: Irrational Games

In this special edition podcast, we chat with some of the key staff members at Irrational Games about their major influences and sources of inspiration.

You'll hear from Irrational's creative director Ken Levine, director of creative development Joe McDonagh, and art director Nate Wells as they explore topics ranging from architecture to Reservoir Dogs.

After you've heard what they have to say here, be sure to stop by irrationalgames.com to check out the studio's own in-house podcast, Irrational Behavior. If you're still hungry for more, stop by our hub page for more stories about Irrational Games.

Super Street Fighter IV

We've been spending some time with Super Street Fighter IV over the last couple of days, and all signs point to it being a worthy followup to last year's return to form for the series. Those who were concerned about this edition being a mere cash-in shouldn't have much to worry about, as it features plenty of new fighters, modes, and moves...basically everything you'd want in a new edition of Street Fighter.

Longtime fans know that the series is known for these "updates" in lieu of full-fledged sequels, considering that the SNES Street Fighter II was released twice more as SFII Turbo and Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Both of those titles were big hits, and they didn't feature nearly as many improvements as this update to IV. Each of the SNES updates only provided gamers with four new characters, while SSFIV introduces ten new fighters to the mix. Some are returning characters and others are completely new, but they all fit perfectly into this new era of Street Fighter.

Those who spent time with IV last year will feel right at home once they pick up this edition, as the core gameplay mechanics are virtually identical. Each character has their standard special moves and Super/Ultra combos, but now they can select one of two Ultras at the beginning of the round. Fighters from the first edition of IV will each feature a new and devastating Ultra II combo. Some fighters like Sagat and Gouken unleash massive projectiles, while M. Bison settles for two gigantic flaming fists to the gut.

Five new stages are available, including a Metro City skyscraper, an African plain during a solar eclipse, and a busy street in India. Each of these features plenty of animated onlookers and animals, and rival any seen in IV.


Many fans of the series were thrown off by the insane difficulty of IV's trials, and SSFIV doesn't budge much in this regard. The trials are laid out more specifically, with each section requiring you to perform a single move or combo instead of a gauntlet of them. Later challenges are almost as difficult as the notorious ones from its predecessor, but it's easier to jump directly to a combo that you want to attempt.

Street Fighter II's re-releases on the Super Nintendo were full-priced and didn't offer nearly what Super Street Fighter IV does. With ten new characters, five new stages, dozens of new Ultra combos, and much improved online support, any claims of this being a quick and easy cash-in for Capcom will be hard to take seriously.

Take a look at the video below to check out almost eight minutes of direct-feed gameplay. If you missed yesterday's look at the opening cutscene and bonus rounds, click here.

New Iron Man 2 Trailer Shows Off War Machine

We’ve know that Iron Man’s monotone ally War Machine was going to have some screen time in the upcoming film for a while now, but Sega hasn’t confirmed his existence in the game of the same name -- until now.

The newest trailer for the video game version of Iron Man II is out. In it, we get to see Tony Stark’s good buddy Jim Rhodes take to the skies as War Machine. What’s more, fans will be able to play as Rhodey in the game. It looks like War Machine will sacrifice a small amount of precision for extra firepower, so playing as War Machine could affect your prowess in battle. The game is set to release in early May, right around the release of the film. Check out the trailer below.