video In a pre-E3 presentation made through Nintendo Direct, the company announced it would be evolving the Wii’s avatar system into an enhanced social network called Miiverse. The demo showed a player being killed in a zombie game, presumably ZombiU, Ubisoft’s updated redesign of last year’s shoote
video Not every new change is revolutionary. In fact most changes tend to be both predictable and not especially dramatic. The demo of Resident Evil 6 featured in Microsoft’s E3 media briefing showed a number of new ideas in the series, including the ability to fall backward and shoot from a lying d
Living up to rumors, Microsoft continued its incremental project of turning the Xbox 360 into the center of a person’s daily entertainment habits. Getting the jump on Apple’s plans for expanding its Cloud service and possibly releasing a television, Microsoft announced a series of new entertainment
The E3 behemoth unleashed its fire-hydrant spray of videgame news: –Forza Horizon announced, offers radio-fueled road trip fantasy. -Ubosoft redesigns last year’s Wii U shooter to include zombies, called Zombi U. –THQ closes San Diego studio behind WWE and UFC games. -Ubisoft gets into egaming with
video As excitement over the newest game announcements building at E3, our friends at Polygon have created a lovely video condensing the history of videogames into 3 ambient minutes. The montage isn’t intended to be a comprehensive list, but it does a wonderful job capturing the series of simple pla
At Microsoft’s E3 media briefing today, Ubisoft announced a new entry in its stealth action series Splinter Cell: Blacklist. The on-stage demo was set on the Iran-Iraq border and showed series’ protagonist Sam Fisher shooting, strangling, and mauling “terrorists” in conveniently de-personalizing hea
Are you being used? Are companies taking advantage of your enthusiasm to enrich themselves through the abstract new mechanisms of social networking? In a jointly reported story on the New York Times’ Bits blog, Facebook users were asked to comment on the network’s practice of using a person’s “likes
Zombies are the perfect antagonist. They are beyond salvation, are impossible to reason with, and can be given supernatural abilities that exacerbate our worst death fears. Former Call of Duty Creative Strategist Robert Bowling has announced his new game will delve into the primal fears provoked by
On the eve of E3 2012, the ground shook forebodingly, prefiguring next week’s tidal wave of news: -The Nintendo DS was almost called “City Boy.” –Castlevania: Lord of Shadows 2 revealed, shows off blood sucking hero. -Microsoft rumored to be working on “Smart Glass” app to stream data from mobile ph
Ed. note: This piece sparked a lot of debate in the comments and elsewhere. We’ll be looking at the trailer and the surrounding issues at greater length early next week. In the meantime we’ve amended the original headline for insensitivity. -Jamin Ed. note #2: We’ve since apologized for this piece.
There is a point at which game design simply gets in the way of players. Designers rely on restricted access to ammo, levels, and new weaponry to guide player’s through their games, creating the illusion of “progress.” Under no circumstances are players to be given free reign of all a game’s levels,
video In the just released trailer for the next Tomb Raider game, in which Lara Croft is transformed from a lone spelunker into an action figure pin cushion, Lara is shown killing a deer with a bow and arrow. The sequence appears to fit in between hyperbolic action set pieces, which has Lara creepin
Brighton-based artist Jim Harris has created a lovely new variation on sprite-art with a series of copper-plate etchings that recreate classic videogame sprites from Pac-Man and Space Invaders. The etchings are on display in The Brighton Five Pound Fringe show at The Rock Inn, Kemptown. Harris promi
Yesterday Activision and Call of Duty co-creators Jason West and Vince Zampella reached legal settlement a day before their trial was set to begin. “All parties have reached a settlement in the dispute, the terms of which are strictly confidential,” Robert Schwartz, attorney for West and Zampella, s
Star Wars 1313 is not a sequel to Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, the 2002 game that let players control Jango Fett as he tried to unravel a conspiracy. But it certainly feels like another pass on the same basic idea. Yesterday, LucasArts revealed Star Wars 1313 as the next major game in the franchise tha
Politicians have long used videogames to help themselves look better. In 2005 Hilary Clinton introduced legislation to make the sale of violent videogames to minors a federal crime. Before her, Joseph Lieberman never seemed to tire of making hyperbolic claims about the morally degenerative effects o
If you think about it, it’s strange that we should individually own games. No one can own a game of tag or soccer. But a game of Mario or Pokémon can be yours through the generations. The strange sense of privately owning of a thing that was once shared as a function of community togetherness has be
Videogame news broke today. We fixed it: -Mortal Kombat team announces new fighter featuring Superman, Batman, and more. –New Indie Bundle includes Bastion, Amnesia, Limbo, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, and others. -Nintendo patents vibrating stylus for the 3DS. –Fez sales pass 100,000 on Xbox
video Ignorance is precious in Dark Souls. It is the sugary juice that makes the tedious process of peeling away the game’s rough and clingy skin bearable–for a time, anyway. The game is at its torturous best when the player is abandoned in their own ignorance and must repeatedly fumble for the corr
Someone’s going to jail again. In advance of a full reveal at Microsoft’s E3 press conference on Monday, Game Informer just announced a new installment in the Gears of War series. The magazine’s cover shows an unidentified character in blue-glowing handcuffs being led away from a city on fire. It se
video Yesterday IO Interactive and Square Enix released a trailer for Hitman: Absolution that CVG, The New Statesman, and The Mirror, among many others, have flagged as sexist. The trailer shows Agent 47 getting dressed in a motel room as a group of women assassin’s, dressed as nuns, walking throug
video Level 1-1 from Super Mario Bros. is one of the most instantly recognizable places in the history of imaginary worlds. It’s opening layout, with the one mushroom-laden question mark and that first angry-faced Goomba is an instinctual memory for millions of people around the world. One fan loved
The Witcher developer CD Projekt released a lone screenshot of their next project, based on Cyberpunk, a pen and paper role-playing game designed Mike Pondsmith. The studio claims the game is being made “for mature and demanding players who expect to be treated seriously.” In the language of videoga
video Filmmakers James George and Jonathan Minard have created an amazing new filmmaking technique for their on-going documentary project, Clouds. The process involves shooting interview subjects with standard DSLR cameras and a Kinect. After shooting, they took the 3D data points recorded by the Ki
Game jams have become increasingly popular over the years, reaching an absurd new milestone earlier this year with the Molydeux Game Jam that took place in 28 different cities around the world this April. Game jams are especially inviting to people curious about making games but uncertain about how
