Having already broken EA’s pre-order record long before the December release date there is a lot to expect from a developer that has never produced an MMO before. The release date of Bioware’s first venture into the genre was announced at the Eurogamer Expo last weekend and lead writer of Star Wars: The Old Republic, Daniel Erickson was on hand to talk in a bit more detail about the game.
I have just come out of the Witcher 2 developer session at the Eurogamer Expo, and for me this one was the most interesting, we got some really good information about the upcoming release of version 2.0 for the PC as well as the 360 version of the game. CD Projekt Red’s Jan Kryzysztof Bielecki delivered the very informative presentation Hit the jump for more details.
Dead Island has not had the smoothest of launches. From released developer builds, to the already infamous ‘Feminist Whore’ line of code discovered over at the Steam forums – the murmurings around the game have been somewhat controversial, destroying much of the goodwill earned by an astounding early trailer.
You can learn a lot about a game from its title. Even non-gamers can tell from their names alone that Grand Theft Auto is going to have a fair bit of crime involved, that Rock Band has a large musical element and that Portal involves… well… portals. While The Baconing isn’t quite as blatant as these examples you can still learn a lot from its name. It tells you that the game is chock full of pop-culture references to delight…
I was discussing with some friends the other day the merit of review scores, a subject which is very much one that is likely to cause some arguments. I for one see the need for the usual scores out of 5, 10 or 100 along with an A-D system, they make it easy for the reader to find out what the reviewer thought of the game. I am of the opinion that the content of the review is more often…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMu1WRgYB7U&version=3&hl=en_GB] E3 kick-started Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 marketing campaign, with a trailer that met with mixed responses. From “really? a turret sequence??!”, to “I want this game now!!!11”. But if you thought that was a slightly odd trailer to start out with, wait until you see this. Fake newsreels, terrible sneering English scientists and not overly convincing CGI overlays are all featured. Although there was one shot that made me think of Battlestar Galactica, I had to quickly banish…
The Witcher 2 sees us returning to the world of Geralt of Rivia, an amnesiac albino monster hunter, who seems to have a habit of getting caught up in world-shaping events he wishes he could avoid. One of the key strengths of the first Witcher game was how it handled important choices, with consequences often coming back to haunt you, hours after you made the initial decision. It was almost unique in an RPG (or any game for that matter)…
Spore was a weird game. I use the term ‘game’ loosely. Spore gave players the chance to create and tailor unique creatures using a powerful yet pleasingly simple editing suite. It allowed us to create vehicles and spacecraft and then share our creatures with other players, our content streaming seamlessly into their world, interacting with their own horrific creations. It also allowed us to draw giant penises and make them walk.
The press release for Of Orcs and Men starts off with a bold statement that this is a “great role-playing game.” I think it is a bit early for a game to be called great when it won’t even be released until Spring 2012.
When I came to write this review I found myself focusing on the negatives, on the pedantic “unfun” stuff. Considering the (perhaps unfair) prominence of pedantic “unfun” stuff in reactions elsewhere, that seems counterproductive, not representative of how much I enjoyed it.