I seem to be rolling in the controversial headlines when it comes to my column rants, hey? Well, this time it will be different to my last column on Call of Duty, because even though the concept is the same, my stance on the matter here is entirely different. I actually love the Assassin’s Creed series, certainly the first two games above all, believe it or not. But lately the series has put quite a huge strain on my love for it, with Revelations almost completely putting me off it if not for the game’s engaging final hour. All of this has unfortunately gotten me really worried for the final game in the franchise.

I’m writing this to voice my concerns for the series, as an actual fan of it, and I will as always try to uphold an objective perspective on the matter, and discuss honestly while I feel the final game in the Assassin’s Creed franchise is in deep waters, and may need to pull a rabbit out of a hat to give the series a grand send off. But first, let’s talk about what I believe to be the actual problems with the franchise as it stands now, and why South Africa just might need to bring KFC’s Double Crunch back to heal our decaying souls. Definitely more on that last one at some point in the future.

This won’t be as convoluted as my Call of Duty rant, because the issue here is a lot less delicate and complex in my opinion. So I’m going to go straight to it. I believe that the main problem with Assassin’s Creed right now is much like the one its protagonists all seemed to have lately: age and exhaustion. And similarly to Call of Duty right about now, it seems like Assassin’s Creed has also become quite a bit about money. I’d even go as far as to say that I feel they’ve milked it much more than it should have been. And again, to fully elaborate the point, I’d like to go through the franchises’ history and provide a clear analysis on why I believe this to be the case. Let’s start right at the beginning.

• Assassin’s Creed: A brand new IP released in 2007, the game received massive amounts of hype and attention for its awesome concept and setting. I believe the story was the strongest aspect of the game, and really made it worth playing. The game was by no means perfect, as it suffered from many issues ranging from repetitiveness and lack of game variety to unskippable cutscenes and technical problems. But graphically the game was amazing, and its story and audio made the experience. I completely loved the game despite its flaws, and it had the advantage of being a new world and new game, so gamers were very open to it and not overly critical. There was definitely huge potential to be seen, and after the game’s ending all fans were highly anticipating a sequel already. Assassin’s Creed did its job, and did it fantastically well in this regard.

• Assassin’s Creed 2: The hype was phenomenal, and many fans including myself were counting the days until this game would release. When the game finally came out, it was a winner on all fronts. When you took away the painfully slow and horrific pace to the first few hours of the game, then Assassin’s Creed 2 became every bit the sequel it needed to be. The story was really great, and provided a lot more depth to the universe as well as increased the hype for the main plot, as it ended with a bang. And with better action, a longer campaign, more variety in all areas of the game, upgraded graphics, a new setting and story direction and awesome new gadgetry and ideas, Assassin’s Creed 2 was an outstanding game, and marked the series’ rise to its throne.

• Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood: The alarm bells started to sound a little when it was announced that this game would be releasing just one year after Assassin’s Creed 2. But the momentum and freshness for the series was much too strong at this point, so fans were ready for another game, especially for the story. But when it launched, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood marked a critical point in the franchise for me. On the one hand, the gameplay was very much improved, and closer to the vision many of us originally had for the series. More emphasis on stealth and a greater emphasis on variety and making the player more deadly in combat paid off really well. A true winner for the series was its newly introduced multiplayer component, which was like nothing else on the market and was compelling for a first attempt. However, I feel that Brotherhood did the story a lot of injustice. In fact it exhausted it to some extent, because it wasn’t gripping or particularly interesting, and the Desmond sections felt mostly there to just keep him in the game. In fact the story only really became relevant in the last hour, and fortunately there was a great cliff hanger. Overall, the game was quite an improvement, and probably the best in the franchise, but it was definitely noticeable that the gap for improvement was growing smaller, and some mechanics were growing old.

• Assassin’s Creed: Revelations: After playing this I must say that if it were not for the franchises’ story, this would have put me completely off the Assassin’s Creed series. Firstly, and amongst the biggest issues with the game, is that it showed me how exhausted the gameplay was. With barely anything worth writing home about added to the game, and an identical formula to its predecessors, Revelations couldn’t bring back the excitement of past games. Variety was a lot less, and things like the renovating system and slow pace often made playing it a serious chore. The game relied heavily on its previous successes, and failed to really build from its predecessors in any significant way if we’re not counting the multiplayer component, which thankfully was a good improvement. However, the worst problem with Revelations, which affected the gameplay as well, was that by now the story had been pretty much exhausted. While Desmond’s dilemma was pretty interesting, the entire Ezio campaign felt like a twenty minute tale stretched over six hours, and everything was pointless and devoid of entertainment until the final hour which wrapped up Ezio’s and Altair’s stories, and that was actually done well. Yep, the yearly development cycle had definitely taken its toll on the series, and even critics rated this game significantly lower than its predecessors. It was just the worst game in the series for me, and it really showed the game’s lack of enthusiasm. It tried to take the story deeper, but Desmond just isn’t anywhere near the level of depth required to carry a story like this, and only the last stretch of the story was remotely interesting or relevant.

This is where I’ll be getting to the real heart of the problem. Which is what Assassin’s Creed 3 needs to do to give this series a great sending off, because right now the game is in trouble. Of course, that trouble is not financially-related, but regarding critical and fan reception. Well, some fans. I’m definitely amongst those worrying for the game, and I feel it seriously needs to step up its game if it wants to reach its previous levels of excellence. But for the first time now, I’m not really excited for the next game in the franchise. That’s highly ironic considering that it’s the final game that will wrap everything up. But the truth is, if Revelations is anything to go by, then I don’t want to get my expectations to an unrealistic level. Because those who know me will know that when I love a game, I have massive expectations for its sequels, and right now I just don’t think Assassin’s Creed has put itself in a very good position, especially since the enthusiastic lead designer, Patrice Désilets, left the series at Brotherhood.

I believe that what is needed for the franchise right now is a progression jump similar to the one from the first game to Assassin’s Creed 2, and even more than that. This is the final game in the series, so the developers need to pull out all the stops and seriously increase the variety and pacing for starters. In fact one of the most important things the game needs is actually meaningful variety. For me, especially in Revelations, it felt like, aside from the Hookblade, almost everything added to the game were just extras there for the sake of it, and were in no way needed. So I feel the game needs to have greater variety in that sense, especially in its missions, arsenal and structure. While I can’t say for sure whether the game needs to go undergo complete reinvention, or just supreme expansion, I can definitely say that a new direction is badly needed. And I don’t mean for the story, because this is obviously the last game, but for the gameplay. Assassin’s Creed 3 needs to heavily emphasise its change of setting, and needs to embrace a change of style and a change in gameplay types. It can’t rely on past successes or its old mechanics. It needs to be bold and new, and once again breathe new life into the franchise, because personally speaking that’s something the series is in dire need of.

The next thing the series obviously needs is complete story emphasis. The time for stretching out details and raising more questions than giving answers should be over. Lackluster, dragged out story missions and slow pacing needs to end as well, and this game really needs to give players what the series has been building up to: a tale where the fate of the entire world is in the protagonist’s hands. The game definitely needs to give players more meaning and importance than hours of jacking around on rooftops and slaughtering people with no plot relevance until the generally significant ending. I know the developers built their game around a 2012 timeline, but that shouldn’t be the excuse as to why the series has become dried out, nor should it be a justification for such short development periods that have actually damaged the series. It’s natural that any new game will eventually stop being new and fresh at a certain point in time, and will also eventually lose its sense of wonder and discovery as fans begin to know the ins and outs of the game. Once this happens, both fans and developers realise the series must stop relying on its freshness, and instead has to turn to producing better sequels. As a result, expectations rise. That’s all normal. But there’s a right way to lose freshness and a wrong way, and Revelations was definitely an example of the wrong way in that it exhausted its own mechanics. This series had, and still has, so much more potential, and it shouldn’t be wasted like this.

Finally, one of the most critical things the series needs is Desmond to actually effectively take on the mantle as the lead protagonist. Both Ezio and Altair are miles above him in terms of character depth and intrigue. I still feel this issue dates back to the original game, when Nolan North was becoming the business in video game voice acting and the developers of Assassin’s Creed seriously underestimated the future of their franchise and Desmond’s importance in it. Revelations did a fairly decent job at giving Desmond some background, but none of it was deeply interesting, most of it was predictable based on hints dropped in previous games and it definitely came at the wrong time. I mean, it was only the fourth game in the franchise that had us learn anything personal and meaningful about him directly from him. Assassin’s Creed 3 therefore needs much more meaningful emphasis on Desmond as a character, because whether we like him or not he is the star of the show, and he needs to step up to it.

In conclusion, I think Assassin’s Creed 3 is in trouble, and it really needs to be something special to give the series the grand sending off it probably deserves. If I have to be perfectly honest, with the story alone Revelations could have been combined with Brotherhood, with some clear cuts made on content, and the result would have been much better. But it stands now that the next entry in the franchise needs to seriously step up big time, and if it manages to pull that off as well as deliver the goods with its story, then I think it will turn out great. If not, and if it makes the same mistakes as Revelations, then from my perspective this franchise won’t be as memorable as I really want it to be.

Assassin’s Creed 3 has a great deal to live up to, and it’s time to raise expectations and not settle for another Revelations, because this series can definitely do a whole lot better than that.

And that is exactly what I want for this franchise. I want Assassin’s Creed 3 to be the best – the series’ magnum opus. It deserves to end that way, and fans deserve nothing less than that.

Cyberconnect 2 are probably known best for their work on the Naruto games, with their most recent and notable titles being Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm on PlayStation 3 and Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox360. If you’re a fan of the anime and games, then you probably know that Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations is coming out in March. But we’re not here to talk about Naruto, as we’re in fact taking a look at Cyberconnect 2′s brand new IP, Asura’s Wrath, which incidentally is also very much like an anime. Right then, let’s check it out.

Name: Asura’s Wrath
Genre: Action, Beat em’ up
Players: 1
Multiplayer: N/A
Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360
Developers: Cyberconnect 2
Publishers: Capcom
Release Date: 21 February 2012 (NA), 24 February 2012 (EU, SA)

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Asura’s Wrath is its unique concept. By that I mean the game’s universe being a fusion of Asian mythology and sci-fi. You don’t hear that everyday, do you? But it’s definitely intriguing, you have to admit. What’s more so is that since the developers appear to be such big anime lovers, Asura’s Wrath is said to seamlessly blend action and narrative, as well as have each of its chapters play out like an episode of an anime series. Although don’t start thinking cell-shaded now, because that’s not what this is. Now, I’ve played the demo of the game as well as done my research on it, so I’ve gotten a fairly solid idea of what to expect from this title and how it plays, but before we go into all of that business let’s first get into what the game is actually about.

In the game you take on the role of the mighty Asura, who was once a revered general of the Gods. After returning from war, Asura receives a summoning from the Emperor, but arrives to find the big chief murdered. Even worse is that Asura is being accused of the crime. From there he rushes home to his family, only to discover his wife, Durga, dead and his daughter, Mithra, kidnapped. Filled with anger, and realising that the Gods have betrayed him, Asura pursues his former allies in search of Mithra, who the Gods have sealed in a glass capsule. Before he can save his daughter, Asura is thwarted by the God Deus, who confesses to murdering the Emperor so that he can bring about something called “The Great Rebirth”. Asura, weakened from the battle, is thrown into space and finds himself falling down to Earth, swearing to have his revenge. Twelve millenia later, Asura is awakened from his slumber and, consumed with rage and a thirst for vengeance, journeys through Earth unleashing his wrath on the forces of the Gods, fighting to save Mithra from Deus and the Seven Deities, who are his betrayers that now rule over Heaven and have been using Mithra’s magical powers to enhance their own.

Asura’s Wrath is actually a very unique game, based on my short time with it. Yes there are many comparisons currently being made with it and the famous God of War series, mostly because of the game’s premise, but with regards to gameplay they couldn’t be more different. If the two boss fight sections available in the demo are anything to go on, then the game probably isn’t like any other action-filled beat em’ up you’ve played. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on you, as well as the final product. However, you can definitely see the anime goodness pouring out of this game, as it’s eccentric in ways only an anime can capture, it’s extremely flashy and over-the-top, there are plenty of rage-filled powering up moments and, of course, there are planet-sized bosses to fight. If all of that is exactly the kind of stuff that gets you going, then this might just be the game that you’re looking for.

The gameplay is really quite diverse, and there are lots of different elements to it. While the game mainly features visually awesome cinematic sequences that you progress through with quick time events, there are other elements incorporated, such as one on one fist fights and high speed rail shooter sections. However, often progressing through the story requires you to build up a Burst meter at the top of the screen through landing successful attacks on your opponents. Once it’s fully charged, you’ll be able to activate the next cinematic sequence. Now, I’m still not completely sold on the quick-time event sections, because even though they’re amazing to look at and the fights I played really flowed fantastically well, there’s only so much appeal you can get from so little input at the end of the day. Hopefully the game can deliver the goods on its other gameplay styles. Seeing as how there’s virtually nothing to explain about quick time events, I’ll move onto the other types of gameplay.

In the demo I was able to play both a shoot em’ up section as well as a one on one fist fight. In the former, the game moves at an exhilarating speed, and you’ll be trading ranged blasts with your enemy. You’ll have access to low damage rapid energy shots, as well as high damage lock-on blasts, where you have to move your aiming reticule over multiple parts of an enemy or over incoming projectiles to guarantee hits and counter attacks. These sections are fairly straightforward and enjoyable due to the simplicity and explosive excitement, but unless there are some mix ups, additional moves or new ways to handle these sections in the game, I can see them growing lackluster after a few repeats. As for the fist fight sections, they’re surprisingly good fun. Instead of homing energy blasts, you’ll get light and heavy attacks, as well as access to jump and evade abilities. You can also use a trigger to power up into hyper mode. The combat system may not be anywhere near deep, but it’s flashy and the fights are set up in an epic enough way that you don’t really end up thinking too much on the combat, but more on the spectacle. And that leads to what is probably my most crucial point about this game.

Asura’s Wrath is a lot about the spectacle and epic-scale battles. It’s definitely not a game that everyone is going to like, but I can’t take anything away from it with regards to it performing as advertised. It’s insane, over-the-top, it’s definitely like an anime and there doesn’t seem to be a dull or mellow moment to this game. It’s completely bonkers. I mean, a chaotic fight on the moon with a guy who has a sword that can extend practically longer than planet Earth? Check. An enemy so gigantic that his finger is as large as an entire planet — and he attempts to crush you with it? Check. A crazy-ass main character who gets the snot kicked out of him but can always bring his monster fury to the battle at the right moments? Check. I can keep going, but I’m sure by now you know exactly what you’re in for. If you’re the right person for this game, then it looks set to entertain you immensely. But if you’re not, then you’ll probably end up finding it utterly ridiculous. Personally? It’s got my attention.

The game’s producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya had some interesting things to say about the gameplay, for those interested to hear more since there seems to be so little information out on this game right now. And that’s a bit puzzling seeing as how the game is releasing at the end of this month. Perhaps that’s for the best so we can all be pleasantly surprised – or so that we don’t get our hopes up. Either way, Tsuchiya commented on Asura’s combat style in the game, saying: “Unlike most action games where you can level up and acquire new abilities, Asura’s fighting style will change according to the story. Asura’s fighting styles are all predicated from the dramatic story or beats within the game. At certain points in the game, if Asura gets extremely angry, you might see him fight with six arms. At even later points in the game, Asura might get beat down and lose most of his arms.” That last part seems like it will often be the case in the game, because already in the demo Asura gets pretty beat up.

The one thing I can say I absolutely loved about Asura’s Wrath was the amazing soundtrack. At least, the music in the demo was just so awesome, and made the fights seem a lot more epic than they probably were. The voice acting is crazy as you’d expect from something like this, and the English voices aren’t really that bad. It’s definitely cheesy enough though. But there’s too little dialogue in the demo to get a complete opinion on it, but the screaming is certainly working out alright. However, the good news for us anime fans is that the PlayStation 3 version of the game will include the option to choose between the Japanese or English voices. However, it has unfortunately not been confirmed yet whether the Xbox360 version will allow for this option, but I certainly hope so for the sake of those gamers, because the original Japanese voices are usually always the best. Graphically, the game is pretty good, and the style is quite attractive. The character models look great, and the game just looks amazing in motion, especially during the cinematic quick-time events. The environments look a bit bland and uninteresting though, but truthfully too little is shown in the demo to get a full conclusion.

Asura’s Wrath doesn’t look to be a game for everyone. It’s undoubtedly a very unique and bold game, but its apparent high focus on spectacle over depth could potentially be its undoing, or even its success. The game definitely looks to be delivering the goods when it comes to audio, visuals and fluidity, but only time will tell if the game can offer enough variety and exciting gameplay to make it a winner. However, one thing is for sure: Asura’s Wrath definitely performs as advertised.

In 2009, eGamer started out with its first look and its first few articles. Being backed on nothing but passion the site grew from strength to strength, day-over-day. Today, February 4th, eGamer is three years old.

Earlier in the week I spoke about the site in a column, therefore I’m not going to reiterate points here.

What I would like to do, however, is thank each and every one of you for the support. To all the people who followed us from 2009, to everyone who started following us this week. It doesn’t matter if you’re a veteran or a n00b — we sincerely appreciate your love.

Our community has grown substantially over the past six months and interaction has become great. We love talking to you guys — and girls — in the comments and on Facebook and Twitter. Nothing is more exciting than your input, and to be honest, it really motivates us.

From here on out, we hope to get to know you better — and for you to know us better. After all, we wouldn’t be here without you.

Thank you for everything!

Naughty Dog’s latest project is The Last of Us, an action title with more than a hint of I Am Legend to it. Check out the debut trailer here, to see what I’m on about. So yesterday we found that this new game really looks to be something entirely different from anything Naughty Dog has done before given that the protagonist is best described as a violent thug, brutal killer and torturer.

Anyway, some new details have dropped for the game and you may want to listen up. Players follow Joel and Ellie as they navigate their own version of post-apocalyptica while scavenging supplies and melee weapons which will break after repeated use. There are boom sticks as well for those who want to hunt for ammo too.

According to Game Informer, Ellie will be a non-playable companion so there goes any hope of co-op. What is mentioned though is that she “managed to keep up, yet stay out of the way.” Now that is something.

Below you’ll see some screenshots, those are apparently in-game not fancy CGI like the trailer.

The Last of Us is scheduled for release in early 2013 and should be something special.

If Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is anything as good as it’s shaping up to be then anyone who picks it up is likely to spend the next few months with it but if you’re a speed freak, you could be over it in just over a week or 200 hours if that’s a better number for you.

That’s a lot of time to spend with any game and it’s got the lead designer from 38 Studios worried that they might have just overdone things a bit. Ideally, the bigger the RPG the better because that’s just how it is with these things but there’s a point where effort turns to overkill. Speaking to Strategy Informer at a recent EA event, lead designer Ian Frazier said that even the QC people who have been testing the game for months now are clocking in at around 8 days to get through all that is KoA: Reckoning.

“That means easy difficulty, skip all cut scenes and dialogue, sprint everywhere that’s sprintable, fast travel everywhere you can, don’t do any combat you don’t need to do… that all took around 200 hours, and that was a speed run.”

The main quest only sets you back between 30 – 40 hours so you’d expect to be getting a great deal of bang for your buck and then some but just hold onto your vale-finding socks because Amalur might not have the steam to keep you going for those 200 hours.

“I think in terms of a selling point – bang for your buck – I think it’s great. It should be on the back of the box. But as a developer I have to look at it and think “did we overdo this?” I really don’t know.”

With any luck, these worries are unfounded but you’ll just have to see for yourself when Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning comes your way next week on PS3, PC and Xbox 360.

So Mortal Kombat is one of the latest high profile titles to be confirmed for Vita alongside names such as BioShock, Monster Hunter and Uncharted (which was out on launch). It sounds like it will be great and NetherRealms’ pledge to make full use of the Vita’s touch functionality should differentiate the experience somewhat.

Here’s a good 100 seconds of gameplay action. It’s cam but decent quality and the Vita’s amazing AMOLED screen makes everything perfectly visible. The game looks like good fun but the wiping blood off the screen thing is almost definitely too gimmicky for its own good. Did we mention that the game will run at a silky 60fps?

Watch it up top. Mortal Kombat will be out for Vita sometime in autumn.

Have you been following Ghost Recon Future Soldier? Are you relatively excited about the game? Well, if you’ve said no to either of the two questions, then you seriously need to watch the trailer.

Future Soldier looks great, and not in a Call of Duty way. The game has all the stealth you’d ever want, in the day time, as well as new features to look into buildings and stuff like that. It’s really high-tech and tactical, it seems.

According to Ubisoft: “Ghost Recon Future Soldier will feature intense next-gen warfare action, prototype high-tech weaponry, and state-of-the-art single-player and multiplayer modes.”

The game will be out in May on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

This is interesting news because Naughty Dog seems to be going in a completely different direction than Uncharted, where the protagonist was an adventure hero.

The Last Of Us protagonist, Joel, may in fact be a very bad person. Definitely not your typical good guy hero.

A recent Naughty Dog video that shows off some mo-cap footage also includes some descriptive narration about Joel. The narration is actually from the game’s other lead character, young Ellie, and it reads as follows:

“He’s been called a violent thug, a brutal killer and a torturer. Me? He’s just Joel to me. Back in his day you weren’t afraid of being hunted by other people, and it wasn’t normal for a girl to scavenging the dead and you sure as hell didn’t have to worry about them.”

Personally, this makes the game much more interesting to me.

Furthermore, Joel’s voice actor, Troy Baker, spoke in an interview about the assumed relationship between Joel and Ellie in the game, saying:

“I think what I’ve seen over the last few days, as we’ve been teasing this, is that people think they know what the game is about. People think they know who Joel and Ellie is, and the relationship between the characters. It’s fun to watch from this side because I don’t think anyone really knows.”

The Last of Us is a PS3 exclusive title, but it hasn’t been given a specific release date yet, and right now it looks likely to release at the end of this year or in early 2013.

Be sure to check out the game’s debut cinematic trailer if you haven’t already.

No, this is not your daily report on how the seasons are staying the same this year. If you do not understand the whole “Winter Is Coming” thing, then you obviously haven’t watched one of the best series ever created. Game of Thrones may have been a huge success on TV, but its first entry into the gaming realm, Game of Thrones: Genesis, didn’t do as well.

Thankfully, we’re getting a proper Game of Thrones title. Not some half-assed, shitty RTS game, but a title into a genre that perfectly suits this series. Publishers Atlus have announced that the Game of Thrones RPG, developed by Cyanide Studios, will be hitting stores in May.

More specifically, May 15th. Mark that date, especially if you’re a fan of the series. The Game of Thrones RPG will be released for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Valve has announced planned updates for Team Fortress 2 for this year. The successful free-to-play game by Valve will see another Saxxy Wards ceremony and a Steam Workshop blog.

Following that, there will be a “Meet The” short for the Pyro as well as “something brand new”. The “something brand new” will be for the game, however it hasn’t been revealed just yet. But, we do know that the “new” isn’t a hat, or a map, or anything like that.

Just in case you haven’t seen the sort of gameplay to expect from Final Fantasy Versus XIII

This is not a wish list and this isn’t a list of features or mechanics we hope to see in Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Instead, this is a look at a couple of the features we are almost certain about the game, features we want done right. I like Final Fantasy XIII and know I’ll enjoy XIII-2 just as much, if not more. However, I think Versus XIII is something new, something different and a chance for Square Enix to evolve the entirety of the JRPG genre. So for that sake, and for the sake of Final Fantasy XIV, which will happen, we want Versus XIII to do well so that it excites that fire back in Square Enix. We want it to affect how Final Fantasy XIV is done and perhaps make Square Enix enough coin to fund remakes of Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX. I’m a long time fan and veteran of Final Fantasy and will be taking experience from previous titles and applying that to the features of Versus XIII.

1) Final Fantasy has always had some sort of statistic based level up system with which to improve characters. Final Fantasy XIII’s for example had a crystarium system, which while working well enough, never had much depth to it. That’s why we want a more complex, or at least a more in depth, level up and equipment system from Versus XIII. More than that though, it shouldn’t be overly convoluted and instead must be simple to learn but difficult to master. However, and even if it’s done right, the most important thing we’re looking for is a diversity of approaches and paths to level up. While it may seem it a bit silly to ask for the ability to separate your characters from your friends in a single player JRPG, despite everyone experiencing the exact same story, we still think it necessary. Previous Final Fantasy games were more replayable and gave a meaning to grinding because you could develop your own characters; independently catering to the strategies you have in mind. Final Fantasy XIII removed a lot of that by forcing everyone to take the same level up path. If Versus XII makes good on this and this alone, I know it’ll be a much better game for it.

2) A well designed level up system is all well and good but has no real point without a great battle mechanic to accompany it. Versus XIII is taking a more real time approach to battles, not dissimilar from Final Fantasy XII’s system. As such, we immediately know that for a magic system to work, it’s going to need some definite balancing. The reason is Final Fantasy XII, as real time as it was, eliminated almost any need for magic by making it slow and limiting in effectiveness. This time we want it relative from start to finish. Each character is also promised to have unique traits and abilities like (of who seems to be the main character) Nocturnis who is able to equip all weapon types. Or another character, as seen in the gameplay video, is able to aim with his weapon allowing for more precise and so I would assume critical hits. The final thing I would argue for is that the summon system be made more versatile and above all remain useful. That’s right, there is a summon system and I can’t wait to see if you get to directly control the each individual summon. Just make sure they don’t get too weak by the end of the game like you have done in other Final Fantasy games Square Enix.

3) Versus XIII has promised and shown a far more realistic atmosphere, set of characters and environments than ever done before. Above all else, the game seems a whole lot darker than we’ve been used to. That’s great and I love the experimentation with new plot styles and tones of story but Square Enix needs to keep it in check throughout. Like all JRPG’s, there will be some influence from anime and manga, this being the case, I don’t want Versus XIII to make the same mistake as many manga and anime series do; that is to be too dark too much of the time. At the end of the day, Final Fantasy is about overcoming an evil or obstacle and improving in the end. So keep this in mind Square Enix. Also, and knowing Final Fantasy has a habit of revealing weird and unrelated bosses near the end, please don’t just reveal some weird omniscient being at the end of the game; keep us guessing but not at the expense of story. Final Fantasy IX for example was very well done and sported a great story but the last boss had almost no relation to the game.

4) Joy of joys, a traversable map and airships are back, reminiscent of games before FFX; let’s hope they do it correctly. Just in case, we want areas not pertaining to the main story and that, like above, link to side missions and stories. Large open maps are great and providing vehicles to traverse them is a great sign of their size and hopefully scope as well as detail.

5) This final feature hasn’t been confirmed but we’re implying it from what we’ve seen. We want more choice, more options. I realise that JRPG’s and western RPG’s are a different breed and I want it to remain that way. I don’t believe that all RPG’s should be like Mass Effect and being told a story rather than shaping it has its appeal; I love Final Fantasy for being a story book. That doesn’t mean that we don’t want more to the world, more side stories and chances for the inquisitive player to learn more about their characters. Reward the extra effort and time spent by giving those players who have invested some love into the game. I don’t just mean bonus summons and ultimate weapons, although I sorely missed that from Final Fantasy XIII. I just want the kind of effort put into the gameplay and main story to be put into side stories. It’s the small things.

At the end of the day, and judging by the videos and screenshots we’ve seen, Final Fantasy Versus XIII is going to be one hell of a game. I just hope it does more than that, that it evolves and moves the JRPG genre onto a new level. I love western RPG’s but sometimes you just gotta give those JRPG’s some love

I have this one friend. His name is Justin, and he loves this band called Journey. More specifically, the song above, which he constantly plays over and over again. I always mock him about his one poor choice in music, but secretly, I actually love this song.

It’s got a vibe that just makes you want to do something. I can’t really describe what though, because I don’t fully understand it myself. It’s just got a special blend of 80′s music genius, and we want you to match it to a game this week.

Which game deserves some Journey love? Which title, from any day or age, needs this nugget of 80′s brilliance? Let us know your thoughts below, and please, listen to the song twice. You’ll thank me afterwards.

In a financials call regarding Grand Theft Auto V, Take-Two assured investors that the development is “making great progress.”

Many analysts are expecting the next game in Rockstar’s infamous series to release within Take-Two’s upcoming financial year — ending March 31, 2013 — but Take-Two has not addressed a release window just yet.

If said analysts are correct however, it would mean that GTA V would release during what is an increasingly crowded release schedule for the publisher.

So perhaps it’s a little iffy, but one can hope right?

That said, the important words to take from Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick are: “Grand Theft Auto V is making great progress.”

He went on to say that the game “promises to continue Rockstar’s incredible track record of delighting fans by raising the bar in interactive entertainment.”

Take that with a pinch of salt since this is of course a call to investors, so they would need to be sold on that in which they chug their money.

Still, it’s a pleasant reminder that GTA V is in fact coming, and we needn’t wait too long before it arrives.

The question is: Are you looking forward to a more serious GTA V or would you prefer a return to the GTA III roots of the modern series?

You know what I haven’t used in ages? Apart from the common sense to choose opening sentences that don’t contain innuendos regarding my sexual activity, that is. Ahem. Moving swiftly onwards, then, to what I was actually referring to — cheat codes. Think about it for a second — how long has it been since you saw, let alone used a cheat for a game that wasn’t from the Saints Row or GTA series? My guess would be quite a while.

I suppose I’m one of the last people out there to be consciously noticing the absence of cheats from games in my day-to-day life of gaming, but upon reflection I really start to appreciate just how absent cheats are from the games of today, and how large a facet of gaming cheats were in the formative years of my gaming career. It really is nothing short of impossible to look back on those days of Gameboy Colours, Socket 478 Pentium PCs and Playstation 2 at friends’ houses without stirring up memories like precariously balancing weighty objects on my ‘Shift’ and ‘F4′ keys in Zoo Tycoon and returning hours later to find myself rolling in enough cashola to use to turn my entire plot into a giant, acquatic, Shark vs Orca deathmatch arena, religiously spamming the gold cheat in Age of Mythology in order to raise a nation consisting entirely of minotaurs, or simply entering a convoluted combination of arrows and shapes into the pause menu of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 so that I could fly. These memories signify the moments and experiences which shaped my passion for gaming, and as you can certainly gather, cheats played a very large role in them.

It wasn’t and isn’t just me, either — I think it is pretty safe to say that cheats played a prominent role in gaming culture as a whole. Nerds the world over flocked to new magazines for their features on the newest cheats for their favourite games, cheats were the first thing you looked for when you bought a new game and I’m pretty confident that the presence of a particularly awesome cheat was often the motivating factor in a game purchase. There is next to no comparison between the situation of a few years ago which I just described and the status quo, however. You’d be hard pressed to find a game (exclusive of Saints Row, of course — we’ll get to that in a bit) that has cheats at all, let alone a magazine or online feature detailing various cheat codes. Cheats seem to have all but disappeared overnight, with what seems to be virtually no outcry from the general gaming community; the question I aim to answer in this column is that of why both of these things — the disappearance and the lack of outcry — have happened.

We shan’t get too ahead of ourselves, though — we are only five hundred words in — and so before we go about answering these questions, let’s take a brief look at the history and context of cheats in general.

Fun fact: The first cheat codes were actually used by play testers of games, to allow them to make the games as demanding as they could be for the system they were using. It was far easier for them to play test and find bugs when they weren’t limited by the conventional constraints of the games in question. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before consumers found out about these, and this, combined with the fact that many gamers were altering binary values and other important-sounding things like those to create their own cheats, resulted in developers deliberately adding cheats for consumer use.

As I’m sure we all know, cheats ranged from your run-of-the-mill God Mode and Bottomless Clip to the slightly more wacky alternative skins, bonus levels, and so on and so forth which could be unlocked through entering certain codes. My personal favourite was playing as Boba Fett in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater; that jet pack got me not only through the dark days, but some mother-trucking insane combos.

Anecdotes of awesomeness aside, the question remains: Why, when developers were willingly adding cheats to games (and didn’t really seem to have a problem with it, either) would there be such a sudden shift away from cheats?

As with most of my topics, the answer will consist of more than one paragraph. The first reason we should consider, though, is that we’ve seen the gaming industry mature from one based largely on less serious, arcade-style games to one based very much on games which try to deal with serious issues, try to be more emotionally engaging with the player and seem to, on the whole, take themselves more seriously as well. I actually think that it is really awesome that we’ve reached a point in the gaming industry where developers are able to take a stand and say, “We’re proud of the work we’ve put in and what we’ve created; we want this to be an experience that immerses and connects with the player. We love fun as much as the next guy, but we don’t want aspects like cheats to ruin the atmosphere we’re trying to create.” Developers, it would seem, are taking the burden upon themselves more and more to create an entertaining experience, and as such want to be recognised for what they do. That, to me, sounds like something that can only benefit the gaming industry.

There is another, quite easily overlooked reason, however, which I think also aids us in answering the question of why gamers don’t have an issue with the removal of cheats from games. This is simply that many things, specifically unlockables, which were made available by cheats are still available in the game; you just have to do something for it, first. Complete a set challenge, achieve ‘x’ amount of headshots or finish a race in a set time and you get a reward for it — the same sort of reward you would have once simply entered a succession of characters to attain. Making unlockables attainable through challenges instead of cheat codes benefits both the developers and the consumers, in my book, so I’m certainly in support of this shift.

Producers are benefited because they have the ability to market their product as a more worthwhile or complete package — not only do you get an amazingly immersive storyline, but there are over 200 rabbit’s tails to collect, and when you get them all you get a special move called the ‘Chicken Dance’ which knocks all of your enemies out and triples your score multiplier. Or something. Whatever reward they choose, it all acts as more bait which they can tout to entice gamers into buying their product.

Consumers benefit because there is a far greater accomplishment associated with completing a challenge than with simply entering a code — if you unlock that Spiderman skin now, it is because you earned it, not because you read about it in a magazine. That makes the game a lot more rewarding and thus, a lot more enjoyable. And I’m a huge fan of enjoyable games.

Given this last reason — that of how unlockables are still available, and are, in fact, more rewarding once attained — it becomes a lot easier to see why the downfall of cheats hasn’t really been mourned.

Unless I missed a pretty big memo somewhere along the line, that is.

Having said all of this, though, I can’t help but feel that an ‘unlimited mana’ cheat can’t have done too much harm in Skyrim. Granted, there is probably a mod for that, but hey — I’m lazy.

Sad news from THQ has revealed that Metro: Last Light, the sequel to Metro 2033, has been delayed.

Metro: Last Light was originally scheduled for a third-quarter release this year, however it’s not ready yet. During an investor meeting, THQ noted that 4A Games said that they would need a little bit of time to polish the title.

Following this, THQ CEO Brian Farrell said that the company will focus heavily on the new title. According to Farrell, when Last Light is ready for release, THQ will double the original title’s marketing budget.

Metro 2033, from 2010, was widely popular despite being quite unknown. And THQ realised this too late.

With the news of doubling the marketing budget, as well as releasing three years after, 4A Games could be creating something really great. And with the change of name to Last Light, there’s a chance that it might not even be a follow-on from 2033.

Finally, Metro: Last Light will be delayed until 2013 where it will be polished and, hopefully, ready to play.

Finally, after years of waiting, Remedy has at last confirmed the release date for the PC version of Alan Wake.

The official announcement for the PC version came in December of last year, and since then fans have been eagerly anticipating it. Now, we’ve been given the exact date. You’d better mark February 16, 2012 on your calenders, because that’s when Alan Wake will arrive on PC, but there are some complications surrounding that.

A recent Q&A provided a lot of information, but the most important things to keep in mind is that the PC version will come with both the game’s downloadable content packs, namely the The Signal and The Writer.

As for the complications, well, the game will arrive first on Steam for $29.99 (about R231.44), which is a good price. It will eventually make its way to Origin as well. However, the actual hard-copy retail version will be coming “soon”, and no specific date has been given yet.

Remedy chief technology officer Markus Mäki commented on the PC version, saying: “We’ve done our best to do justice to the PC version and do things the way they should be done for PC. The PC version looks absolutely beautiful. We’re bringing the game to life in a whole new way.

“With our history of PC titles, such as Max Payne, Max Payne 2 and Death Rally, Remedy has always wanted to bring a PC version of Alan Wake to the gamers’ fingertips. Now we can!”

The key features for the PC version are:

• Experience Alan Wake’s Pacific Northwest in higher resolutions and higher fidelity than ever before
• Fully configurable mouse and keyboard support (or if you prefer to play with the Microsoft gamepad connected to your PC, you can do that too!)
• A wide selection of customizable graphics settings and support for 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios
• Multithreaded engine that takes advantage of quad core CPUs
• Additional features our fans have sought after, such as field of view adjustment as well as “hide HUD”.
• Works with AMD Eyefinity 3D 3-screen mode
• Works with NVIDIA NVISION2 Stereoscopic 3D

I’m definitely looking forward to this. Finally, is all I can say.

The internet has readily available information, which one can find pretty much anywhere. And sometimes, if you persist enough, your search can reveal undisclosed information.

While searching the web, a NeoGaf user has come across a wiki page called “EAP Marketing FY13 Home Page” — a site which has been protected with a login.

On the site, the user somehow found a list of titles which include: The Secret World; Overstrike; Populous; Outernauts; Respawn. How he found the information is unknown at this point in time.

However, it was seen that The Secret World and Insomniac’s Overstrike will be published by EA Partners (EAP), during FY2013 (April 2012 to March 2013). The other titles have a bit more mystery to them.

Populous is property owned by EA, and no news of a remake has even surfaced. It’s an old title, and like Syndicate, we could be due for a remake within the next year.

Hunting through domain registrations, it was seen that Outernauts by Insomniac Games will be published through EA Partners as well.

Respawn, which probably refers to the new game by Respawn Entertainment, was just mentioned. There’s absolutely no news on this project.

Finally, the authenticity of the content on the wiki site has not yet been established. For what we know, this could be fake. We’re filing this in rumours, so take it with a pinch of salt. However, if it is real, are you excited for a Populous remake?

Remember that time when Ubisoft declared that their games would release on PC with “always-on” DRM that asked gamers to be continuously connected to their servers over the internet in order to play any game, even the singleplayer ones?

That was a great time.

It might however come back to bite Ubisoft in the ass, and it’s all their fault really.

The publisher is soon to undergo a server migration, something that would usually only affect the multiplayer component of a game, but thanks to their DRM it means that even the singleplayer will be affected.

Essentially, that means that a select number of games will be entirely unplayable for the duration of the migration which occurs next week.

The games that are affected include: HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes 6, The Settlers 7, The Settlers on Mac, Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell: Conviction.

Certain other games will just have their online modes unavailable, but Just Dance 3 and Driver: San Francisco seem to be entirely unaffected.

Another day at the Ubisoft office, hating on the PC either directly or otherwise.

What’s extremely frustrating for the PC gamer is that this DRM need not have ever existed, and now once again a legitimate consumer will be punished for their purchase, albeit temporarily.

The inability to play an offline mode because of online maintenance really is not on.

What are your thoughts on “always-on” DRM?

‘The Cat that Got the Milk’ is a simple and short game, in fact, the most complicated part of the game is the title itself. If that puts you off however, let me assure you that despite its simplicity this game is a whole bunch of fun.

The Cat that Got the Milk is a charming, almost puzzle-like game where the player directs a small object as it moves from the left of the screen to the right. Moving the cat (I guess it’s a cat) up or down prevents it from moving towards the right; letting go of either direction means it continues on its incessant journey to the right. As the cat moves, it’s the player’s job to direct and avoid any objects in its way; any collisions will mean a return to the beginning of the current stage. And that’s it really, well Ok, some of the obstacles move and some are quite difficult, requiring a bit of patience, but that’s about it.

Now I’m sure you’re all familiar with how addictive simplistic gameplay can be, take Peggle for example, and ‘The Cat that Got the Milk’ doesn’t fail to deliver, making sure to keep you playing until you’ve finished every stage. That’s not always a good thing when some of these zombie state games can go on for hours and hours; happily though, The Cat that Got the Milk (I keep wanting to say ‘that got the hat’) his actually short and sweet. To compliment this, the game uses abstract art to represent the level and obstacles that need navigating and create a very pretty looking game in the process. Just look at the screenshots and tell me you aren’t attracted by the looks of it. If anything the game is even more aesthetically pleasing when viewed as you play it, though the encouraging and enjoyable audio track certainly helps.

Heed my advice; The Cat that Got the Milk will test your reactions. Not your speed or reflexes but the way you would normally play a game of this nature will almost certainly cause quite a few collisions. If you’re not exactly sure what I mean, play it and you’ll begin to understand. It requires a quick yet more relaxed sense of play and as a jumped up (and easily frustrated) individual I found the change of play style enjoyable.

All that’s left to say is download and enjoy it, here’s the link, have fun.

Sony seems to be having a tough financial time as they have posted a loss for third financial quarter which ended on 31 December, 2011. According to the firm, sales fell 17.4 percent year-over-year to a total of 1.82 trillion yen (R184 billion). That’s a 158 billion yen (R16 billion) loss.

Reason for the drop in sales is “primarily due to the impact of the floods in Thailand, deterioration in market conditions in developed countries, and unfavourable foreign exchange rates”.

The Consumer Products and Services division of Sony (think PlayStation, TV, Video, PC, Mobile and Imaging) announced a quarterly operating loss of 85.7 billion yen (R8.6 billion). To compare, the same period last year made a profit of 63.5 billion yen (R6.4 billion). All in all, sales for the period dropped 24.4 percent.

Sony commented by saying: “Categories contributing to the deterioration in operating results… include LCD televisions, reflecting a decline in unit selling prices that exceeded cost and expense reductions, and the game business, reflecting higher marketing costs to promote network service platforms and lower sales of PlayStation 3 hardware due to a strategic price reduction.”

Individual sales statistics show that Sony sold 6.5 million PlayStation 3′s during the quarter, bettering the 6.3 million from the same period in the previous year. As for PSPs, the sales for this period amounted to 2.4 million units, a decrease from the previous period’s 3.6 million.

66.2 million PlayStation 3 games were sold during this period, bettering the previous period’s 57.6 million.

Bethesda has released update 1.4 for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and you can download it through Steam.

The patch will introduce various general performance enhancements, and also contain the usual bug fixes and quest tweaks. Also keep in mind that Bethesda said last month that this update will address the lag issue on the PlayStation 3 version of the game, which is great.

The full list of changes is down below.

General

• Skyrim launcher support for Steam Workshop*
• General optimizations for memory and performance
• Optimized bookshelf script in player-owned houses that would occasionally cause active scripts to lag and also cause an increase to saved games filesize (PS3)
• Improved compiler optimization settings
• Memory optimizations related to scripting
• Fixed crashes related to pathing and AI
• Fixed crash in Haemar’s Shame if player had already completed “A Daedra’s Best Friend”
• Fixed rare crash with loading saved games
• Fixed issue with accented characters not displaying properly at the end of a line
• Fixed issue where quests would incorrectly progress after reloading a save
• Fixed issues with placing and removing books from bookshelves in the player’s home
• Fixed issue where weapon racks and plaques would not work correctly in player’s house if player immediately visits their house before purchasing any furnishing.
• Fixed issue where the player house in Windhelm would not clean up properly
• Fixed crash related to giant attacks and absorb spells
• Fixed issue with ash piles not cleaning up properly
• Fixed occasional issue where overwriting an existing save would fail
• Fixed memory crash with container menu
• Fixed infinite loop with bookshelves
• Fixed issue where traps in Shalidor’s Maze would not work properly in French, German, Spanish and Italian versions
• Fixed issue where transforming back to human from werewolf would occasionally fail
• Bows and daggers will display properly when placed on weapon racks

Quests

• The Unusual Gem inside the Thalmor Embassy is now accessible after finishing “Diplomatic Immunity”
• In “Breaching Security”, the quest token is no longer required to receive a fortune reading from Olava the Feeble
• Fixed issue where Galmar would not complete Joining the Stormcloaks properly if “Season Unending” was an active quest
• Fixed issue where starting “Season Unending” after finishing “Joining the Stormcloaks” would prevent “The Jagged Crown” from starting properly.
• Fixed issue progressing through “Message to Whiterun” while “Season Unending” was still open would block progression for both quests.
• In “Arniel’s Endeavor”, fixed issue where a quest journal would trigger multiple times
• In “Forbidden Legend”, the amulet fragment can no longer disappear after player leaves a dungeon without taking it
• Fixed rare issue in “Forbidden Legend” where killing Mikrul Gauldurson while sneaking would make his corpse unaccessible
• In “The White Phial”, the phial can no longer disappear if player leaves dungeon without taking it
• “The White Phial” will now start properly if player already has a briar heart in their inventory
• Player can no longer get stuck in Misty Grove after completing “A Night to Remember”
• Fixed issue where leaving Riften during “A Chance Arrangement” would prevent quest from progressing
• In “Darkness Returns”, a door in Twilight Sepulcher will properly open if the player leaves the dungeon for an extended period of time before completing the quest
• In “Revealing the Unseen”, if the player leaves the Oculory for an extended period of time after placing the focusing crystal and returns, the quest will proceed correctly
• “Onmund’s Request” will now start properly if player has already found Enthir’s staff before receiving this quest
• Fixed instance where Tonilia would stop buying stolen items and also would not give Guild Leader Armor
• “Repairing the Phial” will start properly if player already has unmelting snow or mammoth tusk in their inventory
• Finding Pantea’s Flute before speaking with Pantea no longer prevents her quest from updating
• In “The Break of Dawn”, fixed rare instance where a quest object would spawn incorrectly on the Katariah during Hail Sithis
• Fixed rare issue in “The Mind of Madness” where player is unable to equip the Wabbajack
• Fixed issue in “Pieces of the Past” where Mehrunes Dagon’s Razor will not trigger properly if player leaves the cell for extended period of time before activating it
• “Blood’s Honor” will start properly if you visited and completed Driftshade and an extended period of time passes before starting the quest.
• Fixed rare issue where “Dampened Spirits” would not start properly
• Fixed issue where killing guards in Cidhna Mine would block progression for “No One Escapes Cidhna Mine”
• Fixed numerous issues with “Blood on the Ice” not triggering properly
• In “Blood on the Ice”, Calixto can now be killed if player owns a house in Windhelm
• In “The Cure for Madness”, killing Cicero then resurrecting him no longer impedes quest progress
• Fixed rare issue in “To Kill an Empire” where an NPC would fail to die properly
• Clearing Knifepoint Ridge before starting “Boethiah’s Champion” no longer prevents quest from starting.

What would a PC game like Skyrim be without fantastic mods? Well, just Skyrim basically, but with the Creation Kit that Bethesda is set to release, you’ll be able to take you entire Skyrim experience to a whole new level.

Although no release date has been announced, this Creation Kit looks extremely impressive, and brings some key features to PC modders, such as an intuitive UI and Steam Workshop integration. Check out the video above to see first hand how you’ll be able to create a better Skyrim, granted you have the skills.

If PlayStation can create something super-powerful, Epic Games might decide to move away from Xbox 360. It was revealed through an interview with Tim Sweeney that Epic Games is looking for hot, new and powerful technology for their titles.

“You should only replace the hardware when you can make a dramatic leap in quality, not just two times or three times. It has to be huge and fundamentally new,” said the Epic Games boss.

And it seems as if Epic is ready for new technology for new games.

“The longevity of this console generation has been a mixed blessing. On the game side, it’s been really great for our business. With each new title, there is a bigger and bigger Xbox 360 installed base of users, so the games can sell more. On the other hand, it gets harder to generate the same excitement from the same hardware. That is when the new hardware is justified,” added Sweeney.

Epic uses the Unreal Engine, therefore they try to maintain a close relationship with technology manufacturers to ensure that the engine will work on new devices.

“The really important thing that we do long term is work with the hardware manufacturers like AMD, Nvidia and Intel and really talk deeply about their long-term roadmap,” said the CEO.

“Not just what’s coming next year but what’s coming out in two years, five years from now. Where is the industry going to max out? We give each other a lot of feedback and can have considerable impact on their direction.”

And they have had considerable impact on the direction of manufacturers before. With the Xbox 360 they managed to get Microsoft to double the memory from 256MB to 512MB.

“And they came through. They put in extra memory and that is one of the reasons we were able to make Gears of War look so compelling,” Sweeney stated.

“Without that extra memory, we would have far less space for details. That decision cost Microsoft about $1 billion, but you can say that it paid off big time. They would not have succeeded to the extent they have today if they had not done that.”

All in all, Epic Games will follow the technology. If one platform betters the other, and if it works with the Unreal Engine, they will work with them. Epic would like gamers to have the best games possible, it seems.

When Bioware announced that the upcoming Mass Effect 3 demo would in fact be a multiplayer demo, I’m sure many Silver Subscribers where wondering just how the hell they were going to get in on the online action without forking out some dough.

Well, Bioware and Microsoft are kind people, and have decided to bundle a free Gold Subscription with the demo, so that every Tom, Dick and Harry can get in on the fun.

No word yet on how long the Gold status will last, or how Microsoft plans to award these subscription, but regardless it’s good news for all concerned. So, if you had made alternate plans for Valentines Day because you didn’t have a Gold Subscription, you best be changing them soon.

Mass Effect 3 will hit stores in March, on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

The launch trailer for Big Huge Games’ highly anticipated action RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, has recently been released by EA and 38 Studios.

If you’re interested, you can check it out above. As for the actual game, it will be released on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox360 on February 10 in Europe and here in South Africa.

Be sure to read up on our hands-on preview of the game if you aren’t too sure what this game is about. On the other hand, if you’re eagerly anticipating it, you can try your luck in our competition and stand a chance of winning it on the platform of your choice. The competition ends on February 8.

Ahead of its release this Friday for PS3 and Xbox 360, here is the launch trailer for Konami’s NeverDead.

This third person action title is the brainchild of Konami veteran Shinta Nojiri, co-developed with Rebellion Software.

The story centres around an immortal demon hunter called Bryce Boltzmann who is capable of detaching and re-attaching parts of his body. The game offers a bit of a twist on the typical health-regeneration game mechanic, often allowing you to use your limbs as weapons.

So far it seems to be very much like Shadows of the Damned meets Duke Nukem with a Megadeth soundtrack, so good things are expected of it. Here’s hoping it delivers.

What do you think of the game?

The Witcher 2 will be out on Xbox 360 in April, as an Enhanced Edition. Basically this means, new content and gameplay tweaked for the Xbox 360. But, before we get to all of that, you need to go through all the videos and images which CD Projekt RED will release for the game.

Let’s look at the launch trailer, shall we?

Gotham City Impostors may not be the most ambitious title of this year, but it certainly is looking like something really special. I mean, who ever thought that an online only shooter, where players take control of citizens dressed up as Batman and the Joker, and take each other out with an array of guns, crazy gadgets and slingshot grenade launchers would be this fun? Certainly not me.

But after a few days in the beta, I can honestly say that I’m hooked. So, this next bit of news excited me immensely, Gotham City Impostors will be hitting PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 next week, a day after the beta ends. Locally, the PC crowd will get their hands on the crazy action first, with the shooter dropping on February 7th.

Xbox 360 and PS3 users will have to wait a day more, with Gotham City Impostors hitting PSN and XBLA on February 8th. All versions are set to cost $15 (around R115.00), which is really a steal considering how many hours you can sink into this title.

Until then though, why not grab the beta? It’s free shooting goodness, so there’s really no reason to at least try it out. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Electronic Arts has confirmed that BioWare’s epic MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has sold over 2 million copies since its launch in December of 2011.

The Old Republic currently has a massive 1.7 million active subscribers not only registered, but playing it for around four hours each day. What makes these statistics all the more impressive is that the game is exclusive to PC.

In case you’re wondering, the other 300,000 owners of the game have either not played it yet or have already “opted out” of their subscriptions, according to EA.

This “makes Star Wars: The Old Republic the fastest-growing subscription MMO in history”, EA boasted during a recent financial call.

Eric Brown, EA’s chief financial officer, commented in the financial call that BioWare’s MMO was “more successful than we anticipated”, and that server stability is also doing better than expected.

EA did its part in pointing out that The Old Republic’s huge sales have not been fully reflected in recent sales reports. The reason is because around 40 percent of the 2 million sales were actually digitally sold through the publisher’s Origin service, and those sales are not tracked by third-party data firms.

The PC version of Prototype 2 has been frustratingly delayed by a full three months and, to make matters worse, no specific reasons have been given whatsoever.

Gamers looking forward to Radical Entertainment’s Protoype 2 on PS3 or Xbox360 will get to see it release on April 27, 2012, but unfortunately PC gamers will have to wait until July 24, which is very disheartening.

The developers made this announcement on their Facebook page, literally giving no reasons at all for the delay. The post reads as follows:

“Hey all, we just wanted to let you know that the PC version of PROTOTYPE 2 is unfortunately going to be delayed until July 24th. Radical Entertainment has always been extremely dedicated to all our fans, and we just wanted to make sure you heard the news from us FIRST. We’ll share more details with you soon.”

I guess we all know the reason is probably piracy. I mean the game is being published by Activision after all. But that doesn’t really make the pill any easier to swallow.

Electronic Arts have been slipping online passes into pretty much every big game to come out of their stable for the last few months with various justifications from server costs to exclusive content to ‘because lol’.

Even singleplayer games have fallen to the online pass syndrome with the upcoming Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning reportedly containing an entire section that is closed off to gamers without an online pass.

Thankfully, we have Syndicate.

The co-op fuelled reboot of the series has been stripped of an online pass system in order to, wait for it, encourage gamers to play it.

Say what?!

“We want as little resistance or barriers to entry as possible,” said executive producer Jeff Gamon. “The co-op is equal billing in this. We wanted everyone who owns a copy of the game to have access to the entire product.”

So let’s get this straight, here. A developer is wholly admitting that their publisher’s online pass system detracts gamers, meaning less people play a certain game. But that same publisher has been pushing online passes for months now.

Am I the only one seeing the idiocy here?

Regardless, I’m willing to overlook this admission of guilt / retarded business practice if it means that fewer games ship with online passes and the system dies a short but nonetheless painful death. Good on you, Syndicate.

Check out the video above, it’s awesome.

By now I’m sure you’re acquainted with the ‘Humble Bundle’ and the idea behind it. If not, it’s basically the opportunity to buy a collection of indie games at one packaged price. What makes this unique is you choose how much to pay and how that payment is distributed among indie developers, charities and the organisers of the Humble Bundle.

The current Humble Bundle contains EDGE, Osmos, and Anomaly: Warzone Earth; all of which are for Android this time around. Plus, and for those who pay above the average contribution, which is currently about $5.92, you also get a copy of World of Goo.

It’s a great way to contribute to organisations that need the donations and score yourself some awesome Android indie games in the process. So go check out the most current Humble Bundle if you’re interested .

EA has become the target for hackers, where thankfully, it isn’t so serious. Electronic Arts was forced to shutdown their forum after it was defaced.

The front page of the forum was the only page altered, where it was believed that no personal data was accessed or lost — therefore we can all stop stressing. Our information is alright!

EA is on the case and they believe that they’ve found the vulnerability which allowed for this to happen. The forum is back online, therefore the problem should be fixed.

“As some of you noticed the homepage of the forums was defaced by a hacker yesterday using a very new exploit for the software which runs the forums,” EA community manager Dan Sheridan stated.

“This was noticed quickly and we took the action to take the forums offline while we investigated the details. This work is now complete and the vulnerability we believe was used has now been fixed.

“There is no evidence that any personal data was compromised and as passwords aren’t stored in a recoverable manor, we are confident they remain secure.”

Let’s hope that this is not the start to something which could end up being a month-long problem. Although we truly hate Online Passes, we’d prefer our information not to be leaked. Perhaps there’s another way to scare EA, hey hackers?

Square Enix has very recently unveiled the launch trailer for Final Fantasy XIII-2, which released yesterday in North America, and is due to arrive on February 3 in Europe and here in South Africa.

The trailer isn’t that long and doesn’t show much, but it’s flashy and has pretty cool music, so I guess it’s worth taking a look at if you’re looking forward to the game. Check it out up top.

Black Mesa, the independent remake of one of the greatest PC games ever made, Half-Life, has been hiding in the dark for a long, long time now. It became so bad that people were starting to compare it to Half-Life 3, assuming that the title would never release. Well, they were wrong, as Black Mesa has just surfaced once more.

The webmaster of the project’s current site has posted a note on its forums, assuring people that the project is not dead, yet:

It was said that once the soundtrack is released, one could expect the launch of black mesa two weeks after. I can now say that a new website will be launched with the soundtrack in preparation for the mod. Fuck if we care about the current website. Just take a good look at it because it will be gone soon enough.

Then again, what if this whole Black Mesa project is actually Half-Life 3 in disguise? What if these “independent modders” are actually Valve employees working on the ultra-secret project?

I’m just joking obviously, but those were some of the thoughts of some Kotaku readers, and I found them quite amusing. However, if that really was the case, Valve would’ve pulled off the biggest trolling ever.

The two iconic gaming legends are back for more action in 2012. It has been announced that Street Fighter X Tekken — a PlayStation 3 and Vita exclusive — will boast Mega Man and Pac-Man as characters in the game.

Mega Man, the original one featured on the Mega Man 1 box art, will become a playable character in the game. Pac-Man, on the other hand, will ride atop Mokujin as he’s quite useless — unless he’s eating balls.

These two legends will join Cole from Infamous, and Toro and Kuro.

Expect a March release.

It’s already the first day of February, and the speed in which day turns to night doesn’t seem to be slowing down. It’s actually crazy. I clearly remember gathering the eGamer team together on the fourth of January for a meeting to discuss the year. It felt as if it was just last week that we came up with new procedures and ways to do things.

And I think now’s a great time to introduce this column: I decided (and was told by Caveshen) that I should do more columns. And while I don’t have an issue with doing more columns, I felt I should do something different. I decided to talk about the site, what we’ve done and what to expect. This will be released — hopefully — on the first day of every month. Following that, I might do further columns on proper topics which I’ve penciled onto greasy serviettes.

At our first get together for the year we decided to change the site’s structure. Just a little bit, though. We decided to do-away with the 12- to 1-o’clock feature hour and create three new slots at 11-, 13:15- and 17-o’clock. These slots will either be for features, previews, exclusives or indie news. We’ll release reviews as soon as possible. With this, we’re will using the normal 45 minute article delays. There’s about 13 articles being released per day, which isn’t too bad.

We’ve also jacked up our administration system for reviews, previews and scheduling of featured articles. And come up with common goals.

Okay — that’s the boring stuff out of the way. We probably won’t need to talk about that for another few months.

January was a big month for us — and a small one for games being released. It was crucial for us to work hard to boost traffic statistics back to where it was in November, as December of 2011 is and was a very slow month. We coasted and neglected because of chocolates, Christmas and holidays.

We launched the year with strong intentions. We hosted a Win What You Want competition offering the winner R700 to spend on something they’d like. The idea behind this is simple: why should we tell you what you’re getting — it’s more fun to choose.

And it seemed to do quite well, according to statistics.

The competition allowed for 1,449 comments during the 14 day period. That’s roughly 103 comments per day, which is great! Thank you very much!

While we enjoyed running this competition, it’s something we’ll do every few months. We’ll try not to burn it out, and we’ll still try to give stuff away in-between this. For example, in February we’re hosting a Kingdoms of Amalur competition plus another three to four competitions. We’re not announcing what they are just yet, but they are coming. In the future we’ll alternate between entry form and comment competitions.

As for the eGamer team: we’ve re-created the staff page and you’ll notice all our gamer information. Feel free to add us on whichever platform you like, we seriously don’t mind.

After that, we’ve also filled our team. We are in discussion with one more columnist for a Thursday slot — and then we’re full. As you have seen, Jake Woolf has joined as an author for Featured Articles as well as Exclusives, and sometimes News.

His first article was a great success seeing over 5,500 visits with a modest amount of comments.

We have many more exciting Features and Ideas for the site and where we want to take it. We’ll hopefully release something special in the upcoming month, as we’re busy refining and reworking the idea. And apart from that, I can say that one exciting exclusive — for us — is the addition of Fiction Friday. We’ve made two fictional stories which received a lot of attention, but, the thing is, we’re not sure if this is a viable idea. People have complained, and others have laughed. The main issue with Fiction Friday is that people don’t seem to read the entire article, but rather the headline. I’m going to ask you though: what’s your take on Fiction Friday and should we continue trying to fool you?

Another piece we’d like to re-introduce is Comments of the Week, or Month, and a Round-Up. As for the comments, we’re not sure if we should talk about this Weekly or Monthly — which do you think we should do? We’ll listen to you on this one.

Following this, do you have anything you’d want us to implement? There’s talk of a forum, but that doesn’t seem possible as we don’t want to go that direction with the site. Sure, it’s community-orientated, but forums are more effort than anything else — and we’d rather have you on the main site, anyway. Perhaps we can do off-topic posts every day as a “forum” where we can just talk about nothing? Or maybe we’ll stick to the Facebook page.

If you haven’t seen our Facebook page, it’s quite fun. We usually post pictures (mainly from 9gag..) and talk crap, or troll Caveshen. Feel free to ask us questions, interact with each other and troll our Wall. We don’t mind. Seriously.

This ends the first edition of the ‘about eGamer’ column. Let’s hope next time it’ll be more interesting. Comment below with whatever you’d like to know, see or talk about. And so on.

There are pre-order bonuses and then there’s Radical Entertainment’s idea of a pre-order bonus. Those who put their name down for Prototype 2 before the game releases will get what’s called the Radnet Edition at no extra cost. It’s a growing trend amongst developers and publishers but usually amounts to little more than an extra weapon or multiplayer skin and occasionally even an artbook. However, this one’s a bit different.

Those who get it will get a one-time use code that opens them up to 55 pieces of varied additional content. These range from bonus mutations and challenges, to Avatar items (Xbox 360)/ animated themes (PS3) and behind-the-scenes videos and more. The additional content will be doled out over 7 weeks from April 24 when the game releases to June 7. There will also be weekly themed rewards which can be won by achieving a bronze medal or higher and a minimum threshold score in that week’s challenges; those who participate in every week’s challenges will win what Activision has dubbed “the ultimate shape-shifting prize,” which will be unveiled in March.

Read up on the Radnet Edition here or just watch the trailer up top. Prototype 2 is out for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC on April 24. This may go down as one of the better pre-order bonuses, just maybe.

A while ago we told you about the Dragon Age anime that was headed our way from BioWare and FUNimation, and now we’ve got an update for you.

At least, that’s what the trailer says, entitled “Production Update 01″.

While hosted on Youtube and available to any who are linked to it, the trailer is not listed and so seems to be something just for those who know of the anime’s existence and seek a bit of a reminder that it’s still around. That or whoever runs the FUNimation Youtube account needs lessons in uploading. The video also takes a few tries before it will play to the end.

Dragon Age: Dawn Of The Seeker is an EA, BioWare and FUNimation collaboration that follows the adventures of Cassandra Pentaghast, the Orlesian Seeker that you might remember from Dragon Age II’s introductory scenes where she interrogated Varric for information on Hawke. She’s been accused of treason and murder, and seeks to clear her name, probably by sticking her sword into loads of other people in the world’s greatest irony that only works in fictional pieces.

There is the promise of actual dragons, at least.

The project is being directed by Fumihiko Sori of Appleseed and Vexille fame, along with Oxybot heading up animation duties.

Whether FUNimation are up to the task is questionable. They are a western company that brings over many of Japan’s most popular animated shows, but not always successfully.

All of that said, what can be seen in the trailer shows some real promise and should be a treat to any fan of the series.

There have been five main games so far in the Twisted Metal series, of course not counting the two spin-offs in 2001 and 2002, with the most recent title being 2008′s Twisted Metal: Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition, which was a PlayStation 2 port of the 2005 PSP title Twisted Metal: Head On. All titles considered, that makes Twisted Metal (2012) the eighth entry in the franchise, and marks the series’ first appearance on next-gen consoles. So, what exactly are we in for? Let’s take a look.

Name: Twisted Metal
Genre: Action, Vehicle Combat
Players: 1
Multiplayer: Offline and online split-screen (4 players), Competitive (16 players)
Platforms: PS3 Exclusive
Developers: Eat Sleep Play
Publishers: Sony Computer Entertainment
Release Date: 14 February 2012 (NA), 17 February 2012 (EU, SA)

The game was originally meant to release in October 2011, but was delayed to February 14, 2012 so that it could receive more polish and be “the best Twisted Metal game ever made”, according to developer Eat Sleep Play co-founder David Jaffe. This will be the series’ first appearance on next-gen consoles after all, and fans have huge expectations of it. According to Jaffe, when it comes to story the game will stick to its original concept, where players will compete in Calypso’s Twisted Metal Tournament in order to win and earn their prize. You’ll get to choose which character you want to play the story mode with and, while there won’t be many choices, the available characters will have the option of faction gameplay online. The characters that will be included are Sweet Tooth (The Clowns), Dollface (The Dolls), Mr. Grimm (The Skulls) and the Preacher (The Holy Men), and these make up four factions in the game. Each character can use any vehicle, and each of them will have three different endings to their storylines depending on action taken in the game and the difficulty setting.

However, Twisted Metal’s main attraction is most definitely not the single-player component, as its always been heavily focused on its crazy multiplayer. It’s all about over-the-top vehicle combat, and the game aims to outdo everything the series has done in the past. With regards to content, in addition to the single-player modes, you’ll be able to play split-screen both offline and online with up to 4 players, as well as head into competitive multiplayer with up to 16 players through PlayStation Network. With a variety of game modes including series’ classics as well as completely new ones, and the promise of being able to unleash massive amounts of destruction in brand new, never before seen Twisted levels, this looks to be gearing up to be a winner, and an early triumph for the PlayStation 3 this year.

Twisted Metal isn’t just about whacky fun though, as it’s actually also a strategic game. And there are plenty of new features on offer that look set to evolve the game’s scope beyond its predecessors and change the way it’s played. For starters, there will be over a dozen Twisted vehicles to choose from, and each of them will come equipped with kick-ass weapons to brutally and tactically take apart your enemies, as well as two special abilities unique to each vehicle. While the game will feature many returning vehicles from previous titles, there will also be a lot of new ones to choose from, such as the Death Warrant, which is a 2005-2009 Ford Mustang, the Road Boat, which is an armored 60′s Cadillac sedan, the Vermin, which is a rodent catcher van, and some other fun cars like the Juggernaut, Kamikaze and Meat Wagon. On top of this, the game will feature aerial combat, which is significant because flight is actually a first for the series. Examples of this would be in some of the game’s new vehicles, like the Talon, which is a helicopter equipped with a minigun turret, and a custom chopper dubbed the Reaper. Oh, and don’t worry, Motorbikes are still here, so there’s lots to smile about.

The staple gameplay has players speed around in vehicles, armed to the teeth with explosive weaponry, attempting to obliterate their enemies. However, variety is key to the experience, and it won’t only come from the environments, weapons and vehicles, but also from the various game modes, which offer some exciting twists. You’ll get your standard Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes, and then you’ll also get modes like Race, where players must get to checkpoints as fast as they can, Endurance, in which players must survive against respawning enemies until death, Team Hunted, where a player on each team is chosen as the Hunted and will be a target to everyone on the opposing team, and Last Man Standing, where each player has a specific amount of lives and the last surviving player is deemed the winner. There’s also a new online game mode called Nuke Mode, in which each faction has a giant airborne statue that the opposing team must try to destroy. It’s rather interesting because in order to destroy the statues, players must kidnap the enemy team’s leader, and sacrifice that player to a missile launcher to launch a nuke. The player who conducted the sacrifice must control the nuclear missile and guide it to the opposing team’s statue in the air. To win, this process has to be completed three times.

In the game each faction will have different campaigns. But it’s not something to jump for joy over really, because players will basically just get different mix ups of missions depending on their choice of faction. For example, the clowns may start off the game with a deathmatch, while the skulls could have an endurance challenge in the first level. However, it’s been said that each faction will have their own things to do in their story, in order to avoid repetitiveness. If you’re one for achievements or generally just a proud individual, you may be happy to know that each level in the game will have three collectable medals, namely bronze, silver, and gold, as you’d expect. There is solid incentive to earn these medals though, as they will lead to unlocks such as skins, side arms, and even secret characters. On that note, as was seen in the Comic-Con presentation by director David Jaffe and producer Scott Campbell, the game will have a custom paint shop to change the appearance of your vehicles.

When it comes to firepower, players will have a complete and creative arsenal of weapons at their disposal, ranging from missiles and miniguns to giant magnets, Napalm, bombs and – no jokes – flying mascots. New weapons added to the game include the Sniper Rifle and Shotgun, which will be able to do high damage to enemy players if aimed at their vehicle’s windshield. In the game you’ll have access to primary weapons and side-arms. The former are in limited supply, while the latter don’t run out of ammo, but have various pros and cons depending on your choice of weapon in this category. You’ll get to choose side-arms like the Mounted Gun, Submachine Gun, 12 Ga. Shotgun, Rockets, Magnum Revolver or Laser Pistol. Additionally, as previously mentioned, vehicles will also have innate abilities, like perks, as well as advanced attacks and special abilities, such as EMP missiles, shields, mines, rear fire, jump, transformations and more. There’s definitely no shortage of variety in this regard. And the cherry on top is that the game’s levels are fully destructible, allowing players to alter the battlefield.

From what I’ve seen so far, there’s a healthy variety in the game’s stages. For some examples, there’s the Blackrock Stadium, which is an arena, based on a level from Twisted Metal 2, that features lava pits and an overhead track. Then there’s Metro Square, which is a Christmas-themed town square that features Times Square and the Museum of Natural History as landmarks. A nostalgic battleground would be the Los Angeles Skyline, as it combines Twisted Metal rooftop levels from the early games in the series. Then there’s Sunsprings, California, which features as a suburban town that has places like a school, a movie theater and a downtown area to wreak havoc in. Other confirmed maps include Diesel City, Watkyn’s Harbor, Diablo Pass and the classic Adventure Park, which features interactive environments and open design. The game certainly has plenty of diversity when it comes to its maps.

Extra information that may prove useful to you would be that the game will unfortunately make use of the infamous online pass system for access to its mutliplayer features, so without that you’d be missing out on what the experience is all about. On a lighter note, those who pre-order the Limited Edition of Twisted Metal will receive a voucher to download Twisted Metal: Black for free from PlayStation Network. So basically, buy it new and early for the highest reward. Still, I have to say that the more I see this game the more awesome it looks, and it’s really tempting to pre-order it, especially since you can get it brand new for a pleasantly surprising R400, which is an excellent price.

Twisted Metal is shaping up to be a fantastic start to the PlayStation 3′s exclusive line-up. It has great potential, looks hellishly fun and comes with a very reasonable asking price. If you’re in search of something whacky, exciting and multiplayer-focused, then this could turn out to be exactly what you’re looking for. The game will be released exclusively on PlayStation 3 on February 14 in North America, and on February 17 in Europe and here in South Africa. Let’s hope it seriously kicks ass.

I have to admit, lately I’ve become increasingly excited about EA’s new FPS, Syndicate. We’re all really excited for the demo release today, and in case you aren’t, watch the video above in order to have your mind changed.

In this new video, Syndicate executive producer Ben O’Donnell walks us through the just-released 4-player co-op demo, detailing some of the features of the upcoming game’s co-op modes.

The demo is ready and available for download on PS3 (US Store — at the moment) and Xbox 360. The PSN Store for Europe should have the demo available later today. Download size for the Syndicate demo is 600mb.

Sorry PC gamers, seems like there’s no love for you this time around.

Warner Bros. Interactive has announced the opening of the public beta for the PS3 and Xbox360 versions of Gotham City Imposters, which is a Batman-themed multiplayer FPS for those who don’t know.

However, despite entering open beta, access codes for the game are still limited, so if you’re interested and you own an Xbox360 you should go over to the game’s official site and register to stand a chance of winning a code.

On the other hand, if you’re a PS3 gamer, you can enjoy the fact that there are no keys for this version, so you can go over to the PlayStation Store and download it now. Although you might need an American account set up for that.

The last bit of important information we heard about this game was its delay from January to February, so let’s hope that extra time and the beta bodes well for the game.

If you haven’t watched the trailer for Resident Evil 6, do it now. Back already? Okay, cool. So if the trailer has your keen to slice up a bunch of nasties then read on because you’ll be able to do just that sooner than you might think.

Those who purchase Dragon’s Dogma when it releases in May will be rewarded with a free demo of RE 6. Capcom has said that the game will come packaged with a redeemable token which allows players to download the demo early.

Those who don’t like fiery lizards will have to wait until July 3 if you own an Xbox or September 5 if you own a PS3. There’s been no communication as to why the PS3 demo releases so much later but that’s still around two months before the game actually releases in November so it’s not too bad.

Dragon’s Dogma is due on PS3 and Xbox 360 on May 22. While you  mull over whether to get this game or not, let me help you with some RE 6 screenshots and a Dragon’s Dogma trailer.

Fellow BioWare fanboys and all other fans of the Mass Effect series, brace yourselves.

The developer has released a brand new trailer that reveals some of the voice cast for the upcoming threequel, which sees returning favourites such as Martin Sheen and Seth Green together with some new faces like Freddie Prinze Jr and Jessica Chobot.

Suspiciously missing in action from the trailer is one Yvonne Strahovski as she’s come to be known, who of course plays Miranda Lawson in the series, but we’re going to assume she was just too busy to sit in on the recording for this one.

That or they’re keeping Miranda’s role in the third game a secret for now, since there really has been nothing in terms of news about her in any of the Mass Effect 3 trailers or interviews so far.

As an added bonus, the trailer features loads of never-before-seen footage that is sure to get your gaming juices flowing.

Mass Effect 3 releases March 6th, with the demo out on Valentine’s Day. You had all better be ready for the reapers.

January has flown past and we’re now in a new month with plenty more exciting games. There are some big names spread across February and March, so you’d better get your wallets ready if you’re interested. Check out the full list down below, and plan out your spending budget.

Note: The games listed here are not all games being released in February, but rather the more noticeable ones.

February 2012’s Game List

Index

• Asura’s Wrath
• Binary Domain
• Fallout: New Vegas – Ultimate Edition
• Final Fantasy XIII-2
• Jak and Daxter HD Collection
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
• NeverDead
• Soul Calibur V
• Syndicate
• The Darkness II
• Twisted Metal
• UFC Undisputed 3
• Uncharted: Golden Abyss
• Wipeout 2048

Browse through the pages below to see all of the games and their information in detail, or simply click the name of the game above to be taken straight to that specific game’s page.

We’ve shown you the Resident Evil 6 trailer, and now it’s time for images. Images of a game which offers horror, emotion, guns, explosions and bioterrorists.

In the game the player will control both Chris Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy, as well as a third mysterious character. There’s fast action and a lot of darkness.

Read more on the game over here.

Expect a 20 November release for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. PC will lag behind, as usual.

Tetsuya Nomura, the who produced Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, has said that we could see a new Square Enix title later this year.

During an interview, Nomura noted that “there is also a secret team working on an unannounced title, so there is a chance that some information about that will be announced this year too, please continue looking forward to these announcements.”

And that’s about it. All the information you will get, for now.

Probably another JRPG, but that’s alright. JRPG’s aren’t too bad, are they?

We haven’t released much information on Inversion, and truth is, we only learnt about it a few days ago when looking through our game release schedule. And to our amazement, it actually looks quite cool.

Inversion is about a guy who sets off to get his abducted daughter back from an enemy called the Lutadore. His name is Davis Russel and he has a kickass gravity gun. The futuristic setting allows the game to feel slightly more believable, where the gravity gun allows you to manipulate objects and enemies — whenever you want.

Inversion’s main selling point is the gravity gun which creates zero-gravity hot-spots. A zero-gravity hot-spot is a whole area with no gravity, opposed to a single item being manipulated on its own.

And while this was all scheduled for a release in February, Namco Bandai has announced that the game will need a bit more time for “polish”. It is still expected to release in early 2012, which is great.

According to Namco Bandai: “This additional development time will allow the team to polish several key aspects of the game ensuring Inversion is of the highest quality.”

Because we never touched on this before, we’ve added screenshots below and a trailer up top.

Inversion will be available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 only.

Hard Reset, Flying Wild Hog’s Steampunk shooter on PC, will finally be getting a retail release come March. The previously download-only title will hit shelves in a new Extended Edition, which is set to bring some new features to the interesting shooter.

Hard Reset: Extended Edition will include five more single-player levels, as well as two additional survival maps and even a new backstory feature, which will take place in some of the environments below. While no pricing has yet been released, this will finally give people the chance to all try out his true retro shooter.

Hopefully, those of us who purchased it early on Steam will get this additional content patched in.

Apart from Mass Effect 3 helping newcomers, and offering multiplayer, BioWare has commented that the latest installment of the game will be quite a bit tougher than previous iterations. In other words, don’t expect to just shoot: you’ll need to think.

“We really thought about it hard. On Normal you’ll be able to power your way through the game or shoot your way through the game, but when you try Hardcore or Insanity, you’re not going to be able to do that any more,” said lead designer Preston Watamaniuk.

BioWare has said that they want you to think about what you’re doing, whenever you play on Hardcore or Insanity.

“You really will have to think about each combat, who the enemies are, what kind of resistance you’re presented with, and then strategise to take them down. I’m hoping that it’ll feel like you made a mistake, and the game called you on it, rather than ‘I thought I was playing well, and then I died,’” the designer explained.

“We’ve tried to make it so that it just feels like if you’re working the problem, using all your squad, all your powers, picking the right guns, you’re going to get through that combat. It’s not going to be ‘I sat in cover and popped out five or six times to use powers and stuff.”

So, the new game is going to be tougher. But that’s good, as it will offer more action and a better play-through.

“There’s all the cover mobility, there’s increased mobility in and out of cover, like being able to Storm out of cover, roll into cover, roll out of cover, a lot more agility around that. We have more involved powers, power combos, mods and the mods interact with the powers. Being able to take a Claymore shotgun and put a shredder mod that allows you to penetrate through enemies, and then you put Cryo ammo on top of that, and all of a sudden you can pull the trigger once and blow four husks away,” Watamaniuk enthused.

Insanity mode is meant to be really tough. You’ll need to do everything well, else you’ll be restarting — a lot.

“You’ll notice that if you play on Insanity, that sort of general rule of thumb is even harsher. You’d better be doing everything well, or you’ll die,” he said.

And, finally, why will Insanity be tougher? Well, “I had a lead designer for another game write to say ‘make Insanity harder!’ And I was like ‘OK!’ This was a really well-known and respected guy, so I was like ‘OK, I’ll do my best.’” said Watamaniuk.

Expect to play, and die a lot, during the month of March. On Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.