Gaming - Page 1200

Alan Wake was first teased as a PC-exclusive, running on Intel's first quad-core processors, but eventually found its way onto Microsoft's Xbox 360 console as an Xbox 360-exclusive. Now the time has come for the critically acclaimed, BAFTA-nominated, TIME Magazine Game of the Year, Alan Wake, to find its way through the dark, dimly lit forest, and onto the PC.

The game ships with both DLC packs, The Signal, and The Writer. It's not the usual run of the mill third-person action adventure game, Remedy have crafted this game into a grand, Hollywood-style story, with tonnes of atmosphere, and have crafted a game where the world feels real, you are Alan Wake.

The PC version does ship with some exclusive features:

Mass Effect 3 is set to be one of this years biggest titles, and with EA's new Origin digital distribution service to kick-start it, it should be a big change for the game itself. Little did I know, that a PC demo had arrived for Mass Effect 3.

So now that the excitement is building for the demo you've just found out about, how about I throw you another surprise? On the 17th of this month, the multi-player gets unlocked and lets you try it out however you want. Wait, there's more! If you have a Battlefield 3 online pass activated you can play it, well, right now!

I'm not able to test it right now, but if you're keen to try it out, comment below and let us know your thoughts on the game! Graphics! Sound! Acting, gameplay, mechanics, all of it. Remember that Mass Effect 3 launches with four-player co-operative play. Something that old-school PC gamers will enjoy.

[UPDATE] And we're good! We're good people! Amendments will be made to the Classification Act 1995 and Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and will roll through in January 2013. I cannot believe this actually happened, and this shows the power of the people, and the Internet. When they work together, they can really push through new things!

News from last month told us that the new Federal Minister for Home Affairs, Jason Clare, had announced his intentions to stick to former Federal Minster for Home Affairs, Brendan O'Connor's previous plans in regards to the introduction of an R18+ adult classification for video games in Australia.

Clare stated that he would follow O'Connor's decision to introduce the R18+ bill in the February 2012 session of parliament. Well, it's February 2012, and here we are. Clare has stayed true to his word, with news arriving today that the R18+ legislation has been cleared by the Federal Parliamentary Caucus of the Australian Labor Party in its meeting in Canberra, and is now ready to be introduced in parliament.

Next-gen consoles and next-gen graphics engines are something that I have quite close to my heart. It's something I think needs to really evolve. I see the AAA gaming market as something that is stuck inside of a bubble.

The cause of that bubble? Consoles. I've covered this a fair bit in a few of my editorials, where I've talked about smartphones and tablets getting close to, and will eventually pass the power in current-gen consoles. Once this happens, consoles will have a hard time selling, unless we see next-gen consoles.

The previous generation of consoles teased "Full HD gaming", but delivered sub-HD gaming. Most AAA titles run at a resolution lower than 1280x720 and at frame rates less than 30fps. Of course, there are some games that run at either slightly higher resolutions, or slightly higher frame rates, but never both. We don't see games like Halo, Gears of War, Uncharted or Metal Gear Solid running at 1080p with 30fps.

Valve's Steam has had quite the press lately, last year they announced Steam Guard, which featured increased security for gamers, but in November of last year, we reported that Steam confirmed they had been hacked. This was after the Steam Forums went down for "maintenance".

This year, Valve released Steam for Mobile, which was a step in a different direction, and then just a few days ago confirmed that last year's hack was actually worse than previously thought. So as you can see, they're having a hard time. Those hard times got worse over the weekend when Steam suffered a worldwide failure, leaving users unable to play games, as well as taking down the Steam user forum and various associated websites.

There were, of course, claims that Steam was under attack once again from hackers, but it turned out that it was actually a failure of their central datacenters uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system. An engineer posted on Steam's forums yesterday saying:

Tim Sweeney, Epic CEO and Technical Director spoke at the 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit, where he predicted that the number of platforms for games will shrink to three or four over time. He also added that consumer have many choices when it comes to gaming platforms with tablets, PCs, smartphones, Macs, consoles and new handhelds. He adds:

Sweeney also predicted that there would be new devices on the market, as well as new technologies for developers to tap into:

Well, to celebrate the release of Skyrim's new freshly-baked Creation Kit on Valve's Steam, Bethesda and the creators of Portal have joined forces and released an official mod for Skyrim. THis brings Portal 2's Space Core to Skyrim, how exciting!

This is how you keep your fans happy on both sides of the fence, Valve and Bethesda, FTW.

We've talked about the Kinect Star Wars bundle before, when it was teased at last years Comic-Con, but now, we're closer than ever to having the Kinect Star Wars Bundle in our hands. Included in the bundle is "Kinect Star Wars", where the game teasing "With no controller in the way you can live out the ultimate "Star Wars" fantasy".

There are five dynamic modes available, Jedi Destiny: Dark Side Rising, Podracing, Rancor Rampage, Galactic Dance Off and Duels of Fate. Also included, and only announced today by Xbox 360 and LucasArts, are new additions to the game, including:

New experiences within Jedi Destiny Mode, including:

Ever wanted to create a mod for Skyrim? Come on, we know you have. Today you can. Bethesda have released their Creation Kit, which really lets Skyrim loose, and sets the boundaries to virtually infinity, and beyond.

The Skyrim Workshop and Creation Kit are free for anyone with a copy of Skyrim and a Steam account. Finding mods for Skyrim is as simple as visiting the Skyrim Workshop in the Steam Community. From there, you can browse the most popular, newest or highest-rated mods of all time. On top of this, you can specifically search for content via tags such as "Armor", "Quests", "Dungeons", and so on.

Creating your mod is a litter harder, of course, you'll need to install the Creation Kit, from the Tools section of your Steam Library. If you run into any problems, the wiki over at www.CreationKit.com is an amazing resource for modders of all skill levels. When you've polished your mod and want to unleash it to the world, just choose "Upload plugin and archive to Steam", from within the File menu of the Creation Kit.

GFACE launched back in 2007, and until now it has been in "MAXIMUM STEALTH" mode. GFACE has been formed as a separate company headed by Crytek chief, Cevat Yerli. GFACE is designed to offer gamers a social networking site where they can communicate, collaborate, and play. GFACE's motto? 'Play. Together. Live.'

GFACE doesn't really bring anything new to the table, and it has some seriously hard competition in the form of Facebook, Google+, Steam, etc. Members do have the ability to view ongoing games live within their browser, all while they chat in both voice and text modes.

GFACE will be a freemium business model, where the core functionality of the new social networking service to remain free.

THQ are going through some rough times, and those tough times are now pushing back to sequel to Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light. The game has been pushed back to an early-2013 release.

Developer, 4A games has said in a statement:

Alan Wake on PC has finally gotten a firm release date, just two weeks from now. February 16th is the day you should buy some batteries for your flashlight, and it has a decent price of just $30. Remedy have been putting a nice amount of polish on Alan Wake for PC, where it includes not just improved graphics, but multiple monitor support, and 3D.

Remedy's CTO, Markus Mäki has said:

In a conference call with EA's Vice President of Investor Relations, it was said to analysts:

The rumor of an 'all-American DLC' has come from some YouTube comments where they've stated:

I'm one of these people. Where in the hell is Half-Life 3. My latest editorial even covers it, where the last words are "Where are you, Gordon Freeman?" We need him, and we need him now. There seems to be a push from the community, too, which is great.

A quote from the group:

In a curious move, Valve have made some of their titles available through a rival digital distribution platform, Impulse. Impulse was acquired in 2011 by GameStop, which is another curious move. When your main source of income is from selling games, it would make sense to have some of PC's biggest games available on your platform.

Valve's games are now available through Impulse, which include Left 4 Dead and its sequel, Portal 2, The Half-Life Complete Collection and The Orange Box. Strangely, all games require Steam activation, which means you'd have to be using Steam at the end of the day. This hasn't affected Impulse, where they've said in a blog post:

According to the leader of Sony's French gaming division, Sony will most likely be the last to announce its next-generation console. Philippe Cardone, CEO of PlayStation France, told Le Point that they are in no rush to reveal details on their next-gen console.

This is fuelling rumors that Sony aren't even at a prototype design stage for the PS4, which means it can't be shown off to developers or at gaming events such as E3. Sony claims that there is "no pressure", but considering that Sony's console ranks third behind Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii, you would think they would be out of the "meh" stage and into the "we need to have another console out in 2 years, max."

With the Wii U launching this year, Microsoft's next-gen Xbox launching next year, Sony will be in a lot of trouble. Wii U won't have the best graphics, but once the next-gen Xbox comes out and stomps all over the PS3 in terms of functionality, features, and graphics... what will Sony do? Sit back and let Microsoft take all the glory? Sony needs to let the PS4 prototypes loose to companies, now.

A new trailer has for Gearbox Software and SEGA's new Aliens-themed, Aliens: Colonial Marines is out, this time it's a cinematic trailer. The trailer features a decent music track in the background as well as a tease of things to come.

Watch it above, but if you want to just read about it, then don't blame me for spoilers: The trailer shows off a couple of different floors of a structure, where we can see marines lock 'n' loading, preparing to fight an onslaught of near-unkillable aliens.

Acid drops through the levels, through the metal and lands on a nasty looking alien. It of course opens its mouth and reveals its second chomper. Anyone who is an Alien/s fan and says they're not excited about this, needs to be checked out. Let's hope Gearbox do well with this game.

Nintendo have released their Corporate Management Policy Briefing/Third-Quarter Financial Results Briefing, and after sifting through the numbers, I've found some juicy information on their next-generation console, Wii U.

Nintendo have confirmed they will show off the final unit and discuss details at the upcoming E3 2012 event, which is held in Los Angeles in June. After E3, Nintendo will organize an opportunity in Tokyo where they can showcase the same things to Japanese wholesalers and financial analysts who can't make it to E3.

They tease launch timing saying that it will be between the E3 show and the end of the year, with Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata confirming this by saying:

The rumor mill is going crazy at the moment with news on Microsoft's upcoming next-generation Xbox console. A games industry source has told Kotaku that the next-generation Xbox will have support for Blu-ray, expanding its disc capacity for games from DVD's 9GB to between 25 and 50GB of data.

A "reliable source" of Kotaku's has also stated that Microsoft intend on incorporating some form of anti-used game system as part of the next-gen Xbox. At the moment it's not clear whether this would not allow you to install a copy of a friends' game, that they've already used, on your console. If so, this would stop the renting of games, second-hand sales, and more.

Another hot rumor is that the the next Xbox will ship with the next-gen Kinect, which would sport an on-board processor, which was originally intended for the Kinect, but didn't make it into the final design. A Microsoft rep told Kotaku:

MegaUpload was taken down a few days ago, as we and many other websites, news sites and even TV had talked about or posted. In between all of this little did anyone realise, he was a near pro Modern Warfare 3 player.

He wasn't in a serious clan or fight in scrims or matches, but he was the No. 1 player in the world for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Kim Dotcom's gamer name was "MEGARACER", and whilst he has been in custody, Arazos took his place and knocked MEGARACER down to No. 2.

On New Years Eve, MEGARACER won the fight of No. 1 position, but Azaros soon overtook him with 9.09 million points on the MW3 leaderboard, leaving MEGARACER with just 9.05 million points. Azaros has 181,800 kills and 63,418 deaths, with a kill/death ration (KDR) of 2.87. MEGARACER on the other hand has 180,980 kills and 86,241 deaths backed up by a KDR of only 2.10.