Blizzard’s annual BlizzCon convention won’t be sticking to its annual schedule this year. For the first time since 2006, Blizzard fans won’t be gathering at the Anaheim Convention Center to celebrate all things Blizzard.
Blizzard made the surprising announcement on its blog earlier today. BlizzCon will return in 2013 — it isn’t a matter of the event being put on ice indefinitely — and to make up for its absence this year, Blizzard announced the 2012 Battle.net World Championship. Set to be held later this year in Asia, it’ll be home to the World Championship tournaments for both StarCraft II and World of Warcraft. It’s another example of Blizzard supporting eSports and professional gaming, with it having already hosted tournaments at BlizzCon itself.
The recent release of an iOS game from Zynga has prompted allegations that the FarmVille developer blatantly copied an existing game. Among those noting the similarities are the developers of the game it’s accused of copying.
Dream Heights was released last week on the Canadian App Store, and although it remains unavailable in the United States, a quick glance at its screenshots reveal it to be very similar to NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower. Tiny Tower is not some obscure iOS game hidden on the App Store, either — Apple named it the iPhone Game of the Year for 2011 and it received a good amount of attention when it was released last June. And while Tiny Tower was clearly inspired by SimTower, Dream Heights is a different matter. Art style aside, the mechanics appear to be ripped directly from Tiny Tower.
During my hands-on session with Kid Icarus Uprising last week, only one facet of the game leapt out at me enough to comment on it: The boss Hewdraw.
I wasn’t especially surprised to see Hewdraw in the game. It’s always been pretty obvious that, given the limited amount of source material development team Project Sora has to work with, practically every element of the classic NES game to which Uprising serves as a sequel will show up in some form or another. About the only thing I haven’t seen yet are (1) mallets to liberate Medusa-stoned soldiers and (2) Eggplant Wizards, though I’ve no doubt they’re somewhere in there.
Electronic Arts has continued working to expand Origin into something more than a home for its own games. The publisher announced today it has agreed to deals with 11 third-party publishers to bring their games to Origin’s catalog.
Trion Worlds MMO Rift (pictured above) is the first of these additions and is now available. Specific games beyond that weren’t mentioned, just that in the “coming months” Origin will also be home to titles from Robot Entertainment (Orcs Must Die), CD Projekt RED (The Witcher 2), Freebird Games (To the Moon), Recoil Games (Rochard), Autumn Games (Jimmie Johnson’s Anything With An Engine), 1C Company (IL-2 Sturmovik), inXile Entertainment (Choplifter HD), Paradox Interactive (Magicka), Core Learning Ltd., and N3V Games (Arcania: Gothic 4).
Since Microsoft launched the Xbox Live Marketplace alongside the Xbox 360 in 2005, there’s been a nagging issue that’s bothered many users: Microsoft Points. According to a report, they might be finally going away this year in favor of a more preferable setup.
Inside Mobile Apps reports a source has indicated Microsoft Points are to be replaced by real-world currencies by the end of the year, which means a new currency system would be put in place not only for Xbox Live, but also the Windows Phone and Zune Marketplaces.
Most video game press events feature a slick-looking “vertical slice” demonstration, an airing of a marketing-produced trailer, and maybe a short presentation from the creators. While Darksiders II showed off a decent chunk of gameplay and a new trailer, it was also preceded by a lecture about the various depictions of Death from Australian art historian Dane Munro. It was a bit odd to go from a normally serious lecture that touches upon topics such as the Etruscan portrayal of the Angel of death and the Danse Macabre, to a demo where Death jumps around shoots bad dudes with a pistol from mid-air.
Disparity between collegiate lecture and “Saturday Morning superhero cartoon video game” aside (Vigil Game general manager David Adams admitted that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were essentially modeled after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Darksiders II still looks like a damn solid game. The demo showed off a few more gameplay features and abilities, but overall, it still focused on how Death is a quick and agile badass compared to how his brother War was a hefty Horseman. During combat, Death rolls around, jumps repeatedly, and quickly switches between his scythe, some claws, a gun, and his Ghost Hand (the current name for the previously seen Ghost Hook, which allows him to either yank small enemies to him or yank him towards larger foes). When he wasn’t fighting, Death was wall-running and using his Ghost Hand as a grappling hook across numerous chasms, pillars, and passageways.
In System Shock 2‘s beginning, you’re cast as a new recruit in the Unified National Nominate. You’re asked to walk down one of three hallways: One has you enlisting with the Marines, another puts you on the path of the Navy, and the last casts you as an operative within the OSA. Choosing these careers, and the decisions within said careers, ends up replacing the traditional character generation found in other RPGs. The Marine makes you a combat specialist; the Navy boosts your hacking and technical skills; and the OSA grants you psionic abilities to turn you into a super-spy. Besides making these specialized choices, you then spend the rest of the game refining your character, and with so few resources (due to its horror gameplay), you find yourself debating and agonizing over how you upgrade yourself.
That’s the feeling that design director Bill Gardner and the rest of Irrational Games wants to impart with the recently announced 1999 Mode for BioShock Infinite. Gardner confirmed that “1999″ is mostly a callback to System Shock 2′s release year (a particular piece of nostalgia, since SS2 was Irrational’s first title), rather than any sort of hint into where the story might take you — a fair point to elaborate on, since one of the few gameplay demonstrations prominently featured a detour into an alternate 1983. Gardner notes, “[I] look back fondly at the times when I was playing, and absolutely being terrified at seeing what’s around the next corner. Or finding the next OS upgrade machine, and then sitting there, pulling my hair out and sweating, literally, over what upgrade to take. That’s missing in modern games.”
Reality Fighters is the Augmented Reality beat ‘em up coming exclusively to PlayStation Vita on March 13th in North America. As well as putting yourself into the game and going toe-to-toe against opponents of varied looks and styles, your in-game tutor will be the world’s most famous sensei: Mr.Miyagi! Players who persevere will be rewarded with the chance to play as Miyagi-san himself, and unlock his trademark handyman uniform and family headband. Providing the voice of Mr. Miyagi is Jim Ward, a prolific gaming voice actor who has also performed in Call of Duty, Ratchet & Clank, Metal Gear Solid and more. Here are a few words from Mitsuo Hirakawa of SCE XDev Studio on the thinking behind this special guest appearance.
