Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter whose work with Carl Epstein on the Watergate scandal played a pivotal role in President Nixon's eventual resignation, isn't the most obvious choice to star as a video game protagonist. But thanks to a burst of inspiration from writer Samuel Kim —...
"Hey, there ought to be a sequel to 'Shadowgate' called 'Watergate!'" Samuel Kim, 'Watergate: The Video Game'
Time to start practicing your simlish: fresh off the troubled launch of SimCity, EA and developer Maxis have officially announced The Sims 4, slated to launch some time in 2014. Unfortunately, there are no real details or screenshots available...
The future of Star Wars video games was uncertain following Disney's decision to shutter LucasArts, but now the company has announced that it has signed an exclusive, multi-year deal with Electronic Arts to develop games based off the franchise. Game developers DICE, Visceral, and BioWare will work on titles that are based in the Star Wars universe. The three developers are known for titles...
The long-running, controversial rumor that Microsoft's Xbox 360 successor would demand an internet connection for all aspects of its functionality has finally been put to rest. Ars Technica is today reporting that an internal Microsoft memo — which it claims was sent to all employees working on the next-gen console — has dismissed the 'always-on' mandate. Referring to the hardware by its codename Durango, Microsoft reportedly wrote, "There are a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection, and those should 'just work' regardless of their current connection status. Those include, but are not limited to: playing a Blu-ray disc, watching live TV, and yes playing a single player game."
With that one, suspiciously informative line, the company has confirmed two major features of the upcoming Xbox:...
Gamers everywhere breathe a sigh of relief
It's no secret that the Wii U isn't selling well, with Nintendo's bottom line suffering as a result. Unsurprisingly, the company is looking for new ways to invigorate sales, and a new report from Kyodo News indicates that Nintendo may be looking to smartphones for inspiration.
Apparently, Nintendo is producing and offering software to game developers that would let them build smartphone games...
Desperate times call for desperate measures
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, released in 2002 for the Nintendo GameCube, wasn't a commercial success, but the game became a cult classic because of a clever time-traveling plot and the unique way it horrified its players. Instead of relying on the jump scare, Eternal Darkness would actively screw with player's heads, say by pretending that they had suddenly died a violent death, or even...
Laser aficionado Patrick Priebe has created a scarily realistic working replica of the Plasma Cutter featured in the game Dead Space. According to Gizmag, Priebe spent about 200 hours building the weapon, which shoots a total of five laser beams — three green lasers for aiming, and two blue, 1,500 milliwatt beams for burning. As demonstrated in the video below, the weapon can shift between horizontal and vertical orientations, and even ejects energy packs after every round. It doesn't seem capable of inflicting too much damage, though it can certainly slice through wood or plastic.
P...
After struggling to make a profit with sales on iOS, the eccentric and endless arcade-brawler Punch Quest has launched on Android. The game saw over a half-million downloads within a week of its release last October — but despite the addictive hit that developer Rocketcat Games had on its hands, the studio said that it wasn't making any money off of the in-app purchases that supported the free-to-play title. The company ultimately began charging $0.99 for the game, and since then has frequently tweaked the price of in-game items to encourage users to splurge on real-money purchases that help them more quickly accrue fun or useful...
The owners of two of the internet's best-known cat memes are striking back at Scribblenauts for using them without permission. Charles Schmidt and Christopher Orlando Torres have sued Warner Brothers for copyright and trademark infringement, based on images of Nyan Cat (created by Torres) and Keyboard Cat (created by Schmidt) that appear in the game. After both cats achieved fame years ago, Torres and Schmidt have parlayed them into an ongoing...
"If it's not something you can do to Mickey Mouse then it's not something you can do to Keyboard Playing Cat." Ben Lashes
Rovio has just released Angry Birds Friends, a Facebook-ified version of its popular gaming franchise. Angry Birds Friends takes the tried-and-tested formula of the original Angry Birds game and adds a competitive social element, with users playing against their Facebook friends for "the title of...
The ESEA gaming network has been exploiting its users' powerful graphics cards to mine Bitcoins without their knowledge. "Mining" is the way Bitcoin is created — it involves dedicating some or all of a CPU or GPUs power to solving hashes, which...
One of video gaming's most popular and ubiquitous franchises is set to skip a Nintendo home console for the first time in over two decades. Despite a Wii U release for Madden NFL 2013 last year, EA Sports' upcoming Madden NFL 25 will not be making an appearance on Nintendo's...
Since last November millions of players have been chipping away at Peter Molyneux's strange experimental cube in Curiosity, but it looks like they may soon find out just what's inside — and it could have something to do with Microsoft's next Xbox. According to Molyneux, the game — which he claims contains a "life-changing secret buried inside" — was always intended to last for around six months, and that...
Phil Fish's Fez launched just over a year ago on Xbox Live Arcade, where it's managed to sell over 200,000 copies. But now the puzzle / platformer indie hit is finally moving beyond Microsoft's console; the long-awaited PC version of Fez was...
Activision is continuing its tradition of releasing a new title in its marquee first-person shooter franchise every year: the company has just officially announced Call of Duty: Ghosts will be available on November 5th. The game is being trumpeted as a new Call of Duty for the next generation of...
Microsoft today revealed new details about its IllumiRoom technology — an augmented reality home entertainment system that expands gaming content...
Grand Theft Auto V may still be five or so months away, but Rockstar isn't slowing down its promotional efforts for the game. The studio has just released a trio of new trailers that give fans a closer look at GTAV's main characters Michael, Franklin, and Trevor. Los Santos — the massive in-game world that Rockstar describes as the largest...
As major game publishers push overbearing copy protection that frustrates legitimate players, an indie studio has taken a novel approach to the difficult problem of piracy. Greenheart Games...
When we tried out the pre-launch version of the Ouya console, we were disappointed with the catalog — there was plenty to play, but it was still distinctly lacking any halo titles. As Ouya prepares for a retail launch in June, one of its long-awaited exclusives has been unveiled: it's by Quantum Conundrum and Portal developer Kim Swift's team at Airtight Games, and it's called Soul Fjord.
As you'll see in the trailer, the hook of Soul Fjord right now is its aesthetic, described as a fusion of '70s funk vibes and Norse mythology. If you haven't guessed the premise already, perpetual pulp villain Loki is attempting to start Ragnarök,...
Ubisoft's Watch Dogs has been on our radar ever since we first got a look at the title during last year's E3 — and now we know when we can pick it up for ourselves. The game will go on sale for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and Windows computers on November 19th, and will also be available for the PlayStation 4 at that console's launch. Ubisoft doesn't specifically say that it will be coming to the new Xbox we'll be seeing from Microsoft next month, but the company's reassurance that W...
Nintendo has begun selling refurbished 3DS and DSi XL consoles at aggressive price points, offering buyers the same one-year warranty that typically accompanies new hardware. The units are guaranteed to be in working order, though the manufacturer...
Markus "Notch" Persson, the man behind Minecraft, has launched a new browser game called Drop. While the stark graphics are based around a cube, that's about the only similarity you'll find with his previous block-building sensation; Drop is a...
When Microsoft first unveiled its IllumiRoom technology at CES, it did so in an unusual way. The software giant traditionally reveals its research projects in short, scrappy videos accompanied by research papers and a lot of technical jargon. IllumiRoom was different. The chief technology strategy officer at Microsoft, Eric Rudder, joined the Samsung keynote to showcase a video of an augmented reality projection unit designed to extend gaming...
