Sleepy Jack is very nearly My First Tempest. While it lacks the vector-drawn clarity of the original and opts to have you travel through the ever-twisting tunnel rather than stylishly skirting around its edge, it’s a shooter with the same energising influx of enemies, and a similarly claustrophobic approach to the battlefield.
So, you’d expect a day at a conference would be thick with talks, but an evening, too? EA got a little lecture-happy with its press events for SimCity and Medal Of Honor: Warfighter tonight. SimCity was the main culprit, an official announcement that neglected to show the game and spent most of its course holding two ill-advised interviews, first with An Inconvenient Truth maker Davis Guggenheim and then with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.
Fredrick Wester, CEO of Magicka developer Paradox Interactive, has said that struggling UK retailer Game Group deserves everything it gets.
Plastic Studios has announced Datura, a PSN exclusive controlled with the Move peripheral which has been in development for two years in collaboration with Sony Santa Monica.
In a post on the PlayStation Blog, Plastic game director Michal Staniszewski reveals little in terms of concrete information about the game, but his references to thatgamecompany's Journey and Flower give a good indication of the kind of game we can expect.
Revered indie studio Vlambeer has called on the game industry to unite against cloning, saying plagiarism "damages people, not just studios" and that, unless more is done to combat the practice, it will "lead to a loss of faith in the industry."
Nintendo and Havok have announced an agreement that will enable Wii U developers to use the company's middleware.
The deal, announced at GDC, gives Wii U developers worldwide access to Havok Physics and Havok Animation, which have been used in over 500 games to date. It follows a similar deal, announced yesterday, between Nintendo and Autodesk.
BioWare says it is aware of an issue preventing Mass Effect 3 players from importing the faces of their characters from previous games in the series, and is working on a fix.
In a post on the studio's forums, community coordinator Chris Priestly writes: "We are aware that some players are having issues importing the faces of their characters from Mass Effect 1 or Mass Effect 2 into Mass Effect 3.
The fifth entry in Maxis’ urban planning series will release in 2013, featuring a 3D city, curvy roads and the promise that it will be “the most playful and responsive SimCity yet.”
Speaking at the end of the second day of GDC 2012, Maxis senior vice president Lucy Bradshaw officially announced the game that had been rumoured for days. Following the original, 2000, 3000 and 4, it will be just called SimCity.
Skyrim was made in under three years by fewer than 100 people. Just eight level designers made over 300 locations, while also working on creature design and combat balance. And yet it came out on exactly the date it was aimed.
The Edge Create Challenge has now kicked off. We're inviting entries from now until 23.59 on April 17, 2012 to our competition in which you can win Unity Pro licences and a trip to Unite, Unity’s developer conference in Amsterdam.
The theme of the competition is, simply, edge. That's it. It's up to you to interpret it in any way you wish and build your game for web browsers in Unity 3.5.
Our April issue, which is on sale March 14, features reviews, along with Post Script articles, on all the most important games including Mass Effect 3, Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Syndicate and Journey.
EA has announced the formation of a new studio in Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden, which will make "best-of-breed" games using Stockholm-based DICE's Frostbite 2 engine.
EA is using GDC to promote jobs at the studio, but is not yet publicly disclosing the genre and franchises on which it will focus, nor its size - though job listings suggest the studio will be making big-budget console games.
Autodesk has announced a licence agreement with Nintendo that will enable developers of Wii U games to use its Gameware technology, which has been used in more than a thousand games to date.
Announced at GDC in San Francisco, the deal gives Nintendo and its licensed developers access to popular UI solution Autodesk Scaleform, the Autodesk Kynapse AI middleware, and Autodesk HumanIK, used for interactive character animation.
Autodesk has announced a licence agreement with Nintendo that will enable developers of Wii U games to use its Gameware technology, which has been used in more than a thousand games to date.
Announced at GDC in San Francisco, the deal gives Nintendo and its licensed developers access to popular UI solution Autodesk Scaleform, the Autodesk Kynapse AI middleware, and Autodesk HumanIK, used for interactive character animation.
Trade association UKIE has published the UK's first ever digital videogame sales chart.
The body has been hard at work on its digital chart, which is currently in beta, since 2010. The first published chart collates sales of PC games through digital channels in January, shared by 25 companies "proactively engaged in the selling and distribution of digital videogame products."
Nintendo's 3DS handheld has passed 4.5 million sales in the United States since its launch last March, the company has announced.
It means that, despite its slow start, 3DS sold almost twice as many units in its first year on shelves as its predecessor: first-year DS sales totalled 2.3 million. 3DS has brought in $1.2 billion in revenue, compared to DS's $540 million.
EDGE CREATE CHALLENGE 2012 OFFICIAL RULES
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED OR RESTRICTED BY LAW.
The organiser of the Edge Create Challenge 2012 competition (the “Competition”) is Future Publishing Limited ("Future"). The Competition shall be made available at the website www.edge-online.com (the “Site”).
Valve has abandoned planned support for cross-platform multiplayer in upcoming shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Shortly after the studio announced the game last August, it said that players on PC, Mac and PS3 would be able to face off against each other in multiplayer matches. Speaking to Joystiq, however, writer Chet Faliszek said the plan had been ditched due to lessons learned from the game's beta test.
Crytek, the German developer of Crysis 2, has revealed at GDC in San Francisco that it is making its first foray into the smartphone market.
The studio unveiled Fibble Flick 'n' Roll, a physics puzzler that is due this spring for iOS and Android, Develop reports.
"Going mobile is an incredibly exciting step for us as a game development company," CEO Cevat Yerli said. "The way that people play games on mobile devices is a real blessing.
Crytek, the German developer of Crysis 2, has revealed at GDC in San Francisco that it is making its first foray into the smartphone market.
The studio unveiled Fibble Flick 'n' Roll, a physics puzzler that is due this spring for iOS and Android, Develop reports.
"Going mobile is an incredibly exciting step for us as a game development company," CEO Cevat Yerli said. "The way that people play games on mobile devices is a real blessing.
German browser game company Bigpoint has announced an international expansion to its operations that will see it open offices in London and Paris.
The company, which has its headquarters in Hamburg and offices in Berlin and Sao Paolo, Brazil, will hire between five and ten staff in both London and Paris. The new teams will focus on expanding Bigpoint's sales network and promoting its 70-game portfolio.
GDC 2012 kicked off this morning under bright, sunny skies and palpable excitement from what seem even bigger crowds than ever. Oh, and the fact that at 4.30am, San Francisco was rocked by an earthquake. Not that it was particularly large or anything, but it marked a heady welcome to the city.
Mafia II developer 2K Czech is assisting Rockstar Games in development of Grand Theft Auto V, according to reports.
A source told VG247 that the studio is lending Rockstar its expertise in animation for cutscenes and general gameplay.
It's a two-way deal, with Rockstar sharing some techniques of its own as Take-Two apparently plans to turn Mafia into a major series. Work on Mafia III has apparently just begun in earnest after a full year of pre-production.
Street Fighter X Tekken producer Yoshinori Ono has moved to justify Capcom's decision to store 12 DLC characters on the game's disc.
Our April issue, which is on sale March 14, features an in-depth Post Script article on why Mass Effect's moral choices don't always add up to a greater sense of freedom .