You wait ages for a novel narrative conceit and then two come along at once. Or, to be more precise, the same one comes along twice. Your progress through The Gunstringer, Twisted Pixel’s cowboy-themed Kinect shooter, is constantly accompanied by the laconic, timeworn tones of a storyteller who fulfils much the same role as Bastion’s narrator.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has again dismissed calls for the company to move into the smartphone market, saying that doing so would mean "Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo."
Sony's PSP successor, PlayStation Vita, will be released in Japan on December 17.
The company made the announcement at its Tokyo Game Show conference, and also confirmed pricing. The WiFi-only model will retail for ¥24,980 (£205.32), with the 3G model costing ¥29,980 (£246.42).
Microsoft has announced that Windows 8 will support Xbox Live, a move that presumably signals plans to phase out the failed Games for Windows Live initiative.
The news came out of the company’s developer-focused Build conference in California today, where attendees were given a detailed preview of Microsoft’s latest operating system.
Rise Of Nightmares is Sega’s test to see if there’s an audience for violent, subversive firstperson hacking and slashing using Kinect. There’s a haunted forest, a haunted castle and more walking dead than you can bludgeon with an iron pipe; it’s just a shame the act of bludgeoning is so tiresome.
On a mission to rescue a damsel in distress, you take on the role of everyman Josh – victim of a derailed train in the Romanian countryside and, fortunately, a dab hand with anything sharp and heavy.
Despite a number of high profile new game announcements and public unveiling of the controversial Slide Pad expansion which adds a second analogue stick, Nintendo's shares have dropped five per cent following its pre-TGS conference.
Game industry market research and analysis firm Newzoo has released new data showing burgeoning game markets in Brazil, Mexico and Russia. The data was collected by polling gamers local to each territory and shows parallels with more established sectors.
Newzoo's reports claim that Mexico's 16 million active gamers' preferences and spending behaviour is highly comparable to that found in North America. 57 per cent of players spend money on games, a share higher than most western countries.
There’s very little in this comedy RPG sequel that players won’t recognise from lumpen hero DeathSpank’s last two outings. This isn’t necessarily a criticism: it means that The Baconing comfortably retains the puerile but pleasing humour that set apart previous entries from their grim RPG counterparts. Unfortunately, it also means that the distinguishing elements of the series – particularly the combat – are starting to show signs of wear.
Can games be more than a game? Michael Abbott thinks the unthinkable with his look at reviews for El Shaddai, saying that since it doesn’t communicate its experience purely through mechanics, surely it can’t be criticised as a failure if the mechanics aren’t completely up to scratch. It's an interesting point, and one we acknowledged in our review: