Stop the presses! Bethesda announced today that tomorrow they’re going to announce something! Hopefully tomorrow’s announcement will not be yet another proclamation that yet another unveiling is coming later this week.
Now that Duke Nukem Forever has been released (remember that?), and with Max Payne 3’s launch nearing, it would seem that Half-Life 3 is due for a release…right? A group of users from 4chan sent a (very NSFW) email to the face of Valve, Gabe Newell; as Newell always says in his games’ developer commentary, while he reads every email that is sent to him, he doesn’t respond to all of them. Yet, the Gaben responded to this email with: “I don’t suppose it would ease your wrath if I told you we’re announcing all your favorite things at E3 2012?”
In a move that may not be surprising to anyone, Crytek and EA have revealed that there will in fact be a Crysis 3 that will be coming to PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 in 2013. The first Crysiswas well known as a very taxing PC game, in which many people would actually go out and have to fully upgrade their computers in order to run in the quality that it could be run at. Crysis 2 was a pretty strong follow-up (it may have not garnered the same attention as the first, but it was a strong game in its own right), but the big thing about the second game was that Crysis 2 was the first in the series to come to platforms outside of the PC (it was also released on the Xbox 360 and PS3).
One of the big differences between Crysis and Crysis 2 however, was the setting. The first Crysis took place in a tropical jungle setting, so the ability to really go all out on graphics was an option, and they definitely redefined the way that graphics looked in a game of that age (it came out in 2007). Crysis 2 changed the setting drastically to a much more city-like environment, which could have been to make in easier on the graphics capabilities of the PS3 and Xbox 360 (which are fixed, unlike PCs, where you can upgrade). Well, fans of the first iteration can rejoice, as the location of Crysis 3 has also been revealed as a New York setting that has been overwhelmed by a jungle area, which means that the setting will very much resemble Crysis as opposed to Crysis 2. An exact date has not been released yet, but with shows like E3 and Pax Prime around the corner, we should expect more details to come out soon.
Remember all the time you spent daydreaming on the idea of going back in time to give the Confederates better technology to fight the Union during the American Civil War? Me neither, but that is the off-kilter premise of developer Radioactive Software’s off-kilter RTS-TPS hybrid, Gettysburg: Armored Warfare.
I have recently been playing a bit of a psn game titled Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the Game, and while I have been playing it, I started wondering about the cyclical nature of certain types of games, and how certain genres seem to ebb and flow with each new generation of console. For example, if we go back to the days of the NES, we see many games such as Scott Pilgrim (side scrolling beat em ups), yet if you look at that same genre today, you would be hard pressed to find many more outside of re-releases of the older games, yet if you say that you want to look for a modern military shooter, you cant take two steps without running into a sea of them.
This seems true of nearly every console, and while some of these moves are obvious (they couldn’t put out many of the modern shooters on earlier systems solely due to the fact that they didn’t have the amount of power needed), why is it that we do not see more of these “retro” style games released on the current consoles? Two examples that I can think of off the top of my head are Rayman: Origins and the previously aforementioned Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the Game, and while they may not have as many explosions or violence, they are both extremely competent and fun games in their own rights, yet they seem to get overlooked by the media in favor of the next modern military shooter or FPS.
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is a third person cover based shooter that features more action than survival horror. With cooperative and competitive multiplayer, Capcom looks to try and take the Resident Evil series in a new direction.
While it was sort of confirmed but mostly just rumoured months ago Oddworld: Hand of Odd; the long delayed fifth title in the Oddworld franchise is indeed being developed.
