Video Games

Ridge Racer Unbounded Coming March 6th

I’ve been curious to see what exactly Ridge Racer Unbounded would turn out to be for some time, and come March 6th, I and everyone else will find out.

For those of you who aren’t aware, this Ridge Racer is the first in the series not made by one of Namco’s teams and has been outsourced to American studio BugBear Entertainment, creators of the Flatoutseries. The big selling point behind Unbounded is the game’s track creator, which allows players to build entire cities’ worth of tracks and share them online.  If done well enough, this sort of thing can result in near limitless replayability, though I don’t think it will be quite as insane as something like Trackmania. It’s still nice to see other devs take a crack at giving players these kinds of features in a racing title rather than just shipping a boxed product with a set number of tracks you’ll eventually grow really tired of.

Alan Wake’s Night Springs headed to XBLA

Currently it is unknown what type of game it is, but the screenshot
shows a Story mode as well as something called Arcade Action. In the
original Alan Wake, Night Springs is a Twilight Zone-esque TV show
written by Wake himself that can be watched on televisions throughout
the game. Possibly the game will take place within the TV show.

Why Play Modern Warfare 3 When You Can Play Team Fortress 2

Apparently, Call of Duty fanboys…I mean, “players,” feel that a game becomes obsolete once it hits the one-year mark. How else do you explain the outrageous sale numbers with each yearly Call of Duty release?  I know it might be hard, but instead of answering the latest “Call”, why not play a shooter that was released in the far-gone year of 2007? This shooter is Valve’s Team Fortress 2, and it was described as “The most fun you can have online” by PC Gamer for a reason (or two…or three…or…).

Achievement Unlocked – Inaugural Edition

Achievements have undeniably become a large part of the gaming world. While some unlock simply by completing set parts of a game, others are a challenge of their own by offering a diversion from the main story and sometimes even causing the player to experience pieces of the game they would have otherwise missed. Here are the best and worst for the week of October 30^th, 2011.

Skyrim: Howling at the Bloodmoon

Given the impending release of the latest entry in
Bethesda’s venerated Elder Scrolls series, the gaming community has been
inundated with previews, interviews, and other media touting the new features
Skyrim will introduce to the land of Tamriel. 
Devoted fans of the series, seething with anticipation, have dissected
and reassembled everything we know thus far about this frigid northern region
and its prophesied hero, the Dragonborn.

Silent Hill HD and Downpour Dated

It appears that the Silent Hill HD Collection and Silent Hill: Downpour have finally been giving at least semi-official release dates. This comes after the controversy with the original voice actors for Silent Hill 2 and 3 (The games included in the HD Collection) being replaced but in the end being brought back to re-record the dialogue for the remakes.

Rainbow 6: Patriots Pits Gamers Against Homegrown Terror

Tired of fighting the same old Russians, and Jihadists in your military shooter?  The next installment in theRainbow 6 series will pit you against America’s newest threat: Itself!  The game will have players going up against a group of Americans called “The True Patriots” who are out to reclaim the country from a government they see as corrupt.  With a story ripped from the headlines, the game industry will no doubt see some interesting debates over this subject in the next year.