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Star Wars, Dr. Who Fans Get Into The Lamest “Fight” Of All Time

A long-standing rivalry between two sci-fi fan groups in England boiled over earlier this week when Star Wars and Dr. Who fans had a “bitter exchange” outside a convention. When the treasurer of Norwich Star Wars Club Jim Poole turned up and tried to get the autograph of Dr. Who actor (and Bill superstar!) Graham…

Microsoft Killing MS Points? Please Be True.

This is far from the first time this rumour has popped up. We heard last year that Microsoft was planning this, but as the reveal of a new Xbox console – and a new Windows update – draws closer, we’re hearing it again. This time a little more convincingly. The Verge reports that Microsoft will…

The Fine Print On The Team Fortress Energy Drink Tumbler Is Ridiculous

Team Fortress 2′s scout class has a secondary weapon called “Bonk! Atomic Punch“. A tumbler of the item went for sale on the Valve store last week, and today Reddit user Rajorface uploaded pictures of the ‘warning label’ on the Tumbler. As you might expect, the fine print is ridiculous. Here’s a picture so you…

Nintendo Forcing Ads On Some YouTube “Let’s Play” Videos

Nintendo of America has muscled in on the world of “let’s play” videos on YouTube, inserting commercials into user-made clips that are of “a certain length”. Seems that late last year the publisher registered with YouTube as a “partner”, registering their content with the video service’s database. While Nintendo claims (via Go Nintendo) that “most…

What To Play While Waiting For Plants Vs. Zombies 2

Chilean developer Syrenaica’s Evilot may look a lot like Plants Vs. Zombies, with the whole lane-based defense thing, but it’s significantly more than that. It’s an evolution. Instead of just placing your defenses and watching them get beaten down, Evilot incorporates match-three puzzle mechanics. Set down three rats and boom — much bigger, strong rat.…

This Shin Megami Tensei IV Trailer Makes Being A Samurai Seem Intense

Shin Megami Tensei IV, the upcoming role playing game by Atlus, is a game about samurai. The protagonist is a samurai, actually. That means you have two mandates: to take care of the demons (would this be an SMT game if that weren’t the case?) and to keep the peace. Also probably more than those…

The Game That Took Eight Years To Make

Eight years. Eight long years. When Grant Davies and Nick Kovac started Endgame Studios in 2003 they couldn’t have imagined how long it would take to release their dream project. Broken promises, regrets, sacrifice. This is Fractured Soul, the cursed project. The game that history couldn’t contain. It was only when the numbers were placed…

Steam copies of Metro: Last Light include a nice little surprise: a pdf version of the book the series is based on, Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro 2033

EA Getting Rid Of Online Passes

One of the first publishers to dabble in the idea of an “online pass” – whereby gamers were charted a fee for accessing certain online content if they purchased a title pre-owned – has decided to do away with the program. EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg has told VentureBeat. “Yes, we’re discontinuing…

The Joker gets three skins from The Killing Joke in an eponymous skin pack from Injustice: Gods Among Us; this is the Red Hood. The two others depict Joker at the beginning (in tourist photographer attire, when he shot and paralyzed Barbara Gordon) and the end of the famous 1988 graphic novel.

This Weird Game Makes Two Players Share—and Argue Over—One Controller

Some game-makers want you to feel empowered when you play their creations. Other would love it if you felt wonderment. Matt Lopresti gets excited if the people playing his experimental puzzle game Split Tree argue with each other or get embarrassed. I interviewed Lopresti—who’s currently at Telltale Games after having previously worked on pretty/snarky portable…

No Wonder The Corporation In This Game Owns Nearly All Personal Data

Here’s a neat speech for Remember Me, the dystopian game where a corporation manages to own the memories of nearly the entire population. The speech is delivered by Antoine Cartier-Wells, founder of that corporation—and listening to him talk about memories, it’s not difficult to see how easy it would be to sway public opinion on…

If you liked 2010’s excellent, emotional action RPG Bastion, then listen to Amir Rao—co-founder of dev studio Supergiant Games—talk about the art of level design on the Critical Path Project

Google Play Games Services Bring A Little Xbox Live To Android

Today Google officially announced Google Play game services, a suite of features aimed at making Google Play a real cohesive game platform rather than a just a random pile of titles in no particular order. Top developers like Glu Mobile and Gameloft are lining up to enhance their Android titles with achievements, cloud saves, leaderboards…

The Mystery Game from Assassin’s Creed Designer Is Officially in Limbo

Don’t get your hopes up for seeing the next game from influential designer Patrice Desilets—a mysterious project called 1666—anytime soon. The latest update on 1666’s fate came today during a Ubisoft investor call when company president Yves Guillemot said the following: “So, for Patrice, after more than two months of discussions with him, we couldn’t…

Madden Again Seeks to Put Up More of a Defense

Around this time each year, Madden bombards us with the annual list of improvements they say they’ve made to the defense. And when the game gets arrives, I’m still usually playing it as I have for years: by calling a play and letting the CPU deal with it. But one new move does look useful…

That Angry Birds movie that’s coming out in three years will be distributed by Sony Pictures, according to Deadline Hollywood. Somewhere, Nathan Drake is yelling into a phone wondering what the hell is going on with HIS movie.

Former THQ Pres: Metro Makers The ‘Jamaican Bobsledders’ Of Developers [UPDATE]

In the Olympics, the Jamaican bobsledding team is famed for beating out countries who had a number of advantages over the Jamaican team—like winter coats and bobsledding tracks for training. Sure, the Jamaican team didn’t come in first, but the fact they were competitive in the first place was amazing. 4A Games, the developers behind…

Valve Launches Steam Trading Cards, So Much Better Than Achievements

Launching today in beta across a selection of popular titles, Steam Trading Cards are collectibles Steam users gather while playing their favorite games, with sets tradable for game badges, profile backgrounds, emoticons, coupons, and more. As if hunting for achievements wasn’t enough. They’re a means of rewarding players for playing the games they love, while…

Here’s How Mass Effect‘s Biological Warfare is Scientifically Possible

Mass Effect’s genophage is one of the few fictions in gaming that is easiest to match to real science. We can already engineer viruses that manipulate genetics within biological systems. While such a bioweaponized feat is difficult to create within model animals (let alone sapient life) let’s have some fun speculating how close theory can…