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Grand Theft Auto is Too Big. Yakuza is Too Small. Sleeping Dogs is Just Right.

Creating a compelling and enjoyable open world experience is more than just giving the player as much real estate technologically possible to play in. It’s a delicate balancing act between character and scale. Somewhere between Grand Theft Auto‘s size and Yakuza’s personality lies Sleeping Dogs That’s not to say that Grand Theft Auto IV or…

It Turns Out, This Is A Really Awesome Year to Love Gorgeous Adventure Games

I would never have expected 2012 to turn out to be such a phenomenal year to be an adventure game fan. And yet, here we are. This new one is Primordia, brought to us by Wadjet Eye Games. Those are the same folks who brought us 2011’s Gemini Rue and this summer’s fantastic Resonance Primordia…

The Game May Be The Same, But Here’s Why the Controls Change

Editor’s Note: In my sports column Sunday, I noted a rather significant change to the control system in NBA 2K13 and pondered why sports video games remake their controls more often than other genres, including series that are now releasing annually. Zack Hiwiller, himself a former designer of sports video games, sheds a good deal…

Witness Dead or Alive 5‘s Latest Fighters Engaged in a Quaint Dinner to the Death

There’s only one way a meal between the boisterous Brad Wong and boyish Eliot in Tecmo Koei’s Dead or Alive 5 can possibly end. Or they could fight I guess. That works too. In an amusing departure from the over-the-top fighting stages we’ve seen from the game so far, Brad and Eliot make their debut…

Soul Sacrifice Isn’t About Revenge, It’s About Choices. Terrible, Terrible Choices.

Revenge may be the popular thing these days, but some games actually aren’t about taking vengeance. At least, they don’t have to be, and at Gamescom this year several developers are making that abundantly clear. Straight out of Sony WWS Japan Studio is Soul Sacrifice, the first game from Keiji Inafune, the prolific co-designer of…

Halo 4’s Spartan Specializations Change the Way You’ll Play Multiplayer

The big changes to Halo multiplayer keep coming to the next entry in the sci-fi shooter franchise. Microsoft’s just announced that a new set of class-based Specialization ranks that players can earn after they hit level 50. As explained on Halo Waypoint, specializations dole out armor modifications designed to enhance certain playstyles. So, the Wetwork…

I Finally Tracked Down The PC That Taught Me To Love Games. It’s Uglier Than I Remembered.

This morning on Twitter, a friend linked to a site featuring early advertisements for the personal computer, circa the 1970s. With thirty or forty years of distance, the ads are, of course, dated and even funny, in a way. But one of the images featured an early Atari computer, an Atari 800 from 1980. And…

A Dramatic Look at the Story of Neverwinter

Every time the terms “Dungeons & Dragons” and “story” appear together and I don’t find myself in a 10×10 room with four other people, checking for traps, I’m just the tiniest bit disappointed. This is Neverwinter, the action-MMO take on the classic franchise, as previewed by our own Kate Cox earlier this year. Specifically this…

The Secret World Unveils an Ambitious Plan to Beautify New York City

Though The Secret World has gotten off to a stumbling start, Funcom continues to aggressively roll out fresh new content, like the August 28 release of Issue 2: Digging Deeper and the promised New York City raid, which in the next few months will give the city a real reason to never sleep. I’d say…

Razer Making Non-Star Wars Version of its Fancy Star Wars Keyboard, and the LCD Panel May Actually Be Useful This Time

Not so long ago, in a galaxy that’s right here actually, there was this Star Wars-themed keyboard from Razer. It boasted not only a number of impressive features for a keyboard, but also a big ol’ tie-in to a now-troubled MMO Want the features without the branding? Razer’s got you covered. Razer announced the new…

PC Dev Offering $5,000 Reward To Anyone Who Finds Their Stolen, Unreleased Games

PC developer Larian is not having a great time at the Gamescom trade show in Germany this week. The dev sent us a note to share that two PCs were stolen from their booth at the show. On those PCs were early copies of their upcoming games Dragon Commander and Divinity: Original Sin. Not good!…

Check Out Black Ops 2‘s CODcasting in Action

In a live demonstration streamed direct from Gamescom in Germany earlier today, Activision and Treyarch showed off Call of Duty: Black Ops 2‘s exciting new multiplayer broadcasting tools. Finally a way for an unskilled loudmouth like me to enjoy Call of Duty! I can imagine my first broadcast bout already. I’ll pick an overlay, set…

It’s time to opt-in for the impending StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm beta! Blizzard’s got the details

Anonymous Claims PSN Hack Affecting 10 Million Accounts [Update: It’s a Hoax]

Anonymous claims it broke into the PlayStation Network and has a 50 gigabyte database of email accounts and their passwords. Ten million accounts “are at risk,” says the hacker involved. The passwords appear to be encrypted, and many of the accounts published in this document appear to be from northern Europe. This still would be…

Is Valve About To Announce That They’re Making A Movie?

It’s been one hell of a week for Valve rumors, but unlike the silly Half-Life 3 speculation that was floating around yesterday, this one seems plausible. The folks at Lambda Generation have discovered that Valve registered domains for “gamerlifemovie.com” and “gamerlifethemovie.com.” Now this in itself might not be all that interesting—companies register domain names all…

Mass Effect 3‘s ‘Leviathan’ DLC Is Coming August 28

The next piece of single-player DLC for Mass Effect 3 will arrive August 28, BioWare said today It’ll be out for Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3. For more on Leviathan, check out Kirk’s impressions of the upcoming downloadable content.

Dressing Up Like A Slave (Or A Posh Lady) And Whipping Your Enemies In Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation

Last week at Ubisoft, in addition to playing through a big honking naval battle in the full console version of Assassin’s Creed III, I also had a chance to get my hands on its portable Vita counterpart, Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation In the portable game, players take on the role of Aveline de Grandpré, a…

All the Shots Are Impossible in This Teleporting Sci-Fi Basketball Game

Chances are, you’ve played H-O-R-S-E. Maybe the last time you chucked up balls in the make-this-exact same-shot-as-someone-else basketball battle was in high school or a long time ago. But it probably didn’t involve sawblades, teleporters and boost strips. Gasketball takes the playground hoops staple and puts it on iOS devices with a mind-bending sci-fi spin.…

The Makers Of DayZ Want To Put It On Consoles

DayZ on your Xbox? Could happen soon. Dean Hall, project lead on the popular zombie-survival title whose success transformed it from an Arma 2 mod into a full-fledged game, told Joystiq at Gamescom that he wants to bring it to consoles. And he’s meeting with console-makers at the show. “You’re not going to put it…

The Gamescom Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 streaming live multiplayer event has started! Watch it here