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E3 2012? No Sir, It’s Adventure Time

How big is Pendleton Ward’s instant cult classic cartoon Adventure Time? So big that D3Publishers has a giant inflatable Finn and Jake hovering over their E3 2012 booth — and the game isn’t even here. And you know what? I don’t particularly care that

Look, Just Forget About a Baseball Game on the Xbox 360 Next Year

The long, slow goodbye to Major League Baseball 2K has been widely expected for more than a year. Gamers therefore assumed that EA Sports—frankly the only publisher with shoulders broad enough to take on this kind of a job right now—would jump back in with MVP Baseball (pictured). You can forget about that happening anytime…

Crossbows and Vampire Lords in Dawnguard Look Amazing in Action

If you were excited about Dawnguard, Skyrim‘s first piece of DLC, before, wait until you see it in action. The video shows you the vampire lord transformation and a ton of the skills that come with it, including summoning a gargoyle, using “vampiric grip” to lift enemies in the air, melee attacks and shooting energy…

Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime Joins The Ranks of the Undead

At yesterday’s Nintendo press conference, president of Nintendo America Reggie Fils-Aime revealed himself to be a rotting, stinking monstrosity. And then, he used the Wii’s augmented reality to make himself look like a zombie! [Rimshot] Above, you can see Reggie demonstrating the Wii U’s AR abilities tied to the Ubisoft Wii U exclusive ZombiU. (Which,…

The Sony and Microsoft E3 Murder Report

This year, Sony and Microsoft’s E3 presentations contained a combined 218 on-screen deaths, according to The Gameological Society. Of course, no one was really murdered at the E3 briefings. That is a relief.

Halo 4 Creators are Prepping for a Halo Comeback

Halo used to the biggest thing in multiplayer Xbox gaming. It’s still a big deal, but for the last half-decade, Call of Duty has been the Xbox’s main event. At E3 this year, new Microsoft-owned development studio 343 Industries is making an interactive case that Halo is ready for top status again. They’re not saying…

Pikmin 3 Plays Well, But I’m Not Sure Which Controller is Best For It

I finally played a new Pikmin game yesterday, which I’ve been waiting to do for eight years. The game looks great, but the tiny sliver I played got me wondering what the best way to play the game will be. Pikmin 3, like the GameCube Pikmin games before it, is about playing as a tiny…

Narco Terror Screens

Everything You Should Know About The Vulgar, Wonderful South Park RPG

Next-gen graphics? Innovative controls? Nonsense. The best thing I’ve seen at E3 so far is a video game based on an animated TV show. Likely you’ve heard of South Park, the immensely popular, surprisingly insightful, almost-always-hilarious Comedy Central cartoon by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. You may have even played one of the old Acclaim-published…

These New Aliens: Colonial Marines Screenshots Will Make You Drool

Hot off the e-presses, here’s four new screenshots from Aliens: Colonial Marines for your viewing pleasure. In the images, we get a glimpse of two aliens, a look at iron sights in action, and a peek at what the multiplayer lobby looks like. Aliens: Colonial Marines is due out February 12 for PC, Xbox 360,…

Who Is Our Mystery Microsoft Interviewee? [UPDATE]

Among the batch of interviews we have lined up for E3 with top game developers and captains of industry, we have a mystery interview today with someone important in the world of Xbox. Who could this mystery man or woman be? Microsoft won’t tell us, so we will leave it to you readers to speculate:…

Hawken is Everything I Ever Wanted in a Mech Shooter

For more than a year now Adhesive Games’ indie PC mech shooter Hawken has tantalized us with breathtakingly gorgeous scenes of giant robot carnage amidst dystopian cityscapes that combine anime sensibilities with Moebius-level intricacy and detail. The aesthetic has won us over time and time again, but what of the gameplay? It’s even better. My…

Why the Wii U Literally Can’t Stand Up

Unlike a Wii, an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, the Wii U console can’t stand up. You can’t prop the system up vertically without it falling over. Horizontal is the only option. The new Nintendo console must lie on its belly like a Nintendo Entertainment System or a really lazy house cat Why? “I…

Carmack Being Carmack: A Dozen Minutes With One of Video Game’s Smartest People

There is nothing quite like having John Carmack tell you about a technological breakthrough that excited him. The id Software programming genius who co-created Doom and launches rockets in his spare time will just unload on you. And—this is flattering—he will assume you can keep up. Yesterday at E3 in Los Angeles, I pretty much…

Sizing Up Its Competition, NBA 2K13 Will Stick to the Way It Plays the Game

Let’s go ahead and say it: NBA 2K13 is right back where it was two years ago—locked in the only meaningful head-to-head competition in sports video game publishing. It’s a fight it won quite decisively, too, when its competitor failed to launch and then sat out 2011, while NBA 2K turned in its two best…

This is Why I Never Could Get Into EVE Online

I’ve tried to get into the universe of EVE Online countless times over the years, but I’ve never managed to form a lasting relationship with the game. During my E3 meeting with CCP, EVE Online creative director Torfi Frans Olafsson explained why with a single sentence. EVE Online is a game driven by the players,…

Talk Amongst Yourselves

E3 continues to roil and rage and froth about our heads, yet there remains a place where like-minded video game fans can gather and talk in relative peace about their love affair with interactive entertainment. If only we could find it. Today’s #TAYpic comes from the fertile mind of Neo-d1ngo, though I can’t seem to…

The New Gears of War Campaign Gets Harder As You Get Better

Last night, I had a chance to play OverRun mode, the great-looking new versus multiplayer in Gears of War: Judgment. Today, I sat down with Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski and People Can Fly’s Adrian Chmielarz to hear the first details about its single-player campaign. There are a number of substantial-sounding tweaks to gameplay, all of which…

Metro: Last Light‘s Decomposing Bones Will Make You Hallucinate

Metro: Last Light is a shooter. But it’s nothing like a Call of Duty, and developers 4A Games resent that comparison. Metro: Last Light is much more about an Eastern perspective on a post-apocalyptic, everything-went-and-got-crazy world. Mutants large and small still terrorize Moscow, as they did in the first Metro title. And I imagine they’re…

In Dead or Alive 5, A Super Move Can Make a Giant Robot Clown Face That Can Sneeze You to Death

You know how it goes when you’re facing another person in a fighting game round: both players have whittled off some chunks off the other’s life bar and the match seems up for grabs. That’s where I was while playing Dead or Alive 5 at Tecmo’s booth today. The person manning the display already whupped…