Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:02 PM

Category: Role Playing

The team spent a long time developing the look and feel of Hades. We wanted something that didn't fit into the stereotypical fire and brimstone imagery that people commonly associate with the underworld. Instead we wanted to create an alternate reality where the undead thrived and lived out their eternal days. We wanted a world that had its own architecture, foliage, geology, etc. From the gameplay side we tried to approach the level design from a different perspective -- where we focused more on using elevated gameplay spaces and took full advantage of the three dimensional qualities of the editor and the engine.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:02 PM

Category: First Person

The fact is, this is London enough for it to work perfectly well, and most players won't notice the fact that the East End looks like the West, and the tube stations are the wrong way round. It's brilliant just to be able to fight the legions of the netherworld among derelict boats on the dried riverbed of the Thames, and being able to look up and see wrecked bridges high above.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:00 PM

Category: Role Playing

Various bits of armor and weaponry can have alignment requirements. Technologists might wield handsaws and rotating axes, while naturalists prefer more traditional weapons. One of the skills that can be trained improves the chances of finding enchanted items, as does certain equipment. For the most part, though, loot is random and is found in abundance while exploring the world.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:28 AM

Category: Role Playing

The title's feature list is definitely appealing. Among the highlights are a non-linear storyline offering freedom to explore, extensive latitude for character customization including the ability to reverse your career choices, and a world that is affected by your decisions.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:47 AM

Category: Role Playing

Just drag-and-drop your selected ingredients from the inventory to the cooking pot! All kinds of plants you find, including herbs and mushrooms, are suitable for "Two Worlds" alchemy - and you can use ready-to-drink potions and parts of dead animals and monsters, as well as minerals and bombs. The possibilities are practically endless, but all these ingredients have their own individual properties - so give your mixture some thought beforehand if you want to achieve the right results!

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:32 AM

Category: First Person

Crysis begins in the year 2019 when a massive asteroid penetrates Earth’s atmosphere and lands in a remote island near the Korean Peninsula. The North Korean government, seizing the opportunity to examine the asteroid, seals off the area to keep the international community out. Naturally, the Pentagon responds in kind by sending an elite team of Delta Force operatives to survey the site.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:17 PM

Category: Role Playing

The story in Immortal Throne begins right where Titan Quest leaves off. Players will find themselves seeking entrance to the underworld of Hades to stop a new army that is marching on the living.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:44 PM

Category: Role Playing

Arguably the single most inventive and unique feature of Silverfall is the faction system that allows you to choose between the "old ways" of nature and the "industrial revolution" of technology. The entire game is peppered with quests that push your allegiance in one direction or another, instantly creating a massive amount of room for replay value (and that's not counting the full LAN and internet multiplayer out-of-the-box, either).

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:17 PM

Category: First Person

Your player character is a “stalker”, a kind of scavenger who is trying to find anything that might be of value inside the affected zone. As the game begins, your character has the tried-and-true gameplay plot device of amnesia. His only memory is that he is on a mission to take out a fellow stalker.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:54 PM

Category: Role Playing

"We wanted to do an expansion that took the best parts of what people experienced in Oblivion, but give them an entirely new setting that looked and felt very different from anything they did in Oblivion," says Pete Hines, Bethesda's vice president of PR and marketing. "So it's kind of more of the same but it's also completely different - we tried to focus on some of the different types of quest from Oblivion that people really seemed to gravitate towards, ones that had really good character, cool plot twists, that sort of thing. That was our goal. We had fewer NPCs that we had to deal with, so let's make them all a little deeper, better stories, and really make them all really memorable and interesting."

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:39 AM

Category: Role Playing

What looks to be the most exciting thing about Elveon, so far, is the Cinematic Duel Fights. At certain points in the game you are able to send your character into a battle that plays out like a movie. The difference between this and other games is that they are interactive episodes; you directly influence the actions of your character during the cinema. This new technique in gameplay is sure to change the way Action RPG’s are designed.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:02 PM

Category: First Person

The speeder bike is a lightning fast rocket machine that can launch itself a good 100 meters into the sky in an exaggerated leap. Press the alternate fire while you're up in the air and the bike turns itself into a piloted missile. Unreal Tournament III has this streak of ludicrous insanity running right through it. It never stops being fun, even when you're on the losing side.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:48 PM

Category: Role Playing

"If you look at all the other great fantasy licences, like Dungeon and Dragons, or Lord of the Rings, there's a lot of work gone into building these up, and we wanted the world of Dragon Age to be worthy of gamers' time and effort. We want Dragon Age to feel like it has a history, rather than a few random fantasy elements thrown together. We realised that, if we owned our own IP, we could wield enormous control over the setting and story."

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:41 PM

Category: Strategy

It's an RTS, very much in the Command & Conquer mould, that really does introduce itself in stunningly cretinous fashion. Its single-player campaign kicks off with long, laughably tedious in-engine cut-scenes starring stupid-looking people with stupid-sounding voices, then forces you through several hours of playing with the single most hackneyed RTS faction ever put to screen.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:52 PM

Category: Role Playing

For those that remember the carefree days of a game like the original Asheron’s Call, where you could basically create your own class, you will immediately recognize the freedom that Silverfall allows.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:54 PM

Category: Gone Gold

AGOURA HILLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--THQ Inc. (NASDAQ:THQI) today announced that Titan Quest™: Immortal Throne™, the first expansion to the award-winning action role playing game Titan Quest™, has reached the gold master stage of development and is entering manufacturing. Titan Quest: Immortal Throne brings an all-new level of action to the franchise, with new quests, items and classes set within the richly-detailed underworld of Hades. Developed for Windows PC, the game is scheduled to ship to retail outlets worldwide on March 5.

“Titan Quest: Immortal Throne adds a new level of immersion and depth to the franchise, allowing players to delve deep into the Hades underworld,” said Brian Sullivan, president and lead designer, Iron Lore Entertainment. “With a myriad of new class and skill combinations, and over a dozen hours of exciting story-driven content to explore, newcomers and die-hard fans alike will enjoy groundbreaking RPG action.”

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:04 AM

Category: Action

LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 12, 2007 - Gamecock Media Group is pleased to announce they have joined forces with Firefly Studios to launch their next game - Hero. Gamecock founders Mike Wilson and Harry Miller first started working with Firefly while running Gathering of Developers. At that time, the two companies brought the original Stronghold games to market.

"When we discussed working with them again, they asked if we wanted the next Stronghold or an original title. The team was insanely passionate and committed to the new original title, so it was a no-brainer for us, we choose that," said Mike Wilson, CEO and Head of Marketing for Gamecock Media Group. "They understand that consumers want something more than another sequel and we plan to support that vision."

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:39 AM

Category: Developer

"The major publishers have been focusing on safe bets - large budget games often attached to major licenses or sequels," says current Gamecock CEO and former G.O.D. CEO Mike Wilson. "This insufficient emphasis on the creation of original game properties has created major dissatisfaction among the industry's most talented game designers and has made the current system unpalatable. In other words, things are getting stale. We aim to change that."

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:56 PM

Category: First Person

The “Third Reich” has conquered the whole world. The World by now lives oppressed and the German soldiers themselves suffer this situation, but nobody has the courage to rise up against the Dictator. One day, a young soldier decides that the moment has come to get into the action… The player will walk in his shoes and will have to complete all the missions in order to reach Hitler and defeat him.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:06 AM

Category: Action

On a deeper level, this is looking intriguing because of the perfect balance Crystal Dynamics are trying to strike. Tomb Raider once had a seductive simplicity and loneliness you'd never know from looking at last year's Legends, and to get it back, the team's stripping away some equipment, moves, and the specialists back at Croft Manor you perpetually nattered with.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:01 PM

Category: Action

"We're huge fans of Battlestar Galactica and are thrilled to have the opportunity to create a game inspired by the TV series," said Ed Zobrist, president of Sierra Online. "NBC Universal is working closely with us so that players will be able immerse themselves in the Battlestar Galactica universe and re-live their favorite missions from the TV series."

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:50 PM

Category: Developer

Our philosophy has always been that we don't believe in trying to design the game for a platform. Our philosophy is to [decide] what game we want to make, then determine which platforms can run that game. Last time around, we were just making [The Elder Scrolls:] Morrowind for PC because that's all there was that could run the game we wanted to make. Then, halfway through development, we found out about the Xbox, and looked at the specs and said, "Hey, that could actually run Morrowind. We should do it for that platform."

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:02 PM

Category: Role Playing

"Well it's a geographical split to start with - there's a giant ridge that runs the breadth of the island," explains Shivering Isles lead designer Mark Nelson when I quiz him about Bethesda's new psychological leanings. "The highlands are the lands of Mania and the lowlands are the lands of Dementia.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:20 AM

Category: Role Playing

NEW YORK, February 5, 2007 - Atari, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR), one of the world’s most recognized brands and a third-party video game publisher, and game developer CD Projekt Sp. z.o.o. today announced that the companies have entered into a publishing agreement for The Witcher, whereby Atari will market and distribute CD Projekt's upcoming fantasy role-playing game (RPG) throughout North America. The Witcher is scheduled for release on Games for Windows, the new brand optimized for Windows XP and Windows Vista, in North America in Fall 2007.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:33 AM

Category: Role Playing

We've included some dynamic and original fighting styles in the game, including some "dirty" tricks you can use to gain the upper hand on your enemy. The magic system allows players to create their own spells by stacking arcane cards. There are also different guilds you can join, which will offer you more options in character development.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:56 AM

Category: Action

The Immortal Throne expansion pack has a much darker, mysterious, more sinister tone than the original Titan Quest, and we wanted to make sure that fell came across clearly in game world. A major design issue we faced was that we needed to create a mythological world that was technically "underground" but also gave the feeling that it existed in a completely different dimension. On a high level, it was important that we created a new experience for players that would contrast the "fire and brimstone" stereotype that often gets associated with Hades.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:57 AM

Category: Role Playing

We have taken the decision to postpone its release for a short time. The time gained will be used to further perfect the multiplayer aspect.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:55 AM

Category: Simulation

As you would expect from a submarine simulator, anything under the water has to be as believable as anything above it. Thankfully, refraction, lighting, and all of the other tricks used underwater create a completely believable and creepy environment that adds to the stress of wartime gameplay.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:33 PM

Category: Role Playing

Mark Nelson: Creating a space that big is always challenging, as you don't want to create a world that's big and empty. The world needs to be filled with things to see and do. That's what Elder Scrolls games are known for, though -- huge, open worlds that give the player room to explore.