Author Archives: Steve Murray

The Unauthorized History of Mass Effect 3

mass-effect-3-posterToday marks the one-year anniversary of the release of BioWare and EA’s Mass Effect 3. The highly anticipated conclusion to the Mass Effect trilogy launched on March 6, 2012, to great reviews from the gaming media but was almost immediately at the centre of a massive controversy among fans over its ending and DLC practices.

Let’s look back at the history of ME3 from launch to today to see what happened and when it happened to make one of 2012’s most anticipated games one of its most controversial. Read the rest of this entry

Reports Say Dead Space 4 Has Been Cancelled

dead-space-3-concept-art-01-isaac-clarkeDead Space 3 has been out all of a month but it looks like EA has seen enough from the sales figures to make a call about the series’ future. Reports say that Dead Space 3 failed to meet its sales targets so EA is pulling the plug on the series, including cancelling Dead Space 4 which Visceral Games already had in pre-production.

The rumour that DS4 has been cancelled is disappointing but apparently not a shock for people inside EA and Visceral Games. While the Dead Space series has been reasonably popular among gamers, it didn’t seem to have too many fans at the publisher. Read the rest of this entry

Curly, Larry and Moe are The A-Team

In 1972 , a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem… if no one else can help… and if you can find them… maybe you can hire… The A-Team.

Building (Critical) Consensus: Tomb Raider

Lara Croft is back and rebooted in the new Tomb Raider. While the title may not be original, it’s still better than that last reboot we saw called Devil May Cry: Devil May Cry. Also, it seems that Tomb Raider overall was better than DMC: DMC. Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix were so confident in their game that the review embargo for the game ended eight days before its release.  It turns out that they gambled correctly on this one. Read the rest of this entry

Is Gran Turismo 6 Coming This Year?

gran-turismo-5-01As a PlayStation guy, the discussion of road car, grand touring and sports car racing sims begins and ends with the Gran Turismo series. Even my friends who weren’t racing fans talked about the game and I can remember one long and heated discussion about the relative 180 made in handling models from GT1 to GT2.

According to an interview with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Senior Vice President Michael Denny, it looks as though Gran Turismo 5 wasn’t our only taste of Polyphony Digital’s epic racing series on the PlayStation 3. Denny might have let it slip that Gran Turismo 6 will be out this year. Read the rest of this entry

Can You Name All 26 Famous Video Game Locations in This Video?

Dutch artist Tim Hijlkema has put together a video featuring twenty-six different famous locations from video games. It’s not a compilation of game footage, however. Hijlkema created new stylized art and animation for each of the worlds he recreated in this video. While the levels all look different, they retain the feel of the original games they were based on.

If you want the full list of levels and games in the video and a collection of wallpapers to go with it, click through to the original video on YouTube.

Geek Links of the Week

While you’d be forgiven if you think that millionaire Dennis Tito’s plan to send a privately funded space mission to Mars and back is a bit outlandish, not everyone thinks it’s impossible. [Wired]

Kickstarter has become the medium of choice (for lack of a better term) for small game developers looking for funding for a new game. We know how it works from our end as backer. Now, a one-man dev team explains the process from the other side. [Gamasutra]

Uncharted 3’s multiplayer went free-to-play this week. At first glance, it doesn’t make much sense but I think it’s a brilliant business move and it may be copied by other games. [The Lowdown Blog]

Who doesn’t love a good gaming glitch? Okay, apart from people who got hosed by a glitch. Anyhow, here’s a look at a half-dozen unintentionally hilarious glitches. [Cracked]

Normally, I don’t run videos in the Geek Links but I love Conan’s Clueless Gamer segments so much that I had to make an exception. Here’s Conan O’Brien reviewing the upcoming Tomb Raider game.

GoldenEye 64 in Real Life

I could be wrong but I’m not sure that there was a more influential title than GoldenEye 64. It is not only one of the best-reviewed first-person shooters of all-time, it set the bar for both FPSs and FPS multiplayer modes on the home console. Prior to GoldenEye, the first-person shooter was largely seen as a PC genre.

And that history lesson brings us to this video recreating GoldenEye’s multiplayer in real-life. Not only does it recreate some of the tactics that people used but the You Only Live Twice game mode and paintball mode easter egg. It’s all that you remember about playing GoldenEye with your friends in one video.

Game of Thrones Has The Greatest Newspaper Ad Ever

Readers of the New York Times would have justified in looking over their shoulder like a mad man while searching for the source of an unexpected shadow on their Wednesday morning paper. That’s because the shadow wasn’t real but an ad for season three of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Read the rest of this entry

Are You Ready For Some Blood Bowl II?

On Tuesday, publisher Focus Home Interactive teased a new project on Twitter. They posted a logo that can only mean that they’re working on a sequel for their cult hit game Blood Bowl. Read the rest of this entry