Pre-Alpha Footage of Dragon Age: Inquisition Hits the Internet

The legal and public relations teams at EA and BioWare aren’t going to be happy but pre-alpha footage of Dragon Age: Inquisition recorded from a screen at DigiExpo 2013 has found its way to the internet.

The video gives us a reasonably good look at the visuals of the game, some questing and some combat. Watch it soon because I don’t expect EA or BioWare to leave this up for long.

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Building (Critical) Consensus: BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea DLC – Episode One

burial-at-sea-episode-one-poster-artIt looks like 2K Games is all aboard the DLC train this week. Yesterday, we looked at the Enemy Within expansion for XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Today, it’s the first part of the two-part Burial at Sea DLC for BioShock Infinite. If you haven’t played through to the end of Infinite, chances are that there are some spoilers in the reviews, this post and the DLC itself so consider yourself forewarned.

Opinion on the first real narrative driven BioShock Infinite DLC seems to really be split on whether you’re partial to using the term “ludonarrative dissonance.” If you thought it was a big issue with Infinite proper, you’ll find the same here. The narrative apparently doesn’t have quite the same moral undertones of the game proper’s so that might also be a detracting point for some. Though everyone agrees that the game looks gorgeous. Since BioShock doesn’t work on Windows 7, this might be one of the few opportunities for PC gamers to visit Rapture in all its glory.

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Comic Book Pull List for November 13, 2013

x-men-gold-1This week in learning something new, I learned that there’s still an Injustice comic series. That game came out back in April but DC is still publishing comics based on the game’s story. And here I was thinking that the comic was just a prequel to the game. This week, Injustice gets its own big annual release in Injustice: Gods Among Us Annual #1.

Elsewhere, Marvel has a new comic series to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the X-Men. The iconic comic characters who found renewed popularity in the 90s with an animated cartoon and the 2000s with the film franchise, have been around 50 years. Various iconic writers come together to write a new tale about fan favourites like Cyclops, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Kitty Pryde and Rogue.

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Building (Critical) Consensus: XCOM: Enemy Within

xcom-enemy-within-korean-box-artHow often do games get proper full-on expansion packs nowadays. Sure, DLC is practically a dime a dozen, though publishers sure don’t price them like that. Lengthy expansion packs that eat up hours upon hours of your time rather than hour (singular) of your time seem few and far between, especially outside of the strategy genre. So when one of last year’s best games based on an old-school cult favourite gets an old-school expansion pack, it’s hard not to take notice.

Whether you will like XCOM: Enemy Within and think that it’s worth the $30 asking price will be largely dependent on how much you liked last year’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown. If you loved it, there’ll be more here for you to love. If you weren’t a fan of EU, well, it doesn’t sound like there’s much here to change your mind.

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Humble Bundle Opens The Humble Store

humble-bundle-headerChances are that you’ve bought a game (or several) from a Humble Bundle or purchased an indie game directly from the developer through the so-called Humble Store. However, that Humble Store was really just a little sales app on a developer’s website and a download link in your email.

That is until Monday when the folks behind the Humble Bundle launched the Humble Store storefront.

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sOs Crowned 2013 StarCraft 2 World Champion

sOs-wcs-global-final-2013The beauty of sports is that anyone can win on any given weekend. That saying also extends to eSports. At this weekend’s StarCraft II World Championship Series Global Finals at BlizzCon, Korean Protoss sOs came in as the underdog 12th seed and beat four higher ranked players en route to winning the 2013 StarCraft World Championship.
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Haven: William Review

haven-text-headerJust when you thought that things in Haven couldn’t change any more over the course of one hour, we have another one that results in us questioning almost everything that we thought that we knew heading into this episode. I guess that makes it just another week in coastal Maine.


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Geek Links of the Week

Are you an aspiring in the UK or Ireland and want to land a lead role in one of the biggest summer blockbusters of 2015? Well, they’re holding open auditions for Star Wars: Episode VII in London, Glasgow and Dublin starting next week. [BBC]

The folks at Wired look into the design process of the new PlayStation 4 and the major role played by former game dev turned PS4 hardware guru Mark Cerny. [Wired]

Remember that super secret job threatening thing the games industry was doing that could end Adam Sessler’s career and everyone was up in arms about even though there wasn’t a shred of evidence what he could be on about? It turns out that Sessler was making a mountain out of a… thing not even big enough to be a mole hill. [Original Gamer]

Good news: A new study says that gaming helps your brain. See, we all knew that gaming was a good thing. [Polygon]

How big are eSports and eSports sponsorships getting? Mainstream business publications are starting to take notice of where marketing dollars are going. [Fortune]

Canadian Invents $100 3D Printer

peachy-printerA new crowdfunded project by a Canadian inventor is bringing affordable 3D printers to the masses. Saskatchewan native Rylan Grayston has created a 3D printer and scanner that will sell for only $100.

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Ubisoft Calls Beyond Good & Evil a Mistake

beyond-good-and-evil-headerI’ve often lamented the lack of new IPs and new ideas coming out of the games industry’s big studios and news like this doesn’t help matters. In an interview with Games Industry, creative director of the upcoming Child of Light, Patrick Plourde, said that when he was pitching the game to Ubisoft, they told him that making Beyond Good & Evil was a mistake.

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