A recent rumour reported by Kotaku’s anonymous rumour man, Superannuation, suggests that the originally planned reboot for XCOM may not be dead after the success of last year’s hit XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
Originally, 2K planned to reboot XCOM as a first-person shooter set in the 1960s. The game was originally set for a March 2012 release date before it was delayed into an apparent state of development hell. In the meantime, it’s thunder was stolen by Firaxis’ reboot of XCOM in the tradition turn-based tactical strategy form that we expect of XCOM.
Among all the other April Fools’ Day pranks and jokes, games developers like to get in on the fun. The press seemed to like the Sony buys Nintendo joke. I read that a couple of times yesterday. Granted, I thought yesterday’s best April Fools’ joke was The Walking Dead’s season finale. *rimshot*
Anyway, ThatGameCompany and Eidos Montreal both had the best pranks of the day with a couple of “new game” reveals.
Captain James T. Kirk is back to help sell the upcoming Star Trek: The Video Game and he’s brought along an old friend. No, I’m not talking about Chris Pine’s Kirk from the rebooted Star Trek helmed by director J.J. Abrams, though that’s the time period in which the new game is set. In the latest Star Trek: The Video Game promo, William Shatner is back and battling his old nemesis, the Gorn. Sadly, no flying drop kick.
After numerous denials, we finally have the first officially confirmed piece of news about the upcoming 50th Anniversary special of Doctor Who. As first reported by Blogtor Who as being revealed by this week’s Doctor Who magazine and later confirmed by the BBC, David Tennant and Billie Piper will reprise their roles as the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler for this fall’s Doctor Who 50th anniversary special.
Steven Moffat loves that little catchphrase that he wrote back in Season 3’s Blink. When Moffat writes, you get the sense that wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey will be involved at some point. (That or Weeping Angels.) With new companion Clara Oswald, we got our fair share of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey fun. There just wasn’t that same Moffat writing that we come to expect from his episodes in The Bells of Saint John.
In 2012, the US Federal Trade Commission did a mystery shopper sting to see if stores were selling adult-rated movies, CDs and games to kids. It turns out that video game retailers have the best compliance in not selling M-rated games to kids. Take that, NRA. [FTC]
But for the gaming industry, it’s two steps forward and one step back. Here’s a look at some of the most offensive attempts at video game marketing. [Cracked]
A group at Full Sail University have spent months breaking down the weighting behind Metacritic’s games review weighting system. Metacritic claims that the results are inaccurate but of course they’d do that. They wouldn’t want anyone to know they give a volunteer site the highest possible weight and Giant Bomb the second lowest weight. [Gamasutra]
A report says that fewer games have multiplayer components. While I’d suggest that when you include indies that may be true, if you were to only look at releases from the big publishers, I’d bet that the percentage with multiplayer has gone up. [The Penny Arcade Report]
With Doctor Who coming back this weekend (can you tell that I’m excited?), here is a look at some of Matt Smith’s best moments as The Doctor. [Geek Sugar]
The second half of Series 7 of Doctor Who begins this weekend too. We’re six episodes into the fourteen episode season (if you include the Christmas Special) which means we have a fair bit of time left to figure out what the deal is with The Doctor’s new companion, Clara Oswald.
Here’s the official launch trailer. The show is back tomorrow (Saturday, March 30th) in the UK, Canada and the US.
Game of Thrones returns on Sunday for Season 3. Unfortunately, HBO has put the first showing of the season premiere against the season finale of The Walking Dead. Assuming that three weeks of nothing happening hasn’t turned people off of TWD, you can always catch the 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM showings.
In case, for some strange reason, you missed Season 2 of Game of Thrones, you can catch up on the show with this short recap video.
As part of their Mass Effect retrospective panel at PAX East, BioWare released an infographic detailing the decisions made by players. They didn’t reveal stats like completion rate or which ending was chosen (for obvious reasons) but they did detail the most popular classes, FemShep vs. BroShep, paragon vs. renegade, the favourite squadmates and even total single player play time across the community.
Pokemon Snap always struck me as an oddity in the Pokemon gaming series. While the Game Boy games were about travelling though Kanto (and subsequently added regions), catching Pokemon and being the very best (like no one ever was), Pokemon Snap was about you as a photographer. Not quite as glamorous and exciting.
That doesn’t mean that the Snap concept is unsalvageable. The team over at GrittyReboots have given Pokemon Snap a remake for this movie trailer.
et geekera 