Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Developer Warren Spector and Blizzard Entertainment COO Paul Sams will help oversee a new gaming academy being put into place at the University of Texas at Austin. The Denius-Sams Gaming Academy, named after co-founders Wofford Denius, Sams and his wife, will begin in 2014 with only 20 spots for students, and will award a postbaccalaureate certificate rather than a graduate degree, which the school says will help it remain industry-focused.

Spector, the creator of Deus Ex and the Disney Epic Mickey series, will put together the curriculum, which will include a 12-month intensive program where students will make a game themselves. Students selected for admission will also get a tuition waiver and a $10,000 stipend for fees and housing expenses. The program will begin next fall.

Did you catch the gaming poster in the trailer for the return of Arrested Development? It's the periodic table of game controllers! ...which is a real poster, by the way. You, too, can be like George Michael.

In its latest financial report (translated here by Dr. Serkan Toto) Osaka-based publisher GungHo Entertainment announced that its mobile puzzle-RPG Puzzle & Dragons grossed over $113 million in April.

To put that in perspective, GungHo's catalog-wide earnings for April totaled ¥12 billion ($119 million) - a 1,142.8 percent increase over its performance in April 2012. Puzzle & Dragons currently generates $3.76 million in daily revenue, and boasts 13 million players in Japan.

Puzzle & Dragons originally launched for iOS and Android devices last year. A Nintendo 3DS adaptation is slated for release in Japan this winter.Hit mobile RPG Puzzle & Dragons earned $113 million in April

Todd Miller is one of the men accused of being behind the 2008 PlayStation Network hacks. Last week he was sentenced to 12 months house arrest, but here's the thing: authorities couldn't prove he was involved. Instead, the Columbus Dispatch reports, the sentence was handed out because Miller, having been interviewed by the FBI in 2011, went and smashed all his computers before they could return with a search warrant. Because of this, they couldn't prove he was involved in the hacks. So they nailed the 23 year-old with "obstructing a federal investigation" instead. In addition to the house arrest, Miller - who has a ninth-grade education - was also ordered by the judge to complete a high school certificate. Hacking suspect gets year of house arrest [Columbus Dispatch, via Game Politics]

This is The Novelist, an upcoming indie game by veteran designer Kent Hudson. It looks kind of amazing. I'll let Hudson explain the concept, via his website: The Novelist asks one central question: can you achieve your dreams without pushing away the people you love? The game focuses on Dan Kaplan, a novelist struggling to write the most important book of his career while trying to be the best husband and father he can be. The Kaplans have come to a remote coastal home for the summer, unaware that they’re sharing the house with a mysterious ghostly presence: you. Read the family’s thoughts. Explore their memories. Uncover their desires and intervene in their lives. But stay out of sight; you can’t help the Kaplans if they know there’s a ghost in the house. It’s up to you to decide how Dan’s career and family life will evolve, but choose carefully; there are no easy answers, and every choice has a cost. Dan’s relationships – to his work, his wife, and his son – react and shift in response to your choices. With a different sequence of events in every playthrough, The Novelist gives life to a unique experience each time you play. The decisions you make will define the Kaplans’ lives, but they may also tell you something about yourself. Sounds really interesting, don't you think? The Novelist will be out this summer. It's on Steam Greenlight, too.

Patrick and Drew have arctic flashbacks as they run through the footage that didn't fit anywhere else.

No The Multiplayer column this week—sorry folks! Patricia ain't feeling so great. The column will be back next week, though.

There's a certain stigma attached to strategy games, where deep systems and mechanics can hoist a sky-high barrier for the uninitiated. Sid Meier's Ace Patrol sidesteps these stigmas, presenting a turn-based experience so simple that even the strategically challenged will be able to play and excel.

Designed for iOS devices, Ace Patrol is a dogfighting game set in WWI. With a series of taps, intense air combat is engaged over a battlefield of hexagonal grids. Using these taps, players execute everything from strafing to swooping dives, hard banking, the Immelman turn and other expert maneuvers.

Greg Rucka doesn't seem like somebody who needs help making his dreams come true. This is, after all, a man who wrote Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman comics all at the same time. He’s also managed to craft incredibly tense dramas in creator-owned series like Queen & Country, Whiteout and Stumptown. But the best-selling novelist still has other things he wants to do, like write a work set in one of BioWare’s video game universes. And, as he recently told me, over e-mail, he wants it bad: “I’d cut a throat to get into the Mass Effect and Dragon Age universes, frankly.” Granted, he’s going to be a bit busy for a while. The Portland-dwelling writer is associated with not one, but two, Kickstarter campaigns. The first is for a print collection of Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, a webcomic that Rucka and artist Rick Burchett started nearly two years ago. The other crowdfunding initiative aims to power the development of point-and-click adventure game AR-K, which Rucka is contributing writing to. (Ash Sroka, who voiced Tali in the Mass Effect games, plays the role of lead character Alicia.) In the interview below, Rucka answers my questions about how AR-K will be a game design education for him, the game he most infuriated him and breaking away from bigger comics publishers and charting his own destiny. Kotaku: You've written stories with very combat-oriented characters like Batman, Wolverine or the Punisher. It seems like the static nature of the point-and-click adventure genre might be a challenge for you. Is that the case? Or are you using other tools in your skill set aside from the things you call on for high-octane set pieces? Rucka: It’s funny, because I don’t actually think I’m terribly good at writing violence or action. In comics–and in my novels–it’s part of the genre, and often a necessary part of the story. But my main interest has always been in character, who people are and what they want and what they’ll do to achieve that end. So in that sense, writing on AR-K is absolutely ideal. The game is driven by Alicia’s character entirely, her choices and her words. As far as “my” toolbox goes, that’s pretty established. The biggest challenge I have is, frankly, that I don’t think I’m terribly funny. Alicia isn’t a comedian, but she’s incredibly wry and acerbic, and that absolutely has to come across in what she says. But, y’know, I write from character, and Sergio and Fernando had done a wonderful job establishing who she is before they even brought me aboard. Kotaku: Aside from the big, obvious answer of 'writing a video game,' what will AR-K let you do that comics or novels haven't let you accomplish yet? How's it going to be different than writing Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow? Rucka: On Logan’s Shadow, I really had very little to do with the actual execution of the game. I was brought in to provide the story and to advise on its execution as much as anything else, and some of the dialogue I provided in that process ended up used in game. Here, I’m much – much! – more involved. I’m actually scripting, which is something I’ve never done before in video games. That’s a learning experience in and of itself. It’s very much an issue of taking an established skillset and applying it to a new form, and that’s exciting and daunting all at once. Kotaku: You've written Perfect Dark novels featuring that series' main character Joanna Dark. Are there other video game characters you’d like to write? Rucka: I’d cut a throat to get into the Mass Effect and Dragon Age universes, frankly. It’s always seemed to me that both are ideally suited for further exploration in novels and comics, and BioWare seems to have recognized that, because of course they’re doing both, with both franchises. Kotaku: You've been writing pirates in Lady Sabre for a while now. Is there pirate stuff you’d like to see in Assassin's Creed IV? Rucka: I think what I’d like to see nobody would want to play, honestly. We tried, over at Lady Sabre (in Chapter 8) to depict a “naval battle” in a somewhat more realistic fashion than you tend to see in movies and games. Nautical warfare is fraught with so many variables, and I’d love to see at least some of that represented, because I think that adds a depth that is truly enriching. But the AC games, while they’re tactical in part, that’s never been their thrust, so I don’t really imagine them saying, hey, yeah, let’s figure out how to code an 8-hour naval engagement and sighting cannon on rolling seas, etc. Kotaku: Walk us through your video game biography. What was the first game to really hook you? What game do you look back on with anger or frustration? Rucka: Oh, man, you’re making me feel old. The first game that really hooked me? Would have to be a toss-up between the original Fallout and Baldur’s Gate. I lost weeks, if not months, of time to those. I adore them both to this day, and still return to them from time to time. "I still chase down interviews and quotes from folks like Feargus Urquhart and Chris Avellone and Brian Fargo, basically anyone who has the whiff of the old Black Isle studios still on ‘em." There’ve been a few games that I picked up with high hopes and then was bitterly disappointed by. There was a Star Trek combat one for the Xbox a while back that was a rage-quit festival, I remember. But most of the time, what I react to is loss of promise, a game like KOTOR 2, for instance, which so obviously suffered from not-enough-time-to-finish-it. I still think it’s a 75% brilliant game and story, and it so clearly was compromised by someone’s decision to get it to market by Christmas. Kotaku: What have you played recently and what have you enjoyed about them? What are you looking forward to? Rucka: I’ve spent way too much time playing ME3 multiplayer, frankly. That’s been the go-to game for the last year, both because of how wonderfully it was executed and because it was really the first time I embraced online multiplayer fully. I’ve got a small handful of friends, and it was our social outlet for quite a while. I haven’t picked up much in the new release category, honestly, because I’ve been under deadline on the new novel. I did play the new (old?) XCOM, and I loved it. I played the originals and I thought Firaxis did a wonderful job of updating them without once compromising what made the originals so good. Next up is probably the new Tomb Raider. It’s just a question of time, y’know? Kotaku: Man, that Mademoiselle Marie storyline of Checkmate… whoo. Not a question, I know. Rucka: She was all the awesome. I wish we’d had the opportunity to do more with her. I’d love to do a MM series. Kotaku: You've made pointed comments about the waning desire to work for Marvel and DC, going so far as to assert that even top talent gets treated as disposable. Now you're doing a new creator-owned series at Image and crowd-funding a collection of Lady Sabre. How much extra work is there in steering your own ship? Did you ever feel like you had a safety net writing for the Big Two or is that whole idea a fallacy? Rucka: I think Marvel and DC both have their place, but comics are larger than that, and I fear everything that’s out there gets eclipsed by the giants in spandex, if that makes sense. These days, the opportunity to do quality work for the Big Two is diminished, because both are more than ever obvious extensions of the parents – Warner Brothers, in the case of the DC, and Disney in the case of Marvel. These are businesses, and the bottom-line is what matters most, and when you’re talking about a creative endeavor, that can be problematic. That said, I love the genre, I love those characters, and I’ve gone to great lengths to never-say-never in regards to working on such properties again. The thing about Lady Sabre is that everything – everything – we do with it comes down to the decisions that Rick Burchett (artist) and Eric Newsom (editor) and I make. We sink or swim based on that, and it also means we have to do all the heavy lifting. The current Kickstarter campaign is a perfect example of that; we spent literally months putting together not only the campaign, but also the information and quote on what printing would cost us. You work at a big – or even small – publisher, and that’s work that someone else does, that’s someone else’s job. With Lady Sabre, that’s part of our job. It’s an extraordinary amount of extra work. There’s another crucial bit, that goes to the idea of a “safety net.” One of the things you trade off when working at the Big Two – or on any work-for-hire project – is autonomy. What you get in return is consistency; you’ll get paid, and you’ll ideally get paid in a timely fashion. Those of us who work in comics, we’re freelancers, we’ve always got to be worried about where the next job, the next check is coming from. With Lady Sabre, there’s no monetization as yet; even the Kickstarter exists not to pay us, but rather to allow us to print the trades, and ideally those trades – the extras from the campaign – will be turned into some modest income. "...It comes down to this: You treat talented creators poorly, you get shitty comics. It’s as simple as that. If you’re happy reading shitty comics, then I suppose you shouldn’t worry about it. If you want to read good comics about the characters you love, then you should damn-well care." Kotaku: Dystopian futures are a dime a dozen in genre fiction. What's going to make Lazarus stand out? The sort-of-medieval idea of ruling families? Rucka: There are lots of stories with dragons, what makes them different? There’s lots of stories with murder, what makes them different? What makes them different is the people who tell them and what they’re trying to say with what they’re offering. Michael Lark and I are writing less science fiction, I think, than “speculative fiction.” The world is character, not solely setting. That’s part of what we’re going to explore. If you want a longer answer, you’ll have to wait until the book is released. Issue 1 of LAZARUS is out at the end of June, from Image comics. Kotaku: Can you articulate what comics as a medium loses by giving creators short shrift? Why should fans care if they keep getting new comics about their character every month? Rucka: Yeah, it comes down to this: You treat talented creators poorly, you get shitty comics. It’s as simple as that. If you’re happy reading shitty comics, then I suppose you shouldn’t worry about it. If you want to read good comics about the characters you love, then you should damn-well care. You don’t get the best work from people who feel they’re under fire, that there’s no security in their job or trust in their work. Respect the talent, respect what they bring to the characters, and collaborate. Comics is, by nature, a collaborative medium. When writers and artists are treated as disposable and interchangeable, the work will suffer. It all comes down to what you want to spend your money on. You continue to pay for crap, then the message you’re sending is that crap sells, and more crap will come to market. Kotaku: Your work's been filled with nuanced, naturalistic characterization of female protagonists. People call them 'strong women,' but they're not just tough. Your heroines have been delusional, naïve or self-destructive. That can't be said about a lot of female video game characters. Do you think there's one stumbling block preventing more well-rounded portrayals in games? Rucka: I don’t know if there’s one. There’s certainly a belief that the male gamer doesn’t want to see/play female protagonists, despite evidence to the contrary. But, like most things, I think fear is the defining factor in these kinds of decisions – fear that money won’t be made, or worse, will be lost. And I think that, like in comics, video games suffer from a lack of women behind the scenes as much as on the screen. Kotaku: Comics fans know from creators. They can name-check you, Grant Morrison, Michael Lark or Jim Lee as forces in their favorite medium. Are there game-makers—writers, designers, artists—who you follow in similar fashion? Is there a creator or studio that gets you excited when you hear they're working on something? Or are you more a fan of franchises or genres? Rucka: I’m slavishly devoted to what BioWare does, especially in their RPG games, and I actually do pay attention to the kinds of things they’re saying, and who’s saying them. That’s pretty much always been my focus, computer RPGs and the folks behind them. I still chase down interviews and quotes from folks like Feargus Urquhart and Chris Avellone and Brian Fargo, basically anyone who has the whiff of the old Black Isle studios still on ‘em. I’ve met Ken Levine once, years ago, and he struck me then as an incredibly talented, incredibly smart guy. I haven’t played Infinite yet, so I can’t comment on the game, but I’ve always appreciated his unapologetic attempts to push the medium. It’s why I follow the BioWare folks and the other people I’ve listed—I think they’re cutting a new storytelling medium, honing it, refining it, and pushing it, and I’m always eager to learn about what they’re working on now, what they’re working on next. Kotaku: Are games a part of your kids' lives? How do you play with them? And where do you draw the line in terms of what they can and can't play? Rucka: Absolutely they are. My son’s 13, and he’s a well-adjusted kid who knows his boundaries, he knows what he can take and what he can’t, and I’m pretty much happy to let him choose what he plays in almost any instance. He just got a new laptop and the first thing he did was get on Steam and download Tomb Raider and the Mass Effect franchise. He’s playing through the Assassin’s Creed games now, too, on the Xbox, when he can tear himself away from FIFA 13. My daughter is 9, and most of her gaming is on her computer, as opposed to any of our consoles. She’s played a lot of stuff on the Wii, and that’s been a genuinely good console for the whole family to enjoy, so we tend to play with her a lot. Xbox has been harder for her, not so much because of content but honestly because her hands are only now really big enough to handle the controller. Thing is, and it’s not original to say this by any means, what they can and can’t play, that’s very much case-by-case. It’s not the industry’s job to parent my children, that’s for me and my wife. We want to know what they’re doing, it’s incumbent on us to be informed and to talk to them. We play a lot of tabletop games, too, for the record. It’s good family time, and it’s a good way to actually explore other things going on in their – and our – lives. Everyone needs to play, you know? It’s good for the mind and the soul, be it on a screen or at the table.

Filming begins in Macon, Ga. on the Need for Speed movie, which this local TV reporter says is "a great moment for Macon, for Fountain Car Wash, and for all of the community."

WWE 2K14 is scheduled to launch on October 29 for Xbox 360 and PS3, Take-Two Interactive confirmed in its fiscal year 2013 financial report. Take-Two snagged the rights to the WWE franchise in February, through a deal that went down before THQ's public bankruptcy auction in January. The deal gives Take-Two exclusive rights to publish WWE games "across all major platforms and distribution channels."

WWE 2K14 is in production from series developer Yukes, based in Japan, and 2K Sports.

Triple Town developer Spry Fox has surprised and delighted me at every turn, from their clone-attracking mobile masterpiece to browser-based strategy game Highgrounds to the completely charming co-op of Leap Day. So when the developers tell us they are crafting a moving, personal tale of love and loss within a roguelike puzzle game, I don't scoff — I sit back and wait for something magical to happen. I can see the stirrings of it in the illustrations of Brent “Meowza” Kobayashi, previously the art director for the MMO Glitch. His whimsical and often melancholy designs set the mood for a story inspired by Robert Frost's 1916 power "The Road Not Taken." The poem's message is about making your own way, forging new paths through life. Road Not Taken is an exploration of what happens when someone steps off the accepted life path — school work, family, death — to explore a more adventurous route through life. According to Spry Fox, it's one of the most personal games the studio's Daniel Cook has created. It's sounds fascinating, the way they describe it — deep and moving — but wouldn't a standard point-and-click adventure game be better suited to such an undertaking? "It's an experiment with a more pointillist approach to narrative, which we think is particularly well-served by the roguelike genre," Said Spry Fox's David Edery. "Each object, each animations, and each bit of text is a bit of paint on the canvas. Over dozens of play-throughs, a greater theme will hopefully be revealed to the player." Road Not Taken promises hundreds of hours of adventuring through Zelda-like puzzles rooms littered with bits of story and Meowza's fanciful artwork. It's not the sort of game I'd ever have expected, the sort of strange and wonderful creature you might come across when walking unfamiliar paths. Keep track of Road Not Taken here.

This week, we're going International.

There is so much suffocating despair in Metro: Last Light. The world is irradiated rubble, blanketed in noxious fumes and trampled by gnarled monstrosities. Humans that remain must huddle underfoot, eking out lives in Moscow's underground railways. But the worst thing, the cruelest twist, the darkest dick move of the apocalypse, is that millions die and the accordion still makes it.

If not its purpose, I have to respect the accordion's presence in Metro: Last Light. You can listen to the instrument's musical wheezing as part of a show put on in a dilapidated theater, one of several populated hubs you'll visit in your trek through the tunnels of Moscow. If you opt out of the game's scavenging and shooting for a few moments, there's an entire show to take in. It has all the awkwardness and earnestness of a production that only needs to be less bleak than its surroundings.

Last Light, much like predecessor Metro 2033, is a feat of obsessive, paradoxical world-building - you believe this as a place that has been demolished, poisoned and forced to retreat into claustrophobic hovels. There are glimmers of recuperating life in these bastions, most of all in Metro's stunning sewer-bound equivalent of Venice. The town layouts are noticeably linear, in part because there isn't much room for subterranean sprawl, and because the game spends all its money on the critical path. To explore is to linger, listen and look; and that's fine.

Buttons, controllers, keyboards, motion controls? Been there, done that. Mind-controlled games, people—or more specifically, games controlled by brain activity—are something else. Son of Nor is a game about controlling the elements and terraforming—we've called it an Avatar game of sorts before, we've likened the abilities you have to "force powers." Both of these things are all the more true now given that you can play Son of Nor using an EPOC Emotiv device. This device has sensors which can "tune into electrical signals produced by the brain to detect user thoughts, feelings and expressions." In this case specifically, you can tap into your in-game powers by using your brainwaves. How easy that is to actually master, however, is another thing entirely. If you head over to Son of Nor's Kickstarter page, you'll notice that you pre-order a copy of the game with an Emotive EPOC headgear for $300 bucks. Definitely not cheap, but possibly worth it. You can also vote for Son of Nor on Steam Greenlight here.

Leaked document suggests Google's Android OS could soon receive new gaming features, like in-game chat, multiplayer matchmaking, and more.

People who gamed on PCs during the ancient 90s may remember The Incredible Machine, a wonderful series in which you could construct all sorts of strange Rube Goldberg contraptions out of springs and ramps and balls. It's back! Sort of. Contraption Maker, a spiritual successor created by some of the people behind the TIM games of old, will enter Alpha this summer for PC and Mac. And—you're not gonna believe this—they don't even have a Kickstarter. "The team that created the original Incredible Machine is bringing all of the Rube Goldberg craziness to the modern age," they write on their website. "Solve puzzles involving ridiculous chain reactions full of hamster motors, trampolines, alligators, cats, and so much more. Then go to the powerful Maker Lab, where you can create your own contraptions. Everything you loved about the original game is back and improved with a new physics engine, high definition art, and new parts and programmability." Very cool.

After just over a month on the market, AT&T is said to be cutting the HTC First from its lineup.

Announced for WiiWare over 5 years ago, Animales de la Muerte is finally here, re-envisioned for iOS. Best of all, it's super fun!

Whoever made this clip wants you to believe it’s the first look at the PlayStation 4 hardware. But, Sony tells me it's a fake. Too bad. Nevertheless, I wouldn't blame someone just wandering over onto the Internet for guessing it wasn't. Let's consider the footage, shall we? Sure, E3 is right around the corner and the super-slick 44-second video seems like it might be the work of a professional creative shop. The facial reaction shots are intercut with looks at an already-announced PS4 game—Infamous: Second Son, in case it's not clear—and hardware but the images and video in those segments are readily available all over the web. And the supposed hardware could be one of the many fan-made renders that are jostling for attention on the internet. Granted, this could be the work of MOFILM, the firm that Sony recently hired to handle crowd-sourced advertising. As good as it looks, it almost certainly be the work of a dedicated fan looking to capitalize on the excitement leading up to E3. Alas, a representative from Sony's American division has confirmed to Kotaku that this isn’t an official clip, saying that it wasn't produced or released by them. We’re all going to have to wait a while longer to finally see what the PS4’s body looks like.

Games are a funny medium. Unlike movies, books, and music, games are made in different parts of the world, but we hardly take note of their place of origin. If it’s fun to play, does it matter? In some respects, this makes games a wonderfully progressive medium, one in which the quality of the creation is judged for what it is. It’s also resulted in a homogenization of design. That we cannot tell if a game is from one place or another suggests the desire for worldwide acceptance is often stomping out quirks that could help define the medium.

Metro alternates between the cramped underground and the ruined surface.

That’s what made 4A Games’ Metro 2033 stand out. Metro 2033 was set in Russia, made in the region, and played like it came from there. You wanted to swig from a vodka bottle to be a little closer to it--I called it “full immersion.” Just being different wouldn't be enough, though. Metro 2033 was drunk on atmosphere, and brought players to an alien place where the real and the supernatural swapped places at will. It also had terrible combat. I’m happy to report Metro: Last Light makes impressive strides there, changes that will make jumping into its world easier for those who were put off by some gameplay elements that didn't work well last time.

Metro 2033 concluded with Artyom launching a barrage of missiles at a nest of Dark Ones. Ever since the bombs dropped, the survivors of the area around Moscow have been barely scraping by living underground. There’s not much food, water, or other supplies, and in addition to the mutated animals that have adapted on the surface, a new race of sentient beings capable of destroying folks’ minds with a wave of their hand is causing humanity to wonder if it’s about to be replaced. Artyom appeared to have successfully destroyed all the Dark Ones, but Last Light opens by encountering a survivor of the blast, starting a quest to learn their true nature.

Atmosphere went a long way towards helping you forget the frustration of shooting things in Metro 2033. The gunplay was shoddy enough to break the illusion. I’m partial to the theory that awkward controls can actually contribute to immersion when done properly (see: Silent Hill), but in Metro 2033, you’re supposed to be a gunslinger with a deadly arm, and it was tough to be that guy. It takes precious few moments with Metro: Last Light to appreciate the mechanical upgrade. On a controller, the controls are much more streamlined, and allow you to swap tactics on a whim. This translates to the mouse and keyboard, as well, and reflects a general shift in combat design to encourage more than popping off rounds and hoping for the best. The way it feels is harder to describe. It just...feels like a modern shooter, and is no longer a distraction. The Metro games aren't about the power fantasy in so many other shooters, and it doesn't reinvent shooting a gun. Now, rather than fussing with the controls, you can easily fire away, and focus on surviving the hellscape.

Your survival is acutely conveyed in the first-person, a perspective that comes with a great power that few games wield very well. Each time I've declared I’m done with first-person-shooters, what I’m really saying is I’m tired with what the games are--or aren't--doing with the opportunity in front of them. There will always be something satisfying about holding left trigger to aim and holding right trigger to shoot, but that feeling dulls a little more with each game. It’s easy to think that’s all there is to it, and then a game comes along and reminds us games aren't trying hard enough. Mirror’s Edge was one such game; Metro 2033 was another.

In-between the tense action, you'll explore wrecked towns and come to understand humanity's survival in the Metro.

It’s the little details that matter in Metro, and how they add up. It’s about having to put your gun away in order to manually recharge your flashlight’s battery. It’s about being asked to both reload bullets and manually pump the pneumatic tubing on a rifle that you can, oh yes, accidentally over-pump. It’s about hearing a terrifying beep from your watch, signifying there’s a minute left on your current mask filter, the only thing keeping you alive while scouring the surface for a replacement. It’s about the game employing mission markers only by asking you to check a compass, or pulling up a notebook that has the next objective written down. It’s about being in an intense firefight, blasting a twisted creature away with your shotgun, their blood splattering onto your mask, and the only way to see what’s going on is literally hitting a button assigned to wiping your mask off. It’s these differentiations that combine with Metro: Last Light’s oppressive and claustrophobic sense of place to transport you to a world of hope and suffering.

And Last Light spends a surprising amount of time conveying that suffering. In Metro 2033, this largely happened through idle dialogue and inference. Last Light doesn't abandon asking players to draw their own conclusions, but it’s also far more blunt, and introduces a narrative trick that allows the game to indulge in some truly horrific moments that recall the day the bombs fell. One sequence, involving a plane, remains etched in my mind. By the end, you still don’t know why the nuclear winter was triggered, but Last Light succeeds at conveying the awe-inspiring terror of the day that changed everything. It doesn't skimp on the follies of man in the post-apocalypse, either, including a harrowing moment early on when the player quietly moves through a concentration camp run by future Nazis. In these moments and others, the player is given opportunities to help, but it’s not impressed upon them, and rarely is it tied to the unlocking of an achievement or significant player benefit. If you chose to help the citizens of Metro, it’s because you chose to reach out your hand--or don’t.

Possibly the most surprising addition are the amount of stealth sequences. It’s common to be presented with a huge room full of soldiers, and while it’s possible to fight through them, that’s a bad idea. I've been rather vocal about games with trial-and-error stealth gameplay, so there was a brief moment of panic. This was followed by a sigh of relief, as it became apparent how fast and loose 4A Games was with the concept of “stealth.” Seriously--these enemies need new glasses. It means you can waltz in front of them, so long as your hand’s indicator says you’re invisible. While it made these sequences tolerable, it robs all tension from them, and the sheer volume of the stealth sequences had me wishing the game was more punishing about playing them.

As with Metro 2033, Last Light is a technical juggernaut designed to bring the most powerful of PCs to their knees if you’re trying to max the visuals out. My modest but capable Radeon 7850, 16GB of RAM, and an i7 CPU heavily chugged at the game’s most intense moments (almost all of them were outside and included environmental effects) on the “high” settings. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions are acceptable ways to play the game but hardly ideal. While the frame rate holds up admirably, texture detail take an enormous hit.

You'll want to gaze at the beautifully destroyed landscape, but each moment spent gazing is one moment closer to death.

I was also bugged by an oversight that probably won’t present itself to many people reading this. I view Metro 2033 and Last Light like foreign films. I could play them with English dubbing, but as they were developed in Russia, it makes sense to play them with Russian voices and English subtitles. While I don’t expect to understand everything, Last Light doesn't subtitle a number of story moments, and not for any obvious technical reasons. It may be understandable that every piece of ambient dialogue cannot be translated because the game won’t know where the player is looking, but there are important ambient set pieces where the player’s attention would be directed nowhere else and the game fails to subtitle them at all. If not only to maintain my level of disbelief and immersion, it’s also a failure to successfully address accessibility for the disabled among us.

To be this far without having gone on and on about how well Last Light renders the end of the world speaks to the impact of everything else. Did I mention it has the creepiest spiders since Deadly Creatures? By its very nature of being a sequel, Last Light doesn’t feel as fresh as Metro 2033 did, but there’s still nothing else like it. Few games generate immersion through gameplay and transport you to their world the way Metro does.

Want to take classes from Professor Warren Spector? The University of Texas has created the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy. Spector will guide its curriculum and Paul Sams, Blizzard's chief operating officer, is also an instructor. Admitted students pay no tuition and get a $10,000 stipend.

Am I the only one who kind of wishes this game was just about pirates doing piratey stuff, completely divorced from the AC lineage?

Of course, it's only coming as a digital release. Do you object? Or are you just glad it's coming out at all?

With its growing focus on mobile gaming and its penchant for trying to out-popular already popular games, Zynga was going to get around to stepping on Temple Run's toes eventually, and what better way than to combine the joy of endless running with the trusted ...With Friends brand? The result is a combination I'm finding much more compelling than I expected. I expected a solid endless running game with a tacked on social aspect — you know, where you challenge a friend or random stranger to a game, take your shot and then wait for them to take theirs. Maybe there'd be tournaments and some sort of leveling system. On the surface level, that's exactly what I got. Zynga, in collaboration with Eat Sleep Play of Twisted Metal fame, have built an incredibly solid little runner here. The controls are responsive, the atmosphere is light and friendly, and the setting — the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain — is the most appropriate setting for a family-friendly running game I could imagine. Chased by bulls through the streets, the player collects stars, jumps over and slides under obstactles, dodges left and right and takes turns with a swipe of their finger. The goal is to get as far as they can before succumbing to the inevitable, while also getting farther than the player they're competing with at the time. I really love the way this game's difficulty ramps as I run. Some endless runners just like to add a little speed, maybe increase obstacle density until it's too much for the player to take. Here we get multi-tiered roads, hordes of bulls to dodge, tempting power-ups in perilous places — there are even groups of computer-controlled players to pass by, amping up that social gaming feel. Also amping up that social game feel, however, are lots of ads and plenty of opportunities to spend in-game currency on getting ahead of the crowd. Gems, collecting by racing and winning, can be purchased as well, making it all-too-easy for players to invest a little cash in order to secure a spot at the top of the leaderboards. Running with Friends doesn't have to be about the compeition. It's an enjoyable enough runner in its own right that other people. Sure it's geared towards friendly competition, but the action is enjoyable enough on its own that it really doesn't matter if you win or lose — you'll have a good time regardless. Running With Friends Genre: social Endless Running Developer: Zynga / Eat Sleep PlayPlatform: iOS Price: Free Get Running with Friends in iTunes

Ace Attorney 5 will get the ridiculous title Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies for the West, and it'll be out on 3DS as a digital release this fall. That's right, a digital release. Hope you've got a big SD card: Phoenix Wright's new adventure ain't coming on a cartridge, according to Capcom's announcement today: SAN MATEO, Calif. — May 13, 2013 — Capcom, a leading worldwide developer and publisher of video games, today confirmed that Phoenix Wright™: Ace Attorney™ - Dual Destinies will be available to purchase digitally on Nintendo 3DS™ across Europe and North America in Fall 2013.Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies, previously announced for the West as Ace Attorney™ 5, sees the return of courtroom hero Phoenix Wright. Set eight years since his last appearance in the courts, the first case in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies sees the action start in a destroyed court room. It’s down to Phoenix Wright and his team at the Wright Anything Agency to discover the cause of the destruction. Players will have to battle it out in court against Gaspen Payne, the younger brother of Winston Payne from previous Ace Attorney™ titles, as they defend the accused. "Dual Destinies" is okay, but they really should've found a third D to add on there, Dream Drop Distance style. It is the 3DS.

If the paranoia weren't already palpable of young students raising their hands in history classes to correct their teachers about how Ezio dealt with the Borgia family, or how Connor handled Washington, now Assassin's Creed's marketing is passing itself off as "true stories." This'll end well.

I'm not really sure we're applying the term "rock legend" correctly here.

The ESRB has asked the Chinese maker of a browser-based game to quit advertising it as rated Adults Only, reports GamesIndustry.biz, largely because the game has never been rated by the ESRB. Even if it had, Wartune would likely run afoul of ESRB policies against making a marketing spectacle of acquiring such a notorious rating. Ads for the game, running on Google's AdSense network, tout it as an "18+ game" in type much larger than the game's logo, with scantily clad nymphs and demons offering saucy come-ons like "You deserve an orgy today." (Though when I created an account to play it, I never ran through any age-gate or verification. I did not participate in any orgies, either, but then, I only advanced to level 2.) The AO rating icon, like every rating given out by the ESRB, is trademarked. Wartune, a turn-based RPG whose visual themes borrow, let's say, heavily from World of Warcraft and Diablo, is hosted at several browser gaming sites but is produced and marketed by Hong Kong-based R2 Games. I sent questions—specifically, what content in Wartune deserves a self-bestowed AO?—to an R2 press inquiry email address but have not yet heard back. Any answers or comments will be updated here. Wartune Advertising Runs Afoul of ESRB [GamesIndustry.biz]

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: A retro review of Chrono Trigger from Sloshy, who wonders if the classic JRPG still deserves all of that love. Another review—this one by PyramidHeadCrab—says that Alpha Protocol is an unjustly maligned classic . If you’re an anime lover, you need to know about AniTAY, where enthusiasts gather to discuss the latest and greatest in Japanese animation. And, finally, RunawayNinjaWizard offers up The Samus Complex, a look at why there aren’t more women in the video game industry. And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY Classic and in the TAY: Open Forum.