All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing, is leaving not just Nintendo but the game industry effective Oct. 1, a month shy of her third anniversary with the company, according to Nintendo. More »

#gameface It's Game Face time, and we've got someone(s) gaming at the IFA technology and consumer electronics trade show in Berlin in a more colorful place than anywhere I've ever lounged to play an Xbox 360. More »

Nintendo executive to exit games industry.

If you choose to throw your cautious attitude towards avoiding Fable 3 spoilers to the wind by checking out the list of Achievements posted after the jump, you'll find a mix of accomplishments both old and new. Some reward gameplay mechanics that have been present in all iterations of the franchise, such as digging and ... um, cross-dressing. Others require you to perform fresh, innovative tasks, like freaking down with one of your Xbox Live friends.

The Achievement hunters among you are going to be in for some awkward, awkward conversations when Fable 3 launches October 26.

Billy Mitchell must be pissed. The certified "Video Game Player of the [20th] Century" has lost the Donkey Kong world record -- again -- to longtime rival Steve Wiebe. Wiebe nudged Billy's July 31 record of 1,062,800 points with a masterful 1,064,500-point effort, achieved on August 20 and confirmed today by score authority Twin Galaxies. The two rivals memorably starred in the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.

Hank Chien, who ever so briefly enjoyed the limelight, falls to third on the all-time leaderboard.

[Pictured: Billy Mitchell from The King of Kong (2007 film)]

#review "Never follow me," said the dark witch Morrigan as she disappeared towards the end of Dragon Age: Origins. Adventurers never were very good at listening. More »

#pullquote Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda, talking to Game Informer about the future of Kinect, had this to say about the current state of first-person shooters on the PC. More »

We’ve already posted up the official video that Nintendo put together for the 25th anniversary of Mario. One of those videos featured a young man blowing into his Famicom cartridge to get it ready for play. Nintendo originally left this scene uninterrupted, but now they’ve released a second video to tell consumers not [...]

#legal It is the season for battling in the Supreme Court about whether it should be a crime to sell very violent video games to children. No such law exists for other forms of entertainment. Who is for? Who is against? More »

THQ and its core games VP Danny Bilson have been touting the publisher's dedication to making properties flexible across multiple mediums ("transmedia") -- for instance, Red Faction is getting a movie, a downloadable game, and a retail game (we're unceremoniously awaiting the inevitable book or comic tie-in). One area the publisher has yet to tap into with its core games IPs is social gaming, though that may no longer be the case. This morning, THQ announced a partnership with digital infrastructure company Joyent for the "rapid prototyping and deployment of online games."

We spoke with VP of online publishing and operations Mike Hogan just late last week about the partnership and what it means for THQ. Will we see Red FactionVille anytime soon on Facebook? "We have a pretty strong online strategy right now -- next week we're launching Company of Heroes Online, it's been in open beta for some time now and we've had great results on that," he told us. "If you take a look at the social applications, it is a part of what we do but it's certainly not all of it. As far as the actual games, I really can't tell you specifically what we have in development, but if you take a look at our license -- THQ has a great portfolio of licenses -- it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to think that some of those are involved."

A game that's optimized for the uncivilized.

While a new Kojima Productions game was on display at TGS 2010 -- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow -- Hideo Kojima's direct involvement seems limited to providing the voice for a mischievous chupacabra. In a tweet, the game director expressed his interest in showing a true Hideo Kojima game at next year's event.

In a tweet translated by Andriasang, Kojima said "I think it would be nice if next year I can do not just editing, but introduce my own new game (game design, script and direction)." During the Metal Gear Solid cosplay event at TGS, he also jokingly said "It's 5! Shall we make 5! With this, I won't have to quit Konami. I'll be there for 3 more years." This was in response to a prompt to "say something shocking," however, and not "say something true." A grain of salt is advised.

Digital sales pass retail sales for the first time ever.

Greetings citizens! This is Chris Mitchell from Hothead Games brimming over with tales of DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue!

DeathSpank: Thongs Of Virtue is our wonderful, full-figured sequel to DeathSpank but with more and better everything. Of course you and everyone you associate with will know that DeathSpank is our hilarious, exciting, highly rated action-RPG mixed with adventure gameplay. Some describe the series as “Diablo meets Monkey Island” but I’d rather describe it as “DeathSpank-Like”.

No doubt by now you’ve played through your multiple copies of the original DeathSpank game (thanks for buying those by the way) and wonder how we can possibly top the tooth and nail action? We wondered too but luckily we had a brainstorm. We took DeathSpank’s patented sword fighting action and added….guns! Guns in a video game? It’s crazy I know, but in the course of his new adventure entirely too many grenades, guns and bombs will be used in the search for Justice. Statistically speaking at least some of them will even be used correctly.

Oh and speaking of adventure, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue has even more adventure gameplay woven in with the slashing, bullet-shooting exciting combat. Many brains will be teased, fortune cookies opened and possibly internet FAQs consulted by our players in the name of a puzzling good time. DeathSpank: TOV was made at the same time as DeathSpank so we were able to take lessons learned on DeathSpank and craft an even better game with deeper adventure gameplay.

Naturally his enemies are pretty well armed themselves with heavy machine guns, airstrikes and the latest in monocle technology to keep things nice and perky. The enemies are far more varied themselves and the bosses (if I may be so bold) are just excellent. We now have many times the number of big bosses that must die at your hand.

This sequel also gave us a nice chance to go all Michael Bay on things. Everything is bigger and more explody. You get a far larger world to adventure in and incredible environments and holiday-themed terrors that need to be filled with holes. There’s more quests that need to be done and more varied quests as well I should add. Oh and what’s this? A pirate ship? Yes DeathSpank gets to go a-plundering thanks to his ally Captain Taint, scourge of various seas.

Naturally DeathSpank’s not the sort of guy to adventure alone, friends of yours (or mine, I won’t judge) can jump in and jump out of co-op action using classic Sparkles or the all new Steve! Steve Von Prong was raised by multi-level marketing ninjas in the deadly ways of the unicorn. If you figure out what that means, please let us know as we’re quite curious.

Gamers who purchase DeathSpank: T.O.V. in its first week will also receive two pieces of free downloadable content: the Snowy Mountain Dungeon, a terrifying, ice-covered dungeon frozen in the North Pole where evil enemies of ice, flesh and terror dwell and a new playable co-op character, Sidekick Tankko. Half-man, half-spider and all awesome, Sidekick Tankko is a deadly warrior who spews mighty clouds of poison and entraps enemies with his inescapable web attacks.

That’s all I’ve got for now but I await questions! Let me have it internet and you will have answers in return. They may not be good answers but you get what you pay for around here.

New hero free to try all day.

Pre-load your copy early to unleash the apocalypse at midnight.

Are you over your initial shock about Ignition's El Shaddai, the abstract, psychedelic third-person action game based on the Bible's Book of Enoch? Now that you've assimilated that into your worldview, prepare to have your mind blown once again: this Bible-themed game includes co-marketing with jeans.

An Ignition rep explained to us that Lucifel (a certain fallen angel you may have heard of, who goes on to a measure of infamy after the game's time) is capable of traveling through time at will, and enjoys the 20th century, bringing back styles from the era into the distant past for himself and his pal Enoch. This includes the jeans both wear, which are Edwin brand. In turn, Edwin will offer special El Shaddai styles of its jeans in Japan, on display in glass cases at TGS.

The rep was careful to explain that El Shaddai wasn't conceived as a vehicle for clothing marketing -- we believe this, given that one of the in-game "models" is, you know, the devil, which can't be one hundred percent ideal.

Just not a good idea, SEGA. Half of this game was pretty good! The other half made me want to rip my werehog fur out.