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As you might imagine, Ubisoft's The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is a dungeon crawler at heart. But that's just one organ in the game's anatomy: the game's trailer shows off the arms of character customization, the brain of dungeon building, and the long, long legs of asynchronous multiplayer competition.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger will meet at high noon in the center of Digital Distribution town on May 22 to dispatch XBLA, PSN and PC for $14.99.

Beyond the release date announcement, Ubisoft also kicked off its pre-order program for the PC version of Gunslinger through its Uplay digital distribution network. Those who pre-purchase the game on Uplay will immediately receive Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood as a bonus.

Gunslinger returns the Call of Juarez franchise back to its wild west roots because, frankly, we all want to forget The Cartel ever happened.

Sometimes this is what happens when you ask a Craig to play a preview version of Call Of Juarez: Gunslinger.

*spit*

WaaaaaWaaaaaWaaaaaa Wah Wah Wahhhhhh WaaaaaWaaaaaWaaaaaa Wah Wah Wahhhhhh WaaaaaWaaaaaWaaaaaa Wah WhuWhuWahhhhh WaaaaaWaaaaaWaaaaaa Wah Waaaaaaaaah.

*clang*(more…)

We had Craig wipe his grubby hands all over The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot last week, and he came away feeling rather positive. So that’s good. But what does it look like when all the screenshots come rapidly, one after the other, in some sort of “moving picture”. We have the technology.

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This Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon trailer is a bromance exploration between creative director Dean Evans and '80s action star Michael Biehn (Mr. Sarah Conner, Mr. Ellen Ripley and Mr. High-Pressure Nervous Syndrome). The audio from Biehn is likely unsafe for standard working conditions.

If for some stupid reason Terminator star Michael Biehn wasn't already your favorite action hero from the 80s, he will be once you see him as Mark IV Cyber Commando Sergeant Rex Power Colt in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. This might just be his greatest role. The trailer, not the game itself. I mean sure, the game will be nice too, but will it have the awkward pauses? The shit blankets? The confessions of teen masturbation? It's like three minutes at a Fahey family reunion up in here.

And by “dumb,” I mean wonderful. Maybe even brilliant, in the sense that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon seems on track to be a neon-emblazoned clown who secretly conceals both a high-powered laser rifle and an Ivy League college degree. That also fires lasers. The bits we’ve been shown lovingly satirize everything – ’80s action flicks, shooters, modern games, old games – with a surgically deft robo hand. Far Cry 3, eat your heart out. Otherwise, the blood dragons (which are actual things) will do it for you. This live-action mini-epic is no different, combining low-budget special effects, terrible costuming, and glorious over-acting to make… something. I can’t do it justice with these words of mine. They’re incapable of producing a synth-dirge soundtrack, and without that, I am lost. See the movie for yourself after the break.

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This live action trailer for Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a mix of Tron, Kill Bill, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and glorious 80s electronica. Yes, that's a good thing.

What might be the best game expansion ever created just got the greatest live-action movie tie-in, even if it is under five minutes long. CorridorDigital, I just want to hug you. This live-action short for Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is exactly what I wanted to see every time I went to the theater in the 80s. Every single time. Some movies came close, but never this close. It's like my early teens vomited all over YouTube, and then I licked it up. Mmmmm.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot follows mediocre Rock band Saliva’s game design document: “Click Click Boom”. Every dungeon crawler does that, though. You click, things go boom, and Saliva make a tiny amount of royalty money to buy penny mixtures with. But then Epic Loot starts playing Starship’s “We Built This City” over the loudspeaker, and the entire game inverts, handing you trowels and hammers.(more…)

The unveiling of Far Cry 3's bizarre expansion, Blood Dragon, was one of the most low-key in memory. Ubisoft haven't really bothered. Just put some art out, a few trailers, and bam, that's it. That's all it needed, really, because that art said more than 1000 developer diaries could have hoped to. And it's the work of this man. James White. He's not known as a games artist (though he has paid tribute to the medium before), but if you like looking at pretty things on the internet, you may already be familiar with James' work, seeing as he's done everything from Nike promos to Google Chrome themes to the poster for Drive. Working with Ubisoft's art team, White helped design the logo and posters, and sounds like he had an awesome time doing it, writing on his blog "When you have a client writing back saying stuff like 'MORE *CRAG*ING LIGHTNING!', you know you fell in with a great crowd." Below you'll see some of White's art for the game, including concept pieces mocking up the logo. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon art [Signalnoise] To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the bottom-right corner. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!

Benoit Perreault is a UI designer at Eidos Montreal. Before that, though, he worked at Ubisoft, where in his spare time - as in, this wasn't an actual Ubisoft project - he cooked up this concept for an Assassin's Creed fighting game. Envisaged as a downloadable arcade title, and uncovered by NeoGAF user Mama Robotnik, it's not the worst idea I've seen for an Assassin's Creed spin-off, especially since so many of the characters have such a large arsenal of moves and deadly weaponry. Not sure about the Ubisoft cameos as unlockables, but then, this is a fighting game we're talking about. Benoit Perreault [Portfolio, via NeoGAF]

This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which primarily focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. This week, however, Rowan focuses on a forgotten JRPG: Grandia. One of the core issues facing most role-playing games is how they deal with repetitive combat. Since RPGs tend to be so much longer than normal games, with a wider scope, it's much more difficult for them to create unique battles like a shorter action game can. So RPGs tend to have constant, similar, repetitive fights. These are often derided by players and critics under umbrella terms like "random battles," "grinding," or in massively multiplayer games, "trash."

Yet RPGs need those regular battles to keep the games interesting. With rare exceptions, the player skills are unlikely to be tested in terms of skill outside of combat, and most RPG stories depend on violence and its consequences. This makes combat an integral component of the pacing of RPGs. Successful RPGs tend to strike a balance between combat, exploration, and storytelling. When one of those three part is left unchecked, the game can become boring - and it's usually excessive repetitive fighting that's the issue.

For decades now, RPGs have attempted to make their regular battles more interesting, and less likely to be described as trash or grinding. Japanese RPGs have historically tended to experiment with different combat forms more aggressively than their Western counterparts. Some games, like the Suikoden series, tries to avoid the combat issue by making combat smooth and unobtrusive, as I wrote about in a prior column. But not every RPG can, or should, de-emphasize combat. When combat works, even in common random battles, it can be the best part of an RPG. How can RPGs avoid having combat be too repetitive and meaningless?

Ubisoft has fully purchased German developer Related Designs, best known for creating the Anno strategy series (Americans may remember Anno 1404 as Dawn of Discovery). The French publisher previously held a 30 percent share in the company, but bought the other 70 percent in an undisclosed cash transaction.

"Bringing the talented teams from Related Designs into the fold at Ubisoft is a mutually beneficial evolution of the relationship that we've had with this great studio for the past six years," said Odile Limpach, managing director at Ubisoft's Blue Byte studio (also in Germany). Ubisoft's Blue Byte (The Settlers) was handling publishing duties on the Anno series since Anno 1404 in 2009 C.E.

A remake of Prince of Persia: The Shadow and The Flame is coming to mobile platforms soon, Ubisoft announced today.

Prince of Persia: The Shadow and The Flame features modernized graphics and enhanced sound, plus the option of two control methods: virtual buttons (oh boy) and a gesture-based interface. Ubisoft Pune, the studio responsible for Prince of Persia Classic HD, is handling development duties.

Meanwhile, Prince of Persia series creator Jordan Mechner has shared bits of his game design bible, first produced 20 years ago. In them he presents insightful doodles and recounts the development process of this first Prince of Persia sequel, including the challenge of working with a team 3,000 miles away in a time before the internet.

Another World’s re-release allows players to turn off the new graphics and play with the game as it was originally designed instead and I am very pleased about that. Less pleasing is the trailer for the remake of Delphine stablemate Flashback, the story of a man with no memory rolling through a jungle and appearing in a deadly gameshow. As with Another World, it’s difficult to detach memories of playing Flashback from memories of how the game looked – it had a varied palette and tremendously expressive animations, all of which fed into a clarity of control. The trailer for the remake, which is being developed by Vector Cell and five members of the original team, strongly suggests that everybody involved has forgotten many of the things that made Flashback worth experiencing.

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Hey guys I’m Philippe Fournier, production manager on the upcoming cyber-shooter Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. It is 2007 — the future. Step into the shoes of Rex Power Colt, a cyber-commando sent to a remote island to stop Colonel Ike Sloan from taking over the world with his rogue cyborg army.

For Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, we wanted to go back to the late 80s and early 90s — what we like to call “the VHS era” — when video games were still new, and over-the-top action movies were at their pinnacle. Most of the team grew up during those years, so it was a ton of fun to relive this carefree episode of our lives, where we could watch cartoons like MASK or GI Joe with Uncle Dan on Saturday morning.

During the conception phase, our days consisted of watching VHS tapes of action movies sitting in front of an old CRT screen. Our office space looked like a kid’s room in the early 90s, with He-Man figurines on our desks and Terminator posters on every wall. We probably had the best Halloween day ever, with people dressed up as Robocop and our very own Omega Force cyborg soldiers.

All of this helped us create a game filled with explosions, cyborgs and cheesy one-liners delivered by the greatest Hollywood action hero from the 80s, the one and only Michael Biehn. The script is terrible. So terrible, that it’s actually good. Our universe sometimes doesn’t make sense, and that’s perfectly fine — not everything made sense during those years.

Fans of open world games, laser-tag, neon pink and dragons that shoot lasers from their eyes will absolutely cyber-love Blood Dragon. It’s based on the same award-winning technology and gameplay systems from Far Cry 3, so when you’re laying waste to cyborgs in the open world, expect a lot of explosive and random encounters filled with cyber sharks, robo dogs and mutant goats. The game is a standalone offer, which means that any fans of the 80s will be able to jump in on April 30th on PSN.

Ubisoft roared confirmation Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is an 80s-styled standalone shooter (you don't need FC3 to play it) headed for XBLA, PSN, and PC on May 1. The dragon's been out of the bag for a while, but today's announcement brings with it a new VHS-like trailer, along with news that PC players get a free copy of the game's bodacious soundtrack, as provided by Power Glove.

From what we've seen of Blood Dragon, the only clearcut narrative tie to Far Cry 3 is the island itself. Beyond that, the game is a humor-laden spinoff with a new protagonist, Sgt. Rex Power Colt, a cyborg commando played by The Terminator and Aliens star Michael Biehn. It's set in a near future recoiling from "Vietnam War 2" and a recent nuclear attack on North America - well, by near future we mean one for the 1980s... which is 2007.

As the screens below show, Blood Dragon's look is far removed from the sunny skies and tropical greenery of Far Cry 3. However, players of Ubisoft's 2012 shooter will find the mechanics of this new game very familiar, both in terms of basic actions and the overall approach. You're once again taking out bases, this time controlled by rogue cyborg military group Omega Force, and you're also hunting wildlife again, except now they're colossal reptiles called Blood Dragons whose bodies are literally lined with neon and who, just as literally, shoot lasers out of their eyes.

There's no word on a price, but if you're after further details, or just further confirmation this isn't some pharmaceuticals-induced illusion, then make sure you check out our hands-on impressions later today.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is stupid. It has a terrible story, one-dimensional characters, and there’s no emotional value in playing it whatsoever. I can’t even criticise it for all those things, because that’s everything Ubisoft wants the game to be. They think they’ve found a loophole in any criticism by deliberately aiming low. Hah! The joke’s on them! Blood Dragon is pretty good.(more…)

After being delayed in January, Ubisoft's ShootMania Storm is now available. Like its spiritual brother, TrackMania, ShootMania Storm offers a bevy of creation tools, allowing users to whip up their own maps and modes. Interested shoot maniacs can grab the game from Steam for $20.

In case you still had any doubts, 30 minutes of Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon footage emerged online this morning. It comes from a PC version of the game, which we understand to be probably obtained via Ubisoft's uPlay servers. Either way, the video showcases the very different-looking Far Cry 3 spin-off, complete with cheesy retro cutscenes and - NSFW - sometimes colorful uploader language.

Part 1 of the video is above, with the second part below the break. While Ubisoft and leaks isn't exactly a new development, the company has been rather coy about Blood Dragon, including FC3 lead writer Jeffrey Yohalem's hint to us last month, along with the April Fools' Day content. We're waiting on official details, but listings on classification boards and XBLM point to a standalone single-player XBLA, PSN, and PC game, with a May 1 release date.

[Thanks, Jesse]

Not only is Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon very real and very, very neon, it also could be here in just over three weeks. The 80s-inspired Far Cry 3 spin-off emerged on the Xbox Live Marketplace this weekend, where its release date is listed as May 1. The listing confirms Blood Dragon as a standalone shooter which won't require a copy of Far Cry 3, likely only to be single-player given its online features are restricted to "leaderboards."

More important than that, or the confirmation of previously leaked screenshots (see the gallery below), is that Blood Dragon features the radness of Michael Biehn, he of Kyle Reese in Terminator and Corporal Hicks in Aliens fame. Beihn's starring role is just a part of the "80s VHS vision of the future" that is Blood Dragon, according to the XBLM listing.

It reads in full:
Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is THE Kick-Ass Cyber Shooter taking place on a bizarre open-world island crawling with evil. Welcome to an 80's VHS vision of the future. The year is 2007 and you are Sargent Rex Colt, a Mark IV Cyber Commando who's fighting against a cyborg army gone rogue. Your mission: get the girl, kill the baddies, and save the world. Experience every cliché of a VHS era vision of a nuclear future, where cyborgs, blood dragons, mutants, and Michael Biehn (Terminator, Aliens, Navy Seals) collide. Playing Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon doesn't require a copy of Far Cry 3.Quite how Blood Dragon ties in to Far Cry 3 beyond the island remains to be seen.

We've reached out to Ubisoft for more info. While details are so far restricted to XBLA, Brazilian classification ratings point towards releases on PS3 and PC as well.

Not only is Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon very real and very, very neon, it also could be here in just over three weeks. The 80s-inspired Far Cry 3 spin-off emerged on the Xbox Live Marketplace this weekend, where its release date is listed as May 1. The listing confirms Blood Dragon as a standalone shooter which won't require a copy of Far Cry 3, likely only to be single-player given its online features are restricted to "leaderboards."

More important than that, or the confirmation of previously leaked screenshots (see the gallery below), is that Blood Dragon features the radness of Michael Beihn, he of Kyle Reese in Terminator and Corporal Hicks in Aliens fame. Beihn's starring role is just a part of the "80s VHS vision of the future" that is Blood Dragon, according to the XBLM listing.

It reads in full:
Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is THE Kick-Ass Cyber Shooter taking place on a bizarre open-world island crawling with evil. Welcome to an 80's VHS vision of the future. The year is 2007 and you are Sargent Rex Colt, a Mark IV Cyber Commando who's fighting against a cyborg army gone rogue. Your mission: get the girl, kill the baddies, and save the world. Experience every cliché of a VHS era vision of a nuclear future, where cyborgs, blood dragons, mutants, and Michael Biehn (Terminator, Aliens, Navy Seals) collide. Playing Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon doesn't require a copy of Far Cry 3.Quite how Blood Dragon ties in to Far Cry 3 beyond the island remains to be seen.

We've reached out to Ubisoft for more info. While details are so far restricted to XBLA, Brazilian classification ratings point towards releases on PS3 and PC as well.

Several purported screenshots for Ubisoft's mysterious, potentially standalone Far Cry 3 continuation Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon have surfaced on All Games Beta, and they seem to mesh with the game's over-the-top, post-apocalyptic plot.

Three first-person perspective shots show what appears to be gameplay from the perspective of the Blood Dragon's protagonist, Mark IV Cyber Commando Sergeant Rex Power Colt. We've reached out to Ubisoft for more information.

It's appropriate on both counts that the first official confirmation of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon comes on April Fools' Day and is totally warped. This teaser video and a new website, both revealed today, indicate some kind of 80s-styled take on the island setting of Far Cry 3.

The website's "Story" section, for what's advertised like a movie, reads: "The year is 2007. It is the future. Earth has been ravaged by a nuclear war and new paths for peace must be found. A U.S. cyborg army may have found a solution: a powerful bioweapon on a distant island. A Mark IV Cyber Commando, Sergeant Rex Power Colt has been sent over to gather information and figure out what the hell is going on."

As with everything today, take what you're looking at and reading with a great big grain of salt. On the other hand, we've seen plenty of evidence FC3: Blood Dragon is a genuine standalone continuation of Far Cry 3. It received Brazilian classification ratings for Xbox 360, PC, and PS3, there was leaked XBLA art which matches with today's reveals, and a list of achievements recently popped up too.

Also, in relation to a possible Far Cry 3 continuation, Far Cry 3 lead writer Jeffrey Yohalem recently told us "I'm working on something now that will be surprising, I think, when it's announced. But it definitely is a 'strike while the iron's hot' thing, and we'll see."

We've reached out to Ubisoft for more details.

Coming from a Eurogamer interview...

"The players will tell us. Right now there are more and more coming into the franchise, so I don't see that day. It's our breakthrough. When you have quality content, the frequency of coming out with the game is not an issue at all. On the contrary, people expect more and more of that content. So it's natural to be able to provide that content. The gamers are happy and it's our job to make them happy." - Ubisoft's Yannis Mallat

In other words, as long as consumers keep buying, Ubisoft is going to keep Assassin's Creed a yearly franchise. The question is, just how low is Ubisoft willing to let the revenue go?

Splinter Cell: Blacklist developer Ubisoft Toronto will work on five projects, including collaborating on a future Assassin's Creed game.

A listing for Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon achievements surfaced this morning, suggesting the rumored continuation of last year's game is a standalone digital release. The listing on Exophase, which seems to indicate a shooter, show achievements totaling to 400G, the base GamerScore allotment for an Xbox Live Arcade game.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon first surfaced via classification ratings for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360, along with XBLA artwork. Far Cry 3 lead writer Jeffrey Yohalem told us last month that he had something in mind in terms of continuation for the game, saying "I'm working on something now that will be surprising, I think, when it's announced. But it definitely is a 'strike while the iron's hot' thing, and we'll see."

We've reached out to Ubisoft for comment.

Ubisoft's Jade Raymond speaking with the Guardian...

“I think there's still room for really great triple-A games that can, despite the budget, retain the classic model of expecting people to pay in one big chunk. There's still room for that. But the big publishers have to be honest with themselves – there's only room for let's say ten successful titles a year on those sorts of budgets. So you have to go all-in on those; you have to be sure you'll have a hit, and when you make it you have to invest everything to make sure it's amazing.” - Ubisoft's Jade Raymond

I guess it all depends on what you call AAA. How many AAA games really come out each year?

Might and Magic is coming back. Not Heroes of Might and Magic or Clash of Heroes, but straight up vanilla Might and Magic. Three days after teasing an announcement, Ubisoft has announced Might and Magic X Legacy (we're claiming dibs on the abbreviation "Might and Magic XL" right now), developed by Limbic Entertainment.

In the classic tradition, Legacy is a single-player, first-person RPG with turn-based battles. The story puts you and your party of four characters in the city of Karthal, which "on the verge of secession, is prey to competing factions vying for its control," presumably vying through the placement of monsters everywhere.

Brave adventurers who dare to enter PAX East will be able to see Legacy at the event this weekend.