Ken Levine dropped one Big Daddy of a bombshell on the Internet yesterday by announcing the dispersal of his critically acclaimed development studio, Irrational Games. Formed in 1997 from the remains of Looking Glass Studios, Irrational Games is responsible for a string of hit PC games such as System Shock 2, Freedom Force, Tribes: Vengeance, SWAT 4, and most famously BioShock and BioShock Infinite. But with all of these critical hits on their pedigree, why close the studio?

Playing the EverQuest Next Landmark alpha has really started me thinking about the possibilities of a game like this. I'm really interested to see where the social game go in my mind there's a huge opportunity here create a completely new gaming experience.

Imagine for instance that you start out the game at the Portal Hub as per usual, but your task is to find a new claim in already crowded world. As you set out in your search of your first claim (the territory you’re allowed to build on), you need to hire a guide -- someone that can point you to the best prime open spots available.  Knowing that you start the game with no resources, you will pay this guide with minerals that you mine along the way. He will protect you until you get to where you need to go, will help you understand the strange social structures of the land you’re about to become a resident of, will fend off the odd monster attack.

And speaking of along the way: On your way to your claim you will inevitably cross other people’s land. Some might be friendly but others will be hostile.  All will exact a price from you in order to cross their territory.  Some might ask for resources, others will want you to spend time building on their land. Others might even want you to fight in a tribal skirmish they're having with a nearby clan who is hogging all the timber. Suddenly getting to your claim is going to be a challenge and will require a lot of political navigation.  Because you see, these people are also bound together in larger guilds and clans, and this means that in order to build next to their land you will have ally with them. This opens up an entire room of interactive social can play entirely within a building simulation.

I am a huge fan of military-based shooters like Battlefield and Call of Duty. From guns like H&Ks MP5 and Remington's ACR games like these bring an exhilarating type of virtual gameplay to the household... Then there is Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare and all that stuff I just said was thrown out the window.

This live action trailer, which I hope will be one in a set, showcases some gameplay of the new, goofy shooter and even gives us a nice live-action tease. Because seriously, who wouldn't use a weapon like that? Who knew I could be so generic! Check out the live action trailer by clicking the jump below and comment some weapon ideas you want to see in this game!

The internet is great for keeping up on video game news, but more often we’re reminded of all the community happenings we missed as they formed. Each Sunday, (I'm sorry I"m late!) I’m sharing my favorite stories from the past week with corresponding highlights from Twitter: my conversation whirlwind of choice.

Last week was filled with drama and goats, but I still got the best Valentine's Day present from ZeniMax Online: permission to speak my mind about their game. Check after the jump for a glimpse of the wild ride.

It's a guide five months in the making, but today we have finally completed it.  The WoW Patch 5.4 Legendary Guide is now finished, and lo, it was good.  Now all that remains is...another...entire set of quests to buff the cloak and finish the story of the expansion. Sheesh.

Luckily none of that is required to get the cloak.  If you want us to continue our tips and tricks guide for Chapter V of the Legendary questline, please leave a comment below or on the original guide.  Silence will be taken as dissent in this case, which will save my fingers for the inevitable Timeless Isle grind that looms on the horizon.  

The NDP Group revealed the anual video game sales report and released information regarding the health of the gaming industry for the year 2013. Turns out the video game market is up a sub-2% from 2012's consumer report and US consumers have recorded $15.39 billion in total sales in the video game department. This includes video games sold; both physical, digital, and rentals as well as any associated hardware like consoles and GPUs.

While it's great news to see our industry still going strong in the upward direction, the most interesting news come from the sales breakdown. Turns out the physical sales of games were down 11% this year from the last. What offset the difference was the increased amount of hardware sold but most importantly, the 5% increase in digital sales from the 13 years-old and up demographic. The offset was enough to push the industry to a sub-2% increase in net worth, which has happened year-by-year for quite some time now anyways, at least in The United States.

Guess the consumer report sort of shows a push in the digital direction. I suppose that's why Microsoft wants to remove the disc drive from the Xbox One, heh. Still, while we're here, why don't you comment on how much you spent on video games! Ok... too personal. How about your biggest gaming purchase? Yehhh. That will do.

This man has many titles... Some see him as the dude behind the world of Geex and some know him as Arturis, but as of this month, he can be known as 'that guy who won January 2014's Blizzard comic contest Arturis man!" [title pending] for his /Silly entry, "Orc Interrupted." To think, this piece marked a return to the series so perhaps this is destiny?

And the comic contest winner for January, 2014, is ... Arturis.

The talented winner will receive an Art of Blizzard Book Standard Edition [Hardcover] ! In February, we’ll be giving away a Risk®: Starcraft Collector's Edition, with an approximate retail value of $49.95, to the winner of the next Blizzard Comic Contest.

Congratulations once again! You can also view the winning piece here.

The internet is great for keeping up on video game news, but more often we're reminded of all the community happenings we missed as they formed. Each Sunday, I'm sharing my favorite stories from the past week with corresponding highlights from Twitter: my conversation whirlwind of choice.

This past week, one classic game's memory was sullied while another game company unveiled plans to honor the contribution of its players permenantly. A mobile app's developer decided to withdraw from the station his success assigned him, and journalists forged new friendships while making a few enemies during a marketing mishap that will shade business interaction for awhile. Click through the jump for all the usual fun!

When I heard that a new RPG game was coming from the producer of Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions I decided to check it out.  Bravely Default is a new game for the 3DS featuring a different take on the classic Final Fantasy franchise.  As soon as I found out that the demo for it was available, I immediately downloaded it.

The demo has you doing errands for some of the town residents and completing them gives you bonuses that can be carried over to the full version of the game.  The requests typically have you collecting items from certain enemies or killing tough bosses.  What’s more, in the fashion of Final Fantasy, you have four unique characters in your party that can be customized with different weapons and job classes.

So after talking with some of the townspeople, I set out for the field to fight the monsters.  Within my first battle encounter, I found that enemies were pretty tough and that my traditional attack first approach wouldn’t cut it.  That’s when I learned of Bravely Default’s new gameplay mechanic.

You know that feeling when you've completed a stage of an epic questline, only to realize that you've wasted an entire week of gameplay because you didn't know what was coming next?  Well let's see if we can stave off that feeling when it comes to the next stage of our Patch 5.4 WoW Legendary Cloak Guide.

Click on over to find out the best way to grind them Titan Runestones, and how to save yourself a week of needless waiting. 

Palpatine doesn't want you do have your cloak.  Are you going to let him win?  Are you?!

Update:  It appears that Brandon Laatsch never actually got permission from Mojang to create this film, and Notch is putting the kaibash on it since there's no money going to Mojang in order to license the Minecraft IP.  We'll keep an eye out on this if anything changes.  I guess my hundreds of dollars are safe for the moment. [Thanks for the heads up Kangoshi!]

Original Article: I don't write about Kickstarter campains much, mostly because I tend not to see gaming crowdfunding initiatives as interesting.  So someone is building a My Little Pony theme park entirely out of LEGO, why should I inflict their Kickstarter on my readers?  Well this crowdfunding campaign is worth not only your time, but also your shares.  Why?  Because this campaign is looking to fund a feature length Minecraft movie from the brilliant mind of Brandon Laatsch.

Minecraft machinima holds a special place in my heart, since I spend so much time in the game building my own stories (pun intended), I really love seeing how artists use the blocky blank canvas to create their own fiction.  For that reason I pine for more episodes of Seedlings.  But Birth of Man, Brandon Laatsch's project, looks to be epic in both scale and content, and takes the uniquely Rocket Jump style and applies it to an entire movie.

Eidos' Montreal's Thief went gold earlier than planned and is officially ready to ship and launch on February 25th, three days ahead of schedule. All I have to say is it's finally happening! I hope Eidos' did the game great justice since the franchise is what I call the founding-father of the stealth genre.

As a gift for going gold early, Stephane Roy, the Producer of Thief gave fans a "Thief 101" trailer, which showcases all the things players need to know before getting themselves caught in the shoes of Garrett and becoming the stealth vigilante they have always wanted to be. One thing I like about this title, as the video demonstrates, is much like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I can play the game how I want: by killing everyone in cold-blooded murder or sneaking around like a rat and never be seen. The latter tends to be more difficult which gives me that thrill I always enjoy in games and I can't wait to challenge myself.

You know that feeling when you guess what the next World of Warcraft expansion is going to be and you're completely off base?  That's a little how I felt watching this machinima by the talented folks over at Slightly Impressive.  I think my favorite part is the reputation grind featuring quests completed in Hearthstone.  "But I don't want to play those classes!" Nailed it.

Hit the jump to watch the video.  It should make you feel much better about whatever MMO experience you've had recently.  Unless your MMO of choice also has only three quests.  Then, I have to apologize for the hurt I am no doubt about to inflict upon your soul.  But cheer up, Warlords of Draenor is coming, and it doesn't have a mandatory Dance Studio rep grind -- at least I hope it doesn't. 

The internet is great for keeping up on video game news, but more often we're reminded of all the community happenings we missed as they formed. Each Sunday, I'm sharing my favorite stories from the past week with corresponding highlights from Twitter: my conversation whirlwind of choice.

Last week saw the bloodiest battle in EVE Online history, a very humble Brad McQuaid, Android users learning what the flappin' fuss is about, and...I think I may have done it 88 times? Today's column sums it all up after the jump--with only a single row of spreadsheet jokes!

Here's a quick morning video for all of you via Youtuber Twisted Genre. It is live footage of country star Taylor Swift being attacked at this year's Grammy Awards. The assailant conducted the assault on the defenseless singer during her Live performance of "All too well." Despite the vicious 2-bit attack, she carried on like a true pro infront of millions of viewers forcing the vigilante to resume years of a harsh training regiment.

Click the jump below to watch the video.

Maybe you have seen all sorts of concept art and character designs and have always wondered how you could get that good. Game artist Ryan Hawkins felt your pain and was tired of the limited commercial resources available to aspiring artists so he and some of his industry buddies made a nice little magazine called The Vertex. And get this. It's all free for anyone to enjoy.

This nifty ebook is a must have for any aspiring game artist I feel, or at least those among you who are looking to learn the ropes or even advance their studies. Having gone through both volumes, the art book is a very specific and informative resource. Now anyone can learn how to create some of these awesome concepts and learn how to make their use practical in a gaming enviornment. If you have ever seen one of those fancy photoshop or VFX art books, this is very similar except it is focused around gaming.

So the Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Open Beta is going on which gave me a good reason to check it out. I'm a pretty big fan of TCG but the original ideas behind Hearthstone didn't seem appealing to me because of the fast, casual, pre-ruling Yu-Gi-Oh-esque flow of the game. With that said, what is 'on paper' is definitely not what is reality and Blizzard's new virtual card game is kind of cool.

The internet is great for keeping up on video game news, but more often we're reminded of all the community happenings we missed as they formed. I'm sharing my four favorite stories from the past week with corresponding highlights from Twitter: my conversation whirlwind of choice.

Check after the jump to play a naughty cat, say goodbye to a few Sony Online MMOs, find why black holes no longer exist, and stick it to the candy man.

WildStar fans have been eager to get their time in the beta, and while many of us wait for access (press included), community fan sites have been running beta key giveaways this week.  By far my favorite of these giveaways requests that gamers write WildStar themed limericks in order to garner beta access.  This has got to be the best idea I've heard in a LONG time, but I might be biased seeing as how was a poetry major in college.

Limericks are short, clever little poems with raunchy content that have a very unique cadence to their language.  It's the raunchy part that has kept me away from writing these sorts of poems, but I might have to give it a shot just for the fun of entering a contest like this.  Let's see...

There once was a game they called WildStar

I am having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that its been over a year and a half since the last time I drew a /Silly comic. So much has changed in my life since then - I've moved to a new apartment, taken a temporary leave of absence from my schooling, and oh, yeah- I helped generate a son. Crazy, I know. But in all that, I've barely had any time to draw, and I've decided that I need to correct that immediately. Stat. Pronto. Muy rapido. Thus, my return to /Silly, which has been waiting here ever so patiently for me to come crawling back to it, a humbled and beaten man. Oh how I've missed you.

The latest comic is a bit out of whack, and I apologize for that - I'm very rusty on the artwork front, my comedic pacing has a slight limp, and my polish is pretty much nonexistent. But I found the idea humorous enough to sketch out, and hopefully you will enjoy reading it as well. I doubt it will earn a full on laugh, but I'll settle for a wry smirk until I get my comic writing skills warmed back up again.

Hit the jump for the full comic, and be sure to leave a comment or two with critiques, insights, complaints or requests for future comic topics!

Candy Crush Saga has been, well, crushing the mobile competition since it came out in 2012, but that isn't enough for the game's developer.  King.com wants to make sure that no one else can make a game using their signature confection, and so they are in the midst of a trademark bid that seems to be reaching a successful conclusion.

I admit that I came late to the candy swapping party, so I haven't gained the multicentennial levels other players have, but it's definitely my go to game for when I need to kill a few minutes (and brain cells).  The idea that King.com wants to trademark something as ubitquitous as "candy" is not only ludicrous, it's insulting to me as a gamer and a game developer.  There are plenty of clones already out on the market, each of them vying for a piece of the teeth rotting pie, so the fact that they are trying to keep games off the market that are similar to theirs strikes me as distinctly "too little, too late."  

It seems though that should this trademark come to fruition that the affect would land not only on games, but anyone creating apps that have the word "candy" in them.  Even with the trademark application only partially approved, King.com has already begun to start threatening other games in the App Store that have the offending word somewhere in their title.  Sucks to be you, candy recipe app creators.  Let's just hope that some smart judge sees this for the snide little power play it is and busts it before it gets to full power.

It's something no one expected. Even the people around me that know how much I love MMOs are baffled, uphauled, mystified... [insert other silly word here] and it all came down to one of my friends getting me the World of Warcraft Battlechest for Christmans and yes, I did roll my eyes when I found out but a gift is a gift so I have to play it.

The pretty WoW box came with all the expansions except for Mists of Panderia which is a shame because all I wanted to do was play a Monk healer that punches things. Oh wait, Blizzard has a 10-day free trail of MoP that can be activated at the push of a button... Damn, it's almost as if they thought of this exact scenario. And with all that said, Warchao the Panderan Mistweaver Monk was born... Alright, well he started as just a Monk... but then I inserted the Mistweaver in there... Bite me...

Here's something that should instantly put a smile on your face. You know, there existed these mythical things called Floppy Disks. Yea, my encounter with such a device is such a blur now but a Youtube video by Minihui brings me back... sort of. His video involves a bunch of floppy drives and the Super Mario theme song. Words can't explain it so just click the jump below and enjoy!

Goldfarming is huge business in China, so it should come as no surprise that game piracy is also rampant.  Take Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment's upcoming CCG. Why not? Some hackers already have.

The pirated version runs on multiple mobile devices and is dubbed Legend of the Crouching Dragon.  I guess the "Crouching Dragon" is the hacker, so the legend must refer to the lawsuit they're about to receive -- which will no doubt be legendary.  These guys scraped everything but the actual WoW-themed art assets, but the lighting effects and animations are still in place, and if you squint you can tell the games are almost identical.  I would say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," but pirates are just exploitive thieves no matter how Johnny Depp looks in a hat.  

Hit the jump to see the gameplay video of LCD, already available for tablet and mobile phone.  

Harmonix has been silent of late, but that doesn't mean that they aren't working away behind closed doors.  Just today they announced that they have revamped their website, which isn't news really. But what could be big news is the fact that Harmonix could be making a dance combat title a la Space Channel 5. 

Alright, I'll let that sink in for you a moment.  Just enjoy the splendor of that idea:  Dance battle. Harmonix. Yummy.  

Okay, now here's the actual information:  Kotaku posted a really interesting article about secret projects today, featuring things like a possible Plants vs. Zombies toy game system like Skylanders Swap Force (which will be amazing, by the way, because we all need more PvZ in our lives), and they started that article talking about Harmonix. Supposedly Harmonix has done some ninja snagging of domain names surrounding the term "Chroma," and even applied for trademark on "Chroma" back in 2012.  So something "Chroma"-ish this way comes.  But here's the really interesting part:  A job posting back in 2012 revealed that Harmonix was seeking people to design a real-time mobile combat game.  

Turns out Ubisoft is looking to publish a "next-gen" Tetris game. All I have to say is "h'what?"

But seriously, the game is looking at an Xbox One and Playstation 4 launch and the press release really does emphasize "Next-Gen." I guess they are going to push 3D graphics and create standard multiplayer modes which if you've played Tetris Arena, you'll understand how fun the puzzler can get with a bunch of other people. Though, I hope this is some sort of sequel to the N64's Tetrisphere (Yes, it's a guilty pleasure! Get over it...). Now if it were truly up to me, I'd be looking into Assassin's Tetris and Raytris Man with emeregent storytelling and action-combat but you know, I live in a crazy fantasy world full of -- erm, never mind.

Here's just a quick note that I have finally gotten a chance to update our World of Warcraft Patch 5.4 Legendary Cloak Guide.  

We have tips and tricks for you up to the nigh end of Chapter 3, bringing our current stage number to 6.  While I work the on stage 7 quests, head on over to the guide to catch yourselves up.  As always, please feel free to add any questions or comments in the, err, comments section.

There's a new tatical RPG in the works -- erm, well in the Kickstarter (close enough, right?) -- being made by the great Yasumi Matsuno himself. I mean, he does have a pretty good track record and all having brought us Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Tactics Ogre. Now he's teaming up with a company called Playdek and hopefully, through the tons of money they're asking for from their Kickstarter campaign, we'll have this new game called Unsung Story and it'll be as good as Mastuno's reputation.

When the online gaming community first learned that Greg Street was leaving Blizzard Entertainment, many of them worried it was a sign that Ghostcrawler didn't believe in Warlords of Draenor.  He did make his departure right after BlizzCon after all.  It turns out though, that the spectral crab has instead snapped up an even better opportunity: Lead Game Designer at Riot Games.

The intrepid investigators over at MMO Champion caught the title shift on Street's LinkedIn page -- in what must be the strangest way to find out breaking gaming news in a while.  I see this move as a great idea for both Ghostcrawler and Riot:  Street gets the opportunity to have more input on game development beyond balancing stats, and Riot gets a top notch systems designer who yearns for more.  There's certainly a lot more upward mobility for him at Riot.  

Since there is already a lead game designer at Riot, there is a second possibility here:  That Street has been brought on to man up additional projects that aren't League of Legends related.  Now there's an intriguing prospect.  

Yesterday the General Manager of the Maxis Emeryville studio Patrick Buechner of EA's SimCity took to their blog to bring some happy news to the few gamers still playing the game:  They will soon be able to play the game offline.  With Update 10 SimCity will get a new Single Player Mode, which will allow players to start a game session completely offline and play alone.  The multiplayer features that rankled so many are still in there, there's just the option to also play the game the way it should have been from the start.

The always online feature was a disasterous choice by the dev team, and cost them most of the community since it really strayed from the original concept of the game.  The question is, is it too little too late?  Perhaps not. I know I never bought the game myself, after their launch failures and hefty price tag -- and that's something I might reconsider now that I know I can play the game the way I want to.  No, I don't have a situation where I normally play games in the absence of the Internet, but I like knowing that if I head someplace remote or travel, I will have a game on my laptop that can be played without paying for hotel WiFi.

But I put the question to you:  Did you play SimCity?  Would you play it now that it will have offline play?  Or is this just a question of EA being too late to the party?  Can a title released last year really get a new lease on life from one little change?

Turns out another Tekken movie dubbed Tekken - A Man Called X is in the works which will be a prequel to the 2009 movie I still can't wipe from my mind. In a write-up by Cinema Today Japan, Actor Kane Kosugi (Dead or Alive) confirmed he will be starring in a role for the upcoming video game movie rendition. The flick is said to be directed by Prachya Pinkaew who worked on Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior and The Protector which were full of the fun martial artsy stuff you expect from a fighting movie and to me, is the A Man Called X' glimmer of hope.

CES 2014 has concluded, and those of us who followed the announcements out of the gaming companies that attended are still sifting through the awesomeness.  The biggest reveal, in my mind, was the news that Razer was working on a modular high end gaming PC concept dubbed Project Christine.

This beautiful piece of hardware is essentially a connected array of separate water-cooled modules, each designed to house one of the components of a gaming rig.  Looking to upgrade your hard drive space?  Just pull out your hard drive module and pop in a new one?  It's a simple yet elegant solution to a problem most gamers have today:  The hardware season is as short as the shoe season is -- about three months.  With the need to upgrade your hardware every couple of months, it's not only a pain but potentially dangerous for your system to keep cracking the case every time you need to swap components.  Project Christine will solve this problem for gamers once and for all.  Which means this very well could be the last gaming PC you ever have to buy.

As you might be able to tell, I'm pretty excited by the prospect of a modular setup such as this.  No, I don't need something that looks like the radiator off of an evil starship, but I could definitely need a computer that let me switch components out with ease.  This is definitely the sort of system I would save up my pennies for.  What about you?  What do you think about Razer's ambitious Project Christine? Does is rev your engines too?

In my house, and whole lot of Hearthstone is being played.  The trouble with the game is that they have yet to start beta testing the iPad version, and I can't always be at my computer.  If only there was a way I could play it on my tablet right now.  Fortunately for me, Jeffrey Grubb, news writer for Venture Beat, has found a way for gamers to do just that.

This little work around uses a program called Team Viewer to allow you to play Hearthstone on your tablet. I haven't tried it yet, but as soon as I'm done watching the video below I will definitely give it a shot. Hit the jump to watch the video and for the directions get your tablet card gaming on.

In our house, gaming clothing is king.  Far above any trendy flashy label, if it's got a clever gaming tie-in, we're there.  I'm also a huge fan of smart clothing, so I'm always on the lookout for something I can wear that also serves another geeky purpose. 

So imagine my joy when I opened my email this week to see the Electronic FPS Laser Battle Jacket.  For the low, low price of $59.99 this jacket is also a laser tage setup.  If your friend has one, you can actually play laser tag (battle for the hardcore). It comes with 2 blasters and 2 targets which means that even if your friend doesn't have one (yet) you can still start up a game of light-based run-and-gun.  That feature alone makes this a great deal.

So a hoodie that also is a game?  There is no more perfect garment for the FPS gamer in your life (i.e. you).  Even if you aren't a Shooter fan, you can still suit up and create your own course for hours of legendary enjoyment.  

The picture may look like that's a 9 member band performing World of Warcraft music, but in fact it's just three.  Husband and wife musicians Peter and Evynne (who gets extra points for having a name that could double as a great WoW character name) Hollens collaborated with Internet famous violinist Taylor Davis to create this haunting medley of WoW music perfect for any MMO lover's iTunes playlist.  If you're committed to making this song your own, you can download it here.

Hit the jump to listen to some haunting melodies, stirring marches, and just try to resist the urge to sneak away from work to log into Mists of Pandaria for your "lunch break."

Crystal Towers in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn makes for a lot of fun but we all know sticking 24-people who (usually) don't know each other into one big run can make for a lot of comical, or disastrous nonsense. I for one, am intrigued by the amount of dominance tanks have to assert on to the raid especially when there are six of them in the alliance (two per party). It's like all the bosses are trees they have to pee Provoke on.

Well, if you've experienced this in the past, this little short is for you. Check it out below:

So what's the first thing you think of when I say the words "Sundance Film Festival"?  No doubt you think of erudite little indie films with depressing plots and gorillas throwing barrels.  No gorillas you say?  What about two foul mouthed siblings satirizing your beloved games?  Or a quirky Asian in glasses with a baby unicorn shooting rainbows from where the sun don't shine?  Yeah, I was a little confused too.

Turns out all this makes a weird sort of sense, when you realize that the team from Hey Ash Whatcha Playin'? and FreddieW have teamed up to create a short film that they are going to show at the Sundance Film Festival in two weeks -- a film about Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze. Ah yes, it all makes sense now, in a way that only a gaming slurpee could make sense.

The short film will be featured at the Nintendo tent at Sundance on January 16th, and the game itself comes out on the WiiU January 21st, so this is obviously one of the best game promotions ideas of all time.  With two insanely talented gaming video creators joining forces to make with the hilarity, no doubt all those snooty film critics will instantly fall in love.  What no?  I'm wrong again now aren't I.  I'll just quit while I'm ahead.

CES 2014 has been pretty quiet on the gaming side, but that's not unusual as it's a hardware show.  Both Microsoft and Sony have had sales announcements, with the Xbox One selling 3 million globally and the PlayStation 4 selling 4.3 million, but the announcement we were really waiting for from Sony finally dropped this morning.  You see, they finally formalized information about their streaming service.

Called PlayStation Now, the cloud based game streaming service has been rumored for a while, ever since Sony bought streaming service Gaikai.  PS Now will allow gamers to play a variety of titles right from their console, without the need for download.  Remember On Live?  Well, now imagine it built into the software package on your console.

"We are thrilled to deliver entertainment experiences only possible from PlayStation through our new streaming game service," said Andrew House, President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.  "PS Now will allow users to engage in the world of PlayStation, whether they're existing fans or have never owned a PlayStation platform."

SEGA has officially announced Alien: Isolation, a first person survival-horror game developed by Creative Assembly. Players will take on the role of a powerless human trying to survive from the Alien attack with limited resources and must use wits and and improvised strategies to get away from what is hunting you down.

So far, everything about the game just screams "YES!" but that's what we all said about Aliens: Colonial Marines prior to its heart-breaking launch. The one thing I like about Creative's approach is you are not a marine and you're not going to be killing Aliens any time soon. They're going to be killing you. Yea, sounds dark but it's a survival game except with the universe's most scariest creatures. I have a hard time with Slenderman as-is so I'm going to need a few extra pairs of pants...

Alien: Isolation is set for a 2014 release and is due to come out for Xbox One, Playstation 4, PS3, and Xbox 360. For now, you can enjoy the trailer after the jump.

Alright, I understand this is the "GAME" Geex but just this once, I have to somewhat go off the technical topic and share something so grand and geeky with all of you. Turns out David Waddell, a North Carolina councilman, sent his letter of resignation to Mayor Michael Alvarez written in full-on Klingon. Yes, turns out poltics can be fun too:

Ah, the life of a loot hunter. I'm sure all of you MMO players rock that title in some shape or form. Doing dungeons for loot... Raiding for loot... Begging for lo -- erm you get the idea. While the experience of obtaining the virtual item you desire most is so grand, one cannot explain the sense of jubilee that explodes on your innards, sometimes... The hunt can make you me want to strangle even the cutest of rare exotic birds (I've already used "puppies" today).

In Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, there's a 24-man, duty-findable raid mission called "The Labyrinth of the Ancient." I guess you could closely compare it World of Warcraft's LFR in that the system pits you with up to 23 random players you've most likely never met before. Now, the way the drop system works is you can only roll and obtain one item per week which is fair because the items themselves aren't too bad and there are other methods to get some sweet gear in a given week. However, with 24 players and one drop per boss per party, the odds are against you, or me... mainly me.

See here, I've been busy this past week so I had to try and obtain the item I want before Monday 8am, which is when the loot-lockout resets. Of course, as a professional crammer, I was sitting there trying to get my drops from 5am to 7am.. a few hour(s) before the actual reset (I'm a genius). Mind you, 90% of these runs typically go very smoothly but this time, the dungeon masters were against me and my very very tired self.

Today I fully intended to share with you a little gem of a game developed by the Joe Danger folks over at Hello Games and announced last month at VGX.  Their upcoming title No Man's Sky is an exploration game featuring procedurally generated planets, and it looks amazing, as you'll see in the video below. I had been waiting to hear back from them about assets, but it turns out I am going to have to wait much longer than I expected.

In researching the game today I found out that the Hello Games studio was the subject of some major flooding over the holiday break, and that trumped my "oh hey check this game out" post big time.  It turns out that on Christmas Eve a river flooded its bank and ruined the Hello Games office.  Even worse, they were evidently in a high risk flood area (turns out the risk was 100%, sad to say) so their insurance didn't cover the damage.

As of January 2nd they were dealing with a second round of flooding:

So this past weekend I spent five minutes with Rogue Legacy, a rogue-lite game as they called it, after picking it up on the Steam holiday sale. What is a rogue-lite game you ask? Well first you have to understand what Rogue is, a dungeon crawl first developed in the 1980's it features randomly generated dungeons and permadeath. It's had a cult following of diehards for decades now and been recreated time and time again. At this point there is an entire genre labeled Rougelike. Games in this genre are easy to play but difficult to master and often lead to you trashing you keyboard. Rogue Legacy is a lite version of this genre and after five minutes I understood why.

Friday news broke that gamers playing Blizzard games such as World of Warcraft were having their accounts compromised by a Trojan virus.  At the time this was particularly scary because the authenticators weren't even protecting player's accounts, and the login information obtained could also be used on other games, and social networks (seeing how so many of us use the same passwords for our online accounts).  The only way to remove the Trojan was to wipe your computer and do a fresh install of your operating system and software.  Definitely scary stuff.

Then Blizzard researched the issue, and released an updated statement saying that they tracked the Trojan to a fake Curse client players were downloading from online searches such as Bing and Google. Google took action and blocked the searches, but the damage had been done for many gamers, who had to go through some rather complicated steps to get their computers cleaned and their accounts reinstated.  And all from a program mascarading as the most popular addon software manager on the Internet.

I've been victim of this sort of scam myself before, so I definitely feel sorry for anyone who was infected.  I was duped into thinking a sponsored link on Google was a safe link, and instead ended up almost filling my system with malware.  I came very close to having to do a fresh install, and I learned my lesson. For those who are looking for things like the Curse client, the easiest thing to do is head directly to their websites.  Sure search engines save you having to type in the URL yourself, but ultimately you are risking clicking on a link that will do very, very naughty things to your computer.

Today just about every type of game has already been made, including, it seems, games made by computers.  ANGELINA is the name of a research project started by PhD student Michael Cook designed to build games out of nothing but a set of themes.  The algorithm takes the instructions and researches the internet in order to understand the theme, and then goes out to grab assets and create a game.

To That Sect was the first game that ANGELINA created during a game developer's challenge, and the first where she competed against human game designers.  She took the theme of "You can only have one," processed it, and came up with a game "about a disgruntled child."  That in itself has some pretty big significance, because children tend to throw fits when they can't get more of something they want.  What if said disgruntled child had control over an environment, put a person in that space, and asked them to collect their toys?  It might look something like the video below.

Of course I'm assigning meaning to the game, where I should just let ANGELINA tell you what it's about.  I'm not sure that what I explained is any less creepy than what the robot came up with, but I'll let you be the judge of that:

In the early days of console gaming we didn't have digital cameras, internet, or email. It was a time of trail blazing, wild west style show downs, and pong. Sure pong has devolved into frat boys bouncing balls into Solo cups full of beer, the only trails being blazed are on the slopes, and the wild west is a trendy genre we revisit in rarity. Still the high score culture lives on. It really was long ago that we'd crowd around arcades trying to leave our initials in the ranking. Some of us working at creative uses of the three letter combo we were provided.

You would think that selling off your game for $0.99 wouldn't do much to increase your profits, but when said discount is on Steam, great things can happen.  

Success came to the makers of PixelJunk Eden when they were part of the most recent Steam Sale, with the game being discounted from $9.99 down to a measly $0.99.  This massive price cut pushed Steam Sale addicts to snatch up the game, and it became so popular that the developer, Q-Game, doubled their income.  

This couldn't have happened to a better title.  PixelJunk Eden is one of my all time favorite games, and had I had the dollar to spend at the time I would have gladly purchased it on Steam.  Just thinking about the rhythmic music and vibrant stages makes me want to hop on over to my PS3 for some spider-winging action.

Steam is like a proving ground of titles all vying for my attention. With a catalog of over 500 games waiting in my library sometimes it's a bit daunting to pick a title out for play. What I've decided to do is go through all 500 something titles I own and give them at least five minutes of gameplay time. Gameplay for me starts when cutscenes end and I take control of the game. The first one I'd like to share with you Geex is Valdis Story: Abyssal City.

I loved a lot of the intros back in my younger days of console RPGs. Something about the magic they evoked, beautifully orchestrated choruses and often traditional animation frames brought together some inspiring imagery. Looking back I can recall many occasions where I'd just load up the game to listen to the intro music and then some years later I found a way to pull the midi files for them from a local BBS. Yes kids, I'm a relic of an age gone by. The days of CRAMM (Classic Roleplaying Adventure Midi Music) are long gone. Sure MP3s are great and remastered classics sound fantastic, but nothing beats nostalgia, its memory fades till nothing is left but perfection.

Greetings fellow Geex!

Here we are, the second day into 2014, and I figured this was as good a time as any to discuss some of the features I have planned for the site in the coming year. This will give me a good chance to bounce these ideas off you, the reader, and see which of them you strongly like and which might be better moved lower down on the priority totem pole. Bear in mind that this is a rough and hypothetical list - its not a set of promised features, but more a set of ideas that I am experimenting with that may or may not make it to the site some day. If you absolutely want to see a feature made, say so in the comments!

Check out the list after the jump...

Having spent the better part of the week working on our 2013 Game Geex Awards, I couldn't help but think of what this year was going to bring to gaming.  I admit I sneaked over to the 2014 release list more than once while I was making my picks for 2013.  There's a lot of interesting gaming coming to us this year, and I have my picks for you right here.

First, a little note about my list:  Of course, these are my opinions, and not necessarily those of Game Geex at large.  Also, in the last couple years I underwent some pretty hefty life changes, and said changes had me really rethinking what games I was playing.  To that end there are many games that might be interesting that will not be on this list, nor will they be in my coverage plans for 2014.  Think of me as a gaming vegatarian:  There are some foods I cannot eat, but that doesn't mean I don't still love food.

It happens every year, like clockwork. No, I'm not talking about tax season or Black Friday, I'm specifically referring to our official Game Geex End of the Year Awards! It is a place for our writers to note down the titles they really loved from the previous year, as well as point out a couple of games that fell a little short of "spectacular." Unlike many other gaming sites, we let each of our writers select any game they want for each category - it saves on hours of argueing over a single "Game of the Year" when each of us have such varied tastes.

So feel free to check out our 2013's EoY Award winners, and leave a comment below with your personal choices, as well as opinions on ours! We here at Game Geex are looking forward to more great gaming in 2014!

It's Official! Blizzard has announced the release date for Diablo's first expansion, Reaper of Souls, to be March 25th, 2014. If you're excited, then be even more excited because the Closed Beta has officially begun so check your emails for invites! If you haven't recieved an invite yet, be sure to opt in for it through your Battle.net account.

Reaper of Souls features the 5th chapter of Diablo 3 as well as the new Crusader class, enchanting, and transmogrification which if I played, I would be most excited for (yes, aesthetics, bite me). The one thing I like are the quality-of-life changes they've made like improving drops for items that are usable by your class. Well, that was definitely needed with the changes to the auction house they are doing making it "less" of an incentive to just sell every sweet piece of gear you get.

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls launches on March 25th, 2014. Maybe this time, I'll go to the launch event they hold in Irvine Spectrum that I tend to neglect for little reason.

Today, I got to try my hand at A Realm Reborn's remake of 1.0's original Good King Moogle fight. Well, I wouldn't call it a total remake but hey, can't complain about more content. The fight is an 8-man primal battle that pits you against the Moogle King and his subordinates, each with a different job and set of skills marked by the equipment they are wearing. The battle itself can get extremely frentic so you'll be on your toes 90% of the battle.

The most annoying thing about the battle is the fact that the gladiator moogle as well as the king can taunt multiple members of your party which forces you to walk up to them. If other moogles are alive like the Black Mage or archer, you'll likely to die with all the area-of-effect damage they can dish out. There's also a lot of dodging that needs to be done but what fight doesn't?

This fight is entirely dependent on what your party wants to do for a kill order and there are a handful of combinations. Most parties don't take out the gladiator moogle first but our party did because the taunt was the most annoying mechanic for us to over-come. Maybe my job would've been easier with the DPS moogles taken down first but I had more fun doing it this way. Anyway, i'll leave you to watch the video! Enjoy.

Patch 2.1 has gone live in A Realm Reborn and so far, I like what I see. A lot of the new content has enemies with neat battle animations and most of the fights are tuned quite well in both difficulty and enjoyment. One of the most enjoyable parts is The Labyrinth of the Ancients which is the first part of Crystal Towers. The run has, and will continue to have as it's updated, a ton of refrences to older Final Fantasy games, especially FFIII, which was the original origin of the tower.

Crystal Towers is the new raid in FFXIV and it's a 24-man (6 tanks, 6 healers, 12 DPS) that can be used in the duty finder function which pairs you up with players randomly from all servers as long as you meet the pre-requisites. It's a sweet feature for those that don't want to be a part of a guild or don't have time to devote to one. Right now, CT only have one raid which consist of 4 bosses and a bunch of mechanical fights prior to them. For those that want to see what they're getting into first, you can see all sorts of gameplay footage below, courtesy of yours truly.

Click the jump below for all the boss battles:

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's patch 2.1 is officially out and there is a lot to see. Some people are having difficulty accessing or finding the mammoth of a patch notes Square Enix put out so here it is, laid out and organized just for you guys. I warn you, it's a lot and will take more than one read to analyze everything.

Click the jump below for the massive wall of text and numbers.

You might recall that I enjoy playing Minecraft, a lot.  I totally would be in Orlando this week for Minecon 2013 if it weren't for, you know, the money, and the time, and the "I forgot" clause.  Luckily I don't have to be there to enjoy the festivities, because Mojang is posting videos of what's going on down in the FL.  

The first video they posted actually gives us a look at the opening ceremony for the convention, and since I wanted to watch it, I figured at least one of you did too, so I posted it here after the break.  And then I found the immediate need to breed some technicolor sheep, so if you'll excuse me, I have some farming to do.

Square Enix is almost ready to roll out A Realm Reborn's patch 2.1, now dubbed "A Realm Awoken", on December 17th, which will be the game's first major content update, and now they have released a trailer to show off all the goodies. The upcoming patch has a whole bunch of new dungeons, story, and a new endgame raid as well as introduces the Wolves' Den which is the PvP mode. On top of PvE updates, the game is introducing general player content like the new housing system and improvements to quality-of-life such as fixing lag in popular areas.

Players, including myself, have waited a long time for this moment since dungeon grinding two available areas has become stale and bland and we really need a refresh in content. This patch was originally scheduled for an October release but was delayed due to server issues during the game's well-recieved initial launch. On top of the massive amount of content, we're looking at some class balancing as well which is great. In fact, the patch is massive enough to warrent its own page on the main website and gives the update an expansion-like feel to.

If you took a look at the title and wondered what "ID@Xbox" was, it's basically Xbox One's indie developer program. Anyone, with reasonable credibility I assume, can try and apply for an Xbox One dev kit. At this time, Microsoft has made public a handful of studios already accepted into the program with more on the way. Some of the studios listed include Double Fine, Crytek (what?), Ninja Bee, Team 17, and more. A larger list can be found here and hopefully we'll see the list grow larger as more and more teams get accepted into the program.

Originally, Microsoft was very adamant towards allowing any self-published video game studio to make games for its new console. That comes to no surprise really since self-publishing was apparently a difficult thing to do during the Xbox 360 era but that would be up to someone with experience on that matter to further inform me. However, with the current changes as well as this program, Microsoft can secure the indie development console market, or at least some of it, but they would have to do this whole process correctly. It's still to early to know if they're on the right track but they already have a handful of big indie teams under their belt which is good for them.

It turns out EA could be working on a new next-gen, open-world Star Wars title. The company posted a job listing on their website for the positions of "Lead Combat Designer" as well as "Animation Director" with the job description: to work on a ‘major new next gen open world action game. All of this was then followed up by a tweet from an EA job recruiter stating:

Best job title EVER! Lead Combat Designer for Star Wars @EA! http://bit.ly/14CEg2Y  #job #starwars #Vancouver #ea #gaming."

I think that's good enough evidence for me. However, a lot of websites are connecting "open world" with Grand Theft Auto and while the base idea is fairly accurate, for this specific type of franchise I feel that's wrong and gives people a negative connotation on what this game could actually be. Sorry folks, I doubt we are going to be hijacking speeders any time soon. However, on the otherside of the coin, there's already The Old Republic, which is THE franchise MMO at the moment and it's a limiting factor on the idea that they could be developing another MMO-ish type of game. Good.... Not again... Ok, again, but please do it better if you will.