A shadow quickly slips into the swamp, invisible and unheard as a squad of CELL agents fan out into the murky waters investigating a few scattered noises. They're not quite sure what to expect but they remain vigilant if not a little tense, burdened by heavy weaponry and itching for a fight. The shadow has a eluded them before- always seeming to explode out of the ether and devastate the unsuspecting soldiers. Moving in a tight formation, they see a splash nearby. It's just a disinterested frog plopping into the muck croaking to itself. Satisfied nothing is wrong, the mercenaries retread their steps back to camp. One turns around just to double check but it's already to late. The invisible viper they had been hunting sinks its steel fang into the soldier's throat. The real hunt has just begun.

In many games you are the hero. This time, however, you are the monster - some twisted combination of phantom and tank melded into a single lethal vector of chaos. Thanks to your alien-tech powered Nanosuit, you are more than human, a super soldier able to take the toughest foe. One minute, you can activate your stealth a become rendered completely invisible and perfectly camouflaged in the environment. The next moment, you can flip on armor mode becoming a bulldozer with a purpose- to storm into a group of enemies crushing them with your might. It's these choices that have always been the basis of combat in the shooter franchise. Either go in quite or run through guns blazing. In "Crysis 3" not much has changed mechanically. But that ain't exactly a bad thing because you can sneak up to a dubious merc, wring him by the neck, then hurl him into space.
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By Joseph Leray

For “Mass Effect” obsessives like myself, the most recent of the sci-fi series’ numerous dust-ups has been what to call the next installment. “To call the next game ‘Mass Effect 4’ or ‘ME4’ is doing it a disservice and seems to cause a lot of confusion here,” Chris Priestly, BioWare’s community manager, explained on their forums.

“We have already said that the Commander Shepard trilogy is over and that the next game will not feature him/her. That is the only detail you have on the game,” he continued. “I see people saying ‘Well, they’ll have to pick a canon ending.’ No, because the game does not have to come after. Or before. Or off to the side. Or with characters you know.”

Yannick Roy, the head of the BioWare Montreal studio working on the ambiguously-named title, later dropped in to clarify his colleague’s somewhat testy assertions: “Thinking of the next ‘Mass Effect’ game as ‘Mass Effect 4’ would imply a certain linearity, a straight evolution of the gameplay and story of the first three games.”
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By Joseph Leray

Boutique gaming mag Kill Screen has posted a great developer diary with the audio team behind “Dead Space 3,” particularly detailing how the audio cues were captured (the screaming Necromorphs are actually sound designer David Lowmiller’s niece) and how and when the game engine decides to use them.

Visceral Games implemented what they’re calling the Fear System into “Dead Space 3”: everything in the game has a hidden fear value between 0 and 1. At a fear level of 0, protagonist Isaac Clarke is cool, calm, and collected; at 1, his heart is beating out of his chest, his breathing is haggard, Necromorphs are screeching, and the game’s score has degraded into “a symphony of destruction,” says executive producer Steve Papoutsis.
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By Joseph Leray

“Mass Effect” producer Michael Gamble tweeted this picture out yesterday, noting that this “does not look like a guy you’d want to mess with.”

This mecha-krogan -- which, by the by, should totally become part of the “Warhammer 40,000” universe -- is presumably a teaser for the third piece of campaign DLC for “Mass Effect 3,” following up the less than stellar “Leviathan” and “Omega” expansions to last year’s space-opera. Eurogamer notes that our hammer-toting Krogan is smashing up the Firebase Jade multiplayer map. It’s likely that we’ll see more multiplayer updates before too long, but it might also suggest that the upcoming campaign DLC might take us to some of Cerberus’ more remote bases.

Executive Producer Casey Hudson also sent out a teaser, noting that the casino scene -- and you can just see Shepard and Wrex leaning on a rail -- “would be a good place for some R & R.”
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By Joseph Leray

With roughly a week to go before the game is released to the unwashed on February 5, Electronic Arts have released a launch trailer for “Dead Space 3,” teasing engineer-turned-super-soldier Isaac Clark’s final assault on the Black Marker.

Despite the game’s title, there’s not much space in this “Dead Space 3” trailer. Maybe we should call the game “Dead Lost Planet 3,” or “Dead Hoth 3,” or “Dead Cutting Open a Tauntaun and Living in its Body Cavity 3.” I mean, that doesn’t actually happen in this trailer, but it should.
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I'm Commander Shepard and this joke has certainly run its course by now. Anyways.... cuddle up with the galactic saviour with these squeezable, huggable plushies! DeviantArtist, eitanya, has stitched together a vertible squad of cutties from BioWare's Mass Effect series! You can even purchase a few from her account with prices ranging from around 90 to 120 space bucks.Check out more images after the jump.
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By Joseph Leray

The scariest part of “Dead Space 3,” Visceral’s dark, sci-fi third-person-dismemberer, will be when the pricing for the game’s microtransactions are revealed.

Eurogamer spotted an in-game prompt in the game’s weapons-crafting system when the player doesn’t have enough resources to build the Necromorph-blasting machine they want. Scrap parts to build weapons can be picked up from the player or by scavenger bots, but they can also be purchased from an in-game store.
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By Joseph Leray


As if the holiday season and the New Year weren’t enough to remind us of the inescapable creep of time, Electronic Arts has announced that it will be scuttling the servers of its older sports titles later this month.

In a statement on their website, EA explains that “fewer than 1% of all peak online players across all EA titles” are still playing games like "FIFA 11," "Madden 11," and "NHL 11" -- games for which the online multiplayer servers will be shut down on the 11th. “It’s no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these games up and running,” the statement continues.
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By Joseph Leray

Speaking with Game Informer Aaryn Flynn, general manager for BioWare Edmonton and Montreal studios, let slip that the role-playing giants are looking to games like "The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim" for inspiration during development of Dragon Age III: Inquisition.

"You can't look at a game like Skyrim and not think about how impressive what they've accomplished is -- or [think] that's an interesting new direction or that there was something that didn't work well for them that we could take in a new direction," he told the magazine. "So, we're always influenced by these games, especially in a relatively tight-knit genre like RPGs."
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By Joseph Leray

Yesterday, the Wii U version of Mass Effect 3 hit store shelves as a launch title for the new console. Mass Effect fans hoped that downloadable content available for other platforms would be available on the Wii U eShop, but the series' official Twitter feed has confirmed that this isn't the case.

When asked about Mass Effect 3: Omega -- a downloadable campaign that centers around liberating the seedy, crime-ridden spacestation from the terrorist group Cerberus -- the official account replied, "Unfortunately, it will not be available for Wii U." A later tweet kept the possibility open, however, telling fans to "never say never," in regards to future announcements.

The Wii U version of Mass Effect 3 does come with some DLC, however: From Ashes (which includes an extra Prothean party member), the Extended Cut ending, and three multiplayer expansions (Resurgence, Rebellion, and Earth) were bundled with the game.

Eurogamer is also reporting that Leviathan, the first Mass Effect 3 DLC campaign, will not be included in the Wii U version of the game. Leviathan was released earlier this year to somewhat middling reviews. Our own Charles Webb called it "a minor side story that doesn't really do much to enrich the already expansive universe of the game."

[@MassEffect via Eurogamer]

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Wii U Review - The Next Generation Of Gaming Begins Now
Five Wii U Games You Should Be Playing At Launch
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