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Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning is a pretty direct response of Skyrim, from the way that it tells its story, way the world is laid out, and—most importantly—the way the visceral, third-person combat works. Set in a brightly-colored high fantasy world in contrast to Skyrim's more realistically-minded environment, as an answer, it's not nearly perfect and presents its own host of issues to the open world RPG formula. Read more...

Tags 38 studios, big huge games, kingdoms of amalur: reckoning, PC, PS3, Xbox 360

After Skyrim was complete, apparently some of the designers had an overabundance of creative energy left over. I can only imagine they were bursting with it, which is the only thing that can explain their five-day challenge to come up with any one thing they would want to see in the game, the results of which are this Skyrim Game Jam video (complete with thumping beats and presented by Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard) showing off some of the many tech-heavy (flowing water in dungeons), mechanically interesting (spell combinations, spears), odd (a lycanthropy skill tree), and brilliant (dragon mounts) that the Bethesda team was able to crank out in five days.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say releasing the video is almost like a gauntlet being thrown down to gamers who just recently got their hands on the Skyrim Creation kit.

Check out the video after the jump.
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Tags bethesda softworks, DICE 2012, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, PC, PS3, Todd Howard, Xbox 360

[Update: In the original version of this post, I identified developers United Front as the team behind the Just Cause series. That would actually be Square Enix London Studios and has been corrected in the article.]

The True Crime series was Activision's answer to GTA: a somewhat tongue-in-cheek open world action game with a focus on melee combat, featuring real-world locations and a decent amount of above-tier voice acting (even if the gameplay itself wasn't much to write home about. For a while, the third game in the series, True Crime: Hong Kong was a thing before Activision chose to divest themselves of the franchise, handing it off to Square Enix two months later.

Well, Square has had the Just Cause collaborators at Square Enix London Studios along with United Front hammering away at the game for the last few months and it's been rechristened Sleeping Dogs.

Find out more after the break.
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Tags square enix, true crime: hong kong, United Front Games

The Simpsons Arcade comes to consoles 20 years after the fact, while the much-anticipated (by yours truly, at least) Gotham City Impostors and Shank 2 make their debut. Oh, and Kingdoms of Amalur might just be the best open world game that doesn't have Elder Scrolls in the title.
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Tags 38 studios, 3DS / DS, big huge games, capcom, gotham city impostors, kingdoms of amalur the reckoning, konami, monolith productions, PC, PS3, PSN, resident evil: revelations, Shank 2, The Simpsons Arcade, wb interactive, Wii, xbla, Xbox 360

I was surprised and disappointed by the lack of fights with giant chickens.
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Tags Family Guy Online, PC, Roadhouse Interactive, Twentieth Century Fox

This nine minute trailer for Namco Bandai and CyberConnect2's grand Naruto continuity mashup begs the question, "How much Naruto is too much Naruto?"
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Tags CyberConnect2, namco bandai, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations, PS3, Xbox 360

Based on this new trailer from Atlus, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 won't be straying too far from the design of the 2009 release. In terms of plot, it doesn't seem very far from the usual-usual with SMT games, featuring a ticking clock until the end of the world and a group of young people making deals with demons to stave off the apocalypse.

More details about this release and the trailer after the break.
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Tags 3DS / DS, atlus, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2

A trio of videos show off the topsy-turvy multiplayer gameplay of the Namco Bandai's upcoming third-person shooter.
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Tags inversion, namco bandai, PS3, saber interactive, Xbox 360

The Soul Calibur series enters its 16th year as a franchise, reaching all the way back to the PS One release of Soul Edge, and it's hard to overestimate how groundbreaking the original game was among the then-current crop of fighters.

It was a 3D, weapons-based fighter that seemed to take the rough ideas of something like Battle Arena Toshinden and make them workable on the still-evolving 32-bit platform. Along with Tekken, Namco and Project Soul seemed to understand how to not only take advantage of the hardware at the time (both series were great looking back in their day) but how to translate fighting—and this is the important part—coherently into 3D, allowing the player to use the y-axis strategically, and not simply as a means of exploiting depth of field.

But both Tekken and Soul Calibur as series have seemed to struggle to make an impact on modern consoles, the most recent iterations of each—Tekken 6 and '08's Soul Calibur IV—bringing more of the same to the table, coasting by on improved graphics without any great, vital leaps in the gameplay. And that's kind of been a problem since the 2D fighting games they were once set to supplant like Street Fighter and MK have found ways to reinvent and reinvigorate themselves while still remaining true to what gamers remember about them.

Fighting games aren't like Madden, it's tough to justify simply iterating on the game with some minor tweaks and changes in roster and justifying it as a new purchase because gamers at large might not notice discrete differences. An occasional reinvention is necessary, not only to draw in new and returning players, but to keep a series feeling vital and reflect the new ways gamers are interacting with the game.

Which brings us (at long last—sorry) to Soul Calibur V. Is it the great jolt the series needs to keep the series alive or simply more of the same with a new coat of paint?
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Tags namco bandai, Project Soul, PS3, Soul Calibur V, Xbox 360

Ubisoft's first gameplay trailer for their latest tactical shooter shows off a healthy amount of equipment and action.
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Tags PC, PS3, tom clancy's ghost recon future soldier, ubisoft, Xbox 360