Adam Jensen is a man with vengeance on his mind. The last time I met him in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I witnessed his transformation: a change fueled by violence and subsequently bestowing him with a wide range of augmentations and new, metallic body parts. And probably a pretty hefty medical bill. But he's finally found them; he's found the group responsible for doing this to him.

The complex they're meeting in is an unassuming building on the outskirts of Detroit, easily mistaken for one of the other derelict warehouses in the area that vagrants like to squat in -- if they're not discovered by the numerous armed patrolling guards, of course.

Being outnumbered, it's apparent that a stealthy approach is required for Jensen to succeed, and he's got some neat augmentations to help him during this particular gameplay segment (about 10 hours into the game). The cloak I so heavily relied on in the past is available, as well as sound-dampening tech for Jensen's footsteps, but there's also a pretty interesting skill I hadn't seen before. It allows Jensen to safely and silently float down from higher vantage points, preventing damage. The animation looks like it was ripped from the book How to Look Like Magneto.

Continue Reading

You might be somewhat upset by the news we're about to drop on you, but we encourage you to keep this fact in mind: You can't rush good destruction. THQ has announced that its upcoming underground shooter Red Faction Armageddon has had its May 31 release pushed back to a June 7 release. The international release date has similarly been bumped back a week, from June 3 to June 10.

The tacking-on of an extra seven days to our wait for the environment-obliterating action title is something of a tough pill to swallow. Just think of it this way: That gives you an extra week to spend with the soon-to-be-launched demo, giving you ample time to truly master your backhand. And, by "backhand," we mean "your devastating sledgehammer arc."

Continue Reading

We knew it was coming, but Microsoft has finally gotten around to confirming the news: Hulu Plus will officially launch on the Xbox 360 tomorrow, April 29. Not only will it feature Kinect support, but it will also be free to all Xbox 360 users (Gold and Silver) for the first week thanks to a partnership with Jack Link's Beef Jerky. And to think, your mom said consuming so much beef jerky would never benefit you in the end. Shows what she knows.

After that free week, feel free to indulge in another free week by going on over to the Hulu Plus page -- just don't tell anybody we tipped you off! We're afraid you'll have to pony up some cash after that if you want to continue to use the service: $7.99 a month.

For the full press release, hit the jump.

Continue Reading

Mike Kulas, the founder and president of Red Faction developer Volition, is leaving the company. His last day will be next Monday, reports The News-Gazette.

Kulas, 49, said his departure, which he had been considering since last year, wasn't triggered by any particular event. With Red Faction: Armageddon apparently complete (and all set for June 7), and Saints Row: The Third in "the home stretch," now is just a good time to make his move. Kulas will be succeeded by Volition's long-time vice president of product development, Dan Cermak.

Kulas founded Volition in 1996, when he and then partner Matt Toschlog split their Parallax Software outfit in two. The pair had formed Parallax several years earlier, producing the successful Descent series.

Volition was acquired by THQ in 2000 and has grown from some 30 employees in the late 90s to over 200 today, while continuing to maintain operations in Champaign, Ill. Kulas said he plans to remain in Champaign and will take some time to relax this summer before deciding on his next professional endeavor.

[Image credit: Volition, Inc.]

The biggest accomplishment in Driver: San Francisco appears to be the city itself, a huge expanse that not only covers the northern part of San Fran, but also Marin County, the East Bay and Treasure Island. Ubisoft Reflections creative director Martin Edmondson gave me a quick tour, showing me both a zoomed-out look at the entire gameworld and views from within the driver's seat in different districts, to give me a taste of the variety in locales. To see it all recreated and in such grand scope -- and running at a smooth framerate -- was quite impressive.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to drive around much on my own when I was at the controls. Instead, my playtime was relegated to roughly the first hour of the game and the northern section of the city, giving me a chance to see how protagonist Tanner gains the ability to possess other drivers -- what Edmondson calls "the shifting mechanic."

Continue Reading

If you managed to delay purchasing Valve's gooey, robot-filled puzzler, Portal 2, your patience is about to be rewarded: Two major retailers are significantly cutting the price of the game this weekend. According to the Kmart Gamer Facebook page, the title will be marked down to $34.99 on 360 and PS3 starting May 1 -- an offer that will be running for an undisclosed period of time.

A tipster also sent in an unreleased GameStop circular, revealing that stores will have the 360 and PS3 versions of Portal 2 on sale for a slightly-less-discounted $39.99, but will also have the PC version on sale for $29.99 on April 30. No matter how you slice it, the value-to-science ratio here is simply unbelievable.

[Thanks, MLC!]

Do you remember when Telltale announced its status as an official publisher for Xbox 360 and we surmised that the San Rafael-based developer may have finally worked something out with Microsoft, allowing it to pre-sell episodic wares as a full season, as it's done successfully on the PC, Mac, and PS3 platforms? Yeah, forget about all that. Telltale is still an official publisher on 360, but it's going to be distributing Jurassic Park: The Game "in North America as a retail release containing the full series on disc."

It's not certain how the PS3 release will be handled, since Telltale says Jurassic Park will be hitting the "Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms as a simultaneous release this fall." Though not mentioned in this latest press release, Telltale CEO Dan Connors said just this week that Jurassic Park "will be released simultaneously on every platform this fall," meaning the PC and Mac releases will appear alongside the "full series" Xbox 360 release. We've reached out to Telltale for some answers but this sounds to us like the episodic pioneer may be releasing an entire season un-episodically.

Continue Reading

Game designer and PhD researcher Lucas Blair recently penned an article that should enrapture the attention of the Gamerscore boosters and Trophy-fiends among you. It's a thorough examination of the different kinds of rewards developers can include in their titles, mixed in with a few suggestions for best practices to ensure said rewards are ... well, reward-ing.

There are a number of interesting comparisons in the report between the dichotomous design philosophies most developers adhere to. For instance: Should achievements be performance-based, or completion-based? Should they reward boring tasks, or interesting tasks -- which the player's likely to do without the incentive. How difficult should achievements be to unlock? It's a pretty thought-provoking read -- though, really, we think Avatar: The Burning Earth set the best example for Achievements a few years ago. Just give us those points.

Though the PlayStation Network and Qriocity side of Sony's digital services may have been subject to a massive breach of user information, it seems that Sony Online Entertainment product users are safe. SOE reps took to Sony's forums to clear the air, saying, "We have been conducting a thorough investigation and, to the best of our knowledge, no customer personal information got out to any unauthorized person or persons."

The post also acknowledges a "continuing investigation" currently taking place at SOE, and notes that the company will "promptly notify" customers of any change in the situation. SOE's games -- including Free Realms and DC Universe Online -- temporarily went offline on April 21 and have since had service restored. An SOE rep states that "SOE's systems and databases are separate from PSN's," thus explaining how the company's games are still working -- and how your information wasn't stolen.

Meanwhile, as reported by our sister site Massively, SOE is working on a "make good plan" for Free Realms and DCUO players on the PlayStation 3, as well as holding a handful of in-game events across multiple games in the coming weeks.

Trevor Grimshaw, a lead artist for Planet Moon (when it was still Planet Moon) posted a bunch of concept art and screens from an "Unreleased Adventure Game" for Xbox 360, which Superannuation identified as a "first-party Kinect game" called My Amazing Story. That title does appear on the artist's resume, and the screenshots have "MAS" in their filenames, so it's a reasonably safe assumption.

The project, an action-adventure game, featured creepy monsters, various suits that the player could wear to gain powers -- including spacesuits and some kind of cat costume -- and cute Kinect integration in the form of "postcards."

Given that there's no Kinect-based action game like this on the market now, it's disheartening to learn of this one only after it was cancelled.

Update: The site is now locked to "invited readers only." We've also removed the header image at Trevor's request.

South Australian Attorney-General John Rau will support the introduction of the long-awaited R18+ classification for games in the region, if the country gets rid of MA15+. Rau's version of video games would change the system to G, PG, M (PG-13) and R18+.

"At the moment, the MA15+ classification is like a crossover point between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable," Rau said, reports ABC News. "We want that to be a very clear gap. We will have a new classification R18+ and the MA15+ will disappear."

Australia's Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor, who has all but demanded that the various, resistant attorneys-general meet and come to a consensus on an R18+ rating for video game at a meeting in July.

Content trumped context after Smuggle Truck was rejected by Apple for distribution on the company's iOS App Store, but Owlchemy Labs reworked some art to launch Snuggle Truck for iPhone and iPad.

"The changes made to the game consist only of minor art changes and some swapped sound effects. Gameplay remains exactly the same," Owlchemy's Alex Schwartz told Joystiq. "Essentially, instead of smuggling immigrants over the border, you're now bringing animals from the wilderness into the comfort of a zoo, where they are provided plenty of food, water, shelter, and state of the art health care."

Schwartz explained that Snuggle Truck was the developer's way of still bringing "the fun and silliness" of its original game to the iOS platform. Due to contractual reasons, he couldn't tell us the details of Apple's rejection.

Mac and PC players don't have to compromise, as they'll be able to switch between Smuggle Truck and its cuddlier counterpart with the press of a button (as shown in the video after the break). Snuggle Truck is available now on the App Store for iPhone ($2) and iPad ($3). Smuggle Truck (with Snuggle Truck) is $5 from SmuggleTruck.com.

Continue Reading

It's not quite blasting demons on one of Mars' moons, but John Romero's next game does have a totally sweet name: Cloudforest Exploration. Romero's studio, Loot Drop, officially announced the project this morning -- the first of at least two social games to be released in partnership with publisher RockYou. Described simply as "an adventure and exploration Facebook game," Cloudforest is scheduled to be released on the service this summer.

"Loot Drop is a natural fit with our design-driven studio culture and with our commitment to developing and publishing the best social games in the world," RockYou senior VP of games Jonathan Knight said in the announcement. The publisher will also collaborate with Loot Drop on a second social game.

"[RockYou] support our creative freedom as we bring innovation to the story-driven adventure genre with Cloudforest Expedition," said Romero, who is joined by Brenda Brathwaite at Loot Drop. "Extending the relationship with a second game makes sense, and we're excited to reveal more details of our projects" -- just, not right now.

You tried to make it last.

Like Teddy's plan to eat his lunch for a whole bus trip you parsed out the exact bites of Portal 2 you'd need to take to savor it for a full week. But we we are, just seven days and one overnight, 15-hour bender later and all you've got to show for it is a big belly fulla nothing.

If you've got an iPad, two bucks and the urge to make the hunger pangs go away, you might wanna pick up The Final Hours of Portal 2, Geoff Keighley's fascinating interactive feature story on the creation of Valve's latest. What kind of revelations can you expect? Well, how about the fact that Portal 2 might be Valve's last game with an isolated single-player component (what about poor Episode 3)? Or the details of Erik Wolpaw's sleep schedule?

Yeah, we thought that one would sell you. Oh, and good news for non-iPadders out there: Keighley says that at least the text of the app will come to other platforms soon.

Next Tuesday, May 3, Civilization 5 will be invaded by Vikings. The "Denmark Civilization and Scenario Pack" adds the Dutch, with Harald Bluetooth as the civilization's figurehead. It also includes the "1066: Year of Viking Destiny" scenario, which finds players competing against three others to seize control of the British Isles.

Also available next week is the "Explorers Map Pack," which adds ten new single-player maps to the game. Five of them are based on real-world locations, the other five are "scripted map environments." The maps will change from game to game and "focus on an exciting gameplay theme." Examples include an arid sandstorm, the Amazon, the Caribbean and the Bering Strait. The packs are $4.99 apiece or $7.49 as a bundle.

Continue Reading

One of the only knocks we gave Section 8: Prejudice regarded its matchmaking system. Specifically, our review mentioned the game's lack of a party system and the general difficulty of playing with Xbox Live friends online. Apparently ours wasn't the only complaint, as TimeGate has addressed community feedback with a new title update.

While the new update won't add a party system to the game, we've been informed by TimeGate that "servers are more likely to try to put friends or Xbox LIVE Party members together during auto-balancing." Furthermore, ranked Swarm matches will now only require two human players instead of four.

Additional fixes were also applied to usability, dedicated servers and a pair of crashing issues. See the full patch notes after the break.

Continue Reading

If you live in or near Austin, Texas, and would like to see Twisted Pixel's The Gunstringer for the first time, you'll have the opportunity this Sunday, May 1 from 4:00 to 6:30PM. The newly minted indie game collective Juegos Rancheros (!) is hosting its first monthly meetup at The Highball, featuring a public demo of The Gunstringer.

This monthly event is intended as a continuation of the Fantastic Arcade festival, which last year featured a selection of indie games in custom-built arcade cabinets. Other games will be on display, as well, including the just-released DSiWare app Inchworm Animation.