Playstation gamers are fortunate enough to have the Gran Turismo series (which we rated the best racing game franchise ever) for their racing needs. It’s been around for 15 years now. To commemorate this moment, Sony is holding a big press event at the Silverstone Circuit in the UK. The father of Gran Turismo and president of Polyphony Digital, Kazunori Yamauchi, will discuss the future of the GT series. Fans speculate that Gran Turismo 6 may be announced, which is further rumored to be a Playstation 3 title. The event will also feature car manufacturers including Audi, BMW, Ford, Honda, Jaguar, KTM, Mercedes Benz, Tesla and Toyota showing off their cars.
Check out the trailer for the Gran Turismo 15th Anniversary event…
If you’re an old school FPS fan, chances are you’ve blasted away Nazi’s as B.J. Blazkowicz. The Wolfenstein series has enjoyed an overall successful run since it’s creation in 1992 and is finally getting a new entry in the series. Bethesda announced Wolfenstein: The New Order, developed by swedish game studio Machine Games. No gameplay video exists yet, but Bethesda released a teaser trailer which reveals a bit about the game’s tone and themes…
We also know that Machine Games used id Software’s ID Tech 5 engine and that it’s based in alternate universe version of 1960. Read the Wolfenstein: The New Order press release below…
The year is 1960 and the Nazi’s have won World War II. War hero B.J. Blazkowicz must launch an impossible counter-offensive against the monstrous Nazi regime that has conquered the globe.
Intense, cinematic and rendered in stunning detail with id® Software’s id Tech® 5 engine, Wolfenstein sends players across Europe on a mission to bring down the Nazi war machine. Infiltrate their most heavily guarded facilities, battle high-tech Nazi legions, and take control of super-weapons that have conquered the earth — and beyond. Wolfenstein is under development at MachineGames, a studio comprised of a seasoned group of developers recognized for their work creating award-winning games.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is scheduled for release in Q4 2013 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and next generation consoles. And Beginning today, additional details about the game will be revealed in a series of exclusive feature stories with Gamespot.com.
Wolfenstein®: The New Order™ is a fictional story set in an alternate universe in the 1960′s. Names, characters, organizations, locations and events are either imaginary or depicted in a fictionalized manner. The story and contents of this game are not intended to and should not be construed in any way to condone, glorify or endorse the beliefs, ideologies, events, actions, persons or behavior of the Nazi regime or to trivialize its war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Gamespot also did a feature describing the gameplay although they were unable to show the gameplay. Here’s what they said about the gameplay specifically…
Heavy feeling, 1960′s sci-fi weapons including a laser turret
Sliding feature allows you to quick get to cover, although there is no “cover mechanic”
Gameplay will encourage constant movement
Story driven, first person action adventure
Exploration and searching for features will happen alongside fast paced combat
Explore the Berlin catacombs in an underwater machine
Some robot enemies including robotic dogs and mecha suits
Interactive NPCs
Leaning feature allows you to shoot in unusual angles
Multiple choice scenarios
Single player only, no multiplayer
Wolfenstein: The New Order game screenshots & concept art via Gamespot…
Wolfenstein: The New Order trailer sceens…
From what we’ve seen, Wolfenstein: The New Order looks like it could be one of the best games this year. We’re really looking forward to it, although I’m a bit bummed there will be no multiplayer. Wolfenstein: The New Order is being developed by Machine Games and published by Bethesda. It’s due for a release date sometime late in 2013 for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC and next generation consoles (presumably including PS4).
Back in March, we had posted about American McGee mentioning the wonderful thought of an Alice 3. He had asked fans to make some noise about the idea to get EA’s attention because they own the current publishing rights. The current title for the possible upcoming American McGee Alice game is.. Alice: Otherlands. American McGee states that it will be the final chapter to Alice’s adventures in the demented and twisted world of Wonderland. American McGee also commented on the Alice: Otherlands Facebook page that there definitely will be some co-op and multiplayer gameplay. On this facebook he’s also posted up concept art for the game which shows you some of the UI and gameplay perspective. You can see American McGee’s Alice 3: Otherlands concept art below…
As for the deal with EA, American McGee won’t know for sure (if he has the rights to make a new Alice) until July of this year. Assuming they do authorize the creation of sequel, McGee is looking to develop the game with his Shanghai based studio Spicy Horse and fund it via Kickstarter or similar crowd funding service.
Stay up to date on the possible sequel via theAlice: Otherlands Facebook Page. American McGee is actively posting in the comments, replying to fans.
Will Wright, the luminary game designer and founder of Maxis sounded off on his opinions of the 2013 reboot of SimCity. Although he designed the original SimCity back in 1989, he left Maxis in 2009 to form his own company Stupid Fun Club. Since then, Maxis developed the latest in the SimCity franchise which was disastrously released this year. A disaster thanks to it’s requirement of an always-on internet connection and a slew of server side issues which prevented the game from being playable.
In a recent interview Will Wright said, “I feel bad for the team. I could have predicted – I kind of did predict there’d be a big backlash about the DRM stuff. It’s a good game; I enjoy playing it a lot.” He continues, “That was basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody $60 for a game and they can’t play it. I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I’d feel the same.”
The 53 year old game designer also agrees with gamers about the concerns of DRM and games requiring an always-on connection. He said, “I think people care if it doesn’t work,” he said. “If you can’t play it on planes, stuff like that… I think there are some very valid concerns about it. Also there’s a perception; I don’t expect to play World of Warcraft on the airplane, because my perception is it has to be on the ‘Net. Sim City was in this very uncomfortable space, like the uncanny valley, almost; [it was caught] between was it a single player game or was it a multiplayer game?”
He also doesn’t agree with the general hatred of EA as a whole as he explains, “It was kind of like, ‘EA is the evil empire, there was a lot of ‘Let’s bash EA over it.’” he added, “It’s hard to talk about EA as this monolithic thing with one agenda. If you move back it’s like all these different studios going in slightly different directions; it’s almost more like a loose federation. It is going through a lot of restructuring right now, but I don’t even have the time to tune into it.”
As whole, Wright is happy about the growth of the indie game market, celebrating the amount of new titles coming out. “I remember ten years ago at every E3 you’d walk around asking your friends ‘What’s new?…’ ‘nothing,nothing,nothing,’” Wright noted. “Now, every week somebody tells me about some weird little app that came out. Not big budget, but they’re interesting and fun out of the box. It’s a much more level playing field, I think. They are putting marketing dollars behind these things, but still it’s not five big publishers controlling ten titles a year.”
Wright also expresses that he feels the game industry is becoming increasingly important, especially to the younger generation. He feels that video games are as important to young people as movies, and probably more important than books.
