If you cheered Electronic Arts’ decision to end its three-year-old Online Pass program, I’ve got some advice: Don’t fly the victory flag quite yet.

I’m on record calling the Online Pass a fairly smart way to cut in on the used-game market. Inserting a one-use-only code that unlocked a chunk of a game — the multiplayer mode, say — didn’t punish EA’s customers, but a second-hand buyer had to cough up an additional fee to get those features. Consumer friendly? Absolutely not. But as a business tactic, the Online Pass addressed a real financial problem, and other publishers quickly adopted it as a growing industry standard.

“We listened to what the consumer was saying, and it just didn’t look like it was popular,” EA communications vice president Jeff Brown told me at a pre-E3 event this week. “When mainstream consumers make it clear they don’t like something, we listen to them.”

Brown added that with the new console generation coming, “it was time to either do it again or stop doing it. We’re not going to do it again.”

They might not have to.

Leaked details on both Sony’s PlayStation 4 and the successor to Microsoft’s Xbox 360, codenamed Durango, suggest both systems may not support used games. We continue to hear that each requires an always-on Internet connection — an excellent way to verify a first-use disc and reject a second-hand game. Sony also filed a patent on radio-frequency-tag technology designed to handle that verification without an online component.

If true, Sony and Microsoft can handle the used-game issue at the console level, whether it’s a partial or total lock. Then Electronic Arts can and should exercise a little realpolitik, step aside, and let the console manufacturers take the heat.

Indeed, an Online Pass might conflict with whatever system Durango and the PS4 put in place. Possibly, it violates the new consoles’ technical certification requirements — the set-in-stone rules for publication approval on a hardware platform. Certainly, it would become an unnecessary hurdle for customers to jump before playing their brand-new game, and adoption of the Online Pass in the secondary market was fairly low, netting $10-15 million a year, tops. So why not get rid of the thing?

When I put the question to Brown, he had to beg off slightly. “I can’t talk about what my partners are putting into their consoles,” he said, citing terms of confidentially that won’t lift for a while yet. But he added, “You’re making a good point.”

I’ve reached out to other companies, like Warner Bros. Interactive, who’ve used Online Pass-like content locks in the past. So far, no one is confirming or denying their plans to keep using them in the future. But don’t be shocked if they start slowly phasing out.

And don’t celebrate the demise of the Online Pass. It might have felt onerous to charge second-hand users extra for on-disc content, but that content and those charges were always fairly minor. What’s coming next might not be nearly so limited in scope.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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We’re coming close to the one year anniversary of my first article that made the front page of Bitmob. It was about my bromance with Garrus Vakarian in the Mass Effect trilogy. At the time, I was excited to share my favorite moments from Mass Effect 3. The article was the deciding factor in my wanting to begin a career in games journalism, but it’s also my most cherished article because it came from the heart of an innocent gamer. I hadn’t then been exposed to the greater gaming community.

A lot has happened since last April. I’m sure I don’t need to recap all the events for you; this isn’t that kind of retrospective. I’m more concerned about the video game community itself.

A year ago, I was pretty naive about our community. I thought it was filled with a bunch of passionate gamers who liked discussing their favorite hobby over the Internet. Bitmob itself was a great place — maybe too great. It truly was a shelter from the legions of trolls that infest the Internet. Eventually, the more I invested in Twitter, the uglier the conversations became, the more websites I visited, and the more bickering that went on.

Why would anyone want to be a part of this industry? I’ve asked myself this question a lot recently. Everywhere I turn, I see arguments about violence, sexism, and bigotry. I wish I could go back to last April, when I decided to write about video games. I would tell my former self to just enjoy the hobby and not try for a career in it.

I always feel awkward when someone asks me what I want to do for a living. Whenever I reply, “I want to write about video games,” I feel an awkward chill run down my spine. Recently, I realized that chill isn’t because most people view video games as childish but because I’m ashamed to associate with our community. Video games are no longer a children’s toy, but gamers sure as hell still act like children.

Last year, Electronic Arts was voted the most evil company in America, and it looks like it will be receiving that title once again. Really? How about the companies that skyrocket prices on pharmaceuticals or create a monopoly off blood diamonds? There is a laundry list of companies out there that treat humans and the environment like garbage, yet a software publisher is voted the most evil company in America because a bunch of gamers didn’t like the ending of Mass Effect 3. No wonder I’m ashamed to associate with this crowd. It’s pathetic; it’s disgusting.

I know I’m coming off as pessimistic, but this is coming from anger. I’m angry that women are treated terribly from all angles in this community. I’m tired of seeing the trolls get more attention than those who are actually trying to add value to conversations. However, every once and awhile something great happens — something that revitalizes my love for video games. Two recent dates come to mind: February 20 and March 26, or the reveal of the PlayStation 4 and the release of BioShock Infinite, respectively.

On the day of the PS4 reveal, Twitter was vibrant and optimistic. Everyone was sharing their favorite PlayStation memories, and there were great discussions about predictions and what Sony needed to reveal. From the early hours of the morning to late at night, after the two-hour presentation, it was a great day to be a gamer — not because a new console was announced but because everyone put down their weapons for a day and shook hands in excitement.

On March 26, an amazing video game came out: BioShock Infinite. The Internet was abuzz once again. Everyone was enjoying common experiences in Columbia. A week later, great conversations are still being had — another example of trolls and white knights alike dropping their issues and sharing something together.

These significant events show how great our community can be. Sadly, it seems it can only sustain such greatness for a single day.

A lot has happened since last April. I’ve made great friends and played some fantastic games, but that feels overshadowed by a colossal community filled with pettiness. As long as the web is the main method of discourse for this industry, it will never get better.

I wish I had some answers, but I don’t. Remember, my first article was written only a year ago. I have no influence in this industry, but maybe one day I will, and I’ll have some answers then. Until that day comes, I think we should all ask ourselves one simple question: why would anyone want to be a part of this industry?

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Films based on video games (and vice versa) usually suck, but using game characters to recreate posters of popular movies works surprisingly well.

Take the image above, for example. I swapped the T. rex from Jurassic Park’s poster with Bowser, and the palm trees at the bottom with Super Mario World’s Valley of Bowser overhead map. Yoshi was my original choice since he’s a dinosaur, but King Koopa looks far more menacing.

Below I added 10 more reimagined movie posters that should please cinephiles and gamers alike. Hover the cursor over the picture to launch the gallery.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Robin Sachs, the popular character actor who voiced gruff, scarred mercenary Zaeed Massani in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, has died at the age of 61.

BBC America reports that London-born Sachs was found in his Los Angeles home on Tuesday, his birthday, having passed away four days earlier. Friends described his death as “unexpected,” but sources indicate natural causes. No official cause of death has been announced.

While Sachs also had voice roles in Resident Evil: Damnation, Rainbow Six: Lockdown, Maiijn and the Forsaken Kingdom, and The Bard’s Tale, his gravelly portrayal of Zaeed gained him the most fans. A downloadable character made available to first-time buyers through Electronic Arts’ online pass system, Zaeed co-founded the ruthless Blue Suns mercenary group before his partners betrayed him. He got his chance for revenge years later while working for Commander Shepard as part of his loyalty mission in Mass Effect 2. Zaeed’s bitter and acerbic style appealed to the Mass Effect fan base, leading to a brief appearance in a Mass Effect 3 side mission.

Sachs first became well known to sci-fi/fantasy fans on TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Ethan Rayne, the villainous counterpart to Buffy’s mentor, Rupert Giles (Anthony Head). His first on-camera role was in one of the classic Hammer horror films, Vampire Circus. Under heavy prosthetics, he also menaced fake space hero Tim Allen as the very real alien menace Sarris in Galaxy Quest. More recently, he took on guest roles in Castle, Torchwood, and NCIS.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The same year its “customers” voted Electronic Arts the worst company in America, the game publisher also released the best-reviewed titles on average, according to review-aggregation site Metacritic.

In 2012, EA had an average critic score of 75.2 on Metacritic, which collects the average score from dozens of different reviews for each game. That was enough to put it ahead of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo as its best-reviewed game publisher of the year. The company’s best reviewed game was Mass Effect 3 with a 93. It’s best original published game was Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning with an 81. It’s worst-reviewed game was Medal of Honor: Warfighter with a 53.

Electronic Arts decided to pull the plug on future Medal of Honor games based on Warfighter’s poor performance at retail. The fact that it was the company’s worst reviewed game of the year probably didn’t help.

Electronic Arts beat out Microsoft’s average review score by almost 2 points. The Xbox 360 manufacturer’s published games came in second, followed by Sony and Nintendo. You can see the full list on Metacritic’s rundown 2012′s best game publishers.

Interestingly, EA’s most direct competition, Activision, only just cracked the top 10. The Call of Duty publisher only managed an average score of 64.4 on the strength of Diablo III’s average review of 88.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Dead Space 3 starts with a break up. You might think that’s weird for a game that involves meticulously cutting off the limbs of alien zombies who want to kill you. But the Dead Space series has seen more unusual changes over the last few years.

Available today for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, Visceral Game’s third entry of its sci-fi themed survival-horror franchise takes hero Isaac Clarke through a galaxy-hopping adventure as he tries to stop undead creatures known as Necromorphs once and for all. Fighting alongside him in the optional cooperative mode is John Carver, a soldier who has his own reasons for hunting down the origin of the Markers, spiraling structures that create the monsters out of corpses.

Much like with Capcom’s Resident Evil games, many fans mourn the transition of Dead Space from a slow-paced and eerie tale to a heavy emphasis on action and leaning on large, scripted sequences to tell its story. So I’ll make this simple: If you didn’t enjoy this change in Dead Space 2 at all, you won’t find a lot to like in Dead Space 3. But if you’re willing to dig in, you’ll find an entertaining shooter that will scare the pants off you.

What you’ll like

Addicting loot hunt

The limb-chopping combat receives a facelift with the new workbenches, which you can use to craft your own weapons. You start by picking a compact frame (one-handed) or a heavy frame (two-handed) and choosing an upper tool and a lower tool. These tools dictate what kind of firepower you’re using. If you attach the military engine, you can create standard weapons like machine guns, revolvers, and a sniper rifle. One of my favorite combinations early on was a rivet-shooting chain gun that I placed on top of a shotgun.

Different barrel tips, a variety of attachments, and modifiers known as circuits can alter the way your gun behaves — a generic plasma cutter can become a lethal killing machine by adding a few damage circuits to its frame. Or you can add an ammo-box attachment that’ll automatically reload your gun once you reach the bottom of the clip. You have a lot of flexibility in tweaking these weapons anyway you want.

The best way to find components is through exploration. Hidden containers and secret rooms contain the rarer stuff, but Necromorphs often drop resources (which acts as a type of in-game currency) that you can use to build other tools and items. Gathering these resources and looking for the nearest workbench to put them together is like a minigame of its own, as it encourages you to keep an eye out for more loot.

Dead Space 3 has a lengthy campaign — it took me close to 24 hours on my first solo playthrough — and I’m sure that at least a few of those hours came from tinkering around with the workbench. You can always recover any parts you’ve added to a gun, so it’s easy to test out your crazy weapon ideas.

If you’re impatient, you can buy more resources, space suits, and weapons through the optional microtransactions menu with real-world money. But I don’t know why  anyone would even consider that. By the end, I had a huge pile of resources, and I never had to worry about running out.

An evolving threat

The Marker-corrupted creatures, many of whom we’ve seen before in Isaac’s previous quests, pack a few new skills that make sure you never really feel comfortable around them — no matter how much ammo you may have. They still love to pop out of air vents when you least expect it, with their scythe-like arms rapidly moving to greet you. But it’s their appearance on the planet of Tau Volantis, and the way they adapt to attacking you outdoors, that reminds you how deadly they can really be.

Only a small ripple of snow — as if they were swimming — will signal their presence before they suddenly emerge to attack you from the planet’s icy depths. The visibility outside isn’t always clear, especially with strong torrents of snow and sleet raining down. It’s typical to find yourself alone one second and then surrounded by Necromorphs the next. It’s unsettling.

Playing in the dark with headphones on accentuates this threat: The most dangerous Necromorphs are those you can hear but can’t see. Their guttural, animal-like roars and shrill high-pitched screams serve as a prelude to their inevitable anxiety-inducing appearance. The addition of new monsters toward the end — like the Twitcher, an extremely fast Necromorph that you have to slow down with your Stasis ability first — keeps the combat from being anything but routine.

Resolution

As we’ve learned with Mass Effect 3 and Assassin’s Creed III, it’s tricky to come up with an ending to an ambitious trilogy that’ll please everyone. The Dead Space plot isn’t convoluted, but it’s large enough to get lost in the details. To Visceral Games’ credit, it has managed to tie up many loose ends in Dead Space 3, whether through cutscenes or text and audio logs scattered throughout the levels.

I have a few issues (some being too spoilery to discuss here) with the direction it took the story in — such as the dumb romance subplot — but it was a satisfying ending. The developers do leave some room for future games or other forms of media to explore, but that’s also handled in a way that feels natural and convincing.

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Once again, it’s time for our panel of video-game characters to get some skin in the game!

Super Bowl Sunday! That glorious national holiday where America shuts down to watch the best commercials of the year and some sports that happens between them! And this year, we get the Cain and Abel goodness of brothers John and Jim Harbaugh coaching the rival teams. Thanksgiving is going to suck at their house.

But enough trivialities! What say you, panel of experts? In the epic clash between the San Francisco 49ers versus the Baltimore Ravens, who shall reign supreme?

Launch the gallery to see the future!

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The privilege of buying in early and often at a reduced cost is the same way by which many Kickstarter projects find their funding. While Minecraft did not raise money through Kickstarter, the primary developer at the time, Markus Persson(Notch) opted to use a similar strategy that many who operate through Kickstarter now use. For a reduced cost, he allowed customers  access to the latest (and sometimes unstable) builds of the project. As the builds got larger and the game itself moved from an alpha to a beta, the buy-in price increased, and the momentum of popularity continued to reach critical levels until the game finally had its day-one launch.

Klei Entertainment’s: Don’t Starve is an unreleased game receiving large content updates every two weeks building towards its final release.

Since its release day, Minecraft updates have not slowed down — the Mojang team releases several monthly “snapshots,” each offering small parts of a larger update that drops later on. While Minecraft is still fondly spoken of, sells well, and becomes an exponentially deeper game with each new version, there is something less exciting about these updates; perhaps it is the idea that the game was “finished” on its original launch date. This may be an unfair assertion, but to consider the game unfinished because it is still rolling out content is to challenge the idea of what a finished product is; yet almost all modern games are in some sense released iteratively, and as such, are “unfinished” upon release. If this is so, then when is a game truly complete? And furthermore, why are the post-release additions to Minecraft so underwhelming for me personally compared to their alpha and beta counterparts?

Consider this: A game is released. After launch, there is no downloadable content, no patches. The game is released one time in its complete form; it’s that simple. The game is finished.

Consider now that a game is released, and post-game content launches that offers either a more definitive end (think Asura’s Wrath or Mass Effect 3) or in the case of a multiplayer title, a rebalance or addition to the game which brings forth new strategies or gameplay (think Team Fortress 2’s weapon releases). In both of these instances, the final product, the released “finished” game, is edited and changed. This is a big deal, and the bigger the game is, the more impactful this change can be. When an epic trilogy like Mass Effect is able to change its ending post-release, it makes one wonder if Tolkien or Lucas could have gotten away with manipulating the final moments of their trilogies after hearing the response of their audience. It seems unreal, almost uncomfortable, to consider that the “canon” of this world could be manipulated after it has already been published, shot, or developed.

Only through purchasing this additional content is the player able to witness the final ending of Asura’s Wrath

If iterative releases are capable of manipulating storylines, how can we trust the final release to be canon? How can we trust the end is truly ultimate?

Now, this isn’t to say that all post-launch content is guilty of opening this can of worms. A more popular variant of downloadable content is one that adds additional content without manipulating the main story or the mechanics of the game itself. This includes side missions or map packs for a multiplayer game. From a canonical perspective these are more likely to enrich the world as opposed to manipulating it.

So how does Minecraft fit into all of this? Well, pre-release there is the notion that some features may be changed or removed before the game’s final release. While there is no real story or canon to Minecraft, one may consider that the features that make it into the release on day one are the definitive (or vanilla) features of the game — or in other words, these features are the canon of this particular game or universe.

Buying into a game before its release and following it as it is shaped from its gooey primordial alpha state into a solid definitive release is exciting because you’re able to see features form before it is even certain they will be in the final product. For example, when Minecraft was in beta and Notch was doing new releases every Friday, you could dive back into your undeveloped worlds to suddenly find new ores such as redstone. As time passed, you would hear of people doing stranger things with it, until eventually you’d come across something like this 16-bit computer built inside Minecraft. When the game finally released, this would be within the capabilities of all the users: no mods, or additional content required; but, as an early adopter you get to see it in all its rougher states, you’d get to see it when it was “subject to change,” when it was uncertain that it’d make it into the final package.

Some Ideas from the Minecraft beta (such as finite torches) never came to fruition in the final release

The irony here is that these between pre-release content updates and post release, there is no real difference aside from the declaration of ”finished and released” by the developer of a supposedly complete product. That is to say, if we can buy into a beta and play any content at all, it is in a sense “released,” and this may be (or with a more pessimistic view, simply is) a clever marketing strategy to drum up hype while allowing early backers immediate access with the promise for more. Yet, this is exactly what draws me to the beta buy-in: the promise for more. I realize that a developer is completely capable of cutting a project short, and the day it happens to me, (where I have bought in early and failed to see the project come to fruition) may be the day I feel less passionately about participating in these betas. Additionally, the early buy-in (in the case of Minecraft and more recently Don’t Starve) often comes with additional bonuses such as a reduced price or extra copies. The reduced price is especially captivating because it feels more like an investment — the day you buy-in, the game may be small but the promise for additional updates gives increasing value to the initial purchase.

I’d like to hold on to the notion that when a game is released it is complete on day one. I’d like to believe that I do not have to download a patch, buy additional content, or sign up for a service to access the final ending. Unfortunately, this becomes further from reality with each year, and as such, it becomes more difficult to determine what the final “true” release of a game will bring.

Whereas pre-release content additions via buying into betas and the like is exciting because it feels as though it is building towards a proper definitive end, post-game content that chooses to address issues or manipulate canon feels cheap by comparison, especially if it is paid DLC. When the next generation of gamers grow up, they likely they will do so in a world where games are rarely complete when they first become playable. Most games if not all will in some sense be iterative, and even those that are not will probably exist in some trilogy, most likely one where even the final chapter is not the end.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Video game programmers have been hiding secret messages, inside jokes, and general wackiness in their titles for decades. Finding these “Easter eggs” keeps gamers busy, and it shows that you can’t take yourself too seriously even when facing certain death in the midst of a zombie outbreak, alien invasion, or demonic possession.

Check out the gallery below to see 15 of the coolest, funniest, and kookiest Easter eggs of games released in 2012.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Hello, and a merry end of 2012 to you all. It’s been a grand year for video games and for those of us who choose to wile away our time playing them. Many of us have already celebrated the finest games of the last 12 months, so now it’s time to dig a little deeper into 2012′s catalog of hits and misses. Here’s where we champion things like dancing, sex, boss machinations, terrible assassins, and great use of taxpayer money in video games.

Onward with haste.

(Polite heads up: I’ve done my best to avoid major spoilers, but as this is a retrospective look at the year gone by, some minor spoilers have tiptoed in. Use the shield of common sense. The final award should not be read by anyone who hasn’t finished Dishonored.)

Worst dancer

Winner: Commander Shepherd (Mass Effect 3)

Video game animation has come a long way in a short time, but we’re still unable to put the sexy into dancing. Despite that, 2012 played host to its fair share of gyrating twits. The gang from Far Cry 3, Marcelo from Max Payne 3, and the dancers from Hitman: Absolution all put forward solid cases, but Commander Shepherd had this one wrapped up way back in March.

Shepherd not only displayed the dance-floor swagger of a beached humpback whale, he also chose to do his dancing while the entire galaxy slipped into the inky abyss. Nice one, S-dog. Your embarrassing dad dance moves almost cost mankind and its best friends everything.

Best (or worst) line of dialogue

Winner: Chap in strip bar (Hitman: Absolution)

I swear to you — this is something I heard. I was playing the strip bar level in Hitman: Absolution, prowling through the drooling masses, when I heard a man cry out from the swarm:

“I’m going to wear your ass like a hat!”

I just don’t have it in me to make that up.

Best use of taxpayer money

Winner: The Chicago Police Department (Hitman: Absolution)

Back in 2010, the Seacrest County Police Department bagged this award for using taxpayer money to fund the manufacture of Lamborghini patrol cars — a crime made worse by the fact that the SCPD didn’t just use them to chase down crooks but also to create roadblocks, which the crooks naturally plowed through at 250 mph.

In 2011, the Steelport Police Department won for what was the equivalent of nuking Steelport from orbit each time the player did a little dance in front of an officer.

So it’s only right that this year’s prize goes to another incompetent police department. Hitman: Absolution’s Chicago PD proved nothing if not dedicated to cleaning up the streets of Chicago. At one point midway through the game, roughly a dozen of Chicago’s finest open fire on Agent 47. It’s a perfectly executed maneuver bar one minor hiccup: the 84 civilians sprawled face down in the wet as a result of misplaced bullets. Oops.

Worst game

Winner: Ninja Gaiden 3

There aren’t many developers who can say they’ve had easier jobs than Team Ninja. Under the guidance of Tomonobu Itagaki, the Japanese developer perfected its fighting formula with the first 3D Ninja Gaiden. For Ninja Gaiden 3, an Itagaki-less Team Ninja took the old formula round the back of the shed and gave it the 12-gauge treatment. In its place arrived a crude and unsatisfying combat system coupled with a grueling cinematic camera that ducked and dived like an 8-year-old recording a distant ship with a handycam while on a dinghy in a monsoon. Oh, and there was a bit where a little girl asked Ryu Hayabusa to be her daddy. Good grief.

How Team Ninja bungled Ninja Gaiden 3 is beyond my comprehension, but it was far and away the worst game I played in 2012.

Best (or worst) scene of a sexual nature

Winner: Lucius (game)

Six-year-old Lucius wanders unsuspecting into a bedroom to catch his uncle playing hide the sausage with the maid. Rather than stop and explain what happens when a man and a woman love each other very much, the two continue at it in full view of Lucius. It’s game over for the player, but not before Lucius gets a good view of his uncle’s throbbing joystick.

Most inane boss machination

Winner: Richard Attenborough (Ninja Gaiden 3)

Ninja Gaiden 3 was an inordinately stupid game with an inordinately stupid antagonist. Gaiden’s mastermind villain had cloned dinosaurs on a jungle island, but unlike Richard Attenborough, Gaiden’s baddie planned to deploy his dinos in a bid to end the world. Fair enough. On the scale of bad ideas, using dinosaurs to destroy Earth falls somewhere between using tissue paper as toilet roll and bringing a blow-up hammer to a knife fight. But by the Gaiden yardstick, it was a relatively spiceless scheme — at least, until the antagonist told Ryu Hayabusa he was also going to sell the dinosaurs to children as pets. Just take that in for a moment.

They say if you put a monkey in a room for all eternity, eventually it will write the complete works of Shakespeare. I say, if you put a monkey in a room for 15 minutes, you’ll get the script to Ninja Gaiden 3 with 82 percent fewer MacGuffins.

Failed assassin

Winner: Agent 47 (Hitman: Absolution)
Runner-up: Ada Wong (Resident Evil 6)

With disguises no longer foolproof and levels roughly the size of a grass snake’s anus, Agent 47 needed a new trick to help him skulk by his enemies. The answer? Taking cues from the Naughty Bear School of Stealth, Agent 47 placed his hand over his face. No, really. Probably the most remarkable thing about 47′s newfangled trick was it worked every time (so long as 47′s magic bar was full). Chicago’s finest, hired goons, and even SWAT patrols were hoodwinked the moment Agent 47 — a bald numpty with an enormous scar etched into the back of his head — raised a hand over his face.

A special mention also goes to Resident Evil 6′s Ada Wong. Ada’s first mission saw her infiltrate a submarine and engage in some light stealth against Killzone’s Helghan soldiers. One of the mission objectives was simply, “Don’t draw attention to yourself.” Thing is, with Ada’s low-cut top and skin-tight leather trousers, not drawing attention proved incredibly tough.

Worst dogs

Winner: Hotline Miami
Runner-up: Mark of the Ninja

I lovingly dubbed Hotline Miami “Disco-Mordor” (for obvious reasons) when I reviewed it back in October. Cutthroat, ungenerous, and bloody excellent, Dennaton’s top-down action hit was one of my favorites of the year. But its pooches … dear lord, its pooches. Miami’s mutts had a lust for human flesh and a knack for rocketing out from just offscreen, making them the most bastard-annoying bastards of the year. Sure, you could don a mask and transform them into abiding canines, but then the pendulum swung the other way, and they were suddenly the victims of your callous hate. You couldn’t win with Hotline Miami’s dogs.

Best couple

Winner: Juliet & Nick (Lollipop Chainsaw)

Lollipop Chainsaw was as unloved as Goichi Suda’s other recent (and probably better) game Shadows of the Damned. While the blow-by-blow bedlam was enjoyable enough on its own, the lead characters were what gave Lollipop Chainsaw its soul. The chitchat between Juliet and her bodiless boyfriend Nick was sharp as they bickered, flirted, and sliced through the carnage with humorous quips. The result? You got the sense you were watching the drama of a genuine relationship amidst all the soaring limbs and gore geysers. Aww.

Bleakest game world

Winner: I Am Alive
Runner-ups: Day Z and Nintendo Land

I Am Alive is an early 2012 Xbox Live Arcade title that severed opinion in spectacular fashion. It may not have been the most polished game of the year, but Ubisoft sure did bleak with panache.

Haverton was a spiteful and uncaring place, painted in stark greys and home only to those robbed of their humanity. During one particularly memorable scene, two men hunched over a fire offered you a hunk of meat. It was an alarmingly selfless gesture from characters caught in a world that had, until that point, offered only sadists, a child, and the dead. If you snooped around a little, though, you soon found cages with human skulls inside them. Haverton was powerful in its wickedness and did a good job of papering over some of I Am Alive’s more prominent flaws.

Wiliest assassin

Winner: Corvo Attano (Dishonored)
Runner-up: Mark (Mark of the Ninja)

It’s been a bumper year for wily bastards in video games, such as Far Cry 3′s Jason Something, Dishonored’s Corvo Attano, and Mark from, err, Mark of the Ninja — not to mention characters from the likes of Lone Survivor and Hotline Miami.

But it’s Dishonored’s disgraced bodyguard and murderer extraordinaire Corvo who scoops the award for King of the Wilies (mind the lone “l” there). Corvo’s knack for teleporting gave him the upper hand over his peers, but even without that advantage, his deep well of tricks and murdering abilities (conjuring rats and slowing time to a standstill were two of the best) meant Corvo was well out in front of the pack. He was presumably loitering in the shadows somewhere like a steampunk Gary Glitter.

Best ego massage

Winner: Dishonored

(SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER)

(YOU HAVE BEEN SPOILER-WARNED)

Games are mostly about empowerment. In Dishonored, Corvo’s cache of party tricks did a sensational job of conferring on the player a gross sense of power. But it was a moment of silence — a transient scene at the end of a level that featured almost no killing — that triggered that feeling better than any other.

(LAST WARNING)

It came after Corvo had weaseled his way into a fancy dress party disguised as himself (in what was basically the best Hitman level all year). Having hidden in plain sight and satisfied the mission objectives, Corvo left the party, but not before scrawling his name in the guest book.

It was a sensational “screw you” to all the guards who had made your getting there awkward. Your wits, not your trigger finger, had got the better of Dunwall’s finest. A real moment of class.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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This year in gaming developers and publishers tested and bent the limits of what they could get away with in terms of downloadable content (DLC). From removing vital content from the retail experience or even leaving the content on the disc but still charging a premium for it, companies like Capcom attempted to move the industry in a frightening direction. They saw how well the freemium model was working for social and mobile gaming and decided to try it out on games that still cost $60 up front.

This year also saw a rise in sequels to popular franchises scaling back on what was included in their predecessors, only to sell it to the loyal fan base and unsuspecting new customers later. Without a doubt, the abuse of DLC is a dangerous and popular precedent for video games. In the following gallery we take a look back at some of the biggest offenders of 2012.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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I’m in a bad mood. Christmas was tough on me this year. I didn’t get my shopping done until the last minute, my doctor says I need to cut out egg nog, and the only holiday movie on TV right now is A Christmas Story. I hate A Christmas Story.

Thankfully, my colleagues at GamesBeat know just how to get me in the holiday spirit: Make me write a list about the year’s worst gaming trends. In a year that had some great trends, like bows and arrows in every game, we also had some ideas that are really starting to stink up our favorite hobby. So, happy holidays; it’s time to get negative.

Ancient aliens in every sci-fi game

Halo 4, Mass Effect 3, and Assassin’s Creed III were arguably the biggest releases of 2012. They’re massive games with budgets that rival most blockbuster movies, so it’s strange that they all ended up using a very similar plot device: the ancient alien.

Sure, the title’s share the science-fiction genre, but it had seemed that each one was telling a very distinct story. That’s why it is so weird that each game ended up have some sort ancient race that is pushing forward the plot.

Mass Effect 3 has the Repears, an ancient race of machines who wish to destroy all the civilizations of the universe. Halo 4 has the Precursor, a civilization of ancient aliens that even predate the Forerunner race of ancient aliens. Assassin’s Creed has the First Civilization, which aren’t Aliens (I don’t think) but have god-like powers and lived on Earth long before recorded history.

In a vacuum, any one of these games using this narrative gambit would be interesting, but when they’re all happening simultaneously, they tend to cancel each other out.

Insulting downloadable content

As gamers, we have accepted that a game is more than what is on the disc. The economics of development often require studios to sell extra story, multiplayer maps, and more as DLC to pad their bottom line. That’s OK.

But it’s not OK to hold back crucial story content or a game’s “true” ending in an attempt to shake down dedicated fans.

In Mass Effect 3, the best character and crucial elements to the lore of that universe were held back for the day-one add-on From Ashes which cost around $5. It introduced the only surviving member of an ancient alien (!) race whose actions have influences the Mass Effect trilogy’s plot since the beginning.

Publisher Capcom has a history of making poor decisions with its downloadable content packs. In its insane anime-inspired title Asura’s Wrath, it held back the ending of the game’s plot in a piece of $7 DLC. This is after the company included paid DLC characters on the disc for Street Fighter X Tekken, which had customers asking what exactly is the “downloadable” aspect of the content.

B-team studios adapting A-list franchises on PlayStation Vita

This is a trend that spilled over from the launch of Sony’s newest gaming handheld, but it dampened (or destroyed) at least two big releases in 2012.

The promise of the PlayStation Vita, according to Sony’s own marketing, is that it is basically a home console on the go. It’s powerful and has dual analog sticks, so why are games like Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified so disappointing?

Because publishers bring in small outside developers that have no experience with the property they’re adapting.

NStigate Games (formerly Nihilistic Software) got the nod to adapt Call of Duty to the Vita. This is after that studio produced a very mediocre adaptation of the first-person shooter series Resistance for Vita around the system’s launch. Nstigate had nothing to do with producing a Call of Duty game prior to Declassified and it shows in the subpar final product.

The same thing happened with the Vita version of Assassin’s Creed. Ubisoft Sofia, a studio that had little to do with Assassin’s Creed, was in charge of bringing a console-quality version to the Vita.

What’s truly sad is that Ubisoft Sofia just came off the decent 3DS launch game Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars. It was a strategy game that wasn’t trying to reproduce any other Ghost Recon game, which allowed the developer to create something new.

By setting the Vita up as some sort of PlayStation 3 on-the-go — and then constantly failing to meet that promise — Sony appears lost and confused about how to position the handheld. If they want publishers to release big-name games, they need to get developers who are up to the task.

Slot games on Facebook

I’m probably just old and set in my ways, but few things in gaming skeeve me out like the casino games on Facebook.

Specifically, the slot-machine titles that have become very popular in the last few months. As a medium, gaming has so much potential. Developers can present intricate systems to players that emulate or encapsulate our relationship to math, physics, and nature. At this point, the people who make games are also very good at rewarding players for actions and creating gameplay loops that trigger a nice release of dopamine in our brains.

Developers use these manipulative techniques in a variety of interesting ways, but these slot machine games take all of that knowledge and use it for evil.

Now, I don’t really think the slots on Facebook are evil, and I don’t want to take anything away from people who enjoy spending their time pulling a lever with nothing tangible to show for it — but I won’t shed any tears when these games fall out of popularity.

The main problem is that the slots are completely devoid of any actual game. All the player does is pull a lever and then play an occasional minigame that amounts to nothing more than picking a number between 1 and 10. Yet, these games are bursting with experience points and satisfying sound effects and bonuses and meta games and social links and every other trick to keep players pulling the lever.

And the setup is so devious. The most offensive slot games have more than one machine. They have a series of themed slots that always start with a machine that seems to spit out tons of coins on every pull. Then each successive table is less likely to pay out than the previous one, but they reward (and require) more money. The idea — at least as it appears to me as a cynic — is to get a certain percentage of players hooked on winning from the generous early games only to take everything back with the greedy later machines. Then, when the player is broke, get them to pay a few bucks for more coins so they can keep playing.

If that’s what people want to do with their time, so be it. But it’s still an ugly use of gaming’s strengths.

Mobs of angry and embarrassing gamers

As gamers, we’re a highly connected group. We play games and then look for places to go and talk about them on the Internet. Our passion for the medium is so great, we’re also easily riled up when we feel like something is threatening the games we love … or if we don’t get our way.

In 2012, mobs of irate gamers took the rage to a new and unnecessary level.

Nothing embodies this phenomenon like the reaction to feminist blogger Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian introduced a Kickstarter project called Tropes vs. Women that will examine the many stereotypical ways that games depict females. A vocal group of gamers felt threatened by this, and while some may have voiced their disagreement with Sarkeesian in a respectful manner, the loud apparent majority drowned out all reasonable discourse with a disgusting wall of sexism.

Groups of male gamers banded together online to systematically harass Sarkeesian. Someone posted a web-based game called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian. Essentially, they proved her right and embarrassed the rest of us who are willing to talk about these topics.

Fear of change seems to provoke these mobs more than anything. When Madden 13 launched earlier this year, a new mode replaced the Franchise mode that’s been a part of the series for years. This created a hornet’s nest in our article that explained the change. Gamers filled the comment section of that story with impotent rage. It isn’t even a big change, but that didn’t stop the mob from demanding publisher Electronic Arts fire the game’s designer.

I’m sure that angry fan backlash like this is common across a variety of mediums, but that doesn’t make it any better. It’s poor behavior for anyone for any reason. The worst part is that genuine criticism is lost in the caps-locking, screaming mob.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Video game trailers are a big deal. Where once big budgets were the exception, they are increasingly becoming the norm. Deep pockets are not always key to creating a stand-out trailer, though. Ingenuity, innovation, and a healthy sense of humor can also go a long way to help sell a game.

Here we present the best game trailers to grace our screens during 2012. They represent a cross-section of the gaming world and feature a variety of styles and budgets. The one thing they have in common? They’re done right.

If you think we’ve missed any trailers of note, feel free to drop a comment below.

Borderlands 2

Gearbox Software gave its first-person role-playing shooter Borderlands 2 (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) a sing-a-long soundtrack that just shouldn’t have worked. The genius is that “Wimoweh” has never sounded as gloriously out of place since its original 1939 release. Even better than Tight Fit.

Watch Dogs

Eschewing both gameplay and prerendered footage, this trailer for Ubisoft’s open-world action-shooter Watch Dogs (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) brilliantly sets up the game’s premise with a starkly delivered blurring of fact and fiction that sounds eminently believable. Watch Dogs is certainly a title to look out for next year.

ZombieU

Zombies. Are we sick of them yet? Ubisoft doesn’t think so, having created one of the year’s most atmospheric trailers for its Wii U-exclusive survival-horror game. The film succeeds in making ordinary environments look extraordinary by subtly twisting our perspective on the dark streets of London.

Dyad

Independent developer Shawn McGrath unleashed his psychadelic musical shooter, Dyad, on the PlayStation 3 this summer. Its original trailer received an unkindly greeting in some quarters, with PlayStation Blog user Mattsta009 saying of its star: “It doesn’t look like that girl is even playing Dyad, she is kind of just holding a controller, acting badly and smiling vacuously at the screen.” In a stroke of genius, McGrath recast himself in the lead role. Watch from 20 seconds in to see him in action. The original trailer is underneath for a neat “compare and contrast” opportunity.

The Last of Us

Proof of the power of soundtrack, developer Naughty Dog used the Hank Williams song “Alone and Forsaken” to great effect in this trailer for upcoming PlayStation 3 action game The Last of Us. The atmosphere seems even more bleak and unforgiving with Williams’ raspy vocals layering on the tension.

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This was an outstanding year for video game music. Professional musicians from various genres all contributed pieces to very unusual places, and many up-and-coming indie composers stole our hearts with their emotional scores. In fact, it’s pretty difficult to find a game with a bad soundtrack these days.

Below is GamesBeat’s choices for the best soundtracks of 2012. It’s an eclectic mix of indie, dubstep, and classical composition that aptly reflects this year’s dynamic music scene.

But because this was such a big year for soundtracks, we also have a few honorable mentions, so be sure to check those out, too.

The Best Video Game Soundtracks of 2012

10. Max Payne 3
Composer: Health

Few songs are quite as lingering as “Tears” on the Max Payne 3 soundtrack. “Tears” lingered in the background of numerous commercials for the game, often playing while the down-and-out protagonist walked away from explosions. It’s an apt summation of the game’s sound and inspires thoughts of edgy spy dramas and sweaty action flicks.

Pairing “Tears” with other tracks from the album like 9 Circulos and Combat Drugs, the Max Payne 3 soundtrack expertly sets the scene of a scumbag ex-cop doing bad things in South America.

9. Mass Effect 3
Composers: Cris Velasco, Sascha Dikiciyan, Clint Mansell, Sam Hulick, Christopher Lennertz, Faunts

Mass Effect has always had a clean, space-age feel to its music, and Mass Effect 3 takes that to a new level. None of its music is overly bombastic, but you do feel a sense of urgency throughout. Melodic, determined pieces inspire us to take in-game decisions very seriously, and you can definitely feel the weight of your choices hanging in the air around you while listening to this score.

8. Skylanders Giants
Composer: Lorne Balfe

Lorne Balfe’s most notable compositions feature prominently in splashy action films like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Inception, but his transition to video games is where he really shines. Balfe scored both Skylanders games, but Giants is where his whimsical style really comes to life. Skylanders Giants owes its jaunty atmosphere to Balfe’s music, and it feels like a proper epic adventure because of it.

7) FTL: Faster Than Light
Composer: Ben Prunty

Is it possible to feel space? FTL is about exploration and space combat that’s also fiendishly difficult. Ben Prunty’s soundtrack amplifies the vastness and danger of space with spangly synth sounds that make you feel like you’re floating among the stars.

It’s also fantastic listening to both the exploration and battle variants of each song in the game. Afterward, you can also feel the expert sound mixing as you play FTL.

6. Borderlands 2
Composers: Cris Velasco, Sascha Dikiciyan, Jesper Kyd, Raison Varner

Borderlands 2 is a space Western, and its mix of airy, sometimes-mechanical tones bring that concept alive. While you scour Pandora for crazier weapons and combat ruthless enemies, the soundtrack is always there, sending out tension tendrils every time you trigger a fight or find a cool location.

Borderlands 2 actually shares two composers with Mass Effect 3, something that isn’t too surprising when you listen to the game’s more action-oriented songs. Velasco and Dikiciyan are masters of incidental tension.

5. Lone Survivor
Composer: Jasper Byrne

Silent Hill composer and creator Akira Yamaoka was on to something when he joined swirling, dreamy guitar sounds with metallic clangs. Lone Survivor’s soundtrack flirts with harsh, chaotic tones while wrapping the game in a melancholy melody. Listening to this soundtrack brings back very powerful Silent Hill memories, and it’s nice to hear that sound live on. The spooky score will unnerve you as you explore Lone Survivor’s gloomy environment.

4. Halo 4
Composers: Neil Davidge, Kazuma Jinnouchi

Few games have soundtracks as passionate as the Halo series. I liken them to Disney films such as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast for the emotional depth in the music alone. Halo doesn’t have discernible lyrics, but it inspires a wide spectrum of feelings. Halo 4 does this more competently than Halo 3 while sprinkling in a fair amount of easily dubstepped beats.

You should feel elated during some scenes in Halo 4, as well as very tense. This isn’t just because of the gameplay, but because the soundtrack plays well with the scenery to deepen your experience.

3. Fez
Composer: Disasterpiece

Fez’s soundtrack is a twinkly adventure all on its own, but pairing this with its sometime mind-bending gameplay creates a nostalgic feeling. Disasterpiece’s sound is best described as 8-bit epic and manipulates a similar electronic sound as Angelo Badalamenti’s work for the early ’90s TV cult hit Twin Peaks.

Fez’s score is inexplicably haunting at times, and many tracks would be just as effective if you played them over stock footage from an old lumber mill and a massive water fall.

2. Sound Shapes
Composers: I Am A Robot and Proud, Beck, Deadmau5, Jim Guthrie

Sound Shapes hit the pinnacle for interactive music. As you guide your musical blob through increasingly treacherous landscapes, your actions build the various parts of the song playing in the background. Building music as you play is an addictive holdover from rhythm games like Rez that works as you leap from precarious ledge to precarious ledge while avoiding baddies that want nothing more than to stop the music.

1. Journey
Composer: Austin Wintory

Game soundtracks exist to heighten emotion in any given scene. In Journey, Wintory’s music is often our only companion, a score drifting delicately on the breeze waving the character’s scarf. While sometimes mournful, Journey’s score urges us to embark on an epic quest fraught with danger and sometimes crushing loneliness.

Journey’s soundtrack is absolutely the most emotional and beautifully composed score for any game in 2012, and Austin Wintory definitely deserved the Grammy nomination he earned.

Next page: Honorable Mentions

Honorable Mentions

4. Silent Hill: Downpour
Can Silent Hill ever be the same without Akira Yamaoka’s soundtracks? Downpour does an excellent job standing apart from Yamaoka’s signature style while still invoking the disjointed musical universe surrounding the Silent Hill series. The only thing it’s missing is a song with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn on vocals.

3. Gravity Rush
If you’ve ever wondered what anime soundtracks influenced by French street music sprinkled with a dash of Star Wars composer John Williams sounds like, look no further than Gravity Rush. Each track amplifies its sometimes manic flying and world-bending platforming.

2. Persona 4 Arena
Most of the music in Persona 4 Arena first appeared in the PlayStation 2 role-playing game Persona 4, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome in 2012. Shoji Meguro’s score is incredibly energetic, lending itself perfectly to a fighting title.

1. Syndicate
Cyberpunk was once completely composed by Greek electronic and ambient musician Vangelis in my mind, but dubstep is taking over. Dubstep pioneer Skrillex’s contribution to Syndicate’s soundtrack is probably one of the most face-smashing sounds in 2012, but the rest of the music feels very inspired by it. If you want to feel like ripping out someone’s neural implant, I suggest taking Syndicate for a spin.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Remember all the way back in January, when we looked at all the games that were coming out in 2012 and thought, “Holy crap! This is going to be the Best Year Ever (for gaming)™!” Well, this is December, and some of us are looking back to those wide-eyed, optimistic past versions of ourselves and wondering why they ever looked forward to some of the stuff we got in 2012. Sure, some of those anticipated titles lived up to our expectations, but in a lot of cases, that optimism was just the first step on a journey of regret and nonstop head shaking.

Here are some of our picks for the most disappointing games and events of 2012.

Assassin’s Creed III

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

Occasionally, a little time and distance softens the heart, and you remember things more fondly than what you actually felt at the time. I, on the other hand, despise Assassin’s Creed III more now than when I gave it a midrange score back in October. Oh, my man-love for its naval missions continues unabated, but I indulge in those behind the back of the main game and its sloppy mechanics, frustrating chases, and worthless side missions. I’m gratified that it doesn’t whitewash our nation’s origins as some altruistic crusade for peace and freedom (often spoken of in earshot of working slaves), but Creed “concludes” its overarching, modern-day plot with a firm middle finger to its most loyal fans. At least it finally settled one lingering question: Desmond is indeed as pointless and useless a diversion as we always suspected.

The delays

Contributing editor Stephanie Carmichael

Most of the games I was looking forward to all year are now coming out in 2013. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (or whatever we’re calling it now) are the handful I’ve been most itching to play. Other titles like South Park: The Stick of Truth, Devil May Cry, and Aliens: Colonial Marines have experienced delays as well. I guess I can’t complain too much. More time in development means a better chance of getting these games right, but it also means I’ll be burning a big hole in my wallet come spring.

Capcom continues to lock content in game discs

Contributor Samir Torres

F*** you, Capcom!

Twisted Metal’s online multiplayer

Intern Giancarlo Valdes

As a huge fan of the Twisted Metal games since the original PlayStation days, I was ecstatic when I finally got my hands on the PS3 reboot earlier this year. The folks at developer Eat Sleep Play did a fantastic job of bringing its unique brand of vehicular combat to a new generation of consoles with its campaign mode, and playing these levels with a friend in local multiplayer was fun, too. But going online was a different story: Starting from launch day and lasting for weeks, a host of problems made it almost impossible (for me at least) to stay connected to a match. The developers deployed various updates to fix these problems, but I had already moved on.

Disney Epic Mickey 2

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

After hearing, yet again, legendary designer Warren Spector’s “big picture” idea of games needing to be open-ended, with multiple paths, as well as not judging players for their “playstyle,” I really think this game was a huge disappointment. It changed very little from the first installment and was just another mess of control, camera, and barely comprehensible storyline. As with most things disappointing in life, the real problem was going into it with such a high set of expectations.

Endless Space

Copy editor Jason Wilson

We saw a couple of space-themed 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) strategy titles this year (Genesis Wars, Legacy of Pegasus, the final “all clear” for Sword of the Stars II). But the one that many space strategy fans were looking forward to was Endless Space, a game that turned out to be style over substance. Endless Space sports a good-looking user interface and some kick-ass ship designs, but it commits one of the biggest errors that any single-player strategy game can make: The A.I. isn’t good at its game. Your foes don’t do a good job of using its systems — like combat — against you, ultimately providing a limited challenged against a skilled player. And for the demanding fans of strategy games, this is a tactic that just doesn’t work.

Mass Effect 3′s ending

Intern Jason Lomberg

From an artistic standpoint, my biggest disappointment was that developer BioWare pulled a George Lucas and “fixed” the ending. That’s not how it should work — you don’t “fix” art.

A piece of art represents the succinct vision of its creator. It’s also a product of its time and, therefore, a cultural artifact. The best films – like Star Wars – engender a certain timeless quality, but even so, it’s not hard to discern that Lucas’s masterpiece reflects the norms and attitudes of the ’70s. By mucking with his own creations to “update” the special effects or modify story elements, Lucas is destroying a piece of history. This is why fans reacted so negatively to Star Wars: Special Edition (and the innumerable “updates” before and since), and it’s why BioWare should not have changed the Mass Effect 3 ending. For gaming to take its rightful place among other artistic media, it shouldn’t be so malleable and subject to “revision.” Numerous gamers took issue with the game’s ending – and I’d be hard-pressed to disagree – but we should criticize ME3 as a piece of art, not a software program that its makers can patch. We should analyze the creator’s vision and not treat it like a technical glitch.

Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation

Intern Mike Minotti

I was excited to have a real Assassin’s Creed experience on a portable system, and I was hoping that such a game could be a great showcase for the PlayStation Vita. Sadly, Liberation was a boring, uninspired slog through the bog hampered by technical problems and an empty open world.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

Intern Evan Killham

Developer Level-5′s series of puzzle-driven adventure games sold me both a Nintendo DS and a 3DS. I love everything about them: the full-on animated cutscenes, the stories, and even the bizarre idea of a universe in which brain-teasers work as a sort of social currency. But I’m not sure what happened with the franchise’s fifth installment. The plot and style are as good as ever, but the riddles in this one are inexplicably obtuse at times (I’m convinced that one challenge’s “clever” solution is not a valid answer to the setup) and blatantly not puzzles at others. A maze, for example, is not a puzzle by my definition, and this Professor Layton contains several of them.

Miracle Mask is the first Layton game that has felt like a chore.

XCOM’s lack of longevity

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

A game about saving the world from an alien invasion is probably beyond cliché at this point. You’d think that such a premise would doom the entire experience to a single playthrough, never to be touched again. But this wasn’t the case with the original X-Com strategy games, where I felt like anything could happen at any time. My first encounter could be the extraterrestrial menace terrorizing an urban populace or a dogfight with high-flying UFO that segues into a ground assault or even a struggle for survival within the supposedly safe confines of my only operational headquarters! Add in a healthy dose of pseudo-randomization, and X-Com felt fresh over and over no matter how many campaigns I played.

But Developer Firaxis’ recent reboot, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, unfortunately starts to feel all too similar all too quickly. Even during your first game, you’ll see the same premade maps again and again. Some missions feel scripted (even featuring monster closets!) and like long, narrow hallways (I don’t ever want to play the final stage again because it’s such a boring slog). I’m convinced that Firaxis doesn’t really want me to play another campaign, which is crystal clear because the game forces me to listen to the same unskippable explanatory voiceovers with every new start.

After well over 100 hours, I’m just about done with XCOM. And it shouldn’t have been this way.

Zynga’s belly-flop

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Zynga was supposed to be the next big thing in gaming, but then it flopped … hard. Its stock became the joke of the industry (currently: $2.39, down from $9.50 at the initial public offering and a peak of $14.69 back in March, and rather than make a bunch of new Silicon Valley millionaires, it had to lay people off. Not many people are rooting for the company that regularly spams Facebook walls. But when the guys leading the charge for social gaming fails that badly, it’s a very bad sign for the health of the business as a whole.

Nearly everything Resident Evil

Intern Jasmine Rea

This year, I found myself sympathizing with legions of Sonic the Hedgehog fans because at our core, we are far too loyal for our own good. Like them, I go into every Resident Evil game with the same naive hope that the series isn’t spiraling the drain. Operation Raccoon City and Resident Evil 6 were nearly enough to make me give up on playing any console-based entries in the series. Poor execution, tedious gameplay, and wretched quick-time events have finally broken me. I’ll go into 2013 with a dull ache for another Resident Evil: Revelations, but I doubt I’ll get that.

Will I buy the inevitable Resident Evil 7? Of course I will, and that’s why gin exists.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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What do I like most about video games? They always strive to do more, to be better.

Games we judged as the best of the best a few years ago might seem dated now. Some feature such tight, timeless designs that they do hold up over the long term, but these fall into a very small category. Otherwise, and in every way, this is the industry status quo: Nearly every game competes not only to outdo past iterations but to also completely dwarf every other title on the market. They don’t always succeed. But one way or another, gamers always benefit from the effort.

The industry moves forward, always forward. So we look back to applaud the new directions it took in 2012 and how they might influence what comes next.

Integrating the GamePad

Most Wii U launch titles relegate the GamePad’s spectacular functionality to stolid maps or inventory screens. Ubisoft’s ZombiU does that, too, but in ways that feed directly into — and significantly enhance — its gameplay. Your best tool to survive the undead hordes is the “Prepper Pad” — in fact, the GamePad itself re-created in the game. It scans and tags items, enemies, and exits, but narrowing your attention to the pad’s small screen leaves you vulnerable to attack and permanent character death. Picking through your items makes you feel completely exposed. When a survival-horror game makes inventory management into a completely nerve-wracking experience, you know it’s smarter than the average bear.

Honestly, I haven’t seen game controls so deeply symbiotic with their game since Dance Dance Revolution. ZombiU simply couldn’t exist on a different system, and it’s a beacon to other developers on how to take full advantage of Nintendo’s new hardware.

Silent storytelling

Minimalism isn’t exactly a new thing in games — see N+ and Limbo for details — but minimalism with depth of design and storytelling threads a fine needle with mountaineering rope. Journey, from Jenova Chen and thatgamecompany, did just that, building an epic story without any words, written or spoken. It didn’t need any, either. A deft combination of imagery, music, and interaction made us feel the joy of discovery, the struggle against adversity, the elation of flight. Journey created great complexity out of relative simplicity.

Not everybody stripped down that far, but more than a few games this year dialed back the interactivity to dial up a player’s personal interaction. “Don’t look or it takes you” set the tone for Slender in just six terrifying words. Antichamber’s tests only said enough to make you question every reflex you’ve learned as a gamer. Dear Esther gave you an island and a mystery, but nothing to jump over, no puzzles to solve, or even any items to touch. Like Journey, those approaches all left the explanations open to interpretation … effectively turning the stories themselves into interactive features. Those journeys became our journeys, full of sweeping emotions and buoyed by the indomitable urge to press onward.

Deconstructing our heroes

Sure, games offer a huge slice of power fantasy with a side of personal awesomeness, but I can’t remember ever playing so many out-of-their-depth characters as I did this year. We’ve never been more fragile. We played as children in Unfinished Swan and Papo y Yo. Postapocalyptic survivors in games like I Am Alive, ZombiU, and The Walking Dead always felt like they were mere inches away from disaster. A world of death quickly unraveled protagonists in Far Cry 3 and Spec Ops: The Line.

But that’s nothing compared to what we did to a lot of our old friends. Commander Shepard suffered from survivor’s guilt all through Mass Effect 3. Max Payne’s self-loathing never ran out of downward spirals to charge through (in slo-mo, of course) until he finally reached for the light again. Even the implacable, emotionless masks of Hitman’s Agent 47 and Halo 4′s Master Chief took serious hits as each found something deeply personal to fight for … fights that frequently came with devastating turns. When the Master Chief suddenly refuses a direct order, it’s time to re-evaluate everything he is.

Gamers have become an older, more sophisticated audience. The industry’s responded by adding vulnerability and depth to the people we play as, making us more sympathetic to their goals and more invested in their safety. And with games like The Last of Us and the Tomb Raider reboot scheduled to pound us mercilessly in 2013, you can expect this trend to extend well into the future.

Adventure games are still relevant

I was done with point-and-click adventure games back in the ’90s. I’m back on them now. The team at Telltale Games didn’t just keep the flame alive with The Walking Dead, their superlative five-part series based on Robert Kirkland’s graphic novel (and its television counterpart) … they brought modern game designs into what many considered an outdated genre.

And they did it with an elegantly simple device: the quick-time event. Turns out the same gameplay cliché that annoys me in God of War (and its many clones) instantly turns the usually static point-and-click exercise into a tense, action-packed struggle for survival. It’s panic-inducing to suddenly find yourself zeroing a shaky cursor on a shambling zombie before it takes a chunk out of protagonist Lee or, even more upsetting, to rescue darling Clementine, his young charge, from a grisly fate. That lends real danger to the rest of the story — survival feels tenuous indeed — and the split-second decisions you must make become even more agonizing.

I actually had to step away from The Walking Dead for a while after its devastating third episode. No other game this year did that to me. That little tick-tick-tick countdown behind every choice made Telltale’s simple point-and-click drama as intense … no, more intense … than any high-octane shooter or jump-scare horror game. More, please.

Games are growing up (maybe)

Two years ago, a trailer showing callous killer Agent 47 eliminating a squad of PVC-clad gun nuns wouldn’t have raised much more than a few eyebrows. Hey, we’re the medium where all the ladies in Dead or Alive get a dedicated physics engine for the boob-jiggle. It’s just a game, after all, so who cares?

Except that’s an argument you can make when you’re 12. The average age in the gaming community hovers in the mid-30s.

2012 saw a heightened awareness of and direct confrontation against the sexism that’s long been a part of this industry’s DNA, both in and out of the games themselves. Halo 4′s multiplayer shipped with a zero-tolerance policy toward racist or sexist language — fittingly announced by executive producer Kiki Wolfkill and Microsoft executive Bonnie Ross — and lifetime Xbox Live bans for violators. Gearbox Software tried to include a special character class in Borderlands 2 for less-experienced players before lead designer John Hemmingway self-sabotaged by calling it “girlfriend mode.” Despite that gaffe, it still presented a serious attempt at inclusiveness … which is the opposite of sexism.

We’ve got a long way to go, baby. But at last it seems like we’re moving in the right direction.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, THQ files for bankruptcy, gaming video giant Machinima lays off 10 percent of its staff, and we crown The Walking Dead as our 2012 Game of the Year.

You’ll also find reviews for Black Knight Sword, Mass Effect 3: Omega, and Middle Manager of Justice.

News:
The DeanBeat: The Newtown shooting will turn up the heat on video game violence — but will it make us think?
DayZ lead designer considered leaving the project
This week in the Nintendo Download: Mario, Wario, and Alex Trebek
Turn your friends into Pokémon in the next Mystery Dungeon game on 3DS
Writer McComb isn’t worried about the lack of the Planescape license for the new Torment game
Valve gives Plantronics the rights to officially brand headsets with Aperture Laboratories and Mann Co. logos
Visualizing a tough year for the retail core game industry
Rabbit pulls reimagined video chat out of its hat
THQ’s bankruptcy filing reveals new games
THQ files for bankruptcy, assets sold to investor Clearlake for $60M
Valve pulls The War Z from Steam over fan backlash, offers refunds
Nintendo’s TVii available tomorrow, but it won’t be fully functional
MeritShare finds a way to gamify employee recognition (exclusive)
Green Throttle Games launches developer program as part of play to take over living room gaming
Assassin’s Creed III glitches and issues addressed in massive patch (full details)
Dartmouth professor names Zynga’s Mark Pincus one of the worst CEOs of 2012
Get ready for great games on a thin laptop as AMD preps new mobile graphics chips
Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic
Nvidia’s next Tegra 4 processor may come with 72 graphics cores
Minecraft documentary free for Xbox Live Gold subscribers this weekend
Online gaming firm Aeria Games merges with Japan’s Gamepot
The spirit of BattleBots lives on in a new robot-building game
Arktos Entertainment acquires majority stake in game studio Hammerpoint Interactive (exclusive)
Why Google predicts Microsoft’s next game console will beat Sony’s
Developer id Software releases Rage add-on next week
Game videos giant Machinima lays off 10 percent of staff
NRA blames video games for mass murders

Mobile News:
Kabam scores big with highest-grossing game on App Store for 2012
Apple freezes the App Store in advance of the holiday app-downloading bonanza
Jordan Mechner’s Karateka remake returns to Apple (iOS) devices today
Mochi Media says 86 percent of Flash game developers are expanding into mobile (exclusive)
MindSnacks’ new iPad games help you learn languages, pass the SAT
After 6M paid downloads, mobile hit Pocket God wraps up with its final, apocalyptic update
Kamcord is helping users record 7 mobile-game videos every second
With more than 20M downloads, Battle Bears mobile game hits San Francisco’s billboards
Plain Vanilla releases its multiplayer video game quiz for iOS
MediaBrix’s responsive design ensures in-game ads will always look right (exclusive)
SGN launches its MasterKey tool for making cross-platform social and mobile games
Gamevil surpasses 200M game downloads on smartphones
Exclusive: Go Ninja developer brings Shaquille O’Neal back to video games

Best of 2012:
GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year: The Walking Dead
The best indie games of 2012
The best games of 2012 (GamesBeat staff picks)
The game industry’s 2012 holiday cards

Interviews:
Heroes of Newerth 3.0 adds bots, hopes to teach new players (interview)
Crytek’s chief: Nothing will beat Crysis 3′s graphics for at least two years (interview)

Previews:
Hawken’s open beta shows a thoughtfully designed mech combat game (preview)
Insomaniac’s Fuse lets you lead a team of four badass agents (preview)
Toki Tori 2′s simple mechanics reward your curiosity (hands-on preview)
Zen Pinball 2 on Nintendo’s eShop gives you a choice of dozens of pinball tables (preview)
The 3DS library gets a little weirder with these quirky eShop games (preview)

Reviews:
Marvel Heroes needs more humanity, more warmth, and more MMO
Black Knight Sword’s punishing difficulty requires more luck than skill to overcome (review)
Middle Manager of Justice is all business, no gameplay (review)
Mass Effect 3: Omega is explosive, nostalgic, and somewhat pointless (review)

Pieces of Flair: 
What sales managers can learn from the four types of online gamers
Solving a Wii mystery: The fate of the awesome toy WeeWaa
Exploring why some players are unable to initiate Halo 4′s single-player campaign
A history of bodies: Video game violence and the player
Love your free players to unlock the full potential of free-to-play games
What are your holiday gaming traditions?
Justin Bieber, Minecraft’s Creeper, and other cameos in modern games (gallery)

If 2012 has shown us one thing, it’s that video game development is truly in the “crossover era.” GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year, The Walking Dead, was first available as a downloadable title, not a retail release. Other downloadables, such as indie-developed darlings Journey and Faster Than Light, garnered plenty of votes as well. And in our staff’s and contributor’s top games of the year lists, we even see mobile releases — like Fieldrunners 2.

Gaming has changed, and it’s nice to see that it’s more than just big-budget console and PC titles that have earned Game of the Year attention. Here are the top games as chosen by GamesBeat staffers and contributors. Let us know what you think about our picks in the comments — especially if you feel we’ve left something off our lists!

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Firaxis Games

Little green men — yesteryear’s poster boys for mysterious invaders from outer space — are about as menacing as Oompa Loompas armed with toy guns. XCOM’s little gray men, however, are scary as hell. It’s not the ashen skin, bulbous eyes, or creepy-crawly walk. It’s what these Sectoids represent: a greater threat that we are simply not equipped to handle.

In the strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, we mere humans bring dull knives to plasma gunfights. And just when we start to catch up in weapon technology, the bug-eyed bastards bring bigger guns and meaner friends. These jerks even cheat with mysterious mind-control powers. Meanwhile, we’re barely keeping the checkbook balanced between research, manufacturing, facility construction, aircraft, and an ever-decreasing budget due to world nations pulling out of the program if you can’t keep them safe (and you can never keep them all safe).

It all adds up to an incredibly exciting and stressful experience. Each decision — whether it’s which tree to hide your assault trooper behind or which whiny country gets your last airspace-monitoring satellite — feels monumental and permanent. Humanity’s existence is at stake, and we just want to make it to the next month, when a few more pennies come rolling in and a few more traumatized soldiers get out of sick bay.

It’s a desperate fight. And boy will we celebrate when those little gray men are dead.

Shoe’s other picks for best games of 2012: Fieldrunners 2, Dishonored, Journey, Fez

Lead writer Dean Takahasi

The Unfinished Swan
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network)
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developer: Giant Sparrow

The Unfinished Swan is one of the most creative titles yet for the PlayStation Network. It’s an interactive fairy tale where you lob blobs of black paint at a white screen. As you do so, you uncover part of a 3D space hidden within the white scene. Uncovering each scene is a mind-bending task, as you have to navigate perplexing puzzles. You explore the unknown, and as you do so, you uncover a new segment in a fairy tale about a boy who loses his mother. It is a touching story that will remind of you of the zany Alice in Wonderland. Ian Dallas, the game creator, feels that a child who is abandoned is like an unfinished work of art. But just when you think that the game has become predictable, it changes. In some ways, the story seems unfinished. But the title is a wonderful first effort for Giant Sparrow, a new studio bankrolled by Sony.

Dean’s other picks for the best games of 2012: Halo 4, Far Cry 3, Journey, Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Culture editor Sebastian Haley

Hotline Miami
Platform: PC
Publisher: Developer Digital
Developer: Dennaton Games

Indie sensation Hotline Miami is best described as the film Drive, but in a retro, pixelated and somehow even more violent form, with subtle hints of Rockstar’s Manhunt sprinkled on top. The short-but-sickeningly sweet levels allow you to carefully orchestrate your symphony of murder and mayhem, filling the floors with maimed corpses and spraying the walls with crimson, all while its surreal, Miami Vice-inspired soundtrack beats in the back of your mind. Basically, if you own a Wii or like looking at livestreams of kittens, this is not your kind of game.

Sebastian’s other picks for best games of 2012: Trials Evolution, Far Cry 3, The Darkness II, Final Fantasy XIII-2

Staff writer Jeff Grubb

Mark of the Ninja
Platform: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade), PC
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Developer: Klei Entertainment

For these Game of the Year summaries, we’re supposed to look above and beyond the individual parts of a game. We’re supposed to write about why it is important, but in the case of Mark of the Ninja, it’s those parts that make it so special. Developer Klei’s 2D stealth action game for Xbox Live Arcade and PC is a master class in well-executed gameplay mechanics. Whether it’s a soundwave that ripples off your ninja’s feet to indicate how much noise he’s making or a vision cone that indicates where an enemy is looking, Mark of the Ninja is constantly communicating with the player. It then provides the player with a great controlling character to poke and prod the world with.

It’s not rare that a game makes you feel like a badass, but with Klei’s game it’s not about how powerful you are — it’s about how in tune with the environment your character is. You have so much visual and aural information that every moment is an opportunity for experimentation. You can spend 10 minutes laying out a detailed plan that involves deadly traps, or you can play the entire game without a sword.

In video games, we don’t usually get a lot of new ideas, we just get different takes on old ideas. Stealth is an old idea at this point, but Mark of the Ninja distinguishes itself by executing the concept better than any other game before it.

Jeff’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Trials Evolution, FTL: Faster Than Light

Copy editor Jason Wilson

FTL: Faster Than Light
Platform: PC, Mac, Linux
Publisher: Subset Games
Developer: Subset Games

I’m low on fuel. My crew raced around my starship like a colony of ants, hastily putting out fires as doors opened to the cold vacuum of space. The Rebels are closing in on me. Do I take a chance and see if I can gain more fuel in the next nebular cloud, or do I make a mad dash for the next sector and hope to find friendly forces instead of angry adversaries? These are just some of the choices the player faces in FTL: Faster Than Light, the indie roguelike that’s swept upon a number of Game of the Year lists in 2012 (including ours!). What makes FTL so compelling to players is that a take on Civilization’s “one more turn” addictive nature — but instead of furthering your game, you’re driven to see if your next attempt takes you closer to escaping the pursuing Rebel forces. And it’s this that makes FTL one of the most interesting, fascinating, and, yes, best games of 2012.

Jason’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Crusader Kings II, Torchlight II, Dragon’s Dogma

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

Far Cry 3
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Something visceral. Something primal. Most shooters don’t have these. They settle you into a safe, comfortable role. Veteran soldier. Seasoned cop. Career criminal. A hero … or an antihero. But Far Cry 3 makes you run blind through the jungle while murderous pirates hunt you like a piece of prey. You’re just a terrified kid. Never held a gun before. Never seen anyone die before. Now you’re covered in your own brother’s blood and getting high off the giddy thrill of mere survival. Then you’re turned lose to roam two amazingly rich, open-world islands where you can really start enjoying yourself, slowly and cautiously picking your tormentors apart. Before you know it, the elation you get from destroying a criminal empire hardens into a different kind of drug: revenge.

That’s when Far Cry 3 surpasses the standard shooter fare. An aimless twentysomething becomes a killer of killers, as feared as the insane warlords he wants dead. Between coolly tense stealth play and straight-up gunfights, you become the predator, stalking intruders in your jungle and murdering them at will. It all culminates in a moment where you must decide just how much you enjoy that particular power fantasy. Enough to abandon your humanity? Maybe.

Far Cry 3 goes there. Solid gameplay — minus a weak-tea multiplayer — and incredibly detailed environments lift it far enough, but its secret weapon lies in how it takes you into that dark, primal place. And then it dares you to ignore your basic animal instincts.

Rus’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Fez, Halo 4, Journey

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Mass Effect 3, the bombastic conclusion to Electronic Arts’ role-playing-game-meets-shooter trilogy, promised us closure. It promised us the chance to finish the galactic fight and say goodbye to protagonist Commander Shepard and his alien allies.

But developer BioWare doesn’t want us to move on just yet. Controversial ending and Internet flame wars aside, Mass Effect 3 maintained relevancy throughout the last few months with a surprisingly robust multiplatform downloadable-content strategy, which includes the recently released Omega single-player experience.

So is a trip back to one of Mass Effect’s beloved locales worth putting aside those sexy year-end releases for a few hours?

It depends on how much you love the space-faring saga.

What you’ll like

Welcome back to the madness that is Omega
Mass Effect 2 introduced players to the criminal-friendly wonderland known as Omega and its iron-fisted ruler, Aria T’Loak. You’ll return to the shady, asteroid-based space station for some spirited firefights during BioWare’s latest downloadable ME3 side quest.

You also team up with the aforementioned Aria and a new, extremely capable associate, which I’ll refrain from describing so players can enjoy her reveal.

Throughout the relatively meaty mission, you revisit familiar places that you encountered in ME2 along with some never-before-seen areas. And for those who enjoyed the Aria character, you get to catch up with the cold-blooded asari assassin slash crime lord while getting some juicy insights into her complicated past.

If you like the combat, you’ll like this DLC
Omega is all about the gunplay, so keep that assault rifle loaded because you’re going to need it to mow down platoon after platoon of Cerberus bad guys. Thankfully, BioWare keeps the combat varied with some new enemy types, including the survival-horror-inspired, experiment-gone-bad adjutants. The first time you meet these Cerberus-bred killers is pretty memorable and reminiscent of a creepy shooter like Dead Space.

All the action equates to some fun, trigger-happy gameplay that will satisfy those who enjoy ME3′s refined fighting mechanics.

What you won’t like

The whole thing is a little pointless
Omega’s premise is shaky at best. You, playing as mega-hero Shepard, agree to help out the dubious Aria regain her station from the antagonist Cerberus general Oleg Petrovsky … in the middle of an everything’s-at-stake, galaxy-wide war.

Why?

Commander Shepard has more important things to do — primarily saving every organic being from extinction. Why would he concern himself with helping a seedy individual like Aria retake a notorious yet pretty insignificant blip on the star map?

Even worse, Aria, who has no leverage, gives out all the orders throughout the entire mission. She sets all the ground rules and forbids you from bringing anyone from your crew. Again, why would Shepard let this happen? Aria’s promise of ships, troops, and resources seems hollow at best, especially since her meager fleet could barely penetrate the Cerberus blockade surrounding her station — after getting kicked out in the first place.

The ridiculousness of the situation annoyed me a few times as I played through the DLC. On many occasions, I wish I could throw some of Aria’s signature F-bombs right back in her face.

After all, who does she think she is?

If you don’t like the combat, you won’t like this DLC
Like I said, you fight a lot in Omega. Unlike previous DLC releases, which involved investigation-type palette cleaners, you won’t find any of that here. After a couple of hours, the “clear this area of hostiles and move on to the next area” approach became stale.

While the new enemy types help keep things interesting, they’re not particularly challenging foes. The adjutants came with a lot of horrific hype, but they were pretty easy to dispatch. And the final battle’s setup and payoff are ham-fisted and anticlimactic.

Plus, not having your crew around detaches the events from the overarching plot. Yes, it’s fun to have some new, impressively powerful squad mates, but it would be nice to get some additional scenes with a few of your trusted comrades as well.

Conclusion

Mass Effect 3 is a spectacular game — one that deserves a lot of credit, especially during this time of the year. Unfortunately, the controversy centered on its hotly debated ending has overshadowed the impressive downloadable content that BioWare introduced.

I’ve already challenged EA to make people care about Mass Effect again. While Omega has its good parts, it doesn’t bring enough of that signature storytelling to the forefront. I love pulling the right trigger to shoot dudes, but I enjoy using the same button to interrupt a cutscene even more. This DLC doesn’t understand that.

On the positive side, the fans who play through Omega are probably the ones who still love the franchise and are always willing, able, and happy to take on another mission. Those loyal Shepards will find a flawed yet enjoyable escapade.

Score: 70/100

Mass Effect 3: Omega released on Nov. 27, 2012 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. The publisher provided GamesBeat with an Xbox 360 download code for the purpose of this review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Game networking service Raptr released its annual Raptr Report detailing the most played games of 2012, and it carries a few surprises about how gamers spent their time in the last 12 months. The data is based on Raptr’s gameplay tracking feature and a user base in the 15 million range. Games on the Wii U and PlayStation 3 didn’t factor into these numbers due to data-capture restrictions.

The overall most played new intellectual property? That goes to Dishonored. Developer Arkane Studios’ stealthy, steampunk actioner narrowly edged out Sleeping Dogs’ kung-fu treachery by a slender 6 percent. But split the numbers out to total playtime per player, and massively multiplayer games still led the charge. Korean heroic fantasy The Exiled Realm of Arborea (aka TERA) commanded a strong 14 percent lead over its nearest competitor, Dragon’s Dogma, with the average player logging 40 hours in the first month alone.

Meanwhile, Xbox Live Arcade’s biggest hit turned out to be a PC game. Minecraft drew 350 percent more playtime than the second-place finisher, Trials: Evolution. According to Raptr, XBLA games tend to max out at roughly 10 hours of use in the first month. Minecraft players averaged just over 20 hours.

Raptr also notes that 27 percent of Minecraft players have tried to ride a flying pig.

The most played game of 2012, however, won’t come as any shock. It’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II with a comfortable 11-point margin, followed by Borderlands 2, Halo 4, and Minecraft.

But it turns out gamers are far more devoted to something other than Black Ops II.

Breaking the data into individual playtimes handily negates Black Ops II’s vast sales advantage. More people bought the latest Call of Duty, but on a person-by-person basis, gamers spent far more time trolling through Borderlands 2′s Wasteland. A lot more.

The average player spent 49 hours in the Wasteland … nearly 50 more than the average Black Ops II player in their respective opening months.

Possibly, the 11 percent of players who completed every side quest added to those numbers. Raptr also reports that players spent an average 80 hours to reach the level 50 cap. Borderlands 2 also topped the list of nonannualized game sequels with double the overall time that was spent on Diablo III. In that same category, Guild Wars 2 took honors for the most individual playtime.

On the MMO front, switching to a free-to-play model worked out well for a pair of high-profile titles. Star Wars: The Old Republic saw a 136 percent increase in overall playtime in just two weeks while Star Trek Online bumped its population a whopping 266 percent in playtime per day.

And the numbers clearly solve the age-old argument between those hardcore followings. Star Wars beats out Star Trek’s playtime numbers by 168 percent. The top three The Old Republic players have shown serious devotion, each logging over 250 hours in the game.

But for Raptr’s coveted No Bathroom Break award, which honors the longest average play sessions, a few new fighters entered the ring. Mass Effect 3 just barely missed toppling Borderlands 2, with XCOM: Enemy Unknown following not far behind. Halo 4, Black Ops II, and Dragon’s Dogma rounded out the list.

Raptr’s methodology  uses a proprietary formula based on key statistics that include total hours, average session length, and average playtime per person. To create equal footing for comparison, all games are compared based on the same time frames, typically defined as the first month after release.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Irrational Games (formerly 2K Boston) released the official cover art for the highly anticipated (and often delayed) BioShock Infinite earlier this month, and fans were mostly disappointed with the final look.

While previous games in the series proudly display the creepy and iconic Big Daddy and Little Sister characters, Infinite shows the star, Booker DeWitt, in a generic “hero” pose. For a game set in a steampunk flying city full of mechanical menaces and sorcery, you’d expect a more inspired box art.

DeWitt’s boring pose and general design are so banal that you could stick him in any action game and he wouldn’t seem out of place — something you could not do with a Big Daddy. Check out the gallery below and see for yourself.

What other games would Booker DeWitt fit in?

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Every video game character you’ve ever loved (or hated) started as a rough sketch during early development stages. Some artists nail the appearance of the hero, villain, monster, or scenery on the first few tries, but designers usually go through dozens of doodles before reaching the final, definite look.

Check out this hand-drawn concept art from 15 popular characters and see how much they resemble their finished in-game 3D models.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Something strange is going on with GameStop. If you look past the shelves lined with used games and away from the mounted televisions loudly reminding you about the latest trade-in bonuses, you’ll find a special space devoted to one purpose: selling downloadable content.

Empty boxes with slipped-in cover art represent codes for new multiplayer maps, weapons, or even single-player story missions for games you might already own. To those of us used to buying DLC online from the likes of Steam, the PlayStation Store, and Xbox Live Marketplace, it looks a little out of place.

After all, who actually spends the time and gas to buy DLC from a brick-and-mortar store? Apparently, a lot of people do.

“DLC as a business was created largely not to include a retail partner,” Brad Schliesser, GameStop’s director of retail digital distribution, told GamesBeat. “Since we’ve been in the business, [we've found that] nearly 50 percent of customers who are purchasing digital content have never bought it anywhere before. They never bought it directly from Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo. They never bought a gift card to redeem on those platforms. There’s a whole other market of people who we’re able to sell this content to.”

According to Schliesser, one of the reasons DLC sells so well at GameStop is because of the retailer’s PowerUp Rewards program, which allows customers to earn points for every purchase they make. They can redeem these points for prizes or discounts on merchandise and games. Another important factor is being able to buy DLC without using a credit or debit card (which is required when buying it online): cash or in-store credit, which customers can accrue from selling games to the retailer, work just as well. About 70 percent of GameStop’s digital sales come from non-credit card transactions.

Its database of PowerUp Rewards members also allows the company to notify customers on the latest pieces of DLC. Using the recent release of Call of Duty: Black Ops II as an example, Schliesser said GameStop can look at those who reserved the game at its stores and specifically message them about DLC they might be interested in, such as the $50 “season pass” that includes four upcoming map packs for the multiplayer-centric first-person shooter.

“When we first started [selling downloadable content] in 2010, we had less than a 2 percent attach rate for DLC to a physical game,” said Schliesser, indicating the number of people buying DLC at the same time as the physical disc. “That started changing in holiday 2011, and what changed is publishers decided to start marketing digital content to customers when the game released rather than waiting three, six, or 12 months afterward.

“We kind of knew at that point that this is the right formula: You have to have a really good game, a game that has a history of good content, and you have to market it at launch. It also helps to have a sales person because that’s one thing that a digital platform [like the Xbox Live Marketplace or the PlayStation Store] really can’t do. You can’t have a customized interaction with someone who knows you and what your gaming habits are.”

While having DLC ready for launch is good for both publishers and GameStop, it’s still a point of contention for many gamers who feel like the extra content should have been a part of their $60 purchase. Ironically, one of the more controversial pieces of day-one DLC from earlier this year — a pack for role-playing game Mass Effect 3, which featured a brand new playable character — has the highest DLC-to-disc attach rate for GameStop: 50 percent of people who bought the regular edition of the game at launch also paid for the $10 DLC within the same transaction.

If you spent the extra cash for the collector’s edition of Mass Effect 3, however, the DLC was already included. Schliesser was aware of the “blowback” from the community but thought the way publisher Electronic Arts and developer BioWare  handled it was “perfectly valid.”

He added, “The most important thing that we found is the associates in the store drive the business. They understand what content is. It’s easy for them to sell content to a customer when that customer is buying a copy of the game. DLC for us attaches better to a physical game than any other accessory or add-on that we have in our company — whether it’s a headset, a controller, or strategy guide — because it’s so easy for the consumer to understand what it is they’re getting. From very early on, we understood that we had to do a good job of not only educating the consumer but also educating the person behind the counter.”

Educating the consumer about downloadable content is a wise move for the world’s largest game retailer. GameStop’s digital sales, which include DLC, were up 31.8 percent to $127 million during the third quarter of its fiscal year.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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This article contains spoilers about Mass Effect 3.

I’m going to guess that most of you probably don’t know that Mass Effect 3’s latest single-player downloadable-content pack, Omega, is coming out today, Nov. 27. That’s right, developer BioWare is giving you the chance to revisit the seedy, asteroid-based criminal wonderland made famous in the sci-fi role-playing-shooter series’ second installment.

And if you are aware of the DLC, it probably doesn’t matter … because most players don’t care about Mass Effect anymore.

Even though the franchise has blasted its way to a spot in video game Valhalla, protagonist Commander Shepard and his plucky crew of alien assassins have lost favor with their extremely fickle fan base.

Electronic Arts has come out in full support of the interplanetary saga, pledging a bright future filled with new releases and content. And, for the most part, the publisher has delivered, at least when it comes to ME DLC.

The third title’s already addictive multiplayer mode received a slew of free, and quite substantial, updates. We also got to do some stellar sleuthing in Leviathan, a single-player experience that helped answer more questions about the origins of the game’s primary antagonists, the mechanical and maniacal reapers.

I liked Leviathan. Hell, I got to go underwater in a giant mech. I would have never imagined doing that in a Mass Effect entry. Plus, as an enthusiast of the virtual space opera, I uncovered some fascinating context into the galaxy’s history.

That’s the problem, however. BioWare is focusing on the beginning of its star story instead of on the end. In essence, the Mass Effect maker is ignoring the 800-pound elcor in the room.

Yes, we got the downloadable equivalent of a “my bad” with the Extended Cut ending, but that just made the nebula even more nebulous.

I wrote an article before the Extended Cut launched where I basically admitted to being an Indoctrination Theory sympathizer. For those who don’t know, part of the ME community believes that the trilogy’s controversial conclusion never really happened. These patient and hopeful individuals think that those sketchy final sequences were part of the reapers’ indoctrination (read: brainwashing) of Shepard.

Granted, my faith in the theory has waned in recent months. But I still believe in its plausibility, and the Extended Cut did nothing to discredit the reapers’ potential mind-bending motives for Shepard.

In short, ME 3 needs a proper epilogue. If that means we get to wake up and finish the fight, wonderful. Or if that means we get to play through a few post-ending, the-Indoctrination-Theory-is-bogus-deal-with-it-but-everyone-who-survived-is-OK scenarios as some of the series’ beloved characters, that’s great, too.

As long as EA and BioWare pump out multiplayer and pre-ending content, the franchise will continue to drift aimlessly with no mass relay in sight.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Maybe you’ve heard about the Nintendo Wii U.

After a major marketing push and a torrential amount of Internet buzz, the successor to Nintendo’s wildly successful Wii video game console finally arrived in stores last Sunday. The gaming industry and the consumer base that feeds it have largely passed judgment already. But if you bought one of the 97 million Wii units solid in the last six years, and you consider yourself a casual user, you might wonder whether it’s worth your time and money to upgrade to the latest model.

Naturally, the answer depends on what you want it for.

Which model to get

This marks Nintendo’s attempt to catch up to its competitors on multiple fronts. We’ve covered the basics before, but the Wii U comes in two different packages — a white Basic Set retailing at $299.99 featuring an 8GB hard drive, and a black, 32GB Deluxe Set for $349.99 that includes a copy of Nintendo Land, a party-game compilation (read our full review here). That’s a significant increase from the Wii’s original $249.99 price back in 2006. Unlike its predecessor, the Wii U comes HD-ready, albeit at the lower end of the high-definition scale: 720p rather than 1080p.

Here’s a rundown of everything that comes in the box:

If you don’t plan to download a lot of games or apps, you might not need the bigger 32GB system. That said, the Deluxe set does include Nintendo Land, one of its best — and one of the few — casual gameplay titles at $10 off MSRP.

The big difference

The centerpiece of the Wii U is the GamePad, a handheld controller with a 6.2-inch touchscreen that combines a video game feel with tablet functions.

A nonstandard button layout presents a few problems for gamers, as we’ve pointed out already, but that won’t bother anyone coming off the Wii’s two-controller approach. In fact, I’ve already seen many clever applications for the GamePad’s capabilities — holding it up for “augmented reality” simulations, for example. But the Wii U’s not-so-secret weapon, asymmetrical gameplay, offers amazing possibilities by letting two or more players (one on the GamePad screen, the rest using the ubiquitous Wii Remotes or the Wii U Pro controller) experience the same game in very different ways, frequently with very different goals.

More often than not, you can also transfer what you’re doing to the GamePad’s screen entirely, freeing up the television for someone else to use while you continue your game or movie in peace. It’s a very liberating option, though at only 480p, the picture likely won’t be as sharp, and I frequently had to crank the Pad’s volume to maximum to hear Netflix films from its tinny little speakers. Plugging in a pair of earbuds only helps slightly.

Games, however, come through clear and strong. And the it’s games you play on the Game Pad that really show you the imagination and potential of the Wii U.

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While some people tell us that the Wii U’s launch lineup is “the best in history” and “it is not debatable,” we prefer to take a “trust but verify” approach to the subject.

Like it or not, a significant portion of the Wii U’s catalog consists of ports from months-old titles, backed by developers promising that Nintendo will feature “the definitive editions” of their games. I think that’s worthy of debate. And their general quality should absolutely be verified before anyone spends money on them.

We don’t need to give every Wii U game a complete review — several have gotten that already on other systems — but we do want to see how both ports and original releases stack up on the new hardware. After all, the Wii U’s big conceit claims it isn’t just what you play, but how you play it that makes all the difference.

Naturally, some games get that. Some don’t.

Unless otherwise noted, all games below are currently available. Click here for all of GamesBeat’s Wii U launch coverage.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

You might think it’s the biggest game of the year, but to me, Black Ops II feels like the biggest surprise of the year. I haven’t despised a Call of Duty game more than Black Ops since World at War — not coincidentally, all three were developed by Treyarch. But I found myself loving a lot of what Black Ops II threw at me. The (branching!) story, characters, level design, and flow clicked into place in ways I haven’t seen from this franchise in years. Oh, you get some fairly sharp interruptions with forced, clumsy, real-time-strategy missions, but otherwise it’s solid entertainment written in capital letters.

The Wii U implementation, however, doesn’t recommend itself over any other, and it often finds ways to drive away the dedicated Call of Duty players Nintendo wants to attract. Compared to the other versions, it’s visually diluted; transferring your game to the Game Pad’s 480p screen waters down the graphics more. It’s cool to get the full CoD experience on a handheld device (even one tethered to its console), but that’s as far as anybody went to fit this game on Nintendo’s hardware. Those RTS levels seem like a natural for its touchscreen interface, but nope … Activision didn’t bother, sticking to the same awful controls you’ll find on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Worse, back in first-person-shooter mode, the Game Pad (and Pro Controller) face buttons reverse all the familiar command inputs from past games. That’s more than distracting in the campaign and intolerable in multiplayer. I can’t believe anyone will take the time to retrain their reflexes just to satisfy Nintendo’s conceits.

Those coming in fresh will get a seriously good game with a few detractions they likely won’t even notice. Veterans might want to stick to more familiar ground. And hey, maybe the multiplayer won’t end up such a grindhouse with all the career shootists happily plugging away on other platforms.

Scribblenauts Unlimited

I’ve been in love with the idea of Scribblenauts since publisher Warner Bros. Interactive stuck it on two tiny kiosks against the very back wall at E3 2009. It came out of that trade show a major player. The finished games themselves always faltered in some way — sometimes very badly — but now I’ve got a Scribblenauts I can really recommend … one that actually gives you the freedom the series has long promised.

The basic game remains unchanged. As rooster-hat-wearing Maxwell, you tap out words to create items and people meant to solve puzzles and problems. Half the fun lies in finding out how extensive and outrageous Scribblenauts’ vocabulary is (short answer: very, now including a number of classic Nintendo characters) and applying wacky solutions to sometimes mundane problems. The ability to modify words (big, radioactive, rotten, etc.) returns, but a robust item creation suite kicks the possibilities into orbit.

More importantly, Scribblenauts finally moves away from quick-hit, one-screen puzzles and a linear progression that felt more like a series of cages than anything else. Now Maxwell moves through an open world, leaving you free to go anywhere at will and engage whomever you want, however you want. While the tasks you find aren’t always terribly interesting, you can usually make them interesting by applying as wild a solution as you can devise. Sometimes my experimentation revealed the limits of Scribblenauts’ imagination, but it’s easy to simply move on and see if a flying robot dinosaur works better in other situations.

But despite being a launch title for a brand-new console, Scribblenauts still never truly leaves the small screen. I played wide swaths of the game without once looking up at my television, doing everything right from the Game Pad’s touchscreen. That makes Unlimited, despite its more open, more expansive nature, feel every bit as much a mobile-platform game as its predecessors.

It’s also possibly the best party game on the Wii U. Encourage everyone in the room to shout out suggestions for things to create, and you’re in for a evening of doodling up some amazing disasters. Either way, alone or in a crowd, Scribblenauts Unlimited gives you a lot to write home about.

Mass Effect 3: Special Edition

All the controversy and bad blood generated by Mass Effect 3′s much maligned ending can make you forget what an amazing game it is. Y’know, until the last 15 minutes or so.

The “Special Edition” port for the Wii U serves as a solid reminder. The concluding chapter of Commander Shepard’s war against the world-ending Reaper threat makes a decent jump over to the Nintendo console, but not without hiccups. Regardless of which controller you’re on, some controls feel a bit sticky — aiming, for example. Melee attacks are mapped to a tough-to-reach button, and integration with the GamePad feels slight. You get a bland radar map (which seems like a cliché in the making) or the power wheel with hotkeyed special attacks for your squad commands. Both of these assume you’re fine with taking your eyes off the TV during a firefight. I wasn’t.

All the campaign’s downloadable content and the “improved” extended ending come standard, so you’ll get plenty of mileage though (perhaps tellingly) not all the multiplayer updates made it in. The graphics go down a notch or two, but they started pretty damn high. Newbies won’t notice a thing. And really, sans all the additional content, nobody else needs to commit to this edition over any other.

If you’re solidly Nintendo Core and haven’t bothered with Bioware’s sci-fi epic until now … well, Mass Effect 2 would actually be the best entry point. But since that’s not available, get Mass Effect 3 and enjoy the hell out of it. Several emotional crescendos won’t register as deeply, but neither will the ending feel so abysmal a letdown. Perhaps that’s a fair trade-off. Certainly, the 25 hours of gameplay before that will be time well spent.

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Hold on to your wallets; November 18 is rapidly approaching. That’s the day Nintendo picked for the U.S. release of its fancy new system, the Wii U.

The world was a very different place since the last home video game console came out in 2006 (the original motion-controlled Wii). Within the past six years, we’ve seen two U.S. presidential elections, three James Bond films starring Daniel Craig, and nine handheld Pokémon games. So it’s okay to feel a little rusty when it comes to hardware launches.

That’s why we compiled all of GamesBeat’s Wii U coverage in this handy post. If you have no idea what the Wii U is, or what it’s capable of, start with our comprehensive primer. Don’t know what games to pick up at launch? Here’s a complete list of all 23 titles. Otherwise, dive right in.

Editorial

• Why the Wii U might be set up for failure

Podcast

• BYOT Episode 8: Wii U and the holiday season of gaming

Hardware

• Why you should wait on a Wii U (review)
• Gadget lovers and gamers: Here’s a look inside the Nintendo Wii U
• Bricked Wii U owners will have to send their consoles to Nintendo for repair
• 10 Things you don’t know about the Nintendo Wii U
• The Wii U is (not really) battery powered
• What’s in the box? Nintendo Wii U Deluxe Edition and Pro Controller
• See how the Wii U’s size compares to the Wii’s

Game Reviews

• The Wii U launch-title review round-up
• Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed
• ZombiU
• New Super Mario Bros. Wii U
• Nintendo Land

Game previews

• Will Wii U players get an unfair advantage in Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer?
• Nintendo Land will make you hate your friends and family
• The Wii U could be a new home for indie games
• EA shows off smart Wii U GamePad tricks for FIFA 13 and Mass Effect 3

Online services

• Your Wii U won’t connect to the Internet? Here’s the fix
• Wii U video chat provided by Vidyo, which also powers Google Hangouts (and sees a $1B opportunity in Nintendo)
• The Nintendo Wii U Online FAQ
• The Wii U’s online service is an ‘empathy network’ — what the heck is that?
• Wii U’s browser is better equipped for HTML5 than Internet Explorer 10 on PC
• Nintendo’s touchscreen TV service for the Wii U plays catch-up (hands-on video)

Interviews

• Nintendo and Wii U eShop impressing indie developers faster than Microsoft and Sony
• Nintendo’s Scott Moffitt tells us what we need to know about the Wii U launch
• Why Ubisoft has eight games coming for the Wii U
• Nintendo VP Scott Moffitt dishes on the Wii U’s $299 price, living room strategy, and more

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The following review contains mild spoilers only.

In one of her increasingly rare moments of lucidity, Cortana — the sassy artificial intelligence who’s guided us through three iconic Halo games that have generated more than $3 billion in revenue for Microsoft — asks a favor: “If we get out of this, promise me you’ll figure out which one of us is the machine.”

Cortana is dying, an 8-year-old with a 7-year life expectancy. Her longtime partner, the Master Chief, makes her a different guarantee: We’ll fix you. Those aren’t empty words, either, coming from a man physically augmented and mentally conditioned from childhood to be humanity’s perfect soldier … possibly at the cost of his own humanity. Saving his last, best friend just represents the latest objective assigned to him. At first.

Unbreakable promises and questions about our very nature provide a strong foundation for Halo 4 (releasing November 6 for Xbox 360), the first in a new trilogy from largely untested developer 343 Industries. They also present an interesting metaphor. Expectations run high when you bring Halo into the conversation, and many people asked whether 343 could keep the magic alive without Bungie, the studio that created the Master Chief and made his war into Microsoft’s signature video-game franchise. Would the Chief survive the transfer from one creative team to another intact?

He did. Halo 4 keeps every promise it makes. The real question is whether you think it promised enough.

What you’ll like

Things change
A moment comes in Halo 4 when the Master Chief does something we’ve never, ever seen him do … something I never even thought he could do. The entire universe pivots in that instant.

We haven’t exactly gone without Halo anytime in the last decade, but it’s been five years since we last played as the Chief. It’s good to be home again. Even better, our pulpy space opera hangs on to the dramatic weight it found in Halo: Reach’s doomed last stand and makes the crisis personal. It hurts to see Cortana, one of the strongest women in gaming, so vulnerable and unsure, and her uncharacteristic glitches soon deteriorate into full-bore schizophrenic breaks. I actually hesitated a few times when the game prompted me to insert Cortana’s chip into, say, a weapons terminal.

But it’s entirely gratifying (and a little telling) to watch the Chief circle the wagons around her, back her to the hilt, and defend her against all comers even past the point where he probably should. This is new ground, and the choices they make push both characters in new, unexpected directions. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I got.

And we get to shoot things. The Master Chief’s tenuous plan to save his friend hits a snag when they’re pulled inside Requiem — a majestic, artificial world built by the ancient Forerunner race — along with a fanatical Covenant splinter group searching for a new god to worship. Turns out those zealots came to the right place. What the Chief and Cortana discover on Requiem puts mankind in the crosshairs of the Didact, an overwhelmingly powerful enemy with an eons-old grudge against our species. If you ever wanted to see the Master Chief completely helpless, the Didact will oblige you.

He also provides our new targets, and they are no joke. Prometheans come in three sizes (pack-animal Crawlers, hovering support unit Watchers, and heavily armed, heavily shielded Knights), but they operate as one interconnected unit. Forget jumping into a pack of them and shooting your way out. Prometheans defend, repair, and even spawn each other, so it’s crucial to apply some strategy in order to shut them down fast. I found popping Watchers from a distance usually made a reliable Step 1, but priorities change according to who’s killing you at the moment. Individually or in a squad, Prometheans make pleasingly dangerous adversaries.

Knights in particular are tough, tricky — they can teleport out of harm’s way if you start scoring on them — and imposing in ways Covenant forces just aren’t anymore, so it’s especially satisfying when you assassinate one. Game-wide, it’s roughly a 50-50 split between Prometheans and Covenant encounters, though it gets especially tense when both come at you at once.

So show up for the violence, stay for the story. Big things happen in this game. We see evidence of a resurgent humanity represented by the UNSC Infinity, a massive, fully-loaded dreadnaught also drawn inside Requiem. Hints drop about our race’s destined role as we march out among the stars. And watch the Master Chief’s body language closely. Something’s happening behind that expressionless visor.

Yes, the universe changes in Halo 4, and I’m eager to see where we go from here.

Looks good, feels better
Stepping up to your first vista of Requiem evokes a genuine sense of wonder and awe, not unlike the first time we walked out onto the surface of a Halo, aided in no small measure by the all-new graphics. Halo 4′s stunning visuals represent a quantum leap for the series and a serious bump on nearly any other game franchise you’d care to name. This game is endlessly beautiful.

That’s only the tip of the overhaul. 343 Industries took major cues from Call of Duty — current holder of Halo’s old first-person-shooter crown — to add a slightly more tactical edge to the familiar run-and-gun game, and everything feeds into that philosophy. It’s in the Prometheans’ rock-paper-scissors approach, the new grenade-warning indicator, the new armor abilities, and in how the best weapons in the Master Chief’s revised arsenal tend to be more precision-focused. The Chief even moves noticeably slower than before, balanced by a permanent sprint function. Man, does it feel different. But once you dial in, Halo 4 takes off.

For better and worse, I never dug into the short-burst Thruster Pack or enemy-scoping Promethean Vision (the range on both didn’t impress me). But a handy, deployable sentry turret and a mobile, hard-light shield became invaluable. I also clung to my scope-equipped Battle Rifle and the improved Designated Marksman Rifle (DMR) like never before. Seriously, I passed over energy swords to hang on to my iron. That’s unheard of in previous Halos.

But whatever you’re shooting, the audio design takes everything up a notch. No more mistaking assault rifles fired in the distance for misaligned typewriters. You bring thunder to a gunfight, and alien weapons truly sound alien.

343 retooled absolutely everything in the never-ending quest for balance. The Warthog jeep feels far less floaty; I actually enjoyed driving it. A lot of old favorites — Ghosts, energy swords, shotguns, jetpacks — feel slightly (and rightly) scaled back from their always-win status. New favorites abound. I grabbed any Sticky Grenade Launcher offered to me for the pure comedic value of remote-detonating my enemies. The Promethean Lightrifle (a super-cool Battle Rifle analogy) and sniperish, one-hit-kill Binary Rifle are definite keepers, though the SMG-style Suppressor seems too inaccurate. And I’d take a very scary squirt-gun over the Boltshot pistol any day.

On the other hand, picking up the ridiculously overpowered SAW, a BFG heavy rifle, pretty much puts you on par with God. That suited me fine in the campaign; less so in multiplayer.

Also overpowered is the heavily publicized Mantis combat mech. It comes in handy when a few squadrons of Banshees strafe you, but it doesn’t distinguish itself from any other recent gun-heavy mobile suits (Mass Effect 3, Gears of War 3, etc.). You hop in and fire barrages of missiles at one teeny little Grunt. Because you can. I actually preferred  getting behind the stick of a Pelican for the first time in the series’ history. That’s some long-deferred wish fulfillment … even if that sequence feels more like a reward for my patience than an actual challenge. I like rewards.

You get a lot of them in Halo 4. The rhythms differ, and the sexy looks are a surprise, but the gameplay feels at all times tight, precise, and joyous.

Particularly once you fire up the multiplayer.

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If you’ve ever magically combined herb plants into pills in Resident Evil 6 or wondered how Max Payne could survive shoving a ton of painkillers down his throat, then you realize that video games aren’t known for their sound representation of science. But for most of them, that’s fine! Like books, movies, and TV shows, they require some suspension of disbelief.

But those that do base their fictions off of real-world research could use some improvement. That’s where the group of scientists working at Thwacke come in. In addition to posting articles that explore topics like nanotechnology in Metal Gear Solid or genetic modification in BioShock, its staff provides consultation for developers looking to incorporate science into their games.

Among its handful of clients is InXile Entertainment, who hired Thwacke to help “shape the science fiction“ of Wasteland 2, the sequel to the beloved 1988 post-apocalyptic role-playing game (which later inspired another end-of-the-world RPG, Fallout).

“I find it’s just great to have another set of really smart eyes looking at everything we do,” said Brian Fargo, the chief executive of InXile and one of the co-creators of the original Wasteland, in a phone call with GamesBeat. “So for me, it goes beyond their science background on things … . They’ve really been great [at] throwing out all sorts of ideas. And all of my writers have used pieces of what they’ve thrown out. It really has helped make the product better.”

GamesBeat reached out to Thwacke co-founder Sebastian Alvarado, a Ph.D candidate in pharmacology at the Montreal-based McGill University, to find out just what the firm can contribute to the development process.

GamesBeat: What’s the founding story behind Thwacke? Was it because of something you and your colleagues noticed was lacking in the video game industry?

Sebastian Alvarado: I was midway into graduate studies at McGill and had the opportunity to visit the studio of a developer here in Montreal. As I walked through their studio, I saw a member of their team Wikipedia-ing “DNA.” Having dedicated my career to studying DNA, I realized that the knowledge that we take for granted in academia could be very useful for the entertainment business. To me, that incident emphasized the huge gap between legitimate research and public knowledge.

I decided that something had to be done, and it had to be done by highly qualified and creative scientists who played video games.

GamesBeat: What role can Thwacke’s consulting play in game development? Do you work specifically with writers and designers? Is it better if you’re involved in the process early on?

Alvarado: Although we can provide input at almost any stage of development, we mostly work early on the conception of a project with writers and with designers. We work with writers to craft plausible narrative — world building — and with designers to align a scientific concept with a design mechanic.

We do this with an extensive network of academics covering every discipline. For example, in Wasteland 2 we were asked which animals that would survive a nuclear fallout and why. In this case we found specialists in environmental biology, medicine, and evolutionary biology to craft science into ideas that can be used in game design. This saves researching time for writers and allows them to focus on gameplay. This out-of-the-box approach has been able to spark new directions for narrative and gameplay that wouldn’t have otherwise been explored.

In later stages of development, we usually work on easy-to-implement text-based assets. In Wasteland 2, we will be doing this for a side mission that involves pages in a wastelander’s logbook. This information is optional but adds depth to narrative and immersion for those willing to read it.

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I have never, ever played a Fable game. I always intended to throw on one of Peter Molyneux’s fantasy epics and take it for a spin, and hey, I still do. Someday. Really.

But the simple fact is this: If you game, you’ve got a pile of shame … that list of titles you haven’t played yet but fully intend to. Someday. Really.

Nobody likes to admit it, but few of us have the money and time to play everything we’re interested in. In fact, the number of missed opportunities just grows and grows as shiny distractions (work, family, newer games that look really cool) come into the picture. So as we come out of the summer doldrums and into a very busy gaming season, we asked some of most influential names in the industry to publicly humiliate themselves by telling us what’s still on their piles of shame.

And they didn’t all answer. But here’s who did.

Cliff Blezinski: former design director, Epic Games (Gears of War)

I’ve yet to go back to Batman: Arkham City because I can’t find the darned disc in my cluttered setup.

Jenova Chen: cofounder, Thatgamecompany (Journey, Flower)

I haven’t played Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the first boss. It’s the game of the year for our lead engineer, John Edwards, so that means a lot. But I haven’t got time to go back to it yet.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu: editor-in-chief, GamesBeat

Mass Effect 2. I don’t understand what all that hub-bub was about the ending to the Mass Effect storyline. We’re still not even halfway through the trilogy, right? Right?

Sigh … yes, this is my big shame game. I’m not even finished with Mass Effect 2 yet. I know it’s something I need to get through — Mass Effect is a major franchise in gaming, after all — but I just can’t seem to find the time. Actually, that’s not true. I somehow scraped together 188 hours for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I honestly don’t know what it is about this series. I loved the first game, but it took me over a year and a half to beat it because I was constantly leaving it, then coming back, and then leaving it again. For all of 2012, ME2′s been sitting next to my TV, beaming subliminal messages to my brain: “Play me … play me. …” But it hasn’t worked. Now that Borderlands 2 is here, and all the other fall games are arriving soon, I’m afraid part two of this sci-fi trilogy will just have to wait a bit longer.

Morgan Webb: co-host, X-Play

Spec Ops: The Line. Everyone tells me it’s really good. Everyone tells me about the crazy tough choices you have to make. And I even bought it. It is still in the plastic and will likely remain so until about January. It’s not a very large pile. I try really hard to keep up with things. And seriously, Shoe needs to play Mass Effect.

Frank O’Connor: franchise development director, 343 Industries (Halo 4)

Working on Halo is a pretty  involved process. There’s the work, of course – story, universe building, endless meetings, travel … most developers know the score there. But you compound that work with home life, raising an angry 3-year-old, taking out the trash, fixing the sewer, making dinner – there just aren’t that many hours in the day. And so when I do play games in my downtime, they tend to be Halo. Take-home tests, matchmaking, just a ton of Halo stuff. So my pile of shame is almost limitless. And to prove that point, my main shameful miss is a couple of years old, and I still haven’t gotten around to it properly. It’s Red Dead Redemption.

Hardly unusual, but when I did finally put it in my drive, I immediately knew this was a place I wanted to inhabit. And I got as far as the first horse race, couldn’t beat Bonnie around her ranch, and that’s where I left it. Right back to Halo stuff. I also have a miserably small completion ratio of Forza, and in fact I have not unlocked the Halo Warthog that’s squirreled away in there. The least dusty, still-shrinkwrapped item on that pile is Borderlands 2.

I still haven’t seen the new Batman, either, and I only saw Cabin in the Woods because it was on my plane. I genuinely feel actual shame because part of my job is to understand why other games are cool and expose myself to new experiences. I feel like I should really just take a couple of months off to reengage and immerse myself in what’s new and what’s awesome.

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