BioShock Infinite is this year’s Skyrim: Flawed in just about all design but completely forgivable due to its overwhelming atmosphere.

BioShock Infinite is exactly what Spec Ops: The Line would’ve been if its game elements worked. Instagram filters and the chained shooting galleries of a bland shooter that relies mostly on a storyline with an immense twist.

BioShock Infinite is like the Twilight series minus the scruples: Its third act becomes as convoluted and incredible as Bella becoming impregnated by a vampire baby who wants to eat her from the womb.

BioShock Infinite is what Proteus would’ve been if the developer had forced in traditional gameplay elements: Simply being present in its universe is more consequential than any other, lesser element of the game.

BioShock Infinite is Far Cry 3 with opposite priorities: a gorgeous shooter with unnecessary ultra-violence that we accept because of the overall product’s excellence.

There are bound to be a few more succinct comparisons to be made in a snappy one-liner. If you have one, feel free to leave a comment!

This was originally posted on gg3.be.

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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 sponsored post is produced by Dealzon.

Strategy gamers! Allocate your resources toward these two titles: SimCity and Europa Universalis III Chronicles. Both games boast in-depth gameplay, long-running franchises, and have numerous fans – but only one will go down in RTS infamy as an online-only single player game. Setting aside server stumbles, SimCity may actually be worthy of positive attention this week. The PC download is almost half off, and Europa Universalis III is free at GameFly.

Today SimCity dropped to $32 for the PC download with Origin activation (flame away). This is a solid price for a recently released Triple-A game, server snafus and DRM controversies aside. We suspect the game will soon reach the $30 price point, but don’t expect it to break the $20 barrier until closer to year’s end.

Europa Universalis III Chronicles can be yours for the unbeatable price of FREE today through April 11 at GameFly. You’ll still have to check out with a PayPal account or furnish your credit card info. But if you’re a fan of grand strategy games, you can’t go wrong with this bundle, as it includes all four Europa 3 expansions.

Note: We update our GamesBeat weekly deal post every Tuesday with the latest deals. For last week’s deals, check below the “Last Thursday” headline.

Tuesday New Deals

SimCity (PC Download) — $31.99 at GameFly after coupon. Yes, it’s Origin activated. Yes, you still need to be connected to the Internet. But hey, you’re not paying full price.
 

Europa Universalis 3 Chronicles (PC Download) — FREE at GameFly. The bundle comes with all four Europa 3 expansions. This same bundle runs $30 at Steam. Between $30 and free, we’ll take free.
 

Ni no Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch (PS3) — $39.99 at Amazon. First big price drop on this beautifully crafted JRPG.
 

June 14 release: The Last of Us (PS3) — $49.99 at NewEgg after coupon. One of the first solid deals we’ve seen on the upcoming and highly anticipated PS3 exclusive.
 

June 25 release: Company of Heroes 2 (PC Download) — $45 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Comes with beta access. Thankfully the title’s still being released, even after THQ’s liquidation.
 

Sep 17 release: Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox 360) — $59.99 at Microsoft. Xbox 360 owners get a better preorder incentive than their PS3 counterparts with an offer of 1600 Xbox Live points.
 

Last Thursday

In a move to bolster sales on titles published by 2K Games, GameFly is bundling up a few fan favorites and selling them at wallet-opening prices. This is a trend we’ve noticed lately for PC game sales, where retailers are happy to cheaply bundle last year’s hit releases to increase sales volume.

For the week, GameFly is offering four solid game bundles priced from $5 to $40. If you preordered BioShock Infinite, you’re probably familiar with some of these titles – they’re the same ones given away as bonuses during Infinite’s preorder sales push. Our top pick would be the BioShock dual pack bundle, containing the first two installment of the series for only $4.

If you see something you fancy, you might want to act fast, since all four bundle deals will be gone tomorrow.

On the console front, we’re spotting the first real discounts on recent releases like BioShock Infinite and Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel. While the savings are less substantial compared to their PC counterparts, kudos to GameStop for actually slashing prices on the 360/PS3 versions. Not bad for everyone’s favorite-game-store-to-hate.

2k Games PC bundles

BioShock Dual Pack (PC Download) — $3.99 at GameFly after coupon and includes BioShock 1&2. If you haven’t played the well-reviewed BioShock series, this is a cheap way to start. The cheapest we’ve seen this combo in the past is $10, and each game normally costs $20 apiece. Note the GameFly coupon code can only be used once per account, though it can apply to multiple games at once.

Spec Ops: The Line and The Darkness II Bundle (PC Download) — $3.99 at GameFly after one-use coupon. Four bucks makes a great price on two 2012 releases with Metascores of 76+. Buying each separately sets you back $60.

BioShock, BioShock 2, and Spec Ops: The Line Bundle (PC Download) — $7.99 at GameFly after coupon. On the surface, this is a good value since each game separately totals up to $70. That said, it’s actually a better move to buy both the BioShock bundle and the Spec Ops: The Line/The Darkness II bundle in the same transaction and use the once-per account coupon code because you’ll get 4 games instead of 3 for the same price ($8).

Borderlands 2 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown Bundle (PC Download) — $31.99 at GameFly after one-use coupon. Two very popular 2012 games are discounted $78 off their normal combined $110 price. If you buy each separately elsewhere at their lowest prices online, you’ll pay $80.

Hot deals & recent releases

Dead Island Game of the Year Edition + $8 preorder credit towards Dead Island Riptide (PC Download) — $4.99 at Amazon. This ties the lowest price ever seen on Dead Island GOTY, which includes the base Dead Island game and 3 DLC packs. Once the game is purchased, Amazon will email you instructions on how to get $8 off the upcoming Dead Island Riptide release (April 23rd).

Last Tuesday’s release: Defiance (PC Download) — $48 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Elsewhere $60. The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions are down to $50.99 at GameStop after coupon. This week, the Magic 8 Ball says an 8+ rating from IGN and Metacritic users, although there aren’t many reviews out yet.

Bioshock Infinite (Xbox 360, PS3) — $50.99 at GameStop after coupon. Next best is $58 at Overstock.com. German retailer GamesRocket still has the PC download for $46.49, and Green Man Gaming still has it for £23.99.

Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel (Xbox 360) — $50.99 at GameStop after coupon. List is $60. Like BioShock Infinite this game released last Tuesday, March 26th but received much less attention. Reviewers say it lacks originality, but gameplay appears to be fine. GameStop has the only discount thus far.

PC download deals

Tropico 4 Collectors Bundle (PC Download) — $8 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. List is $40. The bundle includes the Tropico 4 game with 7 DLCs. Think Sim City with a sense of humor, more islands, and fewer server problems.

Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise (PC Download) — $1.99 at GameFly after coupon. GameFly discounted this July 2012 retro-style beat-em-up from $9.99 to $2.50. Use their once-per-account coupon code and drop the price further to $1.99.

A Game of Dwarves Sale: Game and DLCs (PC Download) — 66% off at GamersGate. The game alone normally costs $10, and after the 66% discount, you can get the game plus 3 DLCs for only $7.12.

360 & PS3 deals

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Xbox 360, PS3) — $39.99 at NewEgg. Until recently, the February 19th release Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance hasn’t strayed far from its list price, making NewEgg’s $20 discount the best ever by $10. Next best price online is $50 at Amazon, which prior to this week was charging the full $60 list price.

Dishonored (Xbox 360, PS3) — $25.49 at GameStop after coupon. While Dishonored has been around for almost 6 months, this is only the second time it’s hit the $25 price point. (The only other time was Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend.) Elsewhere this week, most retailers dropped their prices from $40 to $30, but GameStop’s coupon code makes this the best deal around.

Hardware

Alienware M17x r4 Ivy Bridge Core i7-3740QM, 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M, 1080p, 8GB RAM — $1,999 at Dell Home after coupon. Although this Alienware laptop commands a premium price, this is the lowest we’ve seen on this 17-inch behemoth by $100 and cuts $300 off this config’s $2,299 list price.

Dell XPS 8500 Ivy Bridge Quad Core i7-3770, Radeon HD 7570, 8GB RAM, Windows 8 — $659.99 at Dell Home after coupon. Dell’s cheapest gaming-capable desktop just got cheaper. At $660, the desktop is a new low by $20 and now costs the same as the base XPS 8500 config – but with a more powerful processor and video card. List price is $875.

PS3 Slim 320GB Console (Refurbished) — $171.96 plus $10.44 shipping at TigerDirect. Next best is $300 at Best Buy. While most PlayStation gamers are saving up for a PS4, the PS3 console prices are starting to drop. This 320GB console costs $300 in new condition, so the buyer saves $118.

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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 came to Twitter somewhat reluctantly, as many do. I saw it as an application for unnecessary ego boosting and vanity, a platform you use to wave at your favorite celebrities and hope they wave back. That criticism contains an element of truth, but it’s not the whole picture.

When I did finally create a profile, I did it promote my gaming-related writing. I also decided to start following critics, writers, and editors of the community as sources of news. Surprisingly, I found not just news updates but a hotbed of debates, soap boxes, and sex jokes. This aspect has arrested my attention and the attention of thousands of gamers for the simple fact that these exchanges are both informative and entertaining. Within moments of one another, you can watch game personalities trade some light-hearted barbs over Spec Ops: The Line and then see industry people discuss social issues in gaming culture.

Twitter is more than just an information dump. It’s also an avenue into the various ongoing debates in the community. I like to think of it as a digital realization of rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s metaphor of the parlor, which is … well — let Burke explain:

“Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.”

My experience with the Burkean parlor is usually confined to helping students work through issues they’re having when drafting and planning research papers. It lets them create a context in which they can “talk” with folks past and present who have tackled whatever subject the student is writing about. But let’s repurpose this concept for Twitter. I find the parlor a particularly apt metaphor for this experience since it really is like stepping into a virtual bar of sorts and overhearing conversations.

Much of the time I don’t take part in these discussions, sometimes because the participants are intimidating and sometimes because I don’t want to come across as an obscure suck up. But, I do throw in my two cents or lame joke into the middle of the table every once in and a while, and sometimes, one of the participants responds, which has the unfortunate effect of working as a reluctant ego boost. This also ensures that the conversation keeps on going with individuals who aren’t necessarily regulars. I’ve never had anyone tell me to butt out, since, you know, Twitter is a public platform, so by design, it basically invites conversation.

And, right now, what this culture needs more than anything is vigorous discussion — not one that the critics push, but one that involves the entire community. Obviously, this conversation won’t change everything — technological constraints, unstoppable AAA publishers, tacky marketing campaigns. Keeping that cultural dialogue out in the open, however, influences more than just the flow of gaming criticism. It can also influence game development. Developers like Harvey Smith and Kim Swift tune into our parlor conversations as well. Whether or not they do anything more than chuckle, sigh, or take to heart what’s said is ultimately up to them, but the fact that they’re tuned in means that the channel is open.

If you want to affect our culture’s direction, I imagine this is a good place to start. Come into the parlor. Have a drink. Watch. Listen. Participate. Talk. Let’s figure out why we play games, why we love them, and how we can make them better.

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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 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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[Writer's Note: I held off on posting this for a couple of weeks because of the recent tragedy in Connecticut. However, I've decided to go ahead and publish it after reading Leigh Alexander's post on violence in games and Ben Kuchera's insightful Tweet, "I'm always uncomfortable with the way we give every bully a platform while denying games are powerful when we're under attack. ... We argue games are a powerful art form that contain important messages, and then we're in the spotlight claiming they're pure entertainment." So instead of keeping this buried  somewhere out of fear that it will be criticized for being exploitative or poorly timed, I'm simply going to go ahead and present as intended: as a rumination on my uncomfortable relationship with virtual violence.]

I was 9-years-old when I beat a man to death for the first time. I did it with a red crowbar. I was standing on a craggy cliffside; my victim, a nameless solider wearing a gas mask, lay prostate, his head awkwardly sticking out over the edge like a diving board. I hadn’t meant to dispatch him in such a brutal manner. I had simply run out of ammo moments before and been left with no alternative but to cave in his skull.

I stood still for a couple of moments, my hazard suit shrieking that I should seek medical attention immediately. Instead of progressing toward the level’s end, I knelt down and smacked the body with the crowbar. Thuck! I giggled and slapped the body again and again, and pop! The soldier exploded, showering the arid desert below with intestines, limbs, and a goofy-looking half-skull whose one remaining eye stared at me as it plummeted into the sandy abyss.

I watched in awe and then reloaded my quicksave so I could do it all over again.

*

Four years later in Liberty City, I sat behind the wheel of a Blista Compact. Out of the alleyway emerged the guy I was supposed to kill. He was surrounded by his entourage of armed thugs, so instead of rushing the group with guns blazing, I decided to take the tactical route: I ran them down with my car. I managed to kill the target and two of his bodyguards. Then, I quickly turned the car around and took care of the stragglers.

I briefly wondered why I went back for the men who posed no threat to me. I reassured myself that they were enemies and that I was supposed to kill them — a weak excuse that satisfied my younger self, but even so, that same excuse doesn’t float for the thousands of pedestrians I have shot, stabbed, kicked, and blown to pieces throughout the Grand Theft Auto series. These are people I’ve tormented just because they’ve populated the world.

I tell myself that I’m not a violent person, and real-world examples seem to suggest that I’m not. I’ve only ever been in a handful of scraps, and the most harm I have ever done to another person was when I accidentally busted someone’s lip with my elbow. Yet there’s something about enjoying this kind of wanton artificial violence and mutilation that has me grappling with these presumptions.

But it’s just a game. That’s always the defense. These people are not real. They do not draw breath; the men I massacred were simply lines of code. No harm done, right?

*

Every once in a while, I’ll reinstall Hitman: Blood Money in order to replay a single level: “A New Day,” which has Agent 47 infiltrating a suburban neighborhood in order to kill a well-guarded FBI informant. I’ve completed the mission at least three dozen times now. I know the simplest way to kill the man without raising any suspicions or hurting anyone besides the target. I also know all the corners and hedges to hide behind and can predict what the enemy A.I. will do if I draw them into a firefight. This is often the route I go simply because it’s more fun.

It doesn’t end there, though. After I’ve slaughtered every agent, I move on to eliminating all the other people in the area, including unarmed civilians. They’re witnesses, I tell myself — which is actually somewhat relevant to the gameplay in Blood Money since witnesses cause Agent 47’s notoriety rating to rise and make future missions more difficult to complete. However, even with the practicality issue taken into the account, there is still the knowledge that I consistently choose the path that will end in bloodshed even though I’m well aware of the other, less deadly paths to my objective.

Am I just bloodthirsty? Do other gamers also have ridiculous amounts of fun gunning down virtual people and then feel guilty about it later? And I don’t mean the kind of comedic acknowledgement where one chuckles and quips, “Yeah … I’m a bad person,” with a smirk. I’m talking occasional waves of sincere guilt — not necessarily thoughts that keep me awake at night but moments where I stop and think, “What the hell is wrong with me?” Of course, they’re instantaneously swept out of my brain as soon as the next level of fun-filled carnage finishes loading.

*

Part of me knew that games like Hotline Miami and Spec Ops: The Line were on the way — games that pull a Peckinpah and make the player’s enthusiasm for violence a thematic focus. We’d already seen this prototype in the Metal Gear Solid series, which has consistently presented ham-fisted commentary about violence and war in order make the player mull over these topics, often with mixed results. The example that immediately springs to mind occurs near the end of Snake Eater, when Snake is forced to traverse a river strewn with the ghosts of soldiers the player has killed throughout the game. What sounds like a great idea turned out to be a tedious minigame that frustrated me more than it encouraged me to think about the violence I had committed. (“You give me all these weapons and hapless guards, and you don’t expect me to kill them? Asshole!” was my adolescent line of reasoning.)

Hotline Miami (pictured at top) bothered me in a big way. There is technically a plot in the game — a sorta-kinda reason for why you’re butchering a seemingly endless line of faceless henchman. But the narrative just feels tacked on and flimsy. The game’s multiple hallucination scenes suggest that there is something much bigger going on — some joke the developers are having at the player’s expense: “All we have to do is give you a context and you’ll kill anyone and anything left and right, won’t you?”

Why, yes. Yes, I will. Does that make me a potential monster? Hotline doesn’t ever answer. It’s content to simply smile from the dark. This isn’t a huge departure from the twist in BioShock, but this one affected me on a personal level, poking and prodding my concerns about my love-hate relationship with virtual violence. Logically, none of that makes sense. This is a game. It has no ill intentions, nor does it have the will to dog its players and make them feel disgust. The fact the Hotline affects me in this way says more about me that it does about the game, but the same holds true for novels and film. This doesn’t make one’s experience with the game (or the gamer’s self-realizations) any less valid.

Hotline was a cakewalk emotionally in comparison to Spec Ops: The Line. Instead of teasing me with playful ambiguity and pixelated bloodshed, Spec Ops is much more aggressive in its assault, taking every available opportunity to rub my face in the gory mess that I’ve made throughout the game’s Heart of Darkness-inspired journey. There’s an early segment where the player wanders through a hallway filled with rotting bodies. In his book-length critical reading of game, Brendan Keogh briefly considers the possibility that this hallway is a “metaphorical hell” for the player, the pile of bodies representing all the people that he or she has killed through the game so far. I had a similar interpretation during my first playthrough except that the bodies were not merely representative of this game’s victims but those from my entire time as a gamer: from one end of the room to the other, the bodies of all those dead pedestrians, the FBI informant, and perhaps even of the skeletal remains of that solider from the cliffside. Again, utter logical nonsense. (For one thing, there aren’t enough bodies accounted for.) But Spec Ops spends so much time psychologically assaulting the player and critiquing violence as a form of entertainment that I find myself unable to dismiss the interpretation regardless of how much it’s fueled by my own anxieties about the whole business.

A couple of days ago, games journalist Ian Miles Cheong tweeted, “I don’t think it’s some kind of double standard to be OK with video game violence against not-real-people, and not be OK with real violence.” I share the sentiment, but I still find myself unnerved by just how much I enjoy killing people who aren’t real. (Frankly, I’d be kind of embarrassed to let you in on how much time I spent using spring razors to dismember the guards in Dishonored just to carry their limbs around as distraction devices … or to treat their decapitated heads like soccer balls.) I am not in any way trying to state that Spec Ops or Hotline Miami work as a gauge or predictor for someone’s capacity for violence. Instead, this is more about how both these games hold a mirror up to the player. In my case, I don’t like how they reveal just how much I fucking love violence.

Is it true that I’m more likely to have a favorable opinion of a game if it has gore or an amusing ragdoll system? Yes. Do I absolutely despise a developer’s decision to feature gunplay in a game but not bloody, ragged bullet holes? You bet. And am I ashamed of all of this? A little, but I’m more unnerved than anything else. As someone who characterizes himself as a pacifist, the cognitive dissonance created by this clashing of my real-world ideals and my love for simulated bloodshed is disconcerting.

Ultimately, this anxiety probably won’t change my gaming habits. The majority of games I play are violent in one fashion or another. Tonight, I’ll be gutting pirates all across the Rook Islands with my trusty knife. Tomorrow, I’ll continue trudging through the metro tunnels of post-apocalyptic Moscow, gunning down bandits. Perhaps I’ll even fit in some time to backstab guards in Mark of the Ninja. And on and on it’ll go.

More bodies for the pile.

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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 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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For gamers, that’s good news. The Grand Theft Auto series has a cult following that has gone mainstream. In 2008, Grand Theft Auto IV sold more than 6 million units in its first week, grossing more than $500 million in revenue. Expectations for GTA V are likely to be higher than that, given the huge growth in the installed base of consoles since 2008. Game fans are salivating at every rumor.

Strauss Zelnick, the chief executive and chairman of Take-Two, said on the analyst call yesterday that the Rockstar team was making “substantial progress” on GTA V, but he declined to disclose a release date for the game. At the same time, Zelnick only slightly lowered the expectations for annual sales for the fiscal year, even though the company missed its target by a long shot in its first fiscal quarter.

Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, said that he does not believe Take-Two can hit its target for revenues in the year ending March 31, 2013 unless it ships GTA V. Take-Two is targeting revenue of $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion for the year, with 55 percent of that figure coming from Rockstar (about $963 million) and 45 percent ($788 million) from the 2K Games label. For Rockstar, the Max Payne 3 title is expected to generate no more than $250 million in revenues, and the company’s older catalog of games could generate $150 million. That leaves $563 million in revenue for the fiscal year that Pachter believes could only come from GTA V.

But the chances for an announcement are declining. Rockstar made no announcement at E3 in June, and speculation is mixed about whether it will announce the game later this month at Gamescom in Germany. Pachter expects that a preholiday release is less likely but still possible, but a first calendar quarter release in 2013 might be likely.

Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie Research, agreed that GTA V is likely to ship in the current fiscal year. Atul Bagga, an analyst at Lazard Capital, added that the management guidance suggests GTA V will ship in the first calendar quarter of 2013. Whenever Take-Two makes the announcement, the stock will probably take off, said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at R.W. Baird.

Take-Two could always delay the game and lower its earnings in the future, but that’s a pretty big bomb to drop on a stock that has been battered this year due to missed expectations for games such as Spec Ops: The Line and Max Payne 3. But Zelnick has always been willing to take short-term hits in favor of long-term investment, and the Rockstar leaders, Sam and Dan Hauser, are the ones in charge of production on GTA V. And they’re not known for shipping games early.

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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’re a journalist who hits enough behind-closed-doors appointments at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, someone will offer you something. Maybe just a bottled water. Possibly an art book. Almost certainly a USB hub that transforms into a USB robot (nope, not making that one up). Swag is the universal language of E3, as ubiquitous as booth babes and banner ads.

Apparel, however, rules the show. Nothing marks status like walking around the L.A. Convention Center with a fairly exclusive — and free — t-shirt nonchalantly draped over your shoulder. And these were the absolute best shirts (plus a few extras) we saw…or took home ourselves.

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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 games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed. With all the PAX East 2012 previews and downloadable game reviews hitting, this was a busy week.

Among the news, Commodore founder Jack Tramiel passed away at 83, and Sony killed off its Qore digital game magazine.

Other GamesBeat stories included:

Kinect/voice support coming to Skyrim

PAX East 2012: Loadout game is like a Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Quentin Tarantino (preview)

UK-based startup game company reaches one million players…and counting

Sony kills off Qore digital game magazine

Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir is creepy enough while it lasts (review)

Spec Ops: The Line is hiding something (preview)

Retro graphics and relaxing puzzles help Fez rise above a troubled history (review)

PlayJam partners with Miniclip to bring gaming to Smart TV

The 4 best finds at PAX East 2012

Spirit Camera: A scary event for a scary game (video)

Why Max Payne 3 could be this year’s next big blockbuster video game

PAX East 2012: BioWare faces its (not-so) angry fans

And the following stories also appeared on VentureBeat:

Game sales fall 25 percent in March despite hot sales of Mass Effect 3

At 2.5B games played a month, King.com reaps benefits from its casual Saga titles on Facebook

Health insurer Aetna to give away Mindbloom Life Game

Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes enters open beta

GameStop stores in California to require DLC warning on used games

Why video games are good for you — the cheat sheet

Commodore founder Jack Tramiel dies at 83

PAX East 2012: Storytime with 20-year game veteran Jordan Mechner

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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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Yager Development showed off the latest version of the big-budget military shooter game Spec Ops: The Line at the PAX East 2012 show last weekend. But there’s still a lot of mystery about both the title and its story. I want to know more.

In the game, the apocalypse has arrived early in Dubai. Once a vibrant city populated by the super-rich, the desert metropolis is now entombed in a layer of sand after a series of devastating dust storms. As the player, I’m supposed to be looking for Colonel John Konrad, a founding member of Delta Force and the current commanding officer of the 33rd infantry. He stayed behind with his men during the evacuation of Dubai to help protect refugees who couldn’t escape. That’s my mission, but the reality on the ground is very different. Konrad and this story as a whole are both hiding something.

Six months had passed without a word from anyone inside the city, and Konrad — along with his men — were presumed dead. That’s when the military picked up a weak distress signal from Konrad and sent in protagonist Captain Martin Walker, accompanied by two squad-mates, to rescue him.

The style of the rescue should feel familiar to anyone who’s played a Gears of War game. The Line is a third-person cover-based shooter from Yager and the 2K Games label of publisher Take-Two Interactive. It resembles Gears of War because it uses graphically violent melee attacks, forced walking during plot development, and banter thick with exaggerated masculinity.

It shouldn’t be very interesting. But I was intrigued.

Firing an AK47 assault rifle is at least as satisfying as the weapons in Epic Games’ Gears of War science-fiction thrill ride. Enemies require very little damage to kill, which keeps the frustration to a minimum. Hiding behind cover still works, and it’s as satisfying as ever to pop out from behind cover with perfectly aligned sites to snap off a headshot.

Still, saying a thing is about as good as something that’s been around for half of a decade doesn’t exactly make for a great box quote. Yager needs to find a way to set this game apart from the pack of Gears clones.

After a 45-minute hands-on demo, I see potential for Spec Ops to pry itself away from the game that inspired it in two distinct aspects.

The environment is one way. The imagery of a ruined Dubai is interesting to look at. Spec Ops isn’t exactly what you’d expect from a quasi-post-apocalyptic shooter running on Unreal Engine 3 (the same graphical engine that powers Gears of War). That is to say it has more going on than just brown and gray.

The undisputed high note of my experience was when the game introduced the rescue team. Walker and the rest of bravo squad are silhouettes walking across the summit of a dune as the sun rises behind them. Sand whips around in the wind, attacking their skin and the player’s sense of security. It’s a sight that is both beautiful and intense. Hopefully, the devs have more moments like this planned for the final release.

(Small spoiler) After guiding Walker a few klicks into the outskirts of Dubai, it’s become clear that someone set up Konrad’s distress signal as a trap. The audio is playing back on a tape recorder that’s been rigged together with duct tape and spare parts. It doesn’t exactly appear to be standard issue for the U.S. military. Oh yeah, and then there’s the angry-looking men with automatic weapons.

The men waiting to ambush the Delta Force bravo team are refugees. Before the shooting starts, they imply that men in Army fatigues have been fighting against them. Why would anyone fight over this territory? It’s beyond desolate. It’s uninhabitable. Something more is going on here.

As the Emiratees surround and outnumber the protagonist and his squad, they are left with little choice but to fight back with deadly force. One cover-based shooting section is followed by another.

When the game finally introduces some of Konrad’s 33rd infantry, it turns out that they too enjoy firing at the three-man rescue group.

Motivations for these actions are ambiguous. It’s pretty safe to assume that decorated war-hero Konrad is disguising his real reasons to remain in Dubai, and when I finished the demo, I wanted to know what those reasons were.

Spec Ops: The Line does an admirable job setting up a premise that has me curious to see it through. Its familiar mechanics center is coated in candy shell of potential. I know that the game has something. Right now, I don’t know what it is, but I want it. All I hope is that once I have it, it will have been worth getting.

Publisher 2K will ship the game on June 26 in North America.

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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 New York-based company reported GAAP net income of $14.1 million, or 16 cents a share, compared with net income of $40.9 million, or 45 cents a share, a year earlier. On a non-GAAP basis, the company said it earned $29 million, or 27 cents a share, down from $49.5 million, or 52 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts had been expecting non-GAAP earnings of 23 cents a share.

“We’re gratified with the quarter’s results and are very excited about our upcoming releases,” said Strauss Zelnick, chairman of Take-Two, said in an analyst conference call on Thursday.

Revenues were $236.3 million, down 29 percent from $334.3 million a year ago, when sales of the blockbuster Red Dead Redemption helped the company’s performance. Analysts had expected $249.2 million. The only big release for the quarter ended Dec. 31 was NBA 2K12, which was hurt in part because of the NBA player lockout earlier in the season. The game still sold more than 4 million units.

Take-Two Interactive lowered its guidance on Jan. 17 for the fiscal year 2012 ended March 31, thanks to its decision to shift the Max Payne 3 game from the fourth fiscal quarter of fiscal year 2012 to the first fiscal quarter of FY 2013. Max Payne 3 is now set to debut on May 15.

Take-Two now expects revenues for the current fourth fiscal quarter, Take-Two expects revenue to in the range of $112 million to $162 million, with a loss at 50 cents to 65 cents a share. Analysts had previously expected a loss of 11 cents a share on revenue of $185 million.The current quarter includes the release of The Darkness II on Feb. 7, Major League Baseball 2K12 on March 6.

Digital game content in the third fiscal quarter accounted for 11 percent of revenue. That was driven by the release of Grand Theft Auto III — 10th Anniversary Edition, for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) and Android smartphones.

“The goal is to meet consumer’s needs and find them and delight them where they are,” said Zelnick.

Zelnick said that Max Payne 3 from Rockstar Games is shaping up to be one of “our most exciting releases ever.”

The company will also have big titles coming in the new fiscal year including Borderlands 2, BioShock Infinite, Spec Ops: The Line, XCOM, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Grand Theft Auto V, the big title coming from Take-Two’s Rockstar Games label, hasn’t been scheduled yet.

During the year, Take-Two launched big games like L.A. Noire, which sold more than 5 million units since its launch in May 2011. Take-Two said it raised $250 million through a private offering of 1.75 percent convertible senior notes due 2016. Those proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes.

In the call, Zelnick said he is very bullish on sales of games on tablet computers in the years ahead. He said the company isn’t keen on making risky acquisitions that cost a lot of money. Take-Two has more than $453 million in cash.

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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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