Memories define who we are. They shape our futures and influence our decisions. They can also be the source of tremendous pain. If we could wipe away the bad and keep only the good, who would we be?

That’s the kind of question the action-adventure game Remember Me (out tomorrow for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC) seeks to answer through the setting of Neo-Paris in the year 2084. The corporation Memorize has created a remarkable brain implant called Sensen, which enables people to share and store their memories in a network. In the first few minutes, players go from listening to people praise the technology to witnessing the devastation it has caused.

When the female protagonist Nilin wakes up in a cell, we watch as her captor strips away her memories in an agonizing process. He misses a few. That makes her dangerous. Nilin is a talented memory hunter who can steal or “remix” people’s memories through their Sensen, and as a member of the rebel group the Errorists, she’s a threat to Memorize. With her mind still intact, a mysterious contact named Edge guides her out of prison and onto the streets where she can lead a revolution.

What you’ll like

An immersive sci-fi world
Remember Me’s opening moments are a powerful way to start out the game. As a disoriented Nilin staggers around the confinement facility, the camera follows her every unsteady movement, creating a sense of dizziness. Everything is a little too bright, and she encounters horror after horror: white rooms that house delirious inmates, a machine that rips the memories out of people’s heads, and even a menacing “coercive” robot that hunts down escapees. She leaves in a coffin — one of many mass-produced containers for the dead and still alive.

The vividness of the environment persists. Neo-Paris is a gorgeous city, its infrastructure part historical and part new — the street level littered with androids, neon lights, and holo-televisions. From the skyscraper vistas to the grimy underground, Remember Me is an atmospheric wonder. It feels well thought-out down to the lingo, which the characters constantly bandy about. The game tops that off with weird, futuristic-sounding music that’s different from anything you’ve likely heard before.

The story drives much of the game and introduces you to eccentrically named characters such as Johnny Greenteeth, Headache Tommy, and Bad Request, among others. Nilin sets out to save the suffering city from Memorize. Only she can reach the people responsible and either enact revenge or “remix,” aka rewrite, their memories — altering their roles in events to better suit the Errorists’ agenda. Without her own complete memories, however, she’s unsure whether what she’s doing is right.

The uncertainty makes the experience that much more compelling and enjoyable.

A deep combat system
While Remember Me is big on story, developer Dontnod Entertainment carefully balanced it with strong combat mechanics. Basically, players assemble combos in the Combo Lab menu. You have only four increasingly long, predetermined combinations of the X and Y buttons to toy with the entire game — you unlock these slowly, one at a time — but the real depth emerges with the Pressens. Think of these as the individual Xs and Ys that you can assign to each entry in a combination.

Pressens come in different forms: Power, Regen, Cooldown, and the rarer Chain. While Power Pressens deal a lot of damage, Regen regains health for Nilin every time she uses one in a combo. Cooldowns reset your S-Pressens (special moves) faster, and Chains magnify the effects of the Pressen that came before it in a combo. Players can mix and match to engineer any devastating combo they please — maybe one string that inflicts maximum damage or another that helps recover more health. Some arrangements can even grant bonus Procedural Mastering Points (PMP), which unlock forgotten Pressens. Think of them as level-ups that offer you even more ways to kick butt.

The inputs are always the same — a series of Xs and Ys — but the results vary. Longer combos are more deadly, too, as later Pressens take on more power.

Remember Me constantly adds new layers to the combat, and it takes the entire 10-hour game to see them all. Nilin can use S-Pressens to more effectively terminate the enemies around her. For example, Sensen Fury is very similar to free-flow in Batman: Arkham City, in which players can rapidly trash a number of baddies without losing stride. And Sensen R.I.P. (Rust in Pieces) turns all robots into allies that eventually self-destruct.

On top of this, Nilin can shoot foes with the Spammer weapon she acquires. It has a number of applications, such as breaking shields or weak environmental structures with its Junk Bolt enhancement. She can also use it to interact with the environment by opening doors, moving objects from afar, and so forth.

Frequent new challenges
Remember Me flavors its gameplay with various activities. Some minor missions involve tapping into people’s memories and activating their “Remembranes” (ghosts of themselves in the environment) to watch scenes from their past. This helps you bypass security and learn vital information.

You can also locate and collect different items. SAT Patches and Focus Boosts increase health and Focus (which fuels your S-Pressens), respectively. Those are useful. And Scaramechs — little white “bugs” that crawl on walls and emit a ticking noise — are fun to search for and kill for PMP bonuses.

Sometimes bosses and minibosses, especially, act as the perfect break from regular combat, challenging you to think fast and use your S-Pressens and other abilities in creative ways. It’s fun to hear a lumbering death robot roar and then tell you “it’s just a flesh wound” when its arm falls off. This is a Zorn, and I love him.

These fights do end with a few quick-time events, but fortunately, the title allots you plenty of time to press buttons in sequence, and you quickly get a feel for when these moments will happen. They shouldn’t catch you off-guard.

For some encounters, though, a little surprise could do some good.

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Square Enix said today it lost $134 million on revenues of $1.455 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31. When the Japanese video game maker announced that it expect the loss last month, its longtime chief executive Yoichi Wada resigned from the top job.

The company’s problem is that sales of traditional console and PC games are dropping, but digital sales aren’t rising fast enough to offset those losses. And the games that Square Enix was counting on to be hits — from Tomb Raider to Sleeping Dogs — haven’t sold as many copies as the company expected. In that respect, the Japanese company is in the same situation as many other publishers — facing disruption from mobile and social games. And Square Enix and others are having a tough time adapting to the transition to digital distribution.

Square Enix said its loss for the fiscal year compared to a profit of $59 million and sales of $1.255 billion a year earlier. In a statement, the company blamed the decline in operating income due to the “underperformance of major titles for consumer game consoles in North America and Europe.”

But the company touted its efforts in social, browser, and mobile games. During the year, it launched Sengoku Ixa, a browser game, Final Fantasy Brigade on the Mobage mobile social network, and Kaku-San-Sei Million Arthur. Meanwhile, Dragon Quest X, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, has been showing “steady performance” in Japan (it’s not in the U.S. yet). The company said that smartphone and tablet gaming is spreading rapidly, while the console game markets in North America and Europe are “increasingly competitive and oligopolistic.” As a result, the company is amid a reorganization aimed at establishing a new base of revenues.

The company said, “The group anticipates major transformation in the structure of the digital entertainment industry.” That means digital entertainment will be network-connnected and consumers will access a diverse range of content on multi-function devices.

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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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Last week’s release of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon brings back plenty of 80′s action-flick nostalgia and was well received by critics and gamers alike. Happily there’s a Gamefly coupon which takes 20% off the game, making the PC digital version only $11.99.

Fans of Valve Software will also want to check out some additional deals from Gamefly this week, with classic Valve titles on sale at up to 80% off (after coupon). They’re all Steam activated titles, so you can add to your steam library of 1,450 games (which you’ll totally start playing through this summer).

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

Last Wednesday’s release: Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (PC Download) — $11.99 at GameFly after coupon. You’ll need a UPlay account to play but thats the DRM price we pay these days.
 

May 14: Metro: Last Light (PC Download) — $37.50 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Everywhere else is basically full price. Steam activated.
 

Gamefly Sale: Valve Classic PC Titles — Up to 80% off at GameFly after coupon. Some top picks from this sale:

• Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 – $3.99 each
• The Orange Box – $3.99
• Counter-Strike: Source – $3.99

Last Thursday

Love them or hate them, Origin is having a “six days of action games” sale, with recently released titles discounted as much as 50% off. To add some much-needed irony to the mix, some of the titles in the sale are actually activated on Steam. So if you like to save money but don’t want to deal with having Origin as a DRM platform, you’re in luck.

Patient gamers will be happy to know that last month’s release of Tomb Raider for PC download is now only $20 at Green Man Gaming, and happily the title activates on Steam. (Update: we’ve previously listed this for $25 at Origin’s sale, but GMG’s new price decisively steamrolls the Origin deal). For a game rated as “???” by Conan O’Brien, this is an excellent deal.

For more Steam-activated deals, you’ll find a few other Square Enix titles such as Hitman Absolution and Sleeping Dogs (though both have hit lower prices in the past). If you don’t mind Origin or already have it installed anyway due to Battlefield, big EA titles like Crysis 3, Dead Space 3, and Assassin’s Creed 3 are all on sale (yep – all the ‘3’s).

Origin Action Sale

Origin Sale: Six Days of Action Games — up to 50% off at Origin. Tons of action/shooter PC and console games on sale. PC games tend to be 50% off while console prices are about 33% off. Sale ends Monday at 10am Pacific. Our top picks below:

• Assassin’s Creed 3 (PC Download) — $24.99
• Tomb Raider (PC Download) — $24.99 (activates on Steam).
• The Walking Dead Game – All Episodes (PC Download) — $10
• Dead Space 3 (PC Download) — $29.99
• Full list of games activating on Steam from this sale can be found here.

360, PS3, and Wii U deals

Grid 2 (Xbox 360, PS3) — $49.99 at NewEgg. List is $60. Sequel to the well-reviewed motorsport sim Grid, which was characterized by IGN as “automobile erotica”…hmm. Releases May 28th.
 
Bioshock Infinite (Xbox 360, PS3) — $49.99 at Best Buy. Next best is $58 at Overstock.com. Best discount yet about a month after its release. Lowest price we’ve seen on the console versions by $2.
 
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 (Xbox 360) — $39.99 at NewEgg. Fans of Naruto? You’ll be buying the game regardless of the reviews (which weren’t half bad, by the way).
 

Resident Evil: Revelations (Xbox 360, PS3) — $37.99 at NewEgg. The hit 2012 3DS game is getting its own console release. Release date is May 21st. Elsewhere $50.
 

Playstation All Stars Battle Royale (PS3) — $29.99 at Amazon, which ties lowest ever. Fight as everyone from Sly Cooper to PaRappa the Rapper. Next best is $40 at Best Buy.
 

Assassin’s Creed 3 (Wii U, Xbox 360, PS3) — $29.99 at GameStop. This is the lowest price we’ve seen on the PS3 and Wii U versions of the popular sandbox-style action-adventure game. Next best is $53 at Overstock.com.

Hardware

Alienware M14x r2 Laptop — $969.99 at Groupon. Yep, Groupon does more than sell spa packages now. Specs: Core i5-3210M, 8GB RAM, and GeForce GT 650M. List is $1,260.

Lenovo IdeaPad Y400 59371958 Laptop — $719 at Lenovo after coupon. Specs: Core i5-3230M and the new Kepler-based GeForce GT 750M 2GB. For $700, you’ll have a portable machine that runs most modern games without a problem.

Logitech G9X Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Edition Gaming Mouse — $37.99 at Amazon. It’s a Logitech mouse with CoD printed on it – now it’s $20 more than usual. We’re half joking, of course. (It’s actually cheaper than the unadorned G9X.)

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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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Last week, Japanese developer Hideki Kamiya sparked some controversy when he tweeted about the length of his upcoming Wii U game, The Wonderful 101.

Unsurprisingly, many took this to mean it will be short. However, his colleague, Atsushi Inaba, has since added some clarification, stating that Kamiya was actually commenting on the lack of padding in the game and how the development team will not attempt to artificially increase its length.

Regardless of how long or short The Wonderful 101 is at release, the response made me consider how it’s often worse when games are too long than when they’re too short. The feeling that a game ended too quickly surely indicates that it’s good, right? In comparison, a game that drags on can sour an enjoyable experience, especially if the player loses interest before the end.

With the increase of downloadable games and small-scale titles that don’t sacrifice quality, I believe the argument that game length will become incredibly important in the next generation.

How long is too long?

Calling a game “too long” is obviously a subjective statement. I’ve heard people say six hours of gameplay is perfect while others have scoffed at anything below 20. Still, it’s fair to say that any game that requires substantial investment before being fun is, in some way, too long. Personally, I don’t decide how long I want a game to be until I’m actively playing it. However, as an aging gamer who works full time, I must admit that even in good games, I regularly hit points where I’m bored and race to the end.

Still, I’m in the minority. While I push myself to finish a game because I want to see the conclusion, most people quit when they stop enjoying themselves.

The average gamer is now 30-years-old. They likely have familial, social, or professional responsibilities and some form of disposable income. When they sit down to play, they want immediate enjoyment, but they often don’t have the time to pour hours into a game that isn’t instantly gratifying.

If the average gamer isn’t having fun, they will stop playing and seek another, shorter experience. Full-priced titles that feature obtuse late-game sections or shoehorned-in multiplayer don’t meet that need.

The development perspective

If we consider this issue from a development standpoint, the length of a game is a balancing act of funds and design.

Given infinite time and resources, I doubt developers would stop before they were happy with what they had created. However, we don’t live in such a reality, and developers must regularly weigh how much they have remaining and how best to use it. They still want to give players an experience worth their money — the expanding mobile market with cheap, fun games is proof of this — but if they don’t have the time to produce brand new content, they may consider other ways to increase its value.

Sadly, this can lead to the infamous padding that Kamiya wants to avoid in The Wonderful 101.

It’s a wise concern as consumers are beginning to ask themselves if they want the same old 20-hour experience with a few good parts or a fun and unique three-hour downloadable experience. Considering the price of downloadable titles versus their boxed counterparts, it’s becoming an easy decision.

This divide is made more significant as fans notice the varying quality of video games bought in stores. The average film lasts one to two hours and costs around $8 a ticket, so assuming this is the standard cost to entertainment ratio, the average $60 game should last roughly 11 hours (not far off from most recent triple-A titles). But many games provide much more enjoyment without sacrificing quality. Great multiplayer-focused titles, such as Call of Duty, can also provide almost infinite entertainment.

This uneven value means consumers are looking at the $60 game with much more scrutiny. Incredible free-to-play games, such as League of Legends, are not making this any easier for the big boys.

Is there a problem?

So as gamers, do we have a problem? The answer is yes — and no.

When triple-A games stretch themselves out through extended tutorials or pointless backtracking, then yes, we have a problem. At the same time, as the number of games at our fingertips increases, we can easily find something that suits our tastes. As such, the real problem lies with big studios that produce anything other than perfectly balanced $60 experiences.

As the market for games grows, high-budget games must focus on matching length with quality to remain relevant and enjoyable. Otherwise, they risk losing customers who may decide a $1 app with simple but addictive gameplay is a better value than a humungous $60 experience that demands considerable investment before any payout of pleasure.

A new generation

The allure of the $60 price tag is no longer something I understand. If developers have a great concept but the final product is smaller than they expected, they should market and price it appropriately. Most gamers recognize that a game doesn’t have to be long to be good, and some of the greatest games of this generation have shown this, like Portal and Journey.

So what is the solution to bloated games? I believe indie and mobile developers have already found it — selling games at reduced prices that reflect the entertainment value of the product. I’m using “entertainment value” as a catch-all term that encompasses single-player length, game quality, and replayability (including multiplayer), but developers and publishers should analyze each of these areas to understand how worthwhile their game experience is and determine a reasonable price.

Enough is enough. If you realize your game is done but don’t think it’s long enough, consider bowing out of the $60 price bracket before cramming it full of content that might ruin it. Or just aim for lower prices and develop your game accordingly. Crazy, I know.

Please don’t misunderstand. I believe there is space in the industry for the $60 triple-A title, and I don’t think those games should automatically be shorter. But that price shouldn’t be the goal for every game destined to be on store shelves.

The games industry is underdoing an important transition, and big budget studios must make the move before they become obsolete. It’s surprising when a game like Ridiculous Fishing can achieve higher review scores than Tomb Raider, but I believe this is a sign that the $60 dream can finally fade away — and with it, games that are too long for their own good.

Thanks for reading. For this and other rambles, please check out my blog or follow me on Twitter.

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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.

Even though it was only announced yesterday, the November 5 release of Call of Duty: Ghosts is already available for preorder at numerous retailers. At the time of writing, three retailers are offering bonuses with the game. The most enticing deal on the PC download comes from GameFly in the form of a $7 digital download credit that’s yours as soon as Ghosts releases.

If you’re more of a console gamer (or just don’t want to wait half a year for a $7 credit), Best Buy’s got an alternative deal that applies to the PC physical and console editions. You’ll be out around a hundred bucks because they make you purchase an additional game, but you get instant gratification in the form of a $15 gift card that doesn’t just apply to downloads. If you’re already tempted to buy an additional title and are resigned to the fact you’ll probably buy something else from Best Buy soon – because let’s face it, those marked up HDMI cables have a draw on you – this deal isn’t half bad.

Call of Duty: Ghosts preorder comparison

Just over a month after its critically acclaimed release, BioShock Infinite finally gets a discount on the console versions that beats the best current PC download deal. Best Buy is offering $15 off Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game, bringing them to $44.99. This makes the lowest price we’ve seen for the console game by $3, and it saves you $12 off the current next best deal out there.

If you want to live dangerously on both sides of the law, Green Man Gaming’s offering a dual pack of downloads that’ll let you commit or solve crimes, depending on which angel on your shoulder has your ear at the time. They’ve bundled both Max Payne 3 and LA Noire for $16.

This combo price ties the lowest summed price we’ve seen the games sell for separately, but you’ll also get the Max Payne 3 Rockstar Pass DLC. The lowest we’ve seen the Rockstar Pass go for in the past is $7, so effectively you’re getting the full games at lowest ever prices plus a free DLC. Both games received stellar reviews, so if you haven’t played one or the other, this is a great time to buy.

Hot deals & recent releases

Nov. 5: Call of Duty: Ghosts + $7 Digital Credit (PC Download) — $59.99 at GameFly. Currently the only preorder bonus deal available for the PC download version.
 

Bioshock Infinite (Xbox 360, PS3) — $44.99 at Best Buy. First time the console versions have a solid sale that makes them cheaper than the PC download version. Who’s the gaming master race now?
 

Max Payne 3 and LA Noire Pack (PC Download) — $16 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. A great bundle with two excellent, well-reviewed games plus their additional content.
 

Dragon Age Complete Pack (PC Download) — $9.99 at GamersGate. Includes the Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition and Dragon Age 2. Separately $40.
 

PC download pack & bundle deals

Batman Arkham Complete Collection (PC Download) — $27 at GamersGate. Includes Batman Arkham City Game of the Year Edition, Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition, plus two LEGO Batman games.
 

Codemasters Racing Pack (PC Download) — $21.75 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Pack includes DiRT 3, Dirt Showdown, FUEL, and GRID – a decent set of racing games whose titles make grammarians involuntarily cringe. Separately these would normally cost $80.

Sonic the Hedgehog Bundle (PC Download) — $21.56 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. This bundle includes a whopping ten Sonic game downloads.

Omerta: City of Gangsters and Port Royale 3: Pirates & Merchants Bundle (PC Download) — $19.99 at GameFly. A weird combo for sure, but the odd pairing doesn’t diminish the bargain.
 

Tomb Raider Collection (PC Download) — $12 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. If you want to grab everything before the most recent Tomb Raider title, this is easily the cheapest way. Nine titles.
 

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Collection Bundle (PC Download) — $8.99 at GamersGate. This is the base game plus two DLC packs. Normally $30.
 

Tropico 4 Collectors Bundle (PC Download) — $8 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. You’ll get a great city-building sim game plus 7 DLC packs for less than two DLC packs normally cost.
 

Patrician: Complete Pack (PC Download) — $7 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. The pack contains Patrician IV Gold Edition and Patrician III. If historical trading sim games are your thing, grab this pack.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Complete (PC Download) — $5.99 at GamersGate. Excellent PC RPG for an even better price. This bundle comes with all 3 released expansions.
 

Dungeons & Dragons Anthology: The Master Collection (PC Download) — $5.99 at GamersGate. If you love the D&D RPG system, you’ll want to check out this collection, which includes classics like Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment.
 

Kane and Lynch Pack (PC Download) — $5.60 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Contains Dead Men and Dog Days. If you’ve never played this third person shooter, it’s certainly worth considering for under $6.

Gothic Complete Collection (PC Download) — $5 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Includes all three parts of the saga. Next best is $25 at GamersGate.
 

Just Cause Pack (PC Download) — $5 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Contains Just Cause and Just Cause 2. If you bought each game separately, they’d add up to $19.
 

360, PS3, and PS Vita deals

May 14: Metro: Last Light Limited Edition (Xbox 360, PS3) — $49.99 at NewEgg. Comes with “Ranger Mode” – an exclusive weapon and 100 military-grade bullets. List is $60.
 

June 14: The Last of Us (PS3) — $49.99 at NewEgg. Still a hot, eagerly anticipated title, and Newegg is clearly capitalizing on the hype.
 

June 25: Muramasa: Rebirth (PS Vita) — $29.99 at NewEgg. Hand-drawn graphics, ninjas, and evil spirits. You really can’t ask for more from this Wii port.
 

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (PS3) — $39.99 at NewEgg after coupon. A new style of action-oriented gameplay for the Metal Gear series. Next best is $46 at JR.com.
 

Gears of War: Judgment (Xbox 360) — $34.99 at NewEgg. Yep. You can rip off gods’ heads with your bare hands, but you can’t open locked treasure chests.
 

Sleeping Dogs (PS3, Xbox 360) — $19.99 at Groupon. Good price for the console versions of this open-world game which hardly ever goes on sale.
 

Hardware

Alienware M17x r4 1080p Gaming Laptop — $1,874 at Dell Home after coupon. Specs: Core i7-3630QM, 2GB Radeon HD 7970M, and 8GB RAM. List is $2,149. Deal expires today.
 

Alienware Aurora Gaming Desktop — $1,719 at Dell Home after coupon. Specs: Quad Core i7-3820 Overclocked 4.1GHz, DUAL GeForce GTX 660, and 16GB RAM. List is $1,924. Deal expires today.
 

Alienware X51 Gaming Desktop — $689 at Dell Home after coupon. Specs: Core i5-3330, 8GB RAM, and GeForce GT 640. List is $799. Deal expires today.
 

Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 1080p Gaming Laptop — $879 at Lenovo after coupon. Specs: Core i7-3630QM, 12GB RAM, GeForce GT 750M 2GB, and 1TB HDD + 16GB SSD.
 

Lenovo IdeaPad Y400 Gaming Laptop — $749 at Lenovo after coupon. Specs: Core i7-3630QM, GeForce GT 750M 2GB, and 8GB RAM. List is $1,249.
 

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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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Ever since BioShock Infinite came out, we’ve seen articles sort of criticizing its level of violence and how that clashes with its story. Alongside this, we’re seeing an increasing amount of observations about the “ludonarrative dissonance” that exists when you try to mix a deep storyline with a shooter. The ultimate question about that is: What do you do about it?

I went over this a bit in a previous post examining games like the most recent Tomb Raider as well as the Uncharted series. Why does a guy as likeable as Nathan Drake kill hundreds of people over the course of a game? How does Lara Croft so quickly go from scared young woman to practically being a machine of genocide? I reasoned, and still reason, that for those games’ storylines to make sense in context with their gameplay, they probably shouldn’t have been designed as shooters.

BioShock Infinite probably suffers from the same problem as do many shooters and other action games. Infinite is a really good shooter in my opinion. It’s well-designed, beautiful, and ultimately fun with a story that stands above most of what you see in this industry. That narrative also suffers from what Splinter Cell and Far Cry 2 designer Clint Hocking calls ludonarrative dissonance, the disconnect between the tone of a serious story and the act of killing hundreds of people.

Like I said in my earlier post, all the killing is really only required for a game to be fun if what you’re making is a shooter or other action game, and those genres weren’t really made for deep storylines. Most of the games that popularized the first-person shooter genre – Doom, Quake, or Halo – were about shooting up demons or aliens without regard for deep, character-driven stories — very similar to Super Mario games, really.

Meanwhile, some people have started bringing up terms like “next-generation game design” — the assertion being that as graphics get more realistic, the act of killing all those people will look more and more silly, and customers will eventually cry out for better ways of designing games around the dissonance. But the emergence of new hardware won’t all of a sudden cause the appearance of games that do a better job of dealing with violence while telling respectable tales. There’s a chance — even if a slim one — that market forces could do the job.

But no one is going to make a shooter where you don’t kill hundreds of enemies because that defeats what shooters were designed for. What probably needs to happen is for other genres to become popular. Usually that happens toward the beginning of a console generation.

Shooters and role-playing games are popular now because the Xbox 360’s first killer apps were games like Call of Duty, Gears of War, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Mass Effect. Games like those defined what sold on current generation consoles early on. It happens every generation, really. Grand Theft Auto III in the first year of the PlayStation 2’s lifespan inspired a whole generation of open-world games.

There’s a good possibility that in the next couple years as the PlayStation 4 and next Xbox start out their lives, one or more games of a different genre will make it big and inspire a new trend. Big publishers like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts have already admitted that new IPs tend to do better earlier in a console generation. At this point, there’s no telling what that will be.

Many have suggested that adventure games are probably a better choice for the kinds of stories that Tomb Raider, Uncharted, and BioShock Infinite try to tell. The problem, of course, is that adventure games don’t sell five-plus million copies in today’s market. In my last post about this, I used The Walking Dead as an example because it’s probably the most famous adventure game right now. It’s probably a poor choice from a gameplay perspective since it doesn’t focus a whole lot on puzzles. Others have said that, essentially, we need a new game that repeats the effect Myst had the industry back in the ’90s.

Really, though, there’s no telling what that unique next-generation hit will be until sometime next year. Hopefully, it’ll be the kind of game that allows for deeper storytelling without forcing the player to kill hundreds of people in order for the gameplay to be compelling.

Originally Posted on MultiPlatform

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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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Once again, it’s time for some bouncy commentary from our socially engineered panel of experts!

BEWBS! In an video game industry increasingly sensitive to gender issues, it’s just lucky we have a developer like Vanillaware to come along and remind us that we’re really all just pretending to be grown-ups. To wit: George Kamitani’s character designs in Dragon’s Crown, Vanillaware’s side-scrolling fantasy elf-em-up, which skip merrily past “exaggerated” and go straight to “daaaaammn.”

It’s not uncommon to see female video game characters with breasts larger than their heads, but Kamitani’s art style — along with Crown’s hyper-jiggling animations — still gave a jaded gaming community pause. Then, when Jason Schreier at Kotaku called it juvenile in a slightly juvenile way, Kamitani doubled down, lightly suggesting that anyone not sexually aroused by his ladies’ physics-defying anatomy was probably gay, and that was probably bad. He’s apologized since.

All that leaves us feeling confused, angry, and possibly a little horny. So what say you, panel of experts? Artistic license or license revoked?

Launch the gallery below for wisdom!

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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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It’s tough to find job security in the volatile gaming industry. This week it’s Square Enix employees in Europe facing layoffs.

The Final Fantasy publisher confirmed to U.K. gaming website MCV that it has made some cuts at its British offices, but it did not specify who or how many people it is letting go.

“We do expect changes to the U.K. office, which will affect personnel,” a Square Enix spokesperson told MCV. “We will update you when the time is right, but our priority right now is for the people within the business.”

We’ve contacted Square Enix and asked for the details of these layoffs. We will update with the company’s response.

In March, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada resigned his position after the company reported a significant loss for its fiscal year. The company decided to institute a major restructuring primarily due to disappointing sales of titles like Tomb Raider. That is despite the fact that Tomb Raider is the fast-selling entry in franchise history.

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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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Crystal Dynamics’ recent reboot of the Tomb Raider series does everything right.

Shockingly, this release was the first one I had ever played in the franchise. It’s a great place to start, considering that the title starts at the very beginning of protagonist Lara Croft’s journey.

I just completed Tomb Raider, and, as a female, I’m overwhelmed with pride.

In most games, the hero is a white male. Any game that challenges this convention always captures my attention. Unfortunately, a lot of females in games serve as eye candy for players. They are always sexed up, ditzy girls who don’t represent the majority of women. Lara Croft, however, is different.

She’s strong. She’s sensitive. She’s real.

At PAX East, I saw a little girl dressed as Lara Croft, and this put a big smile on my face. It’s great that young girls have a female video game character to look up to who is a positive influence.

I wish more developers would shed a more positive light on women in their titles. I have much respect for studios and publishers who feature strong female characters in their releases.

Naughty Dog, my favorite developer, put Ellie, a female lead character, right in the front of the cover art for The Last of Us. Outside forces pressured the studio to push Ellie to the back, or possibly leave her off of the cover entirely, because of the misconception that featuring a female on the cover of a game will decrease sales.

This isn’t just happening with Naughty Dog, either.

Jean-Max Moris, creative director of the upcoming cyberpunk title Remember Me, had this to say in an interview with The Penny Arcade Report:

“We had some [prospective publishers] that said, ‘Well, we don’t want to publish it because that’s not going to succeed. You can’t have a female character in games. It has to be a male character, simple as that.’”

It’s 2013, guys. This blows my mind that people still think that you need a white, male lead character in a game in order for it to succeed. Do they assume that every gamer is a white male?! I would love to see more experiences with female leads and more efforts with African-American, Hispanic, and, yes, even gay leads. If you keep making games with white males as main characters, how will the industry ever grow?

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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.

Another Tuesday, another day full of new game releases. While they aren’t exactly highly anticipated releases, fans of Dead Island will appreciate more zombie slaying action with Dead Island: Riptide. PC owners can enjoy a 20% off coupon, making the digital version of the game only $32.

If you’re a Trekkie, you’re either happy about today’s release of Star Trek or you’re nervous like us, given all the bad memories of subpar Trek games we’ve had to deal with through the years. Previews of Star Trek were so-so, but thus far initial user reviews on Metacritic look to be surprisingly decent – a surprise for the gamers reviewing them too!

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

Today’s release: Dead Island Riptide (PC Download) — $32 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Reviews are all in, and if you enjoy Dead Island, you’ll be getting more here. New island, more zombies.
 

Today’s release: Star Trek (PC Download) — $40 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Somehow initial user reviews are excellent. Subtle marketing or is this the real deal?
 

Tomb Raider (Xbox 360, PS3) — $39.99 at Groupon. Great price drop considering console titles are rarely on sale so soon after release.
 

GamersGate Spring Sale (PC Download) — New deals everyday, with lots of excellent titles on sale. Our pick: The Cave for $5.10 and Alpha Protocol for $3.74.
 

Last Thursday

Dishonored‘s latest DLC The Knife of Dunwall just came out this past Tuesday and thus far has been well received by reviewers. The DLC puts you into the boots of Daud, who is attempting a bit of a redemption after feeling guilt over killing the Empress.

To quickly sum things up, if you enjoyed Dishonored and felt Dunwall City Trials could’ve been better, then this is the DLC you want. Adding icing on the cake, the Steam-activated The Knife of Dunwall can be had for only $8 after a 20% off coupon.

If you don’t already have Dishonored in your collection, the base game is down to $24.99 thanks to an instant discount at GMG. Elsewhere you’ll pay full price for the DLC and at least $5 more for the base game.

Say what you want about GameStop, but their download service can have competitive pricing. This week they launched a Spring PC download sale, which for the most part has respectable discounts. The most standout deals are the best ever pricing on Skyrim DLC. Released last month, the Dragonborn DLC is down to a new low of $10. The popular Dawnguard DLC is also at a $10 new low. As with the base Skyrim game, all the DLC activates on Steam.

Beyond the big Dovahkiin deals, fans of the Assassin’s Creed series should check out the franchise sale this weekend at GamersGate. The best deal is Assassin’s Creed 3 for $24.98 – a new low by $5 and $25 off the usual $50 price tag. The more recent Assassin’s Creed games and DLC are getting 50% discounts while the older ones are as high as 83% off. The offer runs through Sunday, April 21st.

If you think today’s post is all PC gaming, owners of PS Vita should check out Amazon’s $30 deal on Persona 4 Golden, an enhanced port of Persona 4 for the PS Vita. Suffice it to say, the port adds more features and content to probably one of the best JRPGs on the PS2 (mmm… nostalgia).

Hot deals

Last Tuesday’s release: Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall (PC DLC) — $8 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. List is $10. Green Man Gaming also has a great price on the Dishonored base game for only $24.99 (normally $59.99).
 

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim DLC Packs — 50% off at GameStop. All the DLC titles are at half price, with most usually around $15 since their respective release dates. Last month’s release of Dragonborn can be had for only $10.

Assassin’s Creed Weekend Sale: Games and DLC — 50 to 83% off at GamersGate. Top choices include AC3 for $25 and the Season Pass for only $15.

Upcoming Releases

Oct. 25: Batman: Arkham Origins (PS3) — $49.99 at NewEgg. The October 25th release date is quite a ways off, but this is the first significant discount we’ve seen thus far. Another offer worth noting is the Xbox 360 version for $59.99 with a bonus $10 credit at Amazon.
 

PC download deals

SimCity with $10 Credit or $7 Cash Back — $40 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Elsewhere $60. Everyone loves to hate the online only aspect, but truth is they’re still selling SimCity like hotcakes. In addition to the $20 instant discount at GMG, there’s a credit/cash back incentive, making it a $30-$33 value post bonus.
 

Tomb Raider — $26.79 at GameFly after coupon. Update: was $33.49, today-only coupon makes it stupid low price for a month old, well reviewed Triple-A title.
 

The Sims 3 University Life — $16 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Next best is $40 at Amazon. It’s the lowest price yet on the 9th – yes, 9th! – Sims 3 expansion pack.
 

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning — $5.99 at GameStop. Ties the previous low. Savings brought to you by the state of Rhode Island.
 

360, PS3, and PC Vita deals

Buy 2 Pre-Owned Video Games, Get a 3rd FREE at Best Buy. Over 7,000 games to choose from, with savings shown in your cart after all items have been added. Deal expires Saturday.
 

Persona Golden (PS Vita) — $29.96 at Amazon. Elsewhere the game is still selling for at least $39. Excellent title to pick up if you never played the PS2 version.
 

Halo 4 (Xbox 360) — $23.99 at NewEgg. Next best is $37 at Amazon. This is the cheapest we’ve seen by $6. If you’ve somehow managed to avoid Halo 4 since its release date, this is a solid price.
 

Hardware

Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 59371960 Gaming Laptop — $799 at Lenovo after coupon. $120 less than this configuration sold for a week earlier. Specs: Ivy Bridge Core i7-3630QM, 1080p Full HD display, and the new Kepler-based GeForce GT 750M 2GB.
 

HP ENVY Phoenix h9-1420t Gaming Desktop — $862.49 at HP after coupon. $10 shipping. Specs: Ivy Bridge Quad Core i7-3770, Liquid Cooled, Radeon HD 7670, 10GB RAM, and Blu-ray drive. GPU is a bit weak but you can obviously upgrade.
 

Sennheiser X320 Xbox 360 Gaming Headset — $69.99 at Rakuten. Next best is $100. This is the lowest price we’ve seen on the headset by $13.
 

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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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Gamers spent $992.5 million dollars on consoles, peripherals, and new physical video games in March — a number that’s 10 percent less than a year ago mostly due to slowing console sales.

Financial tracking firm The NPD Group just released its report for the video game industry for March 2013. That $992.5 million is down 10 percent from $1.1 billion last year. As always, it’s important to note that these figures don’t include digital sales on Steam, Xbox Live Marketplace, or any other digital-distribution platform.

Hardware sales took the biggest hit. Gamers only spent $221.6 million on new consoles. That’s down 32 percent from $324.7 million in 2012. A saturated market and news about next-gen systems from Microsoft and Sony are both impacting sales.

We’ll take a look closer look at hardware in a second, but first, let’s look at the software chart:

Software

Here is a list of the best-selling games in March 2013:

1. BioShock Infinite (360, PS3, PC)
2. Tomb Raider (2013) (360, PS3)
3. Gears of War: Judgment (360)
4. God of War: Ascension (PS3)
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (360, PS3, Wii U, PC)
6. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (3DS): 365,000 units (415,000 with eShop)
7. MLB 13: The Show (PS3, Vita)
8. NBA 2K13 (360, PS3, Wii, Wii U, PSP, PC)
9. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (360, PS3, Wii U)
10. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 (360, PS3)

xx. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates To Infinity (3DS) – (145,000 retail + eShop)
xx. Fire Emblem (3DS) – (64,000 retail + eShop)

If you include home consoles, portable consoles, and PC, physical-game sales were actually up 2 percent from $592.2 million in 2012 to $602.4 million.

Those numbers were up despite approximately 20 percent fewer new games compared to March 2012.

“March 2013 launches generated close to 70 percent more dollar sales per SKU than last year,” NPD analyst Liam Callahan said in a statement. “The performance of new launches was a major driver of the overall software growth for this month, with games launching in March 2013 selling over 40 percent more units than new launches in March 2012. There were positive trends for new launches that were seen across consoles, portables, and PC.”

In February, Sega’s big stinker, Aliens: Colonial Marines, cracked the top 10 list. In March, it’s Activision’s awful The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct making it all the way to No. 9. That’s not bad for a title that only scored a 55 out of 100 in its GamesBeat review.

As usual, this is an Xbox 360-dominated chart, with a few PlayStation 3 and Nintendo 3DS games sprinkled in here and there. No Wii U or Vita exclusive made the top 10, as once again those systems didn’t really have any significant releases throughout the month.

The 3DS did have a very strong month, though.

“With solid performances of new games like Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, 3DS software sales increased over 50 percent from last March,” said Callahan.

Finally, both BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider set new opening-month records for their respective franchises. Clearly, the positive reviews, marketing push, and anticipation was enough to pushy BioShock Infinite over the top. Meanwhile, Tomb Raider has competely a successful comeback. Now it’s up to publisher Square Enix to capitalize on that.

Hardware

The Xbox 360 sold 261,000 units last month. That’s down 29 percent from 371,000 in March 2012. This makes the Xbox 360 the best-selling home console for the 27th consecutive month.

As usual, Nintendo and Sony didn’t share any numbers telling us how their hardware performed. But estimates have put Nintendo’s new console, the Wii U, at sub-100,000 sales for the last two months. The release of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate could help improve those numbers slightly, but that franchise isn’t a system seller like it is in Japan.

In total, gamers spent $402 million on Microsoft hardware, software, and accessories. That’s more than 40 percent of the total consumer spend in March. That’s going to leave Sony and Nintendo in a race for a distant second place.

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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 cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation used to joke that their fans made better-quality Starfleet uniforms than what they themselves wore on the set. It’s not a joke anymore.

Cosplay — short for “costume play,” in which fans create and wear costumes based on fictional characters — still happily occupies its attention-getting, superfan niche. But the hobby has evolved in recent years from something you might throw together for Halloween into a full-on artistic endeavor. Some companies now even hire “amateur” cosplayers to represent their top-tier characters at professional trade shows.

In an age where a porn parody makes a better Wonder Woman outfit than a failed television pilot from powerhouse producer David E. Kelly (Ally McBeal, Boston Legal), this is no small thing. And it didn’t take much to find a bunch of cosplayers who could also teach Hollywood a thing or two about bringing our favorite video game characters to life.

Launch the gallery below to see 10 amazing examples.

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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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It turns out that four is not a magic number as both Gears of War: Judgment and God of War: Ascension struggle to perform in March.

Microsoft and Sony both had major exclusives for their home consoles last month in Gears of War: Judgment and God of War: Ascension, but both underperformed compared to their predecessors, according to analysis from investment firm Cowen & Company. BioShock Infinite, meanwhile, sold an estimated 665,000 copies on consoles in the 10 days following its release in March, and Tomb Raider sold approximately 696,000 units on consoles in its 33 days on the market. Both of these games, though, are multiplatform titles.

“We had expected sales trends to improve in March due to a strong core lineup,” reads Cowen’s note to investors. “However, while some titles appear to have done well, including Square Enix’s Tomb Raider and Take-Two’s BioShock Infinite, two historically strong franchises appear to have significantly underperformed.”

Cowen estimates that Gears of War: Judgment, the fourth release in the franchise, sold 425,000 units on consoles. That’s down from over 2 million in the first month for Gears of War 3 in September 2011. God of War: Ascension, the fourth major release for a Sony home console, only moved 360,000 units on consoles, Cowen predicts. That’s also down from around 1.1 million for God of War 3 in March 2010.

All of these numbers only include console sales. It does not represent any revenues through the popular PC sales service Steam.

Despite the success of Tomb Raider and BioShock Infinite, Cowen expects total game-industry revenue to drop double digits compared to March 2012. The firm doesn’t expect to see growth until August with the early release of Madden and later with Battlefield 4 and Grand Theft Auto V.

Industry sales tracking firm The NPD Group will release its report for the month of March this Thursday after the markets close. We will have full coverage on that with analysis at that time.

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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.

For those of us who didn’t get Company of Heroes 2 beta access earlier this month, there’s always the option of forking over cold hard cash to get what you want. Green Man Gaming has the Steam-activated version plus beta access for $45 after coupon.

Beyond getting an early taste of the game prior to the June 25th release date, you’ll also get the usual digital bonuses like additional skin packs, mini campaigns, additional commanders, and extra added in-game abilities for the German and Soviet army.

If you’re absolutely certain you’ll be playing Grand Theft Auto V and don’t want to bother with preordering closer to the release date, Microsoft Store has an added incentive of 1600 Xbox Live points if you preorder now at retail price. It’s not too shabby of a deal, especially considering 1600 points is valued at $20.

Hot deals & recent releases

June 25: Company of Heroes 2 (PC Download) — $45 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Preorder and you’ll get access to the closed beta that went live April 3rd. Thankfully the title’s still being released despite THQ’s liquidation.
 

Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel (Xbox 360, PS3) — $42.99 at Groupon. Elsewhere $60. A pretty solid $17 drop for a 2 week old release. Offer is only good through Thursday, April 11th.
 

Sep. 17: Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox 360) — $59.99 at Microsoft with bonus Xbox LIVE 1600 Points. Elsewhere $60, no points. The 1600 Xbox LIVE points bonus is equivalent to $20. Unfortunately, no PS3 bonus offer spotted yet.
 

Summer 2013: Deadpool (Xbox 360, PS3) — $47.99 at NewEgg after coupon. Hey, it’s a Deadpool game – can’t go wrong with this, right? Right!? Ads are touting a summer release this year.
 

Apr. 26: Star Trek (PC Download) — $37.50 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. We’re not expecting much out of this Trek game, but maybe Trekkies will get lucky with this one.
 

June 14: The Last of Us (PS3) — $49.99 at NewEgg after coupon. If you’re not hyped up enough about this game yet, just head to YouTube and watch all the trailers again.
 

Aug. 20: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist (Xbox 360) — $49.99 at NewEgg after coupon. First discount spotted so far on this August release. Although this deal is only applicable to the Xbox 360 version, the game will also release on PS3, PC, and Wii U.
 

PC download deals

Dark Messiah Might and Magic (PC Download) — $2.49 at GamersGate. For Thursday only, GamersGate has the lowest price seen thus far by $0.50. Elsewhere you’ll pay at least $7, or as high as the $19.99 list price.
 

360, PS3, and Wii U deals

Tomb Raider Survival/Collector’s Edition (Xbox 360, PS3) — $67.99 at GameStop after coupon. Goodies include a Lara Croft figurine, CD soundtrack, weapons pack DLC, double-sided island map/poster, and a 5×7 lithograph – all in a large tin case.
 

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (Xbox 360, PS3) — $49.99 at NewEgg after coupon. The release date is still TBA 2013, but since preorder deals are harder to find on PS3 and Xbox 360 titles than on PC, the discount’s worth mentioning.
 

Ni no Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch (PS3) — $39.99 at Amazon. Still close to the full $60 price at most retailers, excluding those engaged in a price war with Amazon.
 

Batman Arkham City: Armored Edition (Wii U) — $19.99 at Best Buy. Good discount on a decent game on an already forgotten platform. /snark
 

Nintendo 3DS and PC DLCs

Naruto Powerful Shippuden (3DS) — $25.49 at GameStop after coupon. Next best is $30 at Amazon. Best discount yet on this March 5th release by $10. Amazon tried to price match GameStop at $30, but GameStop’s additional 15% off coupon code makes it a more compelling retailer choice.
 

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (3DS) — $19.99 at GameStop. There’s shipping of $3.49 unless your purchase is above $25.
 

Battlefield 3: End Game (PC DLC) — $11.99 at GameFly after coupon. Next best is $15 at Green Man Gaming. Don’t buy if you have already have the BF3 Premium package – this DLC is already included.
 

Dead Space 3: Awakened (PC DLC) — $4.99 at Amazon. New low by $3, with a next best price of $10 at Green Man Gaming.
 

Gaming Laptops

Toshiba Qosmio X875 Laptop — $1,169 at BuyDig.com after coupon. Specs: Quad Core i7-3630QM, 12GB RAM, 1TB HDD, 3GB GeForce GTX 670M, and 1080p Full HD display.
 

HP Envy dv7t-7300 Quad Edition Laptop — $774.99 at HP after coupon. $10 shipping. Specs: Quad Core i7-3630QM, 8GB RAM, GeForce GT 635M 2GB, and Blu-ray.
 

HP Envy dv6t Laptop — $674.99 at HP after coupon. $10 shipping. This is the “Quad Edition” with Ivy Bridge Core i7-3630QM and a mid-range GeForce GT 635M. It’s not the fastest GPU ever, but this is a sub-$700 laptop before tax and shipping.
 

Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 59371972 Laptop — $869 at Lenovo after coupon. Specs: Core i7-3630QM, 1080p Full HD, GeForce GT 750M 2GB, and 1TB HDD + 16GB mSSD.
 

Lenovo IdeaPad Y400 59371954 Laptop — $749 at Lenovo after coupon. Little brother to the 15-inch Y500. Specs: Core i7-3630QM, GeForce GT 750M 2GB, and 1TB HDD + 16GB mSSD.
 

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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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Music is just as important as visuals in setting the mood for BioShock games. Consider the moment in which you first look at Rapture: The orchestra swell that plays as you gaze on this Randian utopia-gone-wrong is powerful. It isn’t soothing — it fills us with dread and wonder. We wouldn’t have seen Rapture as such a broken paradise without the score helping to guide our emotions.

Video game music is a powerful tool, but it doesn’t always have to burst from our speakers or overpower events. Required Listening takes a look at three soundtracks from March that specialize in sedate music that keeps us playing or quietly creates a living world in our imaginations. I also spoke with BioShock Infinite composer Garry Schyman about capturing a character’s personality.

BioShock Infinite
Composer: Garry Schyman

BioShock Infinite’s soundtrack is a decadent swirl of haunting melodies. Schyman’s work on focused on the incidental and orchestral part of the score. Using a small number of string instruments and bursts of percussion, Schyman creates a ragtime feel for the floating city Colombia while still startling us to attention whenever an enemy appears. Infinite’s soundtrack proves that restraint matters when you’re hoping to create a wispy-yet-adventurous sound.

The tinny piano melody used in “Welcome to Columbia” invokes images of rural Southern churches and ancient upright pianos. I love the unpolished and traditional feel of Schyman’s music. It works well with other musical oddities scattered through BioShock Infinite, but I am not going to mention those directly because I don’t want to spoil all the clever incidentals hidden in the game.

SimCity
Composer: Chris Tilton

Music in the Sims games always has a sparkly and industrious quality to it. It’s never overstated, and it’s melodic enough that we can listen to it for hours on end without going insane. Chris Tilton’s spin on a classic simulation game score is full of bright brass instruments and energetic strings. I like turning this on when I’m cleaning or writing because it motivates me to make progress, just like it should drive you to make your city the best in its region.

Tomb Raider
Composer: Jason Graves

You can tell when Jason Graves works on a game. His love of dissonance and primitive percussion gives Tomb Raider’s wild island a savage character, one sprinkled with classical Japanese undertones but consumed by fear and survival. The grating sound of a cello bow on chicken wire and the sparkling clink of glass bells somehow blend together into a dynamic soundtrack. You won’t be able to stop listening to Tomb Raider, no matter how unsettling the dissonance becomes.

Gears of War: Judgment
Composers: Steve Jablonsky, Jacob Shea, with the “Gears of War Reprise”  by Kevin Riepl

Gears of War: Judgment’s score walks a fine line between gritty orchestral tones and over-the-top synthetic noise. Combining the two creates a soundtrack fit for any blockbuster action film. Where games like BioShock Infinite focus on the emotional depth of its characters, Judgment urges you along on the battlefield. While the score does have a few quiet melodies, you won’t be able to savor them because Gears of War is too busy shooting them.

Click on page 2 for the interview with BioShock Infinite composer Garry Schyman

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Every action adventure game that tries to have a decent storyline runs into the dichotomy of the protagonist having to shoot hundreds of people because of how the game is designed. The problem is a simple mismatch of genres.

Possibly the most famous question in the gaming community is, “How can Uncharted’s Nathan Drake be an everyman if he kills a thousand people over the course of the game?” The new Tomb Raider has run into the same problem. Near the beginning, players see protagonist Lara Croft freak out the first time she kills a person, and five minutes later, she’s mowing people down by the dozens. Don’t even get me started on Call of Duty.

We’re trying to have these realistic stories in video games with believable characters, but developers are doing it with the same unrealistic game mechanics. The problem isn’t mechanics; the problem is the fact that developers are trying to tell these tales and put these characters in shooters. That genre just wasn’t built for this kind of storytelling.

One solution could be giving more options to the player. Stealth games let you use nonlethal takedowns or bypass enemies entirely. That’s still a cop-out because the player is still able to take the role of a single person defeating hundreds. No matter how “relatable” the protagonist is written to be, she is still a superhero in a game where she faces off against such huge numbers.

Now look back at the games that popularized the shooter genre: Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem. All of those are games where you shoot aliens or demons or some other kind of monster. You don’t kill any humans in any of these, yet they’re all very fun action games. The same goes for, say, Super Mario Bros. or Devil May Cry. These both focused on creating good action gameplay and didn’t try to make the crazy proceedings look “real,” which also allowed them to have more varied mechanics.

The only popular shooter today that has these same traits is Gears of War. Epic actually designed a fantastical setting for its fantastical gameplay. The fact that Marcus Fenix is shooting up monsters means that Epic can design whatever fun enemies it wants instead of the same three human types you see in Call of Duty or Uncharted. The same goes for the weapons — you can’t rationalize a gun that shoots subterranean bombs in Call of Duty, but that doesn’t matter in Gears. And at the end of it all, Fenix probably has a far lower body count of human beings than Drake or Croft.

Epic has even stated that this is a reason for designing the setting we see in the series. When asked why Gears of War: Judgment doesn’t take place at a point in the canon before the Locus horde appears, game designer Clifford Bleszinski said that it wouldn’t be Gears without monsters to kill. Epic specifically avoided having human-on-human conflict in the game.

But Uncharted creative director Amy Hennig responded to the same issue by directly comparing the series to one of its main inspirations, Indiana Jones. “Let’s say you made a game out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wouldn’t be any fun. Because [gaming's] an active experience; you have to have that interaction of shooting and having combat,” she said. “But if we only had you fight three guys over the course of two hours, you’d say, ‘this sucks.’”

Funnily enough, someone actually did make a game based on one of the Indiana movies back in 1989, The Last Crusade, which was a graphical adventure game similar to The Walking Dead series. Players mostly explored and solved puzzles — basically what Harrison Ford did in the movies. It feels crazy that I even have to say this, but shooting isn’t the only mechanic that makes a game fun. They even made another Indiana game in the same vein, The Fate of Atlantis.

That seems perfectly fit for the stories that Uncharted and Tomb Raider are trying to tell. Tomb Raider wasn’t even a shooter until the reboot. In the previous games, the combat was always the least interesting aspect. Players spent most of their time exploring and solving puzzles. Tomb Raider: Anniversary even had its own moment where Lara freaks out after having shot someone … after she’d spent the whole game solving puzzles and killing the occasional hostile animal. In the latest game, the actual raiding of tombs is put on the back-burner in favor of shooting up people. I suppose that the only reason Tomb Raider and Uncharted can’t just be puzzle-filled platformers is because then they wouldn’t each sell five million copies.

Therein lies the problem: The big-budget console game market is cornered into shooters and action role-playing games. Developers are trying to expand the caliber of storytelling in big-budget games, but I think they’re forced into the wrong genre for it. Maybe those kinds of stories need to be reserved for lower-budget adventure games. Maybe that kind of gameplay should be reserved for more outlandish settings and stories (which is what Uncharted developer Naughty Dog wanted to do before Sony decreed they get in on the dark shooter trend). Maybe someone needs to find a way to make alternative genres, like adventure games, more popular. It’d be nice if more successes like The Walking Dead got media attention so developers wouldn’t feel like shooters are the only games that sell.

Originally posted on MultiPlatform.

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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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Kate Edwards has had a long career in video games, and now, she has become a leader of the industry. In December, Edwards became executive director of the International Game Developers Association. Her job is to run an organization with 10,000 members who are navigating all of the big changes in the game industry.

At Microsoft, she was the first “geopolitical strategist” who had to identify geopolitical and cultural land mines for the company as it moved into different regions of the world. She implemented a geopolitical quality review process for Microsoft’s games from 1995 to 2005. She worked on titles like Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and other releases. She was the founder and chair of the game-localization special interest group within the IGDA and a leader in the IGDA Seattle chapter. She runs her own consultancy, Englobe.

This week, she attended the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and had to handle the tough issue of women in games, particularly as a dispute erupted among IGDA members about an IGDA-sponsored party where scantily clad female dancers appeared. We sat down with Edwards on Monday, March 25, before any of that happened. Here is our edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: How big is the IGDA now?

Kate Edwards: We hope to approach the neighborhood of 10,000 members by the end of this year. That’s the overarching goal. We have about 90 chapters worldwide. We have 20 or 25 special interest groups.

GamesBeat: How would you describe the IGDA to people who don’t know what it is?

Edwards: The way I like to describe it is, the IGDA is a professional development community. We’re a professional association focused on development. We’re focused on advocacy for issues that affect game developers. We have an international presence. We serve as a place of networking and community for individual game developers.

GamesBeat: Has the membership been growing?

Edwards: It leveled off for a while. Part of that is due to the structure of how we do membership, with studio affiliations versus individual memberships. We’ve gone through some adjustments there. That added to a bit of a plateau. Plus, with the industry being the way it is these days, that affects membership to a degree. We see studios that close, like 38 Studios for example. The members retain their membership, but the studio affiliation goes away.

GamesBeat: It’s hard to tell whether there’s more growth or more contraction.

Edwards: I like to the word “evolving.” That’s the way I see it. This is still a relatively young industry. It’s finding its way. We’re so receptive to the technology that arises in how we deliver and how we develop. It’s only natural that we’ll see a bit of evolution. Some things are going to die off and some things are going to rise. It’s not something that we necessarily want to see, when we see people laid off. It’s not a good thing. But unfortunately or not, it’s a natural part of a changing industry.

GamesBeat: Has anybody done a lot of tallying up there, working out whether they see growth or change like that?

Edwards: We have not done that kind of thing, no. We do the quality of life survey, which is an empirical survey along those lines. The latest one came out recently. But we don’t focus on the numbers as far as layoffs. That’s something that the ESA would know better than we would.

GamesBeat: It’s good that people do surveys, but yeah, I do wish there was more information to give people, a way to give them sound advice. “Okay, here’s where the wind is blowing. Go in that direction.”

Edwards: Within the IGDA, the chapters do communicate with one another, which is one of the strengths of the organization. Developers who are in the IGDA can do that. They can reach out to other chapters. “My studio is downsizing in Boston. I might move to San Francisco or Los Angeles. What’s going on out there?” You get a lot of qualitative information. You get some quantitative information on a per-studio basis. Someone in L.A. might chime in and say, “My company has 35 positions open.” I know it happens at that individual chapter level, but there’s not any oversight quantifying all of that.

GamesBeat: Has that quality of life gotten any better?

Edwards: It’s changing. In general I think the trend is better. Studios are getting more aware. A lot of times [quality of life] is equated with the notion of crunch. We like to look at something broader. It’s not just the crunch mode issue, although that tends to be a major issue. More studios are aware of it. That doesn’t mean all studios don’t do it, but they’re more aware of it. I was at Microsoft for 13 years, and even within my time there, the company became far more aware of work-life balance issues and all the other things that go along with them, for all kinds of good reasons.

GamesBeat: I wondered if some of these problems would carry over from the console business into the mobile and social studios.

Edwards: I think that’s inevitable. They’re going to carry over to some degree. When you’re self-employed or a small shop, you tend to have more control, but that affects your time schedule. It affects all kinds of other things. A lot of the indies that I know, or smaller studios, that’s one of the reasons they might have left a larger developer. They felt they would have more control over their work-life balance, and they do for the most part. At the same time, I’ve seen some of those small studios go through the same issues as any large studio. It comes down to promising a date and not delivering. That’s a reality in any business, not just the games industry.

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Tomb Raider’s story does nothing amazing: A cult led by a charismatic leader wants to sacrifice a human or two so that they can escape the island of Yamatai. They commit other brutal acts along the way, but that comes with the territory of crazy cults. Then our protagonist, Lara Croft, washes ashore and tells them that they’re doing it wrong. Violence ensues. Nothing special here. Predictable, in fact. I called so many plot points in this game that I should’ve started a drinking game with myself.

But I love predictable only if it serves a greater purpose, and predictable and simple was exactly what Tomb Raider needed for the sake of creating a grand, beautiful presentation.

I’m a huge supporter of “excuse stories.” No huge, unexpected twists. No mountain list of characters who you have to follow and remember like in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice. Just easy-to-follow story. Here’s why excuse stories are good: They sacrifice a wonderful plot for a deeper purpose. For Tomb Raider, that meaning involves watching Croft grow from a university student to a survivor. If Croft was the experienced tomb raider we all know and love (or love to hate), and this story, the story of fighting crazy cultists on a mysterious island, was all writer Rhianna Pratchett could muster,  there would be reason to complain.

But Tomb Raider has more going for it. It’s about the island and Croft’s development; both have a profound effect on one another. Yamatai is time warped: a mix of ancient Japan, World War II, and the 1980s. Croft is a modern girl who, in true modern fashion, mucks up everything the island has going for it, and the island repays Croft for every little secret she uncovers. The repayments are brutal: The men on the island have no problem throwing Croft off a cliff, snapping her neck, or hanging her upside down to ruthlessly impale her.

For some, this may be a problem — young girl versus dirty, old men. There’s commentary here on the male to female protagonist ratio in the video game industry, or something like that, but I’m not convinced if that argument ever sprouts. These men — Mathias, the cult leader included — are misguided servants to the Sun Queen. In a way, Croft fights the Sun Queen herself, and the men are hapless victims of her diabolical will.

In either case, the purpose reigns supreme: These men — these falling buildings and cliffs and malfunctioning parachutes — are dumbbells. They add muscles to Croft, physically and mentally, especially mentally as throughout the game Croft gets bolder and angrier, crying to her enemies, “You can’t stop me, you bastards!” It’s one of the more inspiring moments of the game, where she guns down a castle full of cultists for her sake and the sake of her friends. Like Rambo. Only better.

“Can” and “can’t.” Croft says these words constantly, but they’re appropriate for the story’s goals. She has the ability to overcome her obstacles (thank God for Roth, her mentor). At one point, though, will there come a time when she won’t have the ability to overcome? This question drives the tension and drama of Tomb Raider. In all situations, the answer is yes, she can. Croft comes into the game rather skilled — unusual given her age and personality, but even so, Croft still has difficulties. Her abilities only go so far, and on an island this broken and busted, there’s a great deal of luck or coincidence at work. Croft really gets lucky in the beginning, for example, when she frees herself from the first trap of the game — that arrow could have had her face written on its blade, but it settled for his side instead. Yes, Croft transforms by the end, but we know it’s not entirely by her own will. Other forces influence her success, and we should realize this fact.

The excuse story has no other purpose than to ground Lara in as much reality as players are willing to believe. We need a vulnerable hero, one who doesn’t have her stuff together and who’s trying to figure out what she is doing because we are in the same position. So the excuse story informs us that, yes, humans are weak and clueless, yet through obstacles, they still come out all right. And for someone who has screwed up in more than a few ways, that message gives much encouragement for our future.

Tomb Raider’s perfection stems from an average story and an imperfect heroine. I could ask for nothing more.

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So, video game reboots are a big thing now, right? But rebooting a long-lasting franchise is in no way a new concept. Lately, though, the reboot has been bursting onto the scene more often than ever, with the likes of Tomb Raider, DmC: Devil May Cry, and the recently announced Thief (pictured above) as well as many others. The idea behind a reboot is to revive a series that is considered outdated and revitalize the community’s interest in it. Old series of games are taken back to the drawing board as developers hold onto the aspects of their choosing while throwing out those that they feel may not work so well in the current generation of gaming.

It seems as though the concept of a reboot has been growing more and more popular with developers, and we have been witnessing an increase in quantity in recent years that is bound to continue for some time. I understand the intentions of the concept, but we must consider an unintentional rather negative side effect to these constant reboots. No, I’m not talking about disappointing fans by making adjustments to a series’ canon or mythos or both. The issue I have is that if developers are putting so much focus and effort into rehashing these old titles, they may become distracted from making any true progress.

Source: Vgmemes.com

Not my opinion entirely but to the point.

Allow me to elaborate on this. These old titles that developers often wish to reboot are just that: old. While this is the very reason that a series would be ideal for a reboot, it is also what makes the concept counterproductive. The game has already been done; we’ve seen it all before. Sure, you could take it and upgrade it to fit in properly with a new generation of gaming, but wouldn’t it be more productive to concentrate on giving the gaming universe some new and improved ideas featuring new adventures with new faces?

Many fans and critics have shared complaints on the abundance of video game sequels released year after year. Releasing a reboot is not much different, and in the way, we are still missing out on any truly new ideas. The fact is that even if a reboot is shedding new light on an old concept, developers are still simply rehashing what’s already been done. Think about it this way: Are video game reboots any different from the continuing onslaught of movie remakes?

For example, while the recently released Tomb Raider reboot was a fantastic game and quite enjoyable, it did not offer much in the department of new concepts and ideas. Yes it was a new installment to the Tomb Raider series as well as a new and improved storyline and control scheme. But this still does not present us with anything we haven’t seen before. We are still playing as a female archaeologist in search of ancient treasures throughout the ruins of ancient civilizations.

It may have been done in a slightly different fashion, but the old base concept is still there, and it’s worn out. The original Tomb Raider series was great for its time, but that time has passed. The gaming universe has had this archetype before, and now with the existence of similar games originating after the time of Tomb Raider, it’s reaching a state of repetitiveness. By putting so much effort into rehashing titles of past generations, such as in this situation, the industry is holding itself back.

Now, just because I see reboots from this perspective, in no way does that make any of them bad games. Still, I feel as though the industry may be wasting its time dwelling on the past when it could be putting more effort into creating a new series. As enjoyable as some of these reboots have managed to be, they are still rehashes of things that have already been done. Many classic titles of the past are great games, but they have passed their prime time.

Developers, give us some new stories and new adventures with new characters. Put us in control of new methods of gameplay. Focus on 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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I’ll admit right now that I’ve never played a Tomb Raider game before. I grew up in an age of Nintendo, so I don’t know much about protagonist Lara (Lare-uh? Lahr-uh? Laura?) Croft’s past romps through strange jungles and crypts. In fact, all I can remember growing up was gawking at the ridiculousness of her character model. So, when I heard that Crystal Dynamics decided to fully reboot the action-adventure franchise, I had no reaction at all.

I didn’t watch a single trailer, so picking up the game was an impulse buy that started with me gawking at the Xbox 360 Tomb Raider-themed controller on the shelf at the store. Regarding the release itself, the clerk told me, “It’s like Arkham Asylum, Uncharted, and Assassin’s Creed had a baby, and then that baby grew up and then had a fling with Far Cry 3, and that’s basically Tomb Raider.” With a pitch like that, I bought in.

I absolutely had no expectations at all. I booted up the title and switched on my Tomb Raider controller. I’ve seen like half of the original movie adaptation with Angelina Jolie and some gameplay of the old entries in the series to know who Lara is, but from the first few opening scenes, this latest release floored me.

The game mechanics are just as highly polished as the graphics. Rain cascades onto the camera as lightning flashes high above the jungle tops. The dynamic camera cleverly adds tension and pacing to stressful moments in the adventure. And boy, does Lara take a beating. As masochistic as this sounds, the death scenes are just as cringe-worthy and gruesome as the ones in the horror-focused Dead Space. But, that was the kicker for me: the pure grit of Tomb Raider’s island setting. When Crystal Dynamics could’ve taken the easy route, the studio created a story that tries to characterize Lara with more than just a nice set of … weapons.

Speaking of weapons, Tomb Raider has a pretty healthy variety to dispatch enemies with. The bow is the staple option in the game. It’s quiet, and it makes you feel like a complete badass. Other weapons include shotguns, assault rifles, a pistol, and Lara’s signature pickaxe. Crystal Dynamics’ decision to make each weapon upgradable was a great addition to an already addictive title. It keeps you wanting to play and salvage as much as you can from every inch of the map. These role-playing elements aren’t just limited to instruments of harm, however. You can spend skill points — that you earn through experience from kills, scavenging, or overall progression –  on upgrades. Each upgrade enhances Lara’s abilities, which can drastically change the way you play. If you focus more on the brawler side of things, your shoves can turn into deadly swings with the pickaxe, for example. This further represents Lara’s toughening in the narrative and gameplay sense.

But no game is without its faults. Call me nitpicky, but the “animal instinct” feature — basically a button that highlights objective waypoints, slight hints, and scavenge-worthy items in an area — seems like the game’s “easy” button. Granted, I don’t have to push the button, but it’s always empowering to figure out what to do next on my own. Animal instinct streamlines the experience for a more casual audience, but I prefer to play my titles on the hardest difficulties with little-to-no handholding.

Considering that this is my only actual gripe with the release, Tomb Raider is fantastic. Kudos to the game-store clerk for recommending it, and I’d hate to say it, but he was absolutely right. Tomb Raider has that pure, unadulterated fun factor that I can’t just quite put my finger on. Lara Croft has evolved from an over-sexualized video game vixen to, well, an ass-kicking game vixen. Sure, we all used to poke fun at her, but the Tomb Raider reboot shatters the stereotypes of female protagonists. This experience made me appreciate impulse, no-expectation purchases.

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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 Tomb Raider franchise has been all over the place in the decade and a half since it began. The first three games were quite loved, but soon the quality started to decline, and followers began to drop off. A reboot, Angel of Darkness, was meant to start a new trilogy but failed to entice customers. Developer Crystal Dynamics was passed the torch.

Their games were well-received, but Crystal Dynamics wasn’t happy with making the same old experience. They wanted to take the protagonist we all know and love and explore her roots. A third reboot went into effect, and now we have the new, simply titled Tomb Raider. This is the biggest change the series has ever seen, adopting an entirely different gameplay style. While it doesn’t quite go in the direction some of us may have wanted, it is a sharply made game that left me wondering just what will happen next for Lara.

This new Tomb Raider is all about Lara Croft becoming the video game heroine she is meant to be. She is fresh out of college and on her first archeological expedition along with the crew of the ship Endurance. A storm hits one night and causes them to wreck on a mysterious island in a location called the Dragon’s Triangle. These storms prevent anyone from leaving the island, no matter how much they try.

Almost immediately, the group is set upon by a strange, aggressive cult that seems to want them dead for unknown reasons. Lara manages to escape and must learn to survive on the hostile island.

The story is very much about a scared young woman overcoming her fears and doing what’s necessary to live. Lara isn’t the grizzled veteran we know her to be in the other Tomb Raider games; her first few kills leave her pretty shaken. Her very first actually brings her to tears, a reaction that maybe feels a bit direct but is still effective. Of course, she soon kills a dozen more men and then hundreds more by the end of the game. Crystal Dynamics tried to balance the absurd number of people Lara kills with the way she deals wit those deaths, and it really works — for a while. As the game goes on, she becomes more hardened to the violence. It never quite feels like she has become heartless and bloodthirsty, but she gripes less about what she must do as the game marches on. Even though this character-building doesn’t quite succeed, it’s the best I’ve ever seen a game handle this dissonance between a character’s personality and actions.

The bigger problem is that I often wondered how in the hell Lara survives everything that happens to her. At the beginning of the game, she frees herself from a rope just to fall onto a piece of rebar. It stabs her completely through the torso — in through the front and out the back. For a while, she holds her side and seems pained by it. Pretty soon, though, she’s just fine; at least until later when it starts to hurt her again and she has to cauterize the wound with a heated arrowhead. How she manages these injuries feels very inconsistent.

These wounds almost never seem to hinder her climbing ability either, except for one or two parts in particular where she climbs slowly and groans as she does. I understand the need to make a game fun to play and not annoying for the player, but it really sucks all the believability out of the moment. Even with all these complaints, I still really enjoyed the story. It was interesting to see Crystal Dynamics come up with this new origin for Lara. There may be a bit of dissonance in it, but I was still fascinated by the way she grew as a character. I haven’t seen anything like it, and I’m intrigued to see where the series will take her next.

Fans of earlier Tomb Raider games may not like the changes that have been made to the gameplay. Those games had a very unique feel, combining tricky platforming that required sharp timing and reflexes with an acrobatic and fast-paced shooting system. This new Tomb Raider feels more like Crystal Dynamics copied Uncharted’s style in multiple areas. Both games have third-person shooting (although Tomb Raider has no true cover system), follow-the-obvious-path climbing, and huge set-piece moments. It even feels like an Uncharted game in the way it moves and plays. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as Naughty Dog’s games are pretty well-executed third-person shooters. What’s unfortunate is that this robs Tomb Raider of some of its uniqueness, making it feel like a clone of another game when it could have been more original.

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This sponsored post is produced by Dealzon.

Welcome to the first installment of GamesBeat weekly top gaming deals, where we trot around the web and find you the best gaming deals out there. Deals are curated from a giant list of 100+ game deals that includes everything from the latest AAA titles to small-time indie games.

This week we see the release of two big titles: SimCity (in all its glorious server-connection error issues), and the well-received Tomb Raider. If you haven’t bought SimCity and you’re still planning to play after the server snafu, happily there’s a 20% promo code at GameFly, making the game $48 vs. the full retail price of $60. On the Square Enix front, Tomb Raider is available for $40 at Green Man Gaming for the Steam activated version. This isn’t the lowest price we’ve seen for Tomb Raider, but it is the cheapest since release date.

Recent Releases

March 5th release: SimCity (PC Download) — $48 at GameFly after coupon. List price is $60. Interestingly enough, Amazon even halted sales on SimCity temporarily, given all the server issues the game has been experiencing.
 

March 5th release: Tomb Raider (PC Download) — $40 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. List price is $50. Steam activated version. GameFly also has it for $40 after coupon, in case that’s your preferred retailer.
 

March 5th release: The Sims 3: University Life (PC Download) — $32 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. List price is $40. Yep, another expansion to The Sims 3. Activates on Origin.
 

Upcoming Releases

March 12 release: Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 (PC Download) — $24 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. List price for is $30. If you didn’t like the first installment of Sniper: Ghost Warrior, you probably should pass on this one.
 

March 26 release: Battlefield 3: End Game (PC DLC) — $12 at Green Man Gaming. List price is $15. The DLC includes four new maps, along with a Capture the Flag gameplay mode. Activates on Origin.
 

June 25 release: Company of Heroes 2 (PC Download) — $47.99 at GameFly. List price is $60. After THQ folded, Sega picked up Company of Heroes 2 developer Relic. Release date was recently announced, with a closed beta in the near future (yay).
 

Multiple Platforms

Crysis 3 (PC Download, Xbox 360, PS3) — $39.99 at GameStop. Amazon is price matching the console versions. Next best is $42 at Origin. A little bit wild that a triple-A game is discounted so much only a month after release.
 

Red Faction Armageddon (Xbox 360, PS3) — $5.99 plus $3.49 shipping at GameStop. Next best is $14 at Amazon. Released back in 2011, with a Metacritic score of about 75/100. Published by now defunct THQ (sniff).
 

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Xbox 360 Download Card) — $23.99 at Amazon. Skyrim is one of those titles that rarely gets discounted, especially for the 360 and PS3 versions. If you have slow net connection, you may want to skip on this deal.
 

Mobile and Classic Games

The Humble Bundle with Android 5 — Pay What you Want! The 5th installment to Humble Bundle for Android is out! If you pay at least $1, you’ll get Beat Hazard Ultra, Solar 2 and NightSky HD. Pay above the average of $6.65 (at time of writing) and you’ll also get Dungeon Defenders with DLCs and Legend of Super Hexagon.
 

Super Strategy Weekend — 50% Off at GOG. Eleven strategy titles on sale from GOG (aka Good Old Games) for $3 or $5. All DRM-free. Our picks would be the Heroes of Might and Magic series along with Age of Wonders.

Want a bigger list? Smaller list? Ditch the box art images? Feel free to leave feedback in the comments, and we’ll incorporate your suggestions as best as we can in future weekly gaming deal roundups.

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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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Tomb Raider has just come out, and I’m already greatly enjoying it. It was one of my most anticipated games of last year until it was delayed to 2013. A few days ago, right before the game released, I heard something about this new hair-rendering technology that would be included in the PC version called TressFX.

I looked up this tech and was intrigued by what I read. Most intriguing was how it would more realistically render locks of hair instead of the blocky groups of polygons that most games show. Realistic hair is something I’ve dreamed about in video games. The few games that manage to do something more realistic, such as Alice: Madness Returns, are breathtaking. I’m not ashamed to admit that it made me even more excited for Tomb Raider as I read about it.

Of course, I turned the tech on the first time I played the game, eager to see how it worked. At first, I was blown away by the level of detail. TressFX seems to render the hair as individual strands that move according to what is going on. It was quite impressive for the first 30 minutes or so. After that point, the reality of the technology was starting to set in. There are a few issues with the tech (widespread or just on my machine, I don’t know) that need to be fixed before the hair I dreamed of is possible.

First and most noticeable is the strange way the technology seems to try and prevent the hair from clipping into Lara’s body. If you look closely, you can see what looks like some kind of field a few inches off the character model (very noticeable around the shoulders in particular). The hair will just sit there and not actually touch her shoulders. I understand why the game renders it that way as I’m sure that preventing the clipping of models is still a very hard-to-solve issue for developers. However, it looks very unrealistic. I’m sure that it will be the concern most people have about TressFX when they start playing, and it may be a severe turnoff for some of them. I think it just looks too strange for a tech that is supposed to be about realism.

Another issue I have with TressFX is that the individual strands of hair seem to be a little too responsive to the physics elements at work in the world of Tomb Raider. It seems like every slight jerk of the character or gust of wind makes the hair blow about crazily. Maybe it’s just that I’m not used to more realistic hair in my video games, but the physics don’t seem quite right. It’s hard to explain what I mean without seeing it in action for yourself. Shadows from the hair strands also look pretty grungy. It’s almost as if they didn’t alias these shadows as they look pretty blocky and unrealistic.

The reason for this may be that TressFX is quite intensive on the computer. I could run the game at 60 frames-per-second easily without it turned on, but the fps dropped about half as soon as I did. Other accounts I’ve read online say that some computers get unplayable framerates with it turned on. Since the game has to realistically render all of these strands of hair in real time, it can have a pretty severe effect on the framerate. I’m assuming the tech is GPU-based, so it will probably get better with some drivers and newer video cards. Nvidia seems to already be at work on updating drivers to fix some of these issues, but the performance hit is quite a problem now.

At the moment, I don’t feel that TressFX is worth enabling. It looks too odd and unrealistic for me to want to bother with the framerate loss. I’m hoping that some optimization with patches and drivers will resolve the issues so that I can use the technology on a second playthrough of Tomb Raider. Even with these hitches, I still think TressFX is a step in the right direction. I’m all for additional realism in character design wherever I can get it. The hair does look really nice; the physics elements of the simulation can just be a tad bit jarring. I can’t wait to see what future iterations of this technology look like.

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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, Zynga shuts down its Baltimore studio while consolidating three others, THQ will sell off Homeworld, Darksiders, and Red Faction in its last auction, and the Android-based Ouya console will ship March 28.

You’ll also find reviews of Star Wars Pinball and Tomb Raider, as well as previews for Lego City: Undercover, Warface, Time and Eternity, and Throw Trucks with Your Mind.

News

• The DeanBeat: The Nintendo Wii U’s troubles start with a dearth of developers
• Co-creator of Counter-Strike will launch his Tactical Intervention shooter on March 28
• Sony’s 4K movie service coming to PS4, but 100GB downloads remind us why 4K is a waste
• It takes 600 people for Ubisoft to make a triple-A game on PlayStation 4
• CCP holding special Eve Online/Dust 514 event at PAX East for players to make in-game ‘history’
• German publisher Daedalic taps into the international power of adventure games
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II Revolution map pack now available on PlayStation 3 and PC (not Wii U)
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Castlevania, Runner 2, and Retro City Rampage
• Portal developer Kim Swift’s next game is exclusive to Ouya
• Ouya confirms March 28 console shipping and hires ex-Journey developer Kellee Santiago
• Scopely announces marquee game developers as mobile-platform partners
• CCP: ‘No reason we need to stop at just Eve and Dust’ as MMO passes 500K subscribers
• Official key art for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
• OnLive offers a free download with every cloud purchase of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
• With 23,000 expected attendees, GDC will drill down into everything from PS4 to free-to-play
• GDC attendee survey chronicles the explosion of indie gaming and fall of Nintendo
• The Carrot to-do list for iPhone is your new master
• Don’t play this 800-player (!) online version of Bomberman if you have work to do
• ‘The Thunder King’ trailer celebrates the imminent arrival of World of Warcraft’s latest patch
• EA’s top digital executive Kristian Segerstrale leaves
• Social-game developer Playdemic appoints ‘Fighting Fantasy’ author as new chairman
• Will Wright talks about the new SimCity
• Deadpool game rated M for jokes during violence and inflating a blow-up doll
• GameHouse bets it all on its social casino games
• Online gambling now legal in New Jersey
• Skullgirls reaches crowdfunding goal faster than any other game in Indiegogo’s history
• THQ to sell off Homeworld, Red Faction, Darksiders in last auction
• The War Z is back on Steam more than two months after Valve pulled it
• EA chief technology officer on PS4: ‘We no longer have to constrain our games’
• EA says it missed Sony’s event to maintain ‘balance’ with Microsoft — but Battlefield 4 is ‘stunning’ on PS4
• Toki Tori 2 dev explains why you won’t find any text in its puzzle-platforming sequel
• Anodyne and Surgeon Simulator among latest batch of Steam Greenlight games (updated)
• EA enables gamers to use a single identity across game platforms (exclusive)
• Goofy EA numbers that show how deeply players are engaged in games
• Blizzard debuts its StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm launch trailer on Twitch
• Wii Mini is heading to markets outside of Canada
• Uncharted 3′s multiplayer goes free-to-play
• Ex-FBI profiler: ‘We don’t see video games as the cause of violence’
• New developer Win releases Slots Craze social game backed by online-gambling company
• Online gaming giant Nexon invests in ex-Call of Duty creative strategist’s Robotoki game startup
• Sony appoints new firm to plan PlayStation media strategy
• Lombardi still with Valve — LinkedIn update made in error (updated)
• Zynga shuts Baltimore studio and consolidates three other locations
• Harris Poll: 58 percent of adults believe in a correlation between video games and violence
• Wooga: Inside the social games wonderland of Jens Begemann (video)

Mobile News

• Red Hot Labs raises $1.5M for mobile games and a platform to make them spread
• Disney Mobile launches Toy Story: Smash It! game on app stores
• Samsung offers 100% of revenue to indie developers that use its app store
• Firefox OS needs games: Mozilla is confident it can entice developers by eliminating fragmentation
• Exent launches Android game subscription service for TVs (exclusive)

Reviews

• Star Wars Pinball: That wizard is not just a crazy old man (review)
• Tomb Raider hurts so good (review)

Previews

• With 7.5M users in Russia, Crytek’s free-to-play shooter Warface is coming to the U.S. (preview)
• Lego City: Undercover is less violent than Grand Theft Auto but still just as fun (preview)
• Throw Trucks with Your Mind is the best Star Wars game ever (preview)
• Forget saving the world: In Time and Eternity, you have to save your marriage (preview)

Interviews

• Think tank Gun Media brings experts together to make games (exclusive interview)
• Bungie leader Pete Parsons discusses how studio is shaping gaming’s Destiny (interview)
• The peculiar origin of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’s heavy-metal sound (interview)

Pieces of Flair

• Silent Hill: Revelation vs. Silent Hill 3: A visual comparison (gallery)
• Required Listening: Fire Emblem, Crysis 3, and interview with Tomb Raider composer Jason Graves

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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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Without music, many modern video games would not resonate with us on such an emotional level. It’s possible we would not feel a pang of dread as we rounded a blind corner in Dead Space 3, and we likely wouldn’t feel such urgency to hack our way through baddies in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The sometimes abrasive yet compelling quality to even dissonant tones can change how we perceive virtual worlds.

This month we take a look at Fire Emblem: Awakening, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Dead Space 3, and we discuss creating music out of non-musical items and the Tomb Raider soundtrack with composer Jason Graves.

Fire Emblem: Awakening
Composer: Yuka Tsujiyoko

Yuka Tsujiyoko’s music is the backbone of the Fire Emblem franchise. She’s the main composer for the series, which explains how organically music flows from one Fire Emblem to the next. Awakening’s score follows its predecessors with sometimes dreamy, often powerful orchestral melodies poised to elevate victorious highs and make us cry every time we lose a solider in battle.

Aliens: Colonial Marines
Composer: Kevin Riepl
Unlike the poorly received game housing it, Kevin Riepl’s score for Aliens: Colonial Marines is a true love letter to the film series. It plays with tonal similarities to both James Horner’s (Aliens) and Jerry Goldsmith’s (Alien) work on the film series while striking out on its own with gritty industrial sounds. You can feel the passion and dedication in every unsettling note and anvil strike Riepl uses. If you close your eyes and listen to the tracks linked to the picture above, you can imagine the much more frightening and generally more enjoyable game that Colonial Marines should have been.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Composer: Jamie Christopherson
In fine Platinum Games tradition, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’s soundtrack is very unconventional. When Platinum hired Jamie Christopherson to compose, they already had a pumping, heavy-metal sound in mind. The result is a very energetic album full of well-crafted guitar rifts and a successful hybridization of metal and electronic tones. It’s hard to imagine that Christopherson hadn’t written heavy metal on this scale before this project, but as he says in a supplemental interview to this article, it was all new to him.

Dead Space 3
Composer: Jason Graves, James Hannigan
Echoing, overwhelming percussion and spine-tingling dissonance is a hallmark of all three Dead Space scores, but Dead Space 3 combines those signature tones with more enjoyable orchestral movements. The result is a creepy soundtrack that is actually pleasant to listen to when removed from its game. The music is definitely much less claustrophobic, much like its inspiration.

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Somebody must’ve recorded a thousand hours of assorted grunts, groans, gasps, screams, shrieks, whines, sighs, and labored panting for Tomb Raider, developer Crystal Dynamics’ revisionist take on the storied franchise. Iconic heroine Lara Croft throws out her first tortured moan roughly 10 seconds in and rarely stops for the next 15 hours. My wife honestly looked in on me to ask, “Are you watching porn?”

No. And it’s not torture porn, either, despite the controversy Tomb Raider (releasing March 5 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC) generated by including threats of rape in its early demo reels. I can confirm that developer Crystal Dynamics chopped out two of the greasier moments I played last summer at the Electronic Entertainment Expo and excised any other hints of sexual assault from the rest of the game. If you still want it to offend, take heart. Regular assault is never in short supply. In the process, we see an innocent, talented, untested archeologist become Lara Croft, and the path we take to that end easily makes this Tomb Raider the grittiest, bloodiest, most brutal entry in the series’ 16-year history.

It’s also easily one of the best. Assuming you’re not too much of a traditionalist.

What you’ll like

You’re trapped on the island from Lost!

Tomb Raider’s been reimagined enough times — Crystal Dynamics first did it back in 2006 — to win a Mortal Kombat Re-Re-Retconned award, but this Lara Croft rings true. She’s fresh out of college, eager to prove herself, full of the self-doubt that comes with inexperience, and leading her first expedition to find the mythical Japanese kingdom of Yamatai. She finds it when a freak storm maroons her on the island from Lost.

I’m not kidding. A mysterious force kills anyone attempting to leave (or arrive, for that matter), and Lara’s best friend is quickly abducted by the Solarii, a hyper-violent cult not unlike the Others. And like Lost, the Solarii aren’t the island’s most dangerous inhabitants.

Those problems encourage Ms. Croft to do very dangerous things that she really doesn’t want to do, structured as linear missions in an open, beautifully designed world. The island is a fantastic mix of lush jungle and rusted-out industrialism, decorated with enough human skulls to suggest the entire Japanese army died here. Better still, unlike most action-platformers, it feels like a hostile environment where injury is commonplace — Lara gets banged up early and often — and not an obvious, video-gamey playground tailor-made for your climbing entertainment. That said, I never felt lost or coddled … not an easy balance to pull off. Visual cues benefit from smart, subtle integration, and “survivor instinct” lights up your path if you need the crutch.

Likewise, the direction impressed me simply by framing in-game shots with thought and care. Caves feel claustrophobic. Reveals have scope. Even something as mechanical as Lara climbing a ladder takes on a cinematic quality, as does Lara herself. She’s hesitant to creep past murderous cultists and climb a 200-foot radio tower in high winds, but after being hunted like an animal, suffering terrible injuries, losing friends, and killing someone for the first time, it’s such a pure, joyous moment of triumph when she actually does it.

Moments like that set this Tomb Raider apart. They made me eager to explore the island even more, and they gave me a heroine I could genuinely root for.

So a’raiding you will go!

Let’s take a random, 20-minute sampling of my playthrough: Lara got captured, escaped through a grisly mountain of body parts and viscera, discovered a new weapon, used it to gun down a horde of Solarii, evaded one of the island’s more insanely deadly natives, solved a destructive, wind-based puzzle, and then barreled through a gauntlet of shockingly frail wood buildings over a bottomless gorge as they disintegrated around her.

Oh, yeah. Tomb Raider moves.

If you loved solving the old-school puzzles … well, sorry. It doesn’t skimp on platforming and zip-lining excitement, but Tomb Raider puts the emphasis almost entirely on action. The good news is it pulls off that action very, very well. Combat feels a bit clunky at first — understandable, since Lara’s never used a weapon in anger — but a satisfying, strategic version of Uncharted’s high-pressure gunfights soon clicks into place. The stealth/cover system is nothing short of elegant. If danger’s close, Lara acts like it, hunching over so she’s de facto behind cover when you move against some. It’s also refreshing to feel pressured by an enemy A.I. that doesn’t do anything overtly stupid and constantly flushed me from cover with explosives.

Every gun in your pack comes in handy, but I fell in love with Tomb Raider’s signature weapon: Lara’s bow. It’s the first thing that gives her a sense of power, opening up the option for stealth-killing enemies at will. I cheerfully used it to clear scores of Solarii without raising the alarm, and I used it even more after amping up the arrows with fire, then napalm, and then explosives.

Seriously. You won’t even miss Lara’s old dual pistols.

And you become Lara Croft!

Initially, Lara doesn’t even have a credible melee attack. By Tomb Raider’s end, she’s kneecapping giants and daring an army of ancient samurai warriors to bring it while cradling a grenade-launching assault rifle.

Her evolution happens at a steady clip, and new, exciting challenges flow from one to the next with a terrific sense of momentum. Credit also goes to an upgrade system for Lara — based on earning experience points — and her gear — bought with “salvage” collected from crates, animals, and enemies — that feels vital. Two sets of higher-tier abilities unlock once you drop enough points into scrounging Survivor, fighting Brawler, and stalking Hunter categories, making it a slow burn that accelerates nicely. I really felt the changes, and my tactics often shifted based on my new skills. Tomb Raider also regularly introduces cool, new equipment like a climbing ax and rope arrows that open new areas. Or you can just yank enemies off ledges, which never gets old.

Everything comes together when the game drops you into harrowing, breakneck sequences where Lara careens through river rapids or leaps from zipline to zipline, and a single miss equals a gruesome death. Then it stops showing you the quick-time-event prompts because you just don’t need them anymore, and that’s when I finally felt like Lara Goddamn Croft, handling the situation because that’s what we do best.

Of course, one late-game miniboss becomes borderline-impossible to defeat without the right upgrades, and a thorough player can earn every skill, making those categories redundant. And unfortunately, those aren’t Tomb Raider’s only mistakes.

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Advanced Micro Devices is squarely targeting hardcore gamers with its AMD Never Settle Reloaded bundle, which gives a bunch of free games with a graphics card purchase.

AMD makes the Radeon series of graphics chips, which are housed in add-on cards for persona computers. For gamers who buy the graphics cards, AMD has a special offer. The whole point is to try to get an edge over rivals Nvidia and Intel and work AMD’s brands into the minds of hardcore gamers, who spend tons of money on both gaming hardware and games.

If you buy two AMD Radeon HD 7900 series cards (for use in a single gamer PC), you can get six games for free: Crysis 3, BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, Hitman: Absolution, and Sleeping Dogs.

For the purchase of a single AMD Radeon HD 7900 series card, you can get Crysis 3 and BioShock Infinite for free. If you buy an AMD Radeon HD 7800 series card, you can get BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider for free, said Devon Nekechuk, product manager at AMD, in a briefing call. If you prefer, you can get DmC and BioShock Infinite with an AMD Radeon HD 7800 series card.

Tomb Raider debuts on March 5, while BioShock Infinite is out on March 26. DmC: Devil May Cry is already out. And Crysis 3 debuts Feb. 19. For these games, AMD will give you a code once you register with them. You can use that code to download the games on Steam or your preferred platform once they become available.

Last fall, AMD launched its AMD Never Settle Bundle with four games: Far Cry 3, Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs and Medal of Honor: Warfighter. That amounted to $170 in free games with a graphics card purchase. And in the spring of 2012, AMD gave three games away with a card purchase.

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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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A recent article on Destructoid brought up a good point about developers who don’t plan to port multiplatform titles to Nintendo’s Wii U console because they can’t figure out ways to make the games special enough for the GamePad controller. Consider it recommended reading for the new Wii U owners wondering what the hell is up with most of the spring releases apparently skipping the system, but the article’s main thrust is that the GamePad, despite its attention-grabbing touch screen, is still just a controller.

Two developers now — Gearbox Software and Crystal Dynamics — have explained that they didn’t move forward with Wii U versions of Borderlands 2 and the reboot of Tomb Raider, respectively, because they couldn’t work in some kind of “wowza” factor with the GamePad. This is particularly strange in Gearbox’s case because it did find that hook for the Wii U version of the upcoming Aliens: Colonial Marines.

I find the “Wii U’s GamePad is just so special that we couldn’t find a worthy use for it” argument not only condescending but also intellectually dishonest. No one bought a Wii U last November because the only way people want to play video games is with shoehorned-in touch controls. I think Wii U owners would be psyched about getting Tomb Raider on the console, not bummed that they couldn’t use the touch pad to tickle Lara Croft onscreen.

Honestly, all it would take to sell me on a Wii U version of a game is to make it fully playable on the GamePad. That way, when my wife turns on a three-hour block of Say Yes to the Dress, I can pick up and play on the other side of the couch.

So what’s really up?

I don’t expect an answer from the PR machines on this, but any Wii U owner with a healthy amount of skepticism knows we’re not being told the full story here. My question is, when are gamers going to get mad and organized enough to start demanding some answers or, better yet, ports of these missing games?

An online petition for Tomb Raider on Wii U is live and, as of this writing, has 23 signatures. I also found at least one forum with rumblings about a petition for Borderlands 2 on the Nintendo platform. It doesn’t seem like anything too serious is coming together yet — nothing on the level of an Operation Rainfall, which successfully petitioned imports for three Japanese role-playing games on the Wii.

Maybe the majority of Wii U owners just don’t care. Nintendo is following its own trajectory in the industry. While that may not bear fruit with every multiplatform game on the market, it will generate some unique titles over the course of the console’s life span.

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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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Slated for a March 5 debut, Tomb Raider is one of the biggest games being released this year. It is a grounds-up reboot of the Lara Croft franchise that has sold more than 35 million units to date. We recently got a hands-on preview of the multiplayer version of the game, which is being built by Crystal Dynamics and the Eidos Montreal division of Square Enix.

It is the 11th title in the series, but it takes players back to the beginning where we meet a 20-year-old Lara Croft who has to learn how to survive. With outstanding graphics and a gripping the story, the single-player version of the game has gamers salivating. Multiplayer, however, has been a mystery. After all, we can’t all play as Lara Croft in a big online brawl.

But the designers figured out a way to make a fun multiplayer mode that fits with the world of Tomb Raider. Joe Khoury, the producer on the multiplayer version of Tomb Raider from Eidos Montreal, told GamesBeat that the game has all the right elements for multiplayer: an island where survival can be very difficult, the survivors of Lara’s shipwreck that include a bunch of her friends, and a natural enemy in the scavengers on the island who challenge Lara’s crew. The team designed a four-versus-four mode where players can fight grim matches that require a lot of team work. That kind of fighting matches the kind of experience that players will find in the single-player game.

When I booted up the preview build, I was on the team of scavengers. I scanned through the different enemy characters and saw a lot of spoilers from the single-player game. They included your standard crew of bad guys, who were very beefy but rather poorly dressed. Then there were a bunch of enemies that looked more like ancient statues than human adversaries. You can collect in-game currency as you level up. You can spend that currency on weapon upgrades, new weapons, and character unlocks.

I settled upon a “bruiser” character who seemed simple enough. I had several choices for weapons and settled on an assault rifle. We started a four-on-four match that took place in a map called Chasm. The map, pictured above, was in a sandy chasm with a bunch of wooden structures and mines. As a scavenger, my job was to shoot Lara’s friends, who had to collect medical supplies and protect each other. If the scavengers rack up enough kills, the round ends. But the scavenger bullets can’t immediately kill the friends. Rather, you can only wound them with your guns. Then, once the friends are wounded, you have to go up to them and kill them via melee.

Meanwhile, Lara’s friends try to revive each other. When you’re reviving someone, you’re vulnerable. It’s a lot like the Gears of War multiplayer system, where revivals are critical to staying in the game. To win, the friends had to collect and deliver five medical packs, while the Scavengers had to get 20  kills.

I found that shooting my assault gun wasn’t nearly so easy as playing a round of Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Your movements are slower and you have to be more deliberate in everything including aiming and taking shots. It’s easy enough to pick out the enemy from the distance because you can see the hostile red color identifying them.

Up close, you have to move fast, much like you do in Gears of War multiplayer. You can take time to aim at an enemy far away, but if you take too long, someone will come from another direction and take you out. It’s best to play in some organized fashion, but I simply followed some of my cohorts into the action. In my first round, I got five kills and died seven times. I did pretty much the same in the second round, when I played one of Lara’s crew. That told me that the two opposing sides were fairly evenly matched.

In the middle of the round, someone triggered a sandstorm. I couldn’t see anyone during that moment. It was triggered by the opposing team. Whichever side gets to the right part of the map can unleash what Khoury calls a “game changer.” That event is so big that it can change the course of a match. It is a reminder that the island itself and its environment can be as deadly as any opponent. The maps all contain traps that players can set for opponents as well, like rope snares.

The multiplayer action was fun. But does this game need the multiplayer? It will probably be fun without it. But if multiplayer catches on, the game will be able to live on for many more hours. That could help its engagement and word of mouth, ultimately resulting in the sale of more copies of Tomb Raider. The good thing about this multiplayer is that it isn’t just a list of things that are stapled onto what players hope to be  a thrilling single-player experience.

You’ll be able to advance to level 60 in online play. And if you want to play Lara, you’re going to have to level all the way up to get her. That should motivate people to keep playing. Khoury says the team also has some options for downloadable multiplayer content coming down the road too. Tomb Raider debuts on March 5 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. It will be rated mature.

Here’s a video interview with Khoury and Gallagher that we shot after playing a round of multiplayer combat.

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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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Games don’t have to be based on movies or sports teams to feature real humans. As 3D rendering technology advances, more and more developers turn to flesh-and-bone actors, and models to give life to their protagonists and antagonists.

In the case of Far Cry 3′s Vaas Montenegro (top image), Ubisoft hired Canadian actor Michael Mando to portray, voice, and provide motion capture for the sadistic madman as well as star in promotional material. Vaas’s appearance (combined with Mando’s performance) give the title an extra layer of realism.

I made a list of 20 celebrity sightings in modern video games with side-to-side images of their in-game models next to their real faces. Hover the cursor over the image below 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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