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Apogee Software reveals a new first person shooter to the most concentrated form of the key demographic imaginable.

Apogee Software of Duke Nukem Trilogy fame took the stage first at QuakeCon 2012 to reveal their newest old-game-rebirth project, Rise of the Triad. This first person shooter has players battling not-Nazis (that look a lot like Nazis) called Triad. Rise of the Triad’s big reveal was extremely violent and clearly born of the makers of Duke Nukem.  The quick teaser trailer showed a brutal killing of someone begging for mercy as the crowd cheered, followed by many similar moments punctuated with some uh, impressive voice work yelling “f*ckin’ A!” and similar witticisms.

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A devastating tale of love lost… for a game reviewer.

It’s pretty heartbreaking when you are really enjoying a game only to have it all hit a breakneck stop and you just want it all to end already.  Such was my experience with Ys Origin - a prequel to the long running Ys series from Falcom that is finally available in English after first being released in Japan years ago.  I spent several hours mesmerized: loving the combat, wondering what would happen in the story, and considering if I would soon be buying other games in the series to satisfy my nascent Ys fandom.  Then, the game’s off-kilter balancing rammed me into a wall.  Then another.  And another.  Time after time, Ys Origin mires you in lengthy forced grinding situations, and that one fault is the game’s undoing.

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Square-Enix gives us an online hack-n-slash experience unlike anything we've seen before on a Nintendo handheld.

Nintendo’s struggles with their online strategy (if you can call it that) are widely known and widely reviled.  We’ve seen some slight improvements as the years click by, but it looks like Square-Enix might be the ones to teach the big N how to really do things right on the 3DS with Heroes of Ruin.  Square-Enix and design house n-Space picked the perfect sort of game to leverage the online functionality of the 3DS – a dungeon crawler.  Keeping far away from the frame-by-frame criticality of an FPS or fighting game, a game in the vein of Diablo should let Nintendo’s network stretch its legs without really angering the hardcore twitch gamers.  Although already released in Europe, Heroes of Ruin doesn’t launch in North America until July 17^th, and the online multiplayer is just one aspect that has us sharpening our swords in anticipation.

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Say goodbye to two friends in one go.

While the PS Vita is struggling to build up its sales numbers, new game releases for the PSP have still dwindled to almost nothing.  Gungnir is one of the few games set to dribble out for the system this year, and it looks like a good reason to spin up your UMD drive once again.  A strategy role playing game that promises to touch on some heavy topics like racism and class struggles while throwing in some mechanics new to the SRPG genre, Gungnir is the latest and possibly final entry in the Dept. Heaven series.

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The And Yet It Moves developer is pumped to finally reveal the lead platform for its latest game.

Austrian indie developer Broken Rules was relieved to finally be able to reveal that their latest game, Chasing Aurora, will be released first on the Wii U.  Although the 2D game has been in development and somewhat public for a while, its home on the Wii U was kept secret until now.  The game will use the Wii U GamePad and not the just-announced Pro Controller, which leaves open questions about how the GamePad will be put to use.  The only feature specific to the Wii U that the developers have revealed so far is that one of the game modes will be asynchronous multiplayer and take advantage of "the unique features of the Wii U GamePad."

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