PixlBit

No, not that other FF XIII game you've been waiting for.

Continuing Square-Enix’s love affair with the character Lightning, a new game has been announced for consoles that focuses on her greatest and final battle.  Lightning’s powers grew beyond those of a normal human during the FF XIII-2 storyline and will continue to expand in this new game titled Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, which is set to release in 2013.  It appears that customizing Lightning’s clothing and selecting from a variety of weapons will be a big feature in what might be an action-heavy adventure.  Andriasang provided a liveblog translation of a presentation made at the Final Fantasy 25^th Anniversary Event in Shibuya where the new game was revealed.

Read more »

I smell a rat. Many rats. Lots and lots of wonderful smelling rats.

The most sought after demo at this year’s QuakeCon that didn’t require a virtual reality headset was Bethesda’s upcoming stealthy first person shooter:  Dishonored.  Really, sticking the game in the FPS pigeon hole is a bit constricting since during the short demo, I possessed several people, summoned swarms of rats, and slowed time to a crawl.  The single level I got to play showed a ton of promise for a game set in a refreshingly unsettling world with a myriad of different methods available to reach your objectives.

Read more »

The Virtual Insanity panel at QuakeCon goes nuts for advances in VR, but Valve still hasn't committed to supporting the newest gear.

It’s hard not to get swept up by the excitement exuding from the four people on stage for a panel about virtual reality at QuakeCon.  It’s the Oculus Rift VR headset (with a kickstarter that recently broke the million dollar funding level) that has gotten panel members thinking that virtual reality gaming is feasible.  John Carmack and Todd Hollenshead of id, Michael Abrash of Valve, and Palmer Luckey from Oculus talked about the problems with virtual reality headsets through history, where things are now, and where they are headed.  Id has solidified their interest in the Oculus Rift headset by agreeing to provide a copy of Doom 3 BFG Edition with every headset sold in the future.  For now, that’s the only software confirmed to be playable with the product intended primarily for developers.  When Abrash was asked if Valve had plans to make their products playable with Rift, he could only confirm his desire to do so but not any concrete plans.

Read more »

Todd Howard and crew reveal the fun and difficult times to be had in game development.

Today’s slate of panels kicked off with “The Game of Making Games,” hosted by G4’s Blair Herter.  Ted Price of Insomniac, Jens Matthies of Machine Games, Todd Howard of Bethesda, and Raphael Colantonio of Arkane Studios made up the panel of noteworthy developers in what was primarily a Q & A session with the audience.  Herter started off by asking about each developer’s general game-making philosophy, which soon led to questions about axing faltering game elements during development no matter how much time was spent on creating them.  Herter threw out the term “killing your babies” about this design necessity and it became a recurring in-panel meme.

Read more »

Advances in the study of loots are needed to make Heroes of Ruin be anything special.

The age old question of what makes a loot phat has yet to be answered.  There is no magic formula for the presentation of said loots, nor is there an equation for the perfect mixture of merely acceptable loots and those that are in fact phat.  Once researchers have uncovered the perfect recipe, applying this know-how to Heroes of Ruin might make it something fantastic instead of what it is now:  completely and thoroughly decent.

Read more »