The next generation of consoles may be a way off yet, but Epic Games’ has revealed that its latest tech, Unreal Engine 4, is up and running right now. Wired has got the first batch of screenshots, as well as a lengthy interview with Epic’s Tim Sweeny involving a number of subjects, such as the history of Epic, and what sort of effort was involved in building their latest middleware powerhouse.

And a powerhouse it is poised to be, as it may even force Microsoft and Sony to rethink the amount of power they’re putting into their next consoles. They’ll need to at least be fast and powerful enough to run the engine and handle its more demanding properties.

Rampant speculation alert: Way back in 2004, when Epic first revealed Unreal Engine 3, those assets turned out to be from Gears of War, though the game itself had not been announced at the time. It’s likely that these new assets are also from an as-yet-unannounced game that is currently in production. If I were a bettin’ man, I’d wager that the game in question is a new, console specific version of the Infinity Blade franchise which has been so popular on iOS devices.

In any case, with E3 right around the corner, I expect Epic will have even more to say about Unreal Engine 4 very soon.

CCP is finally inviting the general public to sign up for a chance to participate in the closed beta for Dust 514. Sign-ups have been available to active Eve Online subscribers for a while, so this is the first time beta access has been available to those who haven’t already experienced CCP’s spaceflight/economy simulator MMO. Those interested in trying out Eve Online’s FPS sibling can head over to their registration page and get on the list.

CCP hasn’t given word on when the beta is expected to begin, or when players will receive confirmation of their access to the testing. 

For Eve Online subscribers who have already registered, beta tickets are being sent out today. So go check your inboxes!

Alongside the recent news of Activision trying to spy on and fire Jay West and Vince Zampella six months before Modern Warfare 2 came out, GamesIndustry is reporting that they have also settled with EA over their suit which claims that EA stole West and Zampella away from Activision. They’re probably unrelated.

Activision was initially seeking $400 million in damages over West’s, Zampella’s, and 40 other employees’ departures as a counterclaim to Zampella’s and West’s lawsuits against the company for unpaid bonuses and contract termination.

The settlement on this suit has no bearing on West’s and Zampella’s suit. Meanwhile, EA remains somewhat involved and has promised to support West and Zampella in their case against Activision.

According to a press release by 2K Games and Gearbox Software, Borderlands 2 will come with two tiers of special limited editions. While both will come with collectibles and in-game items, the Deluxe Vault Hunter’s Collector’s Edition will sell for $100 and the Ultimate Loot Chest Limited Edition will sell for $150.

The less expensive special edition comes with the game, a Borderlands 2 art book, stickers, a map of Pandora, a digital comic, bonus DLC (the nature of which was not disclosed), and a Marcus Kincaid bobblehead. The more expensive Ultimate Loot Chest comes with all of the above, a scaled replica of a red loot chest, steel book case, an ID chart of the Creatures of Pandora, a lithograph postcard set, field notes from Sir Hammerlock, a cloth map of Pandora, and a numbered certificate of authenticity.

Pre-ordering the special editions or the standard game will give you access to a number of exclusive in-game items, including a collection of unique guns; a key to unlock “the mysterious Golden Sanctuary Loot Chest”; an item that boosts gear-hunting fortune; and an all-new fifth character class, the (female) Mechromancer, which will also be available for purchase for anybody who doesn’t pre-order the game.

The special edition bundles will be available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. Borderlands 2 is set for release in North America on September 18, 2012, and internationally on September 21. You can check out some gameplay footage here, and the original trailer here.

“Point and click adventure games are dead” carries no weight, going by Amanita Games’ release library. The Czech indie developer churned out five short point and click games between 2003 and 2008, and more recently, the full-length hit Machinarium in 2009, and most recently on April 19, Botanicula.

And, Botanicula has won over the wallets of a lot of people already, despite some awkwardness between pre-orders on GOG and the Humble Bundle.

Botanicula’s largest competition is really only other Amanita titles, as other point’n'click titles, like Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (which Jeroen reviewed earlier this week) appeal to a different audience. As their website puts it, Botanicula is a “relaxed game perfect for hardcore gamers, their partners, families and seniors.”

With such a large target audience, reviewing Botanicula requires an adjusted metric. Expectations will be different for every type of person who picks it up, so I aim to look at Botanicula’s ability to appeal to a diverse audience, as well as its merit against other Amanita titles.

From the very beginning, Botanicula is a simple game. In its opening moments, you’re introduced to the general shape of the story – the continuation of life in Botanicula’s ecosystem depends on the germination of the large glowing seeds of the trees on which all the species of the forest live. However, just as the seeds are about to fall from the tree, a giant spider comes and sucks the life out of all but one of them, which drops from the tree just in time and lands in the care of the first of the main characters, Mr. Lantern.

Mr. Lantern travels in a big whooping mob with his four other plant and fungus friends. There’s Mr. Poppyhead, Mr. Twig, Mr. Feather, and Mrs. Mushroom, and though you almost never control any of them independently and they have no real spoken dialog besides various whoops, cheers, and nervous gasps, they pack a lot of charm. The gang navigates from screen to screen, helping various bugs, small animals, and plants. Any character which is supposed to be speaking talks in a garbled series of mouth-noises, while a speech bubble communicates the gist of what they’re trying to get across. Instead of crippling understanding of the objective, Botanicula’s lack of dialog centers the game in its simplicity.

The general aim of the game is to help all of the characters in each zone while collecting quest items as well as cards which increase your score at the end of the game. The concept of quest items and cards is pretty badly explained at the start of the game, and stands out as the one moment where it would have been forgivable to break Amanita’s no-text-or-dialog rule. For a moment, without an understanding of the incentive behind collecting cards, it’s easy to form a mindset of, “if all I’m going to get for playing with minor characters is a stupid card, I might as well not do it at all!” And then a giant, One-Man-Band bug drops out of the sky and is thrown into hilarious, clattering, whomping disarray as it’s chased offscreen, and you remember that the incentive has nothing to do with cards or points anyway.

The core of the point’n'click genre is the puzzles, and while Botanicula has a whole ecosystem of them, I have to admit I have mixed feelings about the difficulty level. Puzzles are sort of organized into informal groupings – the easiest being small creatures which you can simply click on a couple of times to watch a small animation play out. These are cute, and the character designs are extremely charming, but not particularly rewarding as puzzles. They’re the sort of thing that can make your mouth pop open in pleasant surprise, and they really showcase Amanita’s ability to make even a mushroom heartwarming, but they’re not really “puzzles,” as such.

The second tier of difficulty is the meat of the game – the puzzles which stand in the way of important quest items. Botanicula will have you hopping around tiny planets, traveling around in submarines, and exploring a little chestnut village. But for all that, they aren’t really what I’d call “difficult.” And that’s okay – a game which wants to appeal to small children and non-gamers in general should definitely have a more welcoming difficulty level. But coming off of Machinarium, I was hoping for another mind-bender. Instead, Botanicula relies heavily on trial-and-error, and for someone who might classify his or herself as a “hardcore gamer,” Botanicula begins to accidentally accelerate to a sprinter’s pace.

Any given hang-up tends to have less to do with the thought process of solving a puzzle and more to do with happening upon a missing pixel or puzzle element accidentally. The second tier also contains most of the moments where you can play one of the members of the gang individually, but never really as a process of solving a puzzle. Rather, Botanicula has the player hazard a guess as to which character will be able to perform a task, and it’s almost more rewarding to be wrong because you’re treated to a comical sketch of the failure, and then prompted to try again.

Botanicula really has more in common with Amanita’s Samorost and Samorost 2, as its puzzles are more of a slow progression of correct interactions than a lengthy problem to think on. So to those who aren’t new to gaming, I might recommend they play Machinarium first. To a more casual player, the difficulty of these puzzles is spot on.

The third puzzle tier has less to do with difficulty and more to do with the meta-game: collection of quest items in a zone. In most of Botanicula’s zones, the player has to collect 3-14 quest items by collecting every item in the area. They serve as a checklist for all the things that need doing, and for someone who’s played a decent amount of point and click adventure games, they irk me a little. Puzzle games, both of yore and today, always deliver content as a series of logical steps – do Puzzle A, get rewarded with Item A, use Item A on Puzzle B, get Item B, etcetera. It helps to center the player and prevent them from forgetting what they’re trying to accomplish. I can understand Amanita’s motivation – Botanicula is, again, meant for a larger audience that doesn’t want to think about a puzzle in the long-term, but it sacrifices a lot of depth and immersion by stripping this puzzle flow down to only a couple of moments later in the game.

The meta-puzzle aspect is also hurt by Botanicula’s map, which is literally a poorly drawn sketch on a leaf, and almost entirely useless. Between Botanicula’s tangles of branches and circular tunnels, it’s easy to get turned around and not know where the next quest item is. Some kind of directional guide wouldn’t have gone amiss, as despite Botanicula’s ability to ooze charm, the thirtieth time the gang went “whoopa!” over a hole as I stumbled around the map in confusion, I kind of wanted to shove Mr. Twig up whoever drew the map and see how chipper he was for deciding to be cute.

Despite my irreverence for that particular aspect of Botanicula’s design, everything else Amanita did to bring their world to life is stunning, especially, and most famously, the music. Czech alternative band DVA lent their talents to the game, and the soundtrack is great. Just take a listen to Botanicula’s leading track, Juchu. It screams joy, politely mentions indie, and then squirms with happiness. It’s great. My only qualm – and yes, I’ve found another qualm, here – I think Botanicula managed to underuse its music. For the most part, Botanicula understates its tracks, swapping them out most of the time for a quiet recording of birds and bugs to allow the sound effects of each character on-screen to stand out. I understand the message – Botanicula is a game about nature, and as such there should be nature noises, but after teasing me repeatedly with DVA’s kick ass tracks, I feel like I’d rather just open a window and mix the music with birdsong myself than bear quiet moments.

Ultimately, the decision to play Botanicula has a lot to do with what a player’s expectations are. Botanicula is an extremely cheerful title, one that celebrates nature and friendship, but to a dab hand at puzzles or someone with too little patience, it can be hurt by its own player-friendly practices. However, in this “dying” genre, diversification should always be encouraged. After all, what’s more important in an ecosystem than evolution to change?

Botanicula was released on April 19th, 2012 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Review is based on the Windows PC version.

It seems like Activision is making the most of their James Bond license by trying to emulate some Bond villain-style hijinx – and not one of the cool Bond villains either. Called “Project Icebreaker”, Activision heads employed the head of their IT department to get any incriminating evidence he could from the computers of Jason West and Vince Zampella while they were heading up Infinity Ward.

Giant Bomb received the court filings from a PR rep for West’s and Zampella’s attorneys that revealed the ridiculous plot in question. Six months prior to the release of Modern Warfare 2, Activision’s chief legal officer at the time, George Rose, told then director of IT Thomas Fenady to “dig up dirt on Jason and Vince” because “[they were] sick of dealing with these guys, their ego… [they] just want to get rid of them.” And when Fenady showed hesitation, he was told that the order “comes from Bobby [Kotick] directly.”

Further instructions included “Don’t get caught doing it,” “see what files and documents were on [their computers],” and he was also told that “Bobby [Kotick] will take care of you … Don’t worry about repercussions.” Fenady went so far as to contact third party entities for help getting to their files, including Microsoft, but they refused on legal grounds. It went so far that there were even discussions on staging a fire drill so that they could image West’s and Zampella’s computers.

Ultimately, the project was abandoned when it proved to be impossible to complete. However, the timeline for the project does show that Activision were trying to get rid of Infinity Ward’s heads long before their big falling out in 2010 and two months before either of them made any sort of contact with EA. This failed Bond villain scheme might just change how the case unravels in a big way.

Our intrepid editors have taken it upon themselves to slog through the world of Diablo III and provide you, the reader, with a daily update on their progress. With all three playing as different classes (as seen above) you’ll be privy to three very different updates. Prepare yourself for the drama, the perils of fighting demons, and the mystique that accompanies a journey into the depths of evil. Oh, and explosions. Tons of explosions.

Smapdi the Demon Hunter (Chris U)

I began my crusade against the burning hells with a host of allies. But their bickering, greed, and indecision eventually drove me away from them. Besides, a demon hunter like myself does his best work alone. Fortunately, even though I eventually elected to face the trials ahead of me on my own, I still found myself with the option of enlisting the aid of a companion. While I preferred to work by my lonesome, my Templar ally was a character in his own right, full of abilities and gear to customize as I saw fit. Plus,he doesn’t need to stop every five minutes for a bathroom break, or to walk his dog. He’s a better friend than any of my “actual” ones.

Of course, I knew that choosing to venture on with only my companion meant I would need to think long and hard about how I equipped myself – purging Caldeum of the Lord of Lies would require a keen mind. Knowing that I wouldn’t have a small army to take the brunt of my attacks, and realizing that my frail form can’t withstand extended punishment, I decided it would be best to keep enemies as far away as possible. To that end, I began to arm myself with tools to keep my foes slowed at a distance. By channeling my skills through special runes, I could add extra effects to them to help me achieve this end – shots from my Rapid Fire skill were encased with webbing to slow enemies on hit, and my summonable raven companion became a spider armed with debilitating bites. My Templar ally helped on this end, armed with a skill that slowed enemies that attacked him. To top it all off, I equipped my Cull the Weak passive, which boosts my damage against slowed targets. It was a sound strategy, and soon Belial had met his end. Now, I seek to repel Azmodan from Bastion’s Keep.

I pity his chances.

Woozle the Monk (Dan T)

Dear Diablo,

You’re a really fascinating game. The CG you toss at my eyes is mesmerizing and one of a kind. The voice acting is as enchanting as a witch doctor’s spell. I wish I was able to gawk at your visuals, but I’m playing on a Mac and everything is set to “low” or “off.” I’m sure the visuals are splendid. I remember seeing screenshots long ago. They were so colorful that they summoned a tsunami of hate for no real reason. It was like Diablo himself commanded the entirety of humanity to lash out against those early images. I’ve only explored the first town and some nearby woods, so the verdict is still out on how exotic the locales will be.

My monk, Woozle, is surprisingly strong. She punches with the strength of a thousand pandas and each click seems significant. Enemies collapse as their souls escape their body, and when I use my move to knock back ghouls they are visually tossed back. The combat is much more satisfying than I would have imagined and I’m looking forward to see how it grows as more powers populate my skill bar. What’s interesting about the skill bar is how slowly they introduce skills and complexity. The skill bar is limited to only six abilities at a time. Conveniently, there are six classes of skills. You can mix and match skills all you want, but you have to go into the menus to unlock that option. Why they they didn’t make that more obvious is curious. I wonder what more experienced PC gamers think of it? It seems like it’s catering to a greener crowd, but I’m not complaining. Nothing gives me more anxiety than worrying about what skills to equip to defeat the devil.

The story beats have been limited, but I’m enjoying the way it’s presented. Conversations aren’t too long and the voice acting is tolerable. The best part are the many audio diaries that are scattered across the land. I’m a huge fan of walking and talking and I’m glad that Diablo III has implemented this tactic. I’m looking forward to playing more, but the servers are down. I’m not surprised that the launch has been plagued by mishaps, but I can still me mad.

Royastrasz the Wizard (Chris H)

Demons. Explosions. Lasers. Demons. Lasers. DIAMOND SHIELD DIAMOND SHIELD OH GOD DIAMOND SHIELD. Explosions. LASERS DOUBLE LASERS LASERS.
And so it was. And so it has been.

Playing a wizard is an exciting experience. If not for the… well, lasers and explosions, than certainly for the pure amount of badass you radiate everywhere you go. With Glass Cannon up and a bit of gear – not to mention a friend keeping most of the heat off you – you can just sit back and laugh like an idiot as destruction pours forth from your soul. It’s pretty radical. And by radical, I mean I AM KING OF THE WORLD.

Ahem.

So far, I’ve based my entire character around looking cool and doing lots of damage. Survivability? Worthless. Potion button. That’s all you need. In order to properly play a wizard, you’ve got to make a thousand colors pour from your eyes. Until you’re doing that, you’re just not a true master of the arcane. Besides, living is for fools.

Oh. And invisible dye. Naked wizards, best wizards.

While I have questions that I’ll be asking, I’m here to see if anyone has anything in particular they would like me to ask him.

From the Kickstarter page:

RAiN marks the exciting rebirth of 32-bit action rpgs, re-imagined as a player centered experience! Take control as you develop each of the three playable character’s personalities and behavior! Everything a character says and does changes they way they act and the pacing, direction, and message of the storyline. Additionally, players will have to utilize quick, on-the-fly thinking and lightning fast reflexes to master the monstrous inhabitants of Ara. Switch between characters and utilize their strengths to overcome complex and ever-changing enemy attack patterns in fast paced, real-time action combat!

Oh my God, they killed the South Park game’s 2012 release date. You bastards!

That’s right, struggling publisher THQ has decided to push the release of their South Park game back into a time unknown to Mayan calendar makers. It’s now set to be released within their fourth fiscal quarter, which begins on January 1, 2013.

They didn’t seem keen on giving a reason for the delay, but looking at Obsidian’s last few releases, I’d say giving them a little more time to hammer out the bugs would likely be for the better.

For those of you who may not have heard, Diablo III had a pretty rough launch. A combination of downed servers and an “always-online” requirement has left many players fuming, so much so that some of them have taken to venting their frustrations by bombing the game’s Metacritic user scores.

At the time of this article, the game currently holds an average user score of 3.6/10 (compared to the 87/100 critic score) and has amassed 987 negative reviews out of a total 1569. Many of these reviews stressed the fact that users had been unable to even play through Diablo III’s single player mode, thanks to the game’s always-online requirement.

“The intrusive access control known as DRM (Digital Rights Management) is what really is hurting the game here,” one reviewer wrote. “Not only due to the train-wreck of a launch, but because you can not even play this game without an Internet connection.”

Regardless of what you may think about the increasingly common practice of “metabombing”, the angrier, less grammatically correct reviews are always good for a chuckle or two. Hopefully for Blizzard’s sake, the reviews will eventually even out, especially now that Diablo III’s servers are back up and running smoothly.

Excited for Hawken, but disappointed by its planned release as a PC exclusive? Fear not, your mech-loving prayers have been answered! Meteor Entertainment, the publisher for Adhesive Entertainment’s mech-FPS Hawken, is partnering with Nvidia and cloud-based gaming service Gaikai to bring Hawken to tablets and Smart TVs.

Gaikai will open streaming of Hawken to PCs and Smart TVs shortly after Hawken’s debut on Dec. 12, 2012. As Hawken is planned to be free-to-play, anyone can get in and try out the streaming service. Adhesive will also explore touch-screen controls after Hawken’s launch to bring it to portable devices later on. As Jason Hughes, producer at Adhesive Games, explained, Hawken has an even greater potential to reach a wide audience by utilizing the streaming service.

“The direction we’re heading now with free-to-play, it makes sense for the game to be on as many platforms as possible,” said Hughes. “Gaikai allows us to reach many more homes than we can through the PC. The more people that are playing the game, the better the experience will be for players. It helps build a stronger community.”

Having tried OnLive, another cloud-based gaming service, I can say streaming games has me rather skeptical, as lag and framerate issues choked off my Batman: Arkham Asylum enjoyment to a choppy slideshow. However, Nvidia’s Ujesh Desai claims that, when Gaikai upgrades its data centers to run on Nvidia GeForce GRID, server-side latency will be reduced by 30 ms, on top of decreased data center costs.

“Latency will go down so that it will feel like a local console,” said Desai. “Server power is reduced by one half and game encoding is moved from the CPU to the GPU. Therefore, server GPU and game density can be increased by four times. This reduces game streaming costs. Higher quality modes are now possible.”

At an Nvidia press event, Adhesive demoed Hawken on Tegra 3 tablets, showing the game streaming at 60 fps in 720p HD with no latency.

40 million Smart TVs will feature Gaikai in the next year, according to Gaikai CEO Dave Perry. The service will utilize ad-supported streaming, and will support stereo 3D.

Adhesive Games will also be showcasing two new off-planet levels at this year’s E3, and the gaming press will be allowed to try the game for the first time at the event.

Devil’s Third, the much anticipated first project from Tomonobu Itagaki’s Valhalla Game Studios, will no longer be published by THQ, with the ailing publisher citing financial concerns as well as a number of unforeseen difficulties with the title. Rather than drag the title down with them, however, THQ is shopping the IP around to other publishers, so it may yet see the light of day.

The last time we saw or heard anything substantial about Devil’s Third was way back in 2010. Having been dark for such a long time, it started to seem more and more likely that there was trouble in the house that Itagaki built. Specifically, the company from whom Valhalla had licensed the game engine being used for Devil’s Third went under recently, effectively cutting all engine support and sending Valhalla scrambling to come up with a replacement.

The other trouble has more to do with the appreciation of the Japanese Yen compared with the US dollar. Given THQ’s current financial state, it was simply becoming too expensive to fund the game’s continued development. Give the fact that Itagaki and friends have never exactly been known for their timeliness, a protracted development cycle could have cost THQ a pretty penny indeed.

With any luck, Devil’s Third will find a new publisher soon and get back to business as usual, though there has been no word yet about any buyers in particular.

Details and trailers have slowly been trickling in about Naughty Dog’s upcoming survival game, The Last of Us, and today we get a brand new trailer.

The trailer focuses on protagonists Ellie and Joel as they drive through town to scavenge supplies. After taking a detour, they come across a sickly man and while Ellie wants to help, Joel senses an ambush. As it turns out, fungal zombies aren’t the only thing you need to fear in a post apocalyptic Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The trailer also brings up some interesting gameplay thoughts. Knowing Naughty Dog’s love for cinematic gameplay sequences, I’m guessing we’ll be seeing a few moments where we play through scenarios similar to the one presented in the trailer.

The Last of Us is currently slated for a late 2012/early 2013 launch and will be exclusive to the PS3.

You can check out the trailer after the break.

Sony’s Hong Kong site may have accidentally hit the switch on some Mass Effect 3 DLC a bit too early. Posted briefly on their site was information on a Rebellion DLC package for Mass Effect 3. Here’s the official description:

The Rebellion Multiplayer Expansion opens two new fronts against the Reapers: Firebase Jade’s jungle reservoir and Firebase Goddess on Thessia. In-game reinforcement packs now include three new weapons as well as equipment, consumables, and six new classes: Quarian Engineer and Infiltrator, Vorcha Soldier and Sentinel, Phoenix Adept and Vanguard. The battle continues – hold the line!

No price or was given but, interestingly, the release date provided was today. That could just be the result of an automated script giving the release date as the day the posting goes up, though. Here‘s a lovely screenshot of the site before it was pulled down.

Incidentally, this information confirms what Front Towards Gamer reported two weeks ago, down to the exact details. Now let’s see what this “Phoenix” race is.