It’s been a long time coming, but finally…

UPDATE: Valve announce they are releasing Source Filmmaker. “The goal of the SFM was to develop a story telling tool that allowed us to create computer animated movies more efficiently, and with greater creative freedom,” said Bay Raitt, designer at Valve. “Over the past five years, we’ve produced more than 50 animated shorts with the SFM. The Source Filmmaker will allow our community to create their own movies in Team Fortress 2 and in their own Source SDK-created mods.” (more…)

Having read our previous interview with Crate’s Arthur Bruno – a crucial portion of which he has reposted on the Grim Dawn site as a sort of manifesto – I wanted to catch up with him and to talk about how the indie ARPG was looking after its half million dollar Kickstarter success. Read on for a discussion of the challenges of Kickstarting, and some good old-fashioned PC fundamentalism.> (more…)

Spec Ops‘ handsomely bearded writing lead, Walt Williams, talks about the personalities that make up Spec Ops: The Line’s team – both player and non-player characters – in a new development diary installment, which you can see below. Williams claims that the moral choices in the game are “about holding up a mirror to yourself”, which in my case would reveal a tired-looking man with a serious head-cold and a dire need of a haircut. I am not sure what that says about my morals, but I suppose I could> do with looking in a mirror once in a while.

Anyway, clickwards for what might be a bit of a spoilery dev diary. Mr Meer is playing Spec Ops: The Line RIGHT NOW for his ultimate verdict. (more…)

As surely as it’s going to rain all summer long here in Blighty, so there’s surely going to be a new super-hero movie with game tie-ins. This time it’s The Amazing Spider-Man, who will be slinging webs as only a tidy young actor – not a nightmarish twitchy arachnid half-breed – can. It’s a fancy-looking open-world type thing, and it really does look moderately entertaining. The men at Strategy Informer have used their release date-confirming powers to ascertain that the PC version will arrive on August 10th, a healthy month-and-a-bit later than its console cousins. So that’s great news. Just great.

Amiable developer-narrated trailer below, if you’re into that sort of thing. (You so> are.) (more…)

And still they come. With Lego Lord Of The Rings coming shortly, and Lego Harry Potter 2 only just gone, the incessant supply of block-breaking cuteness has just delivered us Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes. It should more properly have been called Lego Batman & Superman, really. Is that a good thing? Shine a giant J into the sky and I’ll tell you Wot I Think. (And this time avoid telling you about how he fancies Lego Harley Quinn.)>

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As the slow dribble of behind-closed-doors E3 videos begin – rendering that whole “behind-closed-doors” bit a little farcical as it does every year – I suggest saving them all up and watching them all in three days, ideally in rooms about half a mile apart, with five minutes to get back and forth between them. Have those rooms be un-airconditioned, sealed off heat traps with the volume three times louder than the human ear can stand. Capture the experience. One very worthy addition to your schedule is Carrier Command‘s 11 minute presentation, giving you an in-depth idea of how it will play. It’s below.

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My plan is to release a 7X game. eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate, eXasperation, eXboyfriend, eXit ab urso actus. But until my great day reaches us, you’ll have to put up with just the four Xs, and as soon as the 4th July. That’s the date that’s just been put on Endless Space, Amplitude’s scifi strategy that’s looking rather good.

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If ever today gets turned into a television special, it will be called A Very Zynga News Day. The social Godzilla with the real> social skills of an actual Godzilla went announcement mad during its Zynga Unleashed briefing – which sounds like it was named for a Godzilla movie. So, let’s see, blah blah blah Sims Social clone blah blah blah ChefVille for some reason blah blah blah… oh! Here’s something: Zynga’s very own social network, called Zynga With Friends. Also they announced Farmville 2 or whatever.

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Among The Sleep‘s main character is two-years-old. In every culture except dog, that means he’s woefully under-prepared to do anything except crawl, cry, and make everything smell horrific by proxy. So then, when the game’s Internet-famous trailer threw the teetering tot into a nightmarish gauntlet of hallucinatory horrors, it provoked many a raised eyebrow. And why not? It may sound crass, but recent horror-themed games have made a rather disturbing discovery: if you want attention, put a child in a high-risk (or even fatal) situation. Just ask Dead Island’s infamous trailer and Limbo. Both games ultimately received mixed reactions, but they certainly didn’t go unnoticed. For Among The Sleep developer Krillbite, though, it’s not a matter of drawing gasps or coaxing a single tear from your eye or potentially doing both at the same time and causing you to choke hilariously. There’s a reason, after all, that this one’s first-person. We’re stepping into a child’s feet pajamas and seeing a child’s world as colored in by a child’s hyper-imaginative mind>. Without its main character, Among The Sleep probably wouldn’t even exist.

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Whenever I see “World of Warplanes,” I always read it as “World of Warp Lanes.” I have no idea what a warp lane is, but I just wanted to share that with you. Anyway, World of Warplanes is rapidly making its way down the warp lane to completion, and – in order to make sure everything comes out just right> - Wargaming.net is narrowing its focus to a few select modes. Specifically, the latest developer diary highlights Superiority (think team deathmatch with a point-controlling twist), Escort, and Training – in Russian>. Do those things strike your fancy? They should. And if not, well, let me also remind you that this is a fantastic opportunity to watch some planes go boom.

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