After the fantastic Saints Row: The Third, the question from everyone went: how can Volition top this? How can they make a game that’s more weird, more outlandish, more explosive? Then following the collapse of THQ, the license and studio was bought by a publisher who ignores the press when it’s convenient for them, then hires pole dancers for preview events – could it survive this too? Well, the answers are in Saints Row IV, due out on the 20th. I’ve played it to the very last, and can tell you wub I think:>

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You will probably be most familiar with Hidden Path via Defense Grid or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which are games quite unlike what they are working on now, which is Windborne. This is a game where the players have floating islands full of weird fluffy creatures and perhaps dragons. It’s a game of exploration, puzzle solving, crafting, questing, doing things with dragons, and construction. It also mingles single-player and multiplayer worlds to tantalising effect. Speaking with Destructoid, Hidden Path’s Michael Austin explained that there is “an evolving single-player mystery that players can choose to investigate at their own pace, and you can continue to invest time in your island or guide it towards a self-sustaining state in order to focus more on exploration, interaction, and collaboration with other players… just completely ignore the quest lines and just build, and at any point you can take your single-player world online.”

Cor! Feel-good trailer below. (more…)

Telltale seem to have a bit of a swagger about them now. The Walking Dead was pretty good, and they know it. They’re taking that swagger over to The Wolf Among Us, which has a confident new trailer, below. In case you missed the excitement, it’s a new episode series based on the Fables comic book series – with you playing as Bigby Wolf – and it’s coming up towards the end of this year. Perhaps not my sort of thing – I never did truly respect a point and clicker – but I do like a man with sideburns. (more…)

In just three hours John’s opinions on Saints Row IV will be unleashed on the internet. I have rarely seen him this excited, and that means something>. It might be possible to uncover a few clues as to the meaning of his strange behaviour by watching the latest Volition dev diary for their insane opus, which I’ve gingerly placed below this post, hoping not to crease or otherwise mar its splendid attire before the big day.

Do NOT watch this video is you are in any way squeamish or at work. I mean, you could, I’m just not advising it. Who am I now, your mother? I could be, for all you know. Have you called her lately? (more…)

It’s sort of difficult to understand why a game as good looking as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt would rely on a CGI trailer, because it’s simply doesn’t need it. Do these things even sell games? I know I buy because of the way the game looks when it plays, but do people get excited by story shine? I mean, it’s is really, really well done, but… (more…)

Watch Dogs seems like just the game to mark the burgeoning brutal reality of governments around the world using technology as a boot with which to stamp on human faces, forever. It’s a game about a fairly cool trenchcoat maverick-not-playing-by-the-rules guy – I mean I say “fairly cool”, I would never want to look like him, or dress like that, but okay he’s the kind of individualist freedom fighter a nerd like me can get behind – who uses modern things like phones and internets to fight back. He use guns too. They’re like computers that can make holes in stuff. They’ll never go out of fashion for fighting back, right guys?

Right! Anyway, a new wad of glossy commercial trailering reveals a lot more about that hacking stuff as you can see below. Gosh, it looks fancy. (more…)

It is a very good day. The week is half-over, birds are chirping delightful sunshine songs, and a broken world of shadow, chaos, and deceit has successfully sloughed its way out of Kickstarter’s collective womb. These facts are joyously skipping hand-in-hand – as you’d expect – but the third is especially thrilling. Tangiers, whose principle influences include Thief (far more so than the new Thief, based on what I’ve seen) and surrealism spiked with potent hits of the Dada Movement and David Lynch, looks utterly magnificent. Its Kickstarter was looking a little touch-and-go there for a bit, but I’m happy to report that it crossed the finish line £7,000 above its goal.

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First impressions are pretty important. Especially when you come sauntering over to the PC after a year of absence. Spelunky, beginning as a PC game, upped and left for the 360 as an advanced version last July. And it was brilliant. It’s now back, promising an even more advanced version for PC. So how is the transition?>

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Catdammit is a free game about a “hobo cat with a chainsaw”. You can play it in your browser here, or watch a video below. I recommend the former. Made entirely in the free version of Unity, this certainly shows what you can do with a free game engine, a brain, and some cheap dreams of an arcade world in which a cat destroys everything with a chainsaw. Worth playing, if just for the way trees dance happily until you chop them down.

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Zoomy pictures, music that sounds like bees trying to emulate Brian May, and punches that seem to be part of the CERN program. It can only mean it’s a Japanese fighting game, and it’s coming to the PC. Confession: I have no idea what I’m looking at, but if you’re excited to learn that The King Of Fighters XIII will be on Steam next month then I’m happy for you>. It’s not the most populated of genres, particularly on the PC, so this probably calls for some sort of celebration. This is apparently the thirteenth in the series, which means you’d have to use your toes if you wanted to count up all the games. Trailer and info below. (more…)