Sometimes I think life would be a lot easier if we weren’t all possessed by this pesky will to survive. I mean, it always makes things so complicated. What might have otherwise been a nice, pleasant Sunday afternoon high-speed collision suddenly gets all weird and lawsuit-y. Or maybe that cackling, trench-coat-clad figure in the park really was> giving away candy. But now you’ll never know. Death From A 1000 Ft Fall proposes another such situation: you’ve been shoved off a skyscraper by your arch-nemesis, but instead of spending your final moments peacefully wafting, tickling the air itself with your feather-like grace, you start thrashing and flailing and going through your pockets for things that might get you out of your almost certainly fatal predicament. Ugh, survival instincts, am I right?

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THE WORLD HAS GONE CRAZY. First Activision took some progressive (well, by Activision standards, anyway) steps with Call of Duty, and now EA’s teamed up with Humble Bundle to host a bonkers sale whose proceeds go entirely> to charity. It consists of eight titans of electronic artistry (or whatever EA’s “A” actually represents these days) both past and present, which by the mega-publisher’s count comes out to a $215 value. The bundle is, as ever, pay-what-you-want, but this time around highlights include the likes of Mirror’s Edge, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Battlefield 3, and, er, Medal of Honor. Well, they can’t all be winners. Also, some require Origin. But still: ultra-cheap games for some really great causes! It might be EA, but today I must set aside my torchfork and don my giant rubber applauding hand.

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Call of Duty: Ghosts may have given dogs the spotlight ahead of, er, half of the entire human race, but I suppose this is a case of better late than never. I mean, this is Call of Duty we’re talking about. It really could’ve been never> – or at least quite a bit longer. But hurrah: female combatants have finally joined the multiplayer fray! Even baby steps should be celebrated. Oh, and we can’t forget today’s other military-grade slab of COD news: Activision gathered a bunch of journofolk under some massive roof in Los Angeles to announce that Call of Duty still has multiplayer>. The industry spent the year sick with worry, intestines tied in knots and palms slick with pale fear, over the obviously very real possibility that Activision might throw out the most lucrative part of its biggest breadwinner for no apparent reason.

Now, however, we can rest. Ghosts will have plentiful dudes (and ladies) with guns, dogs prancing about, and new mode where you can become the explosion. Sorta. I fear that this might lead to the occasional dogsplosion, though, and that is truly the saddest possibility.

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After a weekend on the beta, where the game crashed and lost my progress and the following missions were so tough that I couldn’t claw it back, I’ll admit I didn’t like Payday 2. I quit, leaving my friend Owen to carry on with random players. But Owen has a way about him. A childish enthusiasm that he constantly fired at me on IM. He was having fun, and he wanted Bopo & Bucko* to team up again. He’d show me the way, he said. Then Jim said we should WiT it. So I threw the mask on, we formed a crime team with a pair of other friends, and hopped back online. Here’s wot I think.> (more…)

Here is my drum. It is a good drum. When I beat it, it goes, “GODS WILL BE WATCHING IS SUPER GREAT. THE PROSPECT OF AN EXPANDED VERSION IS VERY EXCITING.” A curiously specific percussive sound, yes, but one that I very much appreciate. Thus, I refuse to stop beating it until this Earth is naught but ash and dust. Or until the game comes out. Whichever happens first. Good news on that front, too: Devolver’s jumped on board to sweeten the already crowdfunded pot. The harrowing, ethical-choice-based disaster survival (and puppy petting) sim will now receive double> the final amount it makes on Indiegogo.

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Growing up, I always dreamed that I’d one day be able to live a life of adventure. Flash forward many years and – boom – several trillion point-and-click adventures. This isn’t really what I had in mind when I was a starry-eyed tyke, but you know what? It’ll do. While Telltale and Double Fine do things up with big-ish-budget panache, hundreds of smaller developers skitter about, nimble ideas prancing with quirk. Case in point: Heaven’s Hope. It’s about a fallen angel in a very literal sense – he took a nasty plummet during his final test at the stunt flying academy – who ends up in a dreary 19th century town overrun by the Spanish Inquisition. How’s that for a setup? It looks gorgeously stylized, too. Fall from these glorious frontpage heavens to the harrowing break-lands below for a trailer.

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Dishonored lacked multiplayer, $5828375 worth of microtransactions, and hyper-linear setpiece rollercoasters, yet for some reason everybody loved it. It’s almost like people want intrigue, options, and whale-oil-based societies from their games. Almost. So, with the new (and excellent) Brigmore Witches DLC bidding adieu to the first game’s creaking, disease-infested Dunwall, what’s next for the best sneaky-stabby series to come along in years? Bethesda’s officially calling it a “franchise” now, so a sequel’s all but certain. Where might it go, though? Could multiplayer be in the cards? And where does Arkane think the first game failed? Also, were Dishonored’s two DLC episodes – with their tweaked powers and fairly vocal main character – a preview of things to come? I spoke with Dishonored co-creative director Raphael Colantonio to find out.>

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It’s a day of the week, and you know what that means! An Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag trailer! To fill in those dark nanoseconds between Splinter Cell trailers.

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The journey of a videogame about hats and dying: it gets announced in a blaze of neon glory on Rock, Paper, Shotgun internet magazine (and probably other places), it blasts through its Kickstarter target like a bomb made of purified snake rage, it got Greenlit so hard it threw The Hulk through a destructible scenery, and then: BOOM, it’s on Steam for pre-ordering for immediate access to beta and all that hot French jazz.

Where will it go from there?> Hyper-tentacular endboss? Cutscene full of Japanese emotions? Walking away from explosions with aviators on? I like those odds. (more…)

They say chivalry is dead, but that hasn’t stopped it selling 1,200,000 copies on the internet. Sadly that’s because it’s actually a game about smacking people’s head off with a big piece of metal, rather than a noble code of courtesy and gallantry. But that giant milestone of downloadable seems like reason to celebrate, nonetheless: The latest update brings glad tidings for Chivalry players, too. There’s lots of small tweaks to gameplay, and a new character customisation thingum. Very handsome its results are, too. Chivalric, one might say. Heraldic, at the very least. (more…)