Need for Speed: Most Wanted Review

Vehicles glide along invisible roads in the sky. Cars are borne out of twitchy, twisty clouds of darkness. Groups of police cruisers perform coordinated donuts, twirling about like dancers in a Busby Berkeley musical. In the creative and unusual pre-race sequences throughout Need for Speed: Most Wanted, you get the sense that the city of Fairhaven is a surreal land with dreamlike logic that might allow anything to happen at any moment. It's striking, then, that the actual game here is so typical and unsurprising, and that although it delivers plenty of the hard-hitting, white-knuckle racing Criterion is known for, it doesn't do so quite as well as some of the studio's earlier games.

Some cars are well-suited to street racing and eluding the police. This is not one of them.

The first game Need for Speed: Most Wanted may make you think of isn't a Criterion game at all; it's Need for Speed Most Wanted, the 2005 game with almost the same name. But while both games take place in open-world cities and involve plenty of police chases, the similarities aren't as significant as you might expect. One of the earlier game's most memorable elements was its hilariously over-the-top tale, told using some cheesy cutscenes, of a newcomer to the city of Rockport who has a personal vendetta against local street racer Razor Callahan. The premise gave you a terrific motivation for rising through the ranks of Rockport's street racing scene and taking Razor down.

Here, you also have the goal of defeating a number of street racers, but there's no narrative to back it up. The 10 racers on your list are identified only by their cars--they don't have names or faces or personalities--and without a personal investment in defeating them, doing so isn't nearly as satisfying here as it was in the 2005 game. It is merely a structural hoop to jump through; you do it simply because the game tells you that this is what you are supposed to do.

Well, that and the fact that driving, racing, and eluding the police are really enjoyable, for the most part. If you've played Criterion's earlier Need for Speed game, 2010's Hot Pursuit, the handling here will feel immediately familiar. Despite the stable of real-world cars, the driving isn't realistic. Cars have a great sense of weight and momentum to them, while still being extremely responsive, and as you'd expect from a Criterion racer, judicious use of the brakes and a bit of practice will have you blissfully drifting through corners at high speed.

Unexpectedly, cars don't start out with boost, but fear not; boosting is a big part of racing in Most Wanted. Each vehicle has five events associated with it, and by taking first place in the easiest of these, you unlock the burn nitrous mod for that car. This enables you to boost after you build up your nitrous bar by doing things like drifting, taking down cops and rivals, and driving in oncoming traffic. Victory in each of a vehicle's events nets you speed points, which you need to earn a set number of before you can challenge each of the most wanted racers. Winning events also gives you access to other mods, including chassis that make you more resistant to impacts, gears that increase your acceleration or top speed, and tires that reinflate if popped by spike strips.

Winning events and making a good car better is rewarding; curiously unrewarding is the process of building up your car collection. In Most Wanted, you don't buy cars, and with the exception of the 10 cars driven by the 10 most wanted racers, you don't earn cars by winning events or doing anything else of significance to advance through the game. You simply find them all over Fairhaven. They're easily spotted thanks to the illuminated headlights and the manufacturer logos that hover in the air above them; you just pull up to a drivable vehicle, and it's instantly added to your collection. After that, you can warp to its spawn point and get behind the wheel, no matter where you are. The fact that you can and will so easily find yourself with a sizable stable of cars simply by cruising around Fairhaven, without having to do anything to earn some of the game's fastest rides, means that car collecting in Most Wanted lacks the sense of accomplishment so many racing games instill by letting you gradually gain access to better vehicles.

The upside of having cars waiting at set points (called jack spots) across Fairhaven is that if you get the cops on your tail as you're roaming about the city, you can pull up on a car's jack spot and, provided that you've got a bit of distance between you and your police pursuers, hop into the other car, reducing your heat level a bit. Your heat level determines just how much effort the police are putting into bringing you down. At the lowest level, you might have a few cop cruisers on your tail. As it increases, the police start setting up roadblocks in your path, and more and better law enforcement vehicles join the fray. Heavy SUVs might try to ram you head-on, and Corvette Interceptors speed along in front of you, deploying spike strips that, if hit, can seriously diminish your car's handling.

All is not lost, however; repair shops are all over the city, and driving through one instantly fixes up your car and gives you a fresh coat of paint to boot. Like using jack spots, speeding through these repair shops reduces your heat level. Your heat level increases automatically as a pursuit goes on, and taking down police cars with a satisfying shunt into oncoming traffic, a swift T-bone collision, or whatever aggressive, effective option presents itself, makes it go up significantly faster. If you get enough distance between you and your pursuers, you enter cooldown, during which your heat level declines. Stay in cooldown long enough, and the police call off the pursuit.

You earn speed points during police pursuits, but you get to keep them only if you eventually escape; if you get busted, you earn nothing, so the stakes can get quite high. Escape from the cops, and you feel great; see the speed points you earned over the course of several risky minutes disappear as you get busted, and you may be crestfallen. It's a good risk-vs.-reward system that leads to some extremely tense moments. Unfortunately, shaking off your pursuers can often feel as much a matter of luck as of skill. Police are tenacious in their pursuit of you--maybe a little too tenacious, because it sometimes seems as if no amount of changing direction, catching big air, going off-road, or anything else is enough to lose the cops. In the game's faster cars, speed can often be your savior, but in the more everyday models, it often feels like you don't have a fighting chance.

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Need for Speed: Most Wanted Review

Vehicles glide along invisible roads in the sky. Cars are borne out of twitchy, twisty clouds of darkness. Groups of police cruisers perform coordinated donuts, twirling about like dancers in a Busby Berkeley musical. In the creative and unusual pre-race sequences throughout Need for Speed: Most Wanted, you get the sense that the city of Fairhaven is a surreal land with dreamlike logic that might allow anything to happen at any moment. It's striking, then, that the actual game here is so typical and unsurprising, and that although it delivers plenty of the hard-hitting, white-knuckle racing Criterion is known for, it doesn't do so quite as well as some of the studio's earlier games.

Fairhaven's finest are always up for a little hide and seek.

The first game Need for Speed: Most Wanted may make you think of isn't a Criterion game at all; it's Need for Speed Most Wanted, the 2005 game with almost the same name. But while both games take place in open-world cities and involve plenty of police chases, the similarities aren't as significant as you might expect. One of the earlier game's most memorable elements was its hilariously over-the-top tale, told using some cheesy cutscenes, of a newcomer to the city of Rockport who has a personal vendetta against local street racer Razor Callahan. The premise gave you a terrific motivation for rising through the ranks of Rockport's street racing scene and taking Razor down.

Here, you also have the goal of defeating a number of street racers, but there's no narrative to back it up. The 10 racers on your list are identified only by their cars--they don't have names or faces or personalities--and without a personal investment in defeating them, doing so isn't nearly as satisfying here as it was in the 2005 game. It is merely a structural hoop to jump through; you do it simply because the game tells you that this is what you are supposed to do.

Well, that and the fact that driving, racing, and eluding the police are really enjoyable, for the most part. If you've played Criterion's earlier Need for Speed game, 2010's Hot Pursuit, the handling here will feel immediately familiar. Despite the stable of real-world cars, the driving isn't realistic. Cars have a great sense of weight and momentum to them, while still being extremely responsive, and as you'd expect from a Criterion racer, judicious use of the brakes and a bit of practice will have you blissfully drifting through corners at high speed.

Unexpectedly, cars don't start out with boost, but fear not; boosting is a big part of racing in Most Wanted. Each vehicle has five events associated with it, and by taking first place in the easiest of these, you unlock the burn nitrous mod for that car. This enables you to boost after you build up your nitrous bar by doing things like drifting, taking down cops and rivals, and driving in oncoming traffic. Victory in each of a vehicle's events nets you speed points, which you need to earn a set number of before you can challenge each of the most wanted racers. Winning events also gives you access to other mods, including chassis that make you more resistant to impacts, gears that increase your acceleration or top speed, and tires that reinflate if popped by spike strips.

Winning events and making a good car better is rewarding; curiously unrewarding is the process of building up your car collection. In Most Wanted, you don't buy cars, and with the exception of the 10 cars driven by the 10 most wanted racers, you don't earn cars by winning events or doing anything else of significance to advance through the game. You simply find them all over Fairhaven. They're easily spotted thanks to the illuminated headlights and the manufacturer logos that hover in the air above them; you just pull up to a drivable vehicle, and it's instantly added to your collection. After that, you can warp to its spawn point and get behind the wheel, no matter where you are. The fact that you can and will so easily find yourself with a sizable stable of cars simply by cruising around Fairhaven, without having to do anything to earn some of the game's fastest rides, means that car collecting in Most Wanted lacks the sense of accomplishment so many racing games instill by letting you gradually gain access to better vehicles.

The upside of having cars waiting at set points (called jack spots) across Fairhaven is that if you get the cops on your tail as you're roaming about the city, you can pull up on a car's jack spot and, provided that you've got a bit of distance between you and your police pursuers, hop into the other car, reducing your heat level a bit. Your heat level determines just how much effort the police are putting into bringing you down. At the lowest level, you might have a few cop cruisers on your tail. As it increases, the police start setting up roadblocks in your path, and more and better law enforcement vehicles join the fray. Heavy SUVs might try to ram you head-on, and Corvette Interceptors speed along in front of you, deploying spike strips that, if hit, can seriously diminish your car's handling.

All is not lost, however; repair shops are all over the city, and driving through one instantly fixes up your car and gives you a fresh coat of paint to boot. Like using jack spots, speeding through these repair shops reduces your heat level. Your heat level increases automatically as a pursuit goes on, and taking down police cars with a satisfying shunt into oncoming traffic, a swift T-bone collision, or whatever aggressive, effective option presents itself, makes it go up significantly faster. If you get enough distance between you and your pursuers, you enter cooldown, during which your heat level declines. Stay in cooldown long enough, and the police call off the pursuit.

You earn speed points during police pursuits, but you get to keep them only if you eventually escape; if you get busted, you earn nothing, so the stakes can get quite high. Escape from the cops, and you feel great; see the speed points you earned over the course of several risky minutes disappear as you get busted, and you may be crestfallen. It's a good risk-vs.-reward system that leads to some extremely tense moments. Unfortunately, shaking off your pursuers can often feel as much a matter of luck as of skill. Police are tenacious in their pursuit of you--maybe a little too tenacious, because it sometimes seems as if no amount of changing direction, catching big air, going off-road, or anything else is enough to lose the cops. In the game's faster cars, speed can often be your savior, but in the more everyday models, it often feels like you don't have a fighting chance.

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Medal of Honor: Warfighter's Dirty Secret Fuels the Flames of Hatred

October 29, 2012 4:22PM PDT

Tom Mc Shea analyzes the damaging portrayal of your enemies in modern military games.

The words of the enemy rang in my ears, "Carry the jihad to the infidel lands!" Undercover in a terrorist training camp, I fired shots into the chests of inanimate dummies standing in for the capitalist elite, while an Arab voice bellowed words of anger. As I boarded a makeshift airplane--the final step of my initiation--I turned my gun onto passengers while tearing toward the cockpit. I kicked the door in, tossed a grenade, and then murdered the two pilots in charge of the flight. The Arab man--head of this terrorist organization--mocked my speed but took me into the fold anyway. He had a mission to perform, and any able-bodied man with a cold, black heart could further the cause.

Moral judgments are made during this sequence and cemented through the course of Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The Arab and Somali forces who oppose you are bad. While you, a good guy from America, kill to protect your family and to preserve your freedom, their motivations are never properly explored. Instead, they exhibit the same stereotypical behavior prevalent in so much media. Terrorists shout threatening words in a foreign tongue, mercilessly execute hostages, and, when their end is near, strap a bomb to their chest so they can't be taken alive. Honor? Pride? Respect? Save that for the Americans. The alien people depicted in Warfighter don't deserve your sympathy. They deserve a bullet to the head.

Because Warfighter doesn't take the time to explain who your enemies are, they become nothing more than evil strawmen who represent every deplorable thing terrorists have done to America. But such a representation is lazy and unfair. Exploration of the cause of their unrest is necessary to establish them as real human beings. But if Danger Close gave them a purpose other than to be mindless killers, if they also had families waiting for them at home, dreams of a life without oppression, that would shatter the illusion the development team has created. To give them feelings, a personality, would make murdering hundreds--thousands!--of them during the course of the campaign upsetting. Fleshing them out would have required respect for the players, that they are mature enough to fight a fully realized enemy. But that's not the case here. Your enemies are part of an organization dedicated to the murder of your countrymen.They are foreign. They are different. And they deserve to die.

Modern military games are damaging in too many ways to count. From the way they transform American soldiers into unfeeling automatons capable of killing thousands without the slightest twinge of sorrow, to their explosion-filled set pieces that further the notion that war is a fun pastime, military shooters are filled with the realization of our unhealthy desire for senseless bloodshed. But the one element that's most troubling is how the other side is depicted as little more than feral dogs. It's sickening that human beings could be treated so poorly in popular video games, and it's only strengthening society's tendency to fear that which they do not know. It doesn't matter that Warfighter doesn't develop your enemies. They are the other. They want to hurt you and that's reason enough to want them dead.

Your enemies are foreign. They are different. And they deserve to die.

Such an unjust portrayal should have disgusted me. But instead of anger boiling my blood every time my enemies were painted as less than human, I felt only a cold pang in the bottom of my stomach. Medal of Honor: Warfighter is just the latest in a seemingly never-ending string of military shooters that fuel the flames of righteous jingoism and the insidious us-against-the-world mentality. I played through Warfighter with quiet determination. Dialogue thick with combative patriotism spewed from the screen and into my subconscious, joining the wealth of such poisonous rhetoric that any consumer of video games and popular media absorbs over the years. I've become numb to all this chatter. This is the kind of game that sells, and every developer eager to make a splash at retail is willing to set aside moral obligations to rope in those who crave senseless killing.

The cutscenes and gameplay join hands in an unholy marriage of xenophobic pride. While the cutscenes continually stoke the fires of your unrelenting hatred toward the other, the gameplay allows you to enact a dark fantasy with little repercussions. In some games, dodgy artificial intelligence could be chalked up to the limits of the development cycle, and the enemies could be excused their recklessness and idiocy. In a modern military game, the enemies are modeled after actual people, which makes their stupidity more obvious. And these mindless enemies feed into the messages these games continually communicate.

First, by creating an enemy that is unfathomably stupid, the notion that the people you're fighting are less than human is hammered home. Watch as your squadmates duck behind cover, circle targets to get a better vantage, and do their best to stay out of their enemy's line of sight. Their impenetrable shields protect them from bullets that sink into their flesh, making you and the forces of good seem like gods compared to the lowly people who oppose you. Now contrast that with how your enemies react. A foreign soldier may run from cover to find a spot in the middle of a wide-open courtyard, assuming a vulnerable position while you gun him down in cold blood. Another pauses expectantly while you execute the person next to him, waiting for you to deliver another oh-so-satisfying headshot.

The second reason the artificial intelligence is lousy in so many modern military shooters is that these games are little more than power fantasies. Programming enemies to favor suicidal tactics instead of self-preservation allows players to kill thousands of enemies during the course of the game. Imagine the alternative for just one second. If every enemy were as smart as your squadmates, hiding behind cover as long as possible, forcing you to be on the offensive, each encounter would stretch on for dozens of minutes, if not longer. Because your enemies are mindless, you don't have to put yourself in your character's head. You don't have to consider how the enemy thinks; how he's going to react. Instead, you wait a second or two for the enemy to expose himself, and you gun him down with a couple of shots. And the bodies pile up at your feet.

Different games and different difficulty levels can mitigate the divide between the superhuman protagonist and his subhuman foes, but the underlying message is unmistakeable. Medal of Honor: Warfighter is a game that furthers the divide between Western philosophies and the rest of the world. But it's not alone. It's only a meager imitation of what has come before it, underlining how pervasive this problem has become. Until we recognize what these games represent, and how damaging they are, developers will continually parrot the same jingoistic blather. We live in troubling times, but as long as we see through the facade, there's hope for the future.

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Split Attention in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

October 29, 2012 5:16PM PDT

Get the first details on this somber fairy tale that puts you in simultaneous control of two adventuring brothers.

How well can you multitask? If you've ever had trouble scratching your head while patting your stomach, perhaps Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, also a third-person downloadable adventure game comes from the mind of Swedish film director Josef Fares, can help you start thinking in parallel.

While Brothers stars two protagonists, it is not a cooperative game. Instead, you are expected to control both avatars simultaneously. This is done by dividing the controller in half. The left directional stick and shoulder buttons control the older brother, while the opposite stick and buttons control the younger (or is it the other way around?). For players experienced with modern games--where only a single avatar is controlled--this two-person mechanic may feel a bit…alien.

All interactions are contextual, and there are no prompts for intractable elements.

The brothers are on a quest to find a cure for their dying father. Along the way they can interact with various people and items. These interactions differ depending on which brother you use. For example, the older brother generally wants to speak with, or aid, others. The younger brother loves playing tricks or making people laugh. In the picture above, you see a girl playing with her ball. Taking the ball gives you an opportunity to play a surprisingly tricky game of catch with the brothers and hone your skills.

The game does not include traditional combat, but will have boss encounters of a sort.

To help you adjust to controlling the brothers, the game has several asynchronous puzzles. One example involves a menacing dog, shown above. The brothers need to cross the field, but the dog will attack if they try to run past. Working together, one brother can distract the canine while the other brother moves up to the next hay bale. By taking turns in this way, they will eventually outwit the canine.

Fares couldn't stress enough the importance of using a traditional controller when playing Brothers.

The dog example is about as close as the game gets to traditional combat. Exploring the world, talking with villagers, and solving puzzles take precedence over hacking and slashing. It is a very relaxed and slow-paced game, but that doesn't mean it is boring. "I value my time and the quality of experience," Fares noted. "Any [puzzle] you encounter will not recycled a second time."

Take a little time off the main path, and you might find a pack of rabbits: three black and one white. The black rabbits are all clustered together, and when the white rabbit tries to approach, they all hop away. Should you feel sorry for the lonely white rabbit, you could dip it in the ashes of an expired camp fire. The soot-covered rabbit will then be able to happily join his kin.

The game's fictional language leaves some of the interactions, and story, open for interpretation.

If helping poor rabbits and playing catch doesn't sound like a fun time, Brothers may not be the game for you. And Fares is perfectly OK with this. "This game is not for everyone," he admitted, but he hopes that those who do enjoy it can make some sort of connection with it. You should be able to finish this game in one sitting, he noted, since the game is only three to four hours long. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is set for release during the spring of next year on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and PC.

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GTA V posters show spring 2013 release?

October 28, 2012 4:49PM PDT

Photos of what appears to be a promotional poster for Rockstar's upcoming title suggests the game will be out early next year; Xbox 360 and PS3 are the only platforms listed.

A Polish fan site has posted photos of what appear to be promotional posters for Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto V, which seem to suggest that the game will be out early next year.

According to the photos posted on the site GTA-Five.pl (currently down), and spotted by Kotaku, Grand Theft Auto V is set to be released in spring 2013.

The photos of the posters also indicate only two platforms--Xbox 360 and PS3--with no mention of the PC or the upcoming Wii U.

Last week, Rockstar released the official artwork for the game, and promised that more details would be released in November.

It has been previously confirmed that the GameStop-owned Game Informer magazine will feature the game in its December issue.

GTA V was announced in October 2011, but the game remains largely a mystery. Some analysts expect it to be on store shelves by March 2013, while others disagree. For more on GTA V, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.

By Laura Parker, Associate Editor

Laura Parker is the Associate Editor of GameSpot Australia. She loves adventure games, sparkly stuff, Trivial Pursuit, cake, Master Chief, earthworms, and rhetorical questions. She once stole a sandwich from Peter Molyneux.

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This Week in Games: October 27, 2012

Halo 4, Assassin's Creed and GTA news, plus G4 ditching its games programming, Zynga's downsizing, games media hissy fits, and more Meat. Also: Minecraft and League of Legends dominate, still.

Assassin's Creed III ships next week with bonkers, lofty expectations both critically and commercially, but it is already breaking records of sorts. Ubisoft announced on Thursday that the new installment is the company's "most preordered game" (that's a thing people care about these days, apparently) ever, surpassing previous record holder Assassin's Creed: Revelations. The franchise as a whole has now sold more than 40 million units to date across all systems.

If you love the franchise so much that you'd really like to wear clothing evocative of the styles it portrays, you're in luck. Purveyors of high-end games-inspired clothes Musterbrand (it also sells stuff based on Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Hitman, and Metal Gear Solid) has launched an official Assassin's Creed clothing line, which offers various cardigans, coats, and long- and short-sleeve shirts. The most expensive offering is the "AC DNA Coat," (below) which sells for £162, or about $260. Other items included in the virtual marketplace include a "Kingdom Knit Jacket" and an "Ottoman Long Cardigan."

Sticking with the Creed for a moment; the upcoming Assassin's Creed movie is coming sooner rather than later. Ubisoft announced on Monday that its Ubisoft Motion Pictures outfit has "fast-tracked" the film, and partnered with production company New Regency to get the job done. Ubisoft's deal with New Regency allows the game maker to maintain control of "key elements" of the film's creative direction, unlike its deal with Disney that led to some "creative" re-interpretations for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Writing of the screenplay for the untitled film is beginning immediately, Ubisoft said, but did not specify who has been tapped for the job (we say, give it to Book of Eli and The Walking Dead Ep 4 scribe Gary Whitta, he knows games and movies.) "Ubisoft chose to partner with New Regency because they are a talent and filmmaker-driven company, with the same independent and creative mindset that we have at Ubisoft Motion Pictures," said Ubisoft Motion Pictures chief executive officer Jean-Julien Baronnet. What we do know at this point is that the movie will star Michael Fassbender as the Assassin and, presumably (or not?) Desmond.

Wii U, Online Games, and Pre-Orders

An updated Electronic Arts privacy policy document confirms that Wii U gamers wishing to play EA titles online will need an Origin account to do so. Additionally, by signing up for a Origin account for Wii U, players must agree to allow EA to collect their email address, Mii information, friend list, country, language, and date of birth. Further, the document spells out "Nintendo Network ID." Nintendo has previously confirmed that Friend Codes from the Wii era would return for the Wii U, but it is not clear if "Nintendo Network ID" is a new name for these. Having an EA Origin account to play EA games online is not an exclusive requirement for the Wii U. The same policy is in place for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gamers. In all cases and for all platforms, players will not need to agree to share their credit card number or other personal financial account information. 

Speaking of the Wii U, pre-orders seem to be piling up pretty fast. According to Nintendo, Wii U preorders at GameStop have sold out. That, however, has not kept gamers from expressing interest in the new console. Company president Satoru Iwata claimed in new presentation that as of last week, more than 250,000 gamers had put their names on GameStop's Wii U wait list. That same presentation also indicated that the company will be selling the device at a loss, initially. Iwata stated the company's ambition to sell the system at a "reasonable" price trumped its desire to sell the console in line with manufacturing costs.

League of Legends = Insanely Popular. Duh

Riot released numbers on Monday for the recent League of Legends Season 2 World Championships which took place last week at the Galen Center Arena at the University of South California. Riot is reporting that at peak, over 1,154,000 unique people watched the event online, not counting TV numbers. More than 8,282,000 unique viewers tuned in total via online and TV combined, with 2,402,225 people watching through Korean and Chinese TV. Over the course of both the World Playoffs and Finals, people watched 24,230,688 hours of League of Legends. These numbers make the Riot Season 2 World Championships the most watched competitive gaming eSports event of all time. With the rise of streaming services like Twitch.TV and Own3d.TV, this record has been broken several times in the past year. Two months ago, the bar was set by Valve's The International Dota 2 tournament, taking in 567,000 concurrent viewers, half from China. In June, Major League Gaming brought in 437,000 concurrent viewers and 4.7 million unique viewers for the Spring Championships. Riot has now shattered those previous records.

Meat Lovers, Rejoice. Something With Cats Incoming

Super Meat Boy developer Team Meat has unveiled its next game. Writing on the company blog, Edmund McMillen announced Mew-Genics, the two-man studio's next official project.  Details are light on the game, but McMillen said it will be "randomly generated, strange, and involve cats." He added that Mew-Genics is the strangest project he has ever worked on, which is definitely saying something given his back-catalog. Mew-Genics is a result of a game jam Team Meat founders McMillen and Tommy Refenes held one weekend in September. McMillen said development is "moving quite fast," with more information and screenshots coming "soon." He also assured fans holding out for Super Meat: The Game for iOS devices that the game is still in development, but it has been placed "on hold" until the company releases Mew-Genics.

Borderlands Coming to iPhone/iPad Next Week

The Borderlands franchise appears to be branching out from consoles and PC and coming to mobile platforms. A Gearbox forum user first spotted an advertisement for Borderlands Legends in the Borderlands 2 digital strategy guide, indicating the game will release for iPad and iPhone sometime this month. This was later confirmed by a teaser story on Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch blog on Tuesday. EW games report Matt Cabral then followed this up on Thursday with an exclusive hands-on look at the game, which will hit the App Store next Wednesday night. Cabral described the game, saying "its gameplay signifies a drastic departure from the series' defining open-world first-person shooting. Viewed from a top-down perspective, each level unfolds in a small, arena-like battlefield where the original Borderlands' vault hunters — Brick, Lilith, Mordecai, and Roland — are tasked with fending off hordes of ugly foes. Missions contain multiple, increasingly difficult levels, each with four waves of baddies to unload on. More objective-based than story-driven, missions include a clear-cut goal; during my demo, for example, I was required to destroy three crates of Marcus bobbleheads — a cool call-out fans will appreciate. While reducing the crates to rubble doesn't pose much of a problem, staying alive while attempting to do so is another story. Enemies approach from all sides and utilize different attack patterns." He continued, describing its tablet-friendly controls scheme. "Legends evens the odds by putting players behind the ass-kicking arsenals of all four protagonists. Simultaneously controlling the quartet is a delicate balancing act favoring thoughtful strategy over ammo clip-emptying abandon. Characters fire weapons automatically, so it's up to the player to ensure they're in the right spot to get a bead on the bad guys. In terms of controls, this means tapping characters and drawing a destination path, or touching them and then the enemy the player wants them to focus on. Legends also encourages the use of cover, littering each level with waste-high defenses to hunker down behind." The game will boast a total of 36 unique powers and abilities, as well as "thousands" of weapons, and a "strategic cover system." Cabral also noted that the looting mechanic only yields money, not weapon-drops.

Rough Week for Studios

Tuesday was not a great day for many Zynga employees. The social gaming empire confirmed that its Austin, Texas-based studio (home of its The Sims Online-esque The Ville) may eventually be closed, with more than 100 staffers losing their jobs this week. Affected employees were given just a matter of hours to clear their desks and leave their offices. Zynga also closed its Boston studio, which was producing Indiana Jones Adventure World. "These reductions, along with our ongoing efforts to implement more stringent budget and resource allocation around new games and partner projects, will improve our profitability and allow us to reinvest in great games and our Zynga network on web and mobile," said CEO Marc Pincus in an internal memo received by Gamasutra. The announcement of the downsizing came during Apple's much-publicized press event, during which the technology giant announced the long-rumored $329 iPad mini, among other things.

The following day, Zynga said it is forming an exclusive partnership with bwin.party, a real-money gaming operator. This marks the company's first move into real-money from the fake-cash gaming its used to hosting on Facebook, through games like Zynga Poker. The poker and casino games site in the UK will use Zynga's branding and will launch with 180 games that the two companies have worked on together, including slots, roulette and blackjack. Zynga stalwarts will have a presence too; there's a Farmville slots game. Oh, happy day.

In other downsizing news, Bigpoint--the studio behind Battlestar Galactica Online--also laid off 120 workers this week, more than a third of which were from the San Francisco studio, the rest being mainly administrative staff from the office in Hamburg, Germany. It also announced the departure of CEO Heiko Hubertz, who will be taking up the role of executive chairman of the company's supervisory board. The company is cutting its development efforts in the US, claiming that development in the regional is not efficient. "The games that we have developed in the last two years haven't been that successful, and the San Francisco area and Bay Area is quite a competitive market," Hubertz told Games Industry International. "San Francisco is, after New York, one of the most expensive cities you can live in in the US, so the people are quite expensive."

The Boston area development scene took its second hit on Thursday when Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment confirmed to The Boston Globe that it has enacted a round of layoffs at the Needham, Massachusetts-based Turbine Inc. "As part of the continual review of our business operations and fluctuating market conditions, we have had to make reductions in our Turbine workforce," a spokesperson from the company said. "The group continues to remain an integral part of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment." According to the report, Turbine had more than 400 employees before the cuts, making the studio the Boston area's most sizable studio.

G4 Done With Games Programming, Refocusing on "GQ-style" Content

Struggling TV network G4 is cancelling all gaming-related programming, including X-Play and Attack of the Show, a source reportedly close to the situation told Kotaku on Friday. An "exclusive report" on TV Guide's website explains the shows will be winding down over the next two months, rolling out new episodes through December. Tweets from G4 employees, including Attack of the Show host Candace Bailey and X-Play personality Blair Herter, suggested that changes were afoot late on Thursday.

"Attack of the Show and X-Play have been important for G4, and we want to acknowledge the creative people who have helped inspire and showcase the phenomenon of gamer culture," G4 Media general manager Adam Stotsky told TV Guide. "With more than 3,000 episodes aired between them, we have more than enough great material to honor these innovators and their amazing contributions as we bring both shows to a close."

Remember SmartGlass?

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it would be bringing the Xbox entertainment experience to tablets, PCs, and phones, but has hardly said a thing about it since. Remember that? SmartGlass? Well, they haven't forgotten all about it;  the new update will actually , be launched this Friday, October 26, on Windows 8 and Windows RT. SmartGlass will live on mobile devices as an app, allowing users to access their 360 content from several mobile devices. The technology will also include a feature that Microsoft is dubbing "multi-screen entertainment," allowing gamers to enhance their gaming experience by integrating their mobile devices as they play games on the Xbox 360. SmartGlass will be free for download on Windows 8 and RT PCs, Windows Phone 8, iOS, and Android devices. The following games and partners have confirmed Xbox SmartGlass integration: Ascend, Dance Central 3, Forza Horizon, Halo Waypoint, Home Run Stars, Karaoke, Kinect Sesame Street TV, and Prima Games.

Halo 4 = Hella Expensive to Make. Also, Maps

If you're looking to grab Halo 4 and all its add-on map packs, you're going to end up spending around $85 by next Spring. Microsoft announced the Halo 4 "War Games Map Pass" on Wednesday this week, a very-reasonable (compared to comparable offerings) $25 package that gets players nine maps in total that will be released between December 2012 and April 2013. The map packs will sell for about $10 each as standalone downloads. So, if you commit up front you'll be saving about 15 percent. In addition, players who purchase the Map Pass will receive two in-game helmets ("Scanner" and "Strider") and an in-game emblem ("Falcon"). The Pass is included as part of the $100 Halo 4 Limited Edition release. The first pack due out  is titled "Crimson" and will launch in December with the maps "Wreckage," "Harvest," and "Shatter." You then have to wait a couple of months, and then in February 2013 you'll get the "Majestic" pack, which adds "Landfall," "Monolith," and "Skyline" to the mix. The last pack comes in April, dubbed "Castle" with "Daybreak" (shown below,) "Outcast," and "Perdition."

In other Halo 4 news, we also learned this week that the game is the most expensive game ever produced by a studio at Microsoft. If the game is a bust, it won't be for lack of trying. Microsoft Game Studios boss Phil Spencer told Polygon this week that the company has spent more money making Halo 4 than it has developing any other game in the company's history. Absolutely. Nothing's even close," he said. He added that the Halo series, which he estimated to be a "three billion dollar franchise," is the company's "most important entertainment product." Some of Microsoft's other major franchises include Forza, Fable, and Banjo-Kazooie.

Speaking of Polygon. Congratulations to the whole team over at Vox Media. After months of teases, and their content being buried within parent-site The Verge, the full site games finally launched this week with much fanfare on Twitter. We wish them well. Check it out here.

GTA Info-Dribble 

Want another dribble of Grand Theft Auto V info? A new piece of artwork emerged this week, showing nothing we haven't already seen in the trailer that hit ages ago. The real motivation for the non-news seems to be pre-awareness for a substantial info-dump in November, via the Game Informer cover story that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Still, GTA is GTA, and the lack of real info doesn't make us any less excited for it. In fact, indulge your love of the franchise with this anniversary celebration from earlier this week.

Speaking of anniversaries, Grand Theft Auto: Vice Cityturns ten years old this month, and to celebrate, Rockstar Games will release an "Anniversary Edition" of the game for select iOS and Android devices this fall. According to Rockstar, GTA: Vice City for mobiles will contain the "full experience" found in the original PlayStation 2 title. It will feature high-res graphics and "several" enhancements unique to the iOS and Android platforms.

Libel, Legal Threats, and Doritos

Criticisms of games media, like any other kind of media these days, are many and frequent in public forums in in opinion pieces. Normally they're not particularly newsworthy, but this week the fallout of such criticism sparked debate and controversy across a variety of communities.

It all started when Rab Florence, a comedy writer, performer, and occasional writer-about-games wrote a piece for Eurogamer dubbed Lost Humanity 18: A Table of Doritos. He opened with the widely-circulated and derided image of Spike's Geoff Keighley surrounded by licensed Halo 4 junk from Mountain Dew and Doritos, characterizing it as "tragic and vulgar" before going on to explore how seemingly innocent actions can easily be interpreted as an act of bias by a reader. He also skewered the European "Games Media Awards," which happened recently in London. "Games PR people and games journos voted for their favourite friends, and friends gave awards to friends, and everyone had a good night out," Florence noted, before elaborating on his disdain for such chummy behavior. The story discussed writers tweeting with the hashtag #gmadefience at the event in order to win a PS3 from publisher Trion, and a few instances of behavior he found questionable. As Ben Kuchera noted in his analysis of the events, that's not news. Opinion pieces rarely are. What happened next however, is.

Intent Media, the publisher of MCV UK, reached out to Eurogamer to complain about comments made about their journalist, Lauren Wainwright, about whom Florence had expressed some suspicions due to tweets arguing that she saw nothing wrong with GMA attendees winning free PlayStations n return for social media promotion. Absurdly, given that everything quoted was done so on a public forum (Twitter, though Wainwright has now made her profile private) Eurogamer has since deleted sections of the story, and it has been claimed that MCV threatened Eurogamer with legal action. MCV editors, on the other hand, state that no legal action was actually threatened. The Eurogamer piece now carries the sidebar, "Following receipt of a complaint from Lauren Wainwright, Eurogamer has removed part of this article (but without admission of any liability). Eurogamer apologises for any distress caused to Ms Wainwright by the references to her. The article otherwise remains as originally published."

Much has been written about this in the past few days. Adam Pavlacka wrote about it on Worth Playing, there's Kuchera's piece on Penny Arcade Report, as noted above, along with a  withering piece from Rock, Paper, Shotgun's John Walker, who concluded, "The last two days have been an utter disgrace for UK games journalists and PRs. I'm sick with anger about it. I'm embarrassed by my profession, and I'm once again reminded that even though being outside the cliquey circles can feel like you're doing something wrong, it likely means I and others are doing something right. I implore young writers getting started in this business to avoid getting embroiled in the cosy world of PR-journo group hugs, and I desperately suggest to them that if you ever think you might want to prevent another journalist from publishing their thoughts, that you instantly quit and get a job where you won't be a disgrace to our industry."

Florence, sadly, has endured criticism and derision from some quarters for choosing to criticize what he observed, as he noted on Twitter on Thursday.

As you can imagine, the whole debacle has spawned plenty of discussion on forums such as Reddit, and NeoGAF.

Minecraft More Popular than Call of Duty on Xbox 360 

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is already a breakout hit. It has sold over 4 million copies since launch in May, driving $80 million in revenue. Now, it has hit another milestone. The latest Xbox Live activity chart reveals the game was the most popular title on Xbox Live for the week of October 15. The game tallied more unique users on Xbox Live during the week than big-budget retail releases like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, FIFA 13, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Borderlands 2, Halo: Reach, and Battlefield 3. Not surprisingly, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition was also the best-selling Xbox Live Arcade title of the week, outperforming the likes of The Walking Dead, Sonic Adventure 2, and Trials Evolution. Specific sales figures were not released, but in August, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition was selling at a clip of 17,000 copies per day, amassing revenue of a staggering $340,000 every 24 hours.

To celebrate, enjoy this Minecraft-themed Gangnam Style parody from CaptainSparklez. 

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Field Trip: Contests & EyeCandy

October 27, 2012 3:15PM PDT

This week's Field Trip is packed with Halloween themed activities, contests, and information about the latest game industry community news along with ways to find free stuff or discounts on games.

Many game industry communities like Capcom, Bethesda, Sega, EA, Gearbox, and Blizzard are rolling out in-game content and contests around Halloween. This report is packed with ways for you to celebrate the spooky holiday, but don't worry, there's some regular happenings too!

Industry Community Activities

- Bethesda Killer Dishonored Moves Contest ends Oct. 31
- Halo 4 Soundtrack Remix Contest ends Oct. 29
- Win a role in Activision's Walking Dead game
- Resident Evil 6 LampFree projector sweepstakes
- Turbine Pumpkin Carving Contest ends Nov. 2
- GameStop Assassin's Creed III Reward Giveaway ends Oct. 31
- Blizzard Halloween Pumpkin Carving Contest ends Oct. 28
- Call of Duty Fan Megapack IV Giveaway ends Oct. 30
- Blizzard Comic Contest ends Oct. 31
- Amazon.com Halloween Gamer Costume Contest ends Oct. 31
- Capcom Design your own Darkstalker ends Oct .31
- World of Tanks Trailer Contest ends Oct. 28
- Unreal Games Wallpaper Contest ends Dec. 10
- Capcom Okami Pumpking Carving Contest ends Oct. 30
- Reddit Pumpkin Carving Contest ends:Oct. 29

To Loot or Not to Loot

- Borderlands 2 Halloween Masks you can print!
- Ravaged $10 off only $14.99 for a limited time.
- Borderlands 2 Golden Keys Giveaway at Gearbox.
- SEGA Halloween Sale on Mobile platforms.
- Lord of Ultima 50% off Castle Themes sale ends Nov. 2.
- Sonic the Hedgehog Toy Collection by Erector.
- XBL: Resident Evil 4 HD, Dead Rising 2 on sale.
- Guild Wars 2 Gems Cards Available at select retailers.
- Minecraft: Halloween Skin Pack for the Xbox 360.
- PSN SFxT Swap Costumes 50 percent off.
- End of Nations Original Soundtrack coming soon.
- Paint your own Dragonborn figure
- Guild Wars 2 Halloween Guide
- ClapTrap blue edition
- Gears of War and Fortnite Twitter headers
- Capcom store has 10% off when you donate towards charity; also earn a chance to win a Street Fighter 25th Anniversary Chess Set.

Eye Candy

- Command & Conquer Nod Pie
- Team Fortress Doomates Digital Comic
- Line of Defenses Digital Comic
- Street Fighter Car Spotted in Miami
- Epic Jack O'Lanterns
- SWTOR Fan Art - Movie Poster
- Brick Force Comic Episode 12
- Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel, Now and Then
- Treyarch Bloody Office Makeover
- Gears of War Wall Sculpture
- Plants vs. Zombies:: Stop Zombie Mouth!
- World of Tanks Fan Art Spotlight
- Starcrafts, the animation
- Dragon Ages III: Inquisition Concept Art First Look
- Resident Evil BGS2012 Cosplay

The Buzz

General
- Barcraft Gatherings
- Need for Speed Halloween Community Event
- Rift: Storm of Legions Beta event November 2-7
- Secret World Halloween Celebration
- The first annual Edmonton Comic & Entertainment Expo
- Team Evil Geniuses reveal some Starcraft 2 pro tips
- Team Fortress 2 Scream Update
- Wicked Weekend Celebration over at BrickForce
- Play BioShock Infinite: Industrial Revolution to earn rewards
- Pixar visited the Blizzard office report
- EA Breast Cancer Walk 2012
- Official Dishonored Mapp App
- Free-to-Play Shooter Hits Home

Spotlights

- SOE October Gamer of the Month
- Community Creation of the Week: A Bard's Song
- BrickForce's Community Spotlight
- Concept Artist Spotlight: Naomi Baker
- PSN Community Spotlight – The Joy Of Horror

Career Path

- GameSpot Senior Software Engineer
- Amazon recruiting 10,000 extra Christmas staff
- Gamasutra Hiring Report : PopCap, Riot, and Retro Studios

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Medal of Honor: Warfighter - Graphics Comparison

 The_Beanster That's not exactly accurate. I have a PC and I game up close but for console gaming I am sitting 10 feet away on a 50 inch Plasma. I can't tell the difference between 1080P and 720P movies on my TV< nevermind graphics resolution. The human eye is not capable of dissolving the details unless you get a 60-70 inch TV or sit closer. For most console gamers, lack of 1080P is a moot point. What hurts consoles are 30 fps in most games, and poor textures, lack of DX11 lighting model, tessellation, and unique features like PhysX. Resolution alone, even on the PC, is a meaningless metric. As a PC gamer, I laugh when PC gamers still use it as evidence of better graphics. Take Crysis 1 and at 1280x1024 it looks better than 90% of PC games at 2560x1536. Resolution by itself adds nothing to the game. 

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GameSpot Black Fridays - Episode 1

Save big with Black Fridays, brought to you by Amazon.com, a new live weekly show that hooks you up with exclusive gaming deals. This week's lineup includes an exclusive offer on Assassin's Creed III. Offers only valid in the US.

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Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward Review

Adventure games are making something of a resurgence lately, thanks in part to the new input methods appearing on consoles and handhelds. Interest in adventure games has also been driven by a number of somewhat less traditional entries in the genre, such as the heavily text-and-image-driven visual-novel-style adventure games from Japan. In 2010, Aksys Games released Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors for the DS, a horror-themed adventure game mixing visual-novel-type storytelling scenes and character interaction with puzzle-laden rooms that you needed to escape. The warm reception of that game has now yielded a sequel in Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward--and it's just as enthralling as its predecessor.

Virtue's Last Reward begins with the protagonist, a college student named Sigma, waking up in an elevator next to a strange woman who seems to know more about him than she's letting on. A strange rabbit creature appears on a monitor near them, telling them that they must figure out how to escape the car before it falls. Once they do, they find themselves in an abandoned warehouse with seven other abducted individuals. The creature appears again, telling them that they must all play the Ambidex game to escape their industrial prison. The Ambidex game involves puzzles, traps, and important decisions to either trust or betray your fellow players. The penalty for losing or failing to comply is death, or possibly an even worse fate.

The game is divided into two distinct sections. As Sigma, you team up with groups of your fellow captives and explore various rooms of this mysterious facility. These rooms are the escape portion of the game: you investigate a room for items, clues, and puzzles to solve, piecing things together until you are finally able to unlock a safe containing an item to allow you to exit.

The story- and dialogue-heavy portions of the game are the novel portions, which appear in between the escape sections and elaborate on the various mysteries the game presents. You also have the opportunity to make choices that influence the path the game's plot takes. The game's use of the term "novel" to refer to these sections is apt: there's a massive amount of text in Virtue's Last Reward, but because the writing is superb and the voice-over work for the supporting cast (available in both English and Japanese) is excellent, the hours upon hours of dialogue you page through are a pleasure to experience.

The quality of storytelling is a key factor in an adventure game, and Virtue's Last Reward passes that test with flying colors. The game's plot immediately grabs you and rarely lets go, going from a creepy horror premise to interpersonal character drama to mind-blowing sci-fi concepts expertly. The promise of unraveling the many mysteries--Why are we here? Who are these other people? What purpose do the Ambidex game and the room puzzles serve? What is this facility?--keep you engaged, and the many new mysteries that appear throughout give you even more reasons to keep playing for hours on end as solutions dangle tantalizingly in front of you, just beyond the reach of the next puzzle.

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