Despite what’s been a rough holiday season for Electronic Arts both in terms of sales and company layoffs, EA reassured us today that it remains commited to keeping its two new intellectual properties, Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space, moving ahead. Read more…

It’s Spore. Were you surprised, really? All that DRM nonsense, all those lackluster reviews, all those pirates urging folks to fight the power by pirating this game. Rounding out the list of the year’s most stolen are Assassin’s Creed, The Sims 2, Crysis (still? come on guys), and more. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at number seven? That seems random.

When it comes down to it, though, it’s a damn shame that what a lot of us will remember Spore for is for being downloaded hella much. Then again, there are people who will say that EA deserved every dollar they didn’t get for this game. What’s your guys’ take? Does Spore deserve the decidedly undesirable title of “most pirated game of the year”?

Source: Torrent Freak

Once not too long ago, Blizzard joked about World of Warcraft coming to consoles in the form of a game called World of Warcraft: The Molten Core…for the Atari 2600.

Now some folks at Gamer’s University have been crazy enough to take that joke and roll with it so far as to create a playable game out of it, with “glorious” 192i resolution, 8-way directional control (!) and “revolutionary AI that reacts to your every move (which can be in any of 8 directions, remember?)”. I’m not sure how close it is to the real Molten Core having never done that raid, but it’s still pretty hilarious. Read more…

See the look on that kid’s face? It’s a look that says one of two things. “Man I really gotta go to the bathroom” is one of them. The other one is “Oooh I am stalking behind you and am going to knife you” during a COD4 match.

Unless you game with a mirror in front of your face, you probably aren’t familiar with what you look like when you’re playing something. “Immersion”, a new video gallery from The New York Times Magazine, does that for us, just with one key difference: it’s about kids. Read more…

At and around the time of 9/11, I was a Counter-Strike addict. It sometimes struck me as odd while I’d played the game, but it never felt wrong. Should it have? It was a game, it was a whole mess of fun, and it didn’t matter much to me how topical the game inadvertently was. I was a teenager. I wasn’t smart enough to see that yet.

During 9/11, Naomi Alderman wasn’t playing terrorists vs. counter-terrorists on de_dust. She was playing Paladins and Sorcerers vs. Mephisto and Duriel in the Durance of Hate. She was playing Diablo II, for 30 hours a week. It was her way of dealing with the tragedy surrounding her in the streets of Manhattan. And, looking back, she sees absolutely nothing wrong with that. Read more…

Being a resident of a major American metropolis with you know, some people who are into arcades, I’ve gotten a chance to play Street Fighter IV – dare I say it – the way it was meant to be played. On a big ol’ cabinet with quarters lined up along the bottom of the screen, huddled up next to a crowd of fellow fighting game fanboys, getting my ass kicked by some quiet dude beasting with Blanka.

I should count myself lucky, and I do. Street Fighter IV won’t be coming to US arcades in any official capacity. No surprise to anyone, but Capcom just set it in stone. Read more…

The Last Remnant, a game previously doomed to the bargain bin before it was even released, has received a near perfect score from prestigious Japanese gaming mag Weekly Famitsu. The game got a 10/10/9/9 and a shiny Platinum Award. One review remarked:

Players might be confused at first because you’re unable to select specific commands in battle, but once you learn how to form a Union and play around with the options of Formations and their arrangements, the game gets really fun.

What the hell? Since when is this game supposed to be near perfect? I’ll admit to judging this game without even playing it – I mean, come on, it sounded kinda interesting but overall it never looked like you know, Platinum Award material. Even Amazon thought so – they were pricing the game at a $20 discount before it even came out. Now just today, it’s back to $56.99. Guess they read Famitsu too.

Source: NeoGAF

Richard Garriott, aka Lord/General British, aka spaceman extraordinaire, has done a lot of great things in his life, exiting the Earth’s orbit notwithstanding. The Ultima games are landmark Western RPGs, and if it weren’t for Ultima Online you wouldn’t be playing World of Warcraft today.

Tabula Rasa, though, doesn’t really stand as much of a testament to the fellow. That’s not just my opinion – it’s Amazon.com’s as well. Previously listed as $4.99, it now costs a paltry $0.96. This is no database error – it’s been at that price for a few days now.

I didn’t play TR, but I heard it was pretty dang awful. It presumably still comes with 30 days of free subsriciption – but is it still even worth it when you’re paying more for shipping than you are the game itself? Sound off if you’ve played this thing, and let us know if it’s worth 100 of our precious pennies.

Newest good sign that Sonic Unleashed might be the first good Sonic in some time: It honors the time-honored tradition (first introduced in Sonic Adventure) of having a whale in a Sonic stage. Here Sonic’s taking it to the icy continent of Holoska, where he speeds around some snowy hills, rides a sled off huge jump and then runs off a giant whale that just sorta pops up in the middle of the ocean. See it for yourself in the trailer after the jump. Read more…

Leave it to CliffyB to raise the bar. Some of us here at Ripten certainly see Gears of War’s world as more than a mere backdrop for chainsaw duels and Mountain Dew-fueled testosterone fests.

But would we go as far as this? That photo pictured above – of Dom, Marcus Fenix’ right hand bro, and his girl – the subject of much melancholy in the ad campaign and supposedly the focal point of Dom’s story in Gears 2? You can own it for yourself – it comes with the Limited Edition of the game. CliffyB has his own, and he keeps it close at all times, more so than you’d imagine. Read more…

I haven’t played Fallout 3. But please, somebody who has, please tell me: do all the NPCs have bulletproof adamantium skulls? I understand every action in the game is determined by stats and behind-the-scenes dice rolls, and that the game isn’t an action game or a shooter, but this is pretty ridiculous, and if it’s not totally indicative of what actually goes down in the game, well, it’s at least funny.

32 headshots. Ouch. Hit the jump and see it for yourself. Read more…

Call me sick, but in my time with Fable 2, I’ve tried to kill kids. Multiple times. You see, my character’s evil. He’d do that. He seduces men and women and takes them under the bridge and puts a flintlock rifle in their faces and pulls the trigger without remorse. He soaks up the upgrades to evil and corruption stats like they’re candy.

But kids, no matter what you do, seem to have an invisible forcefield around them. Just like GTA IV, just like in Fallout 3. Games that are about moral choices, that seem to say – we won’t go this far.

In the case of Fallout 3, lead designer Emil Pagliarulo had this to say on the topic:

We began to think, really what benefit would there be in killing the kids in the game? It just seems gratuitous, unnecessary and cruel.

Some people would say it is necessary, though. Read more…

There’s a new Gears 2 TV spot/trailer that hit today – it’s another minute-long meditative piece in the vein of Gears 1’s “Mad World” spot that captured the hearts of so many. It’s got the same somber but pretty soundtrack, Marcus looking glum, minimal exposition, the works. Personally I think it’s a much better piece of advertisement than its predecessor, but the jury’s out on the larger consensus among gamers.

Now, the Gears of War franchise being something that’s very male, I wondered if maybe this ad would have enough artistic sway to win someone over who’s not exactly into big dudes with soul patches and chainsaw bayonets. Someone like my girlfriend.  After all that’s what these ads are designed to do – make the game seem like something more sophisticated than dudes killin other dudes.

Hit the jump to watch the clip, and to hear what my better half has to say. Read more…

In case you missed it, yesterday BioWare revealed the newest entry in its Knights of the Old Republic franchise, an MMO called Star Wars: The Old Republic. Amidst equal amounts of fanboy protest squeal and outcries of joy, it was easy to lose yourself in the din. That’s why we’re here with a handy list of the most important things you need to know about SWTOR (we pronounce it Sa-Woah-TOAR). Read more…

SERIOUS SPOILER ALERT. If you’re super-sensitive about Gears of War 2 spoilers, do not click the jump. You’ll feel horrible about what you’ve done afterward. Trust me.

If you’re curious about what lies next for the Gears saga, and have maybe snuck a peek at the leaked footage of the Gears 2 ending, well, then come on in. Don’t say we didn’t warn you though. Read more…

The stereotype of the shut-in neckbearded gamer is going the way of the dodo. Aside from you know, people who raid in World of Warcraft (I kid), most of the gamers I know are regular, normal, socially functional people.

Maybe they’re even more socially functional than I give them credit for – a study shows that gamers are more likely to marry, date, have kids, and go out than non-gamers. Read more…

When I was a kid cartoons only had one game at a time. These days if you like Naruto you get a whole Toys R Us shelf worth of choices: handheld RPG-lites, full-fledged action games on current-gen consoles, or four-player fight-a-thons on the Wii like (deep breath) Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2, which drops this coming week.

How spoiled are Naruto fans nowadays anyway? Well, with Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2, they’re getting an original storyline, waggle-tastic ninjutsu controls, a huge cast of characters and more. Read more…

It was a good show while it lasted, wasn’t it? Hey, let’s try another MMO. Oh this one has good PVP, it has cool innovations like public quests. But wait – there’s a new WoW patch? Okay, screw this, let’s play WoW.

That’s essentially the way Blizzard COO Paul Sams would tell you the story of how the folks who immigrated from World of Warcraft to Warhammer Online are already back to their previous MMO of choice.

We’ve seen a significant number of people, well over half, that cited Warhammer as their reason for leaving – they’ve already returned.

You think you’re out but then they just pull you back in. More thoughts from Sams after the jump. Read more…

I like to crack a Gabe Newell joke as much as the next guy, but when it comes down to it you’ve gotta give credit where credit is due, and Gaben’s definitely a smart guy. Maybe not as smart as us joe six-pack gamers though, if you’re asking him what he thinks. Says he in the newest Game Informer:

It seems by and large that gamers are incredibly smart; the average gamer seems to know more about what makes a good game than the average person at a publisher.

How humble (and the guy plays Horde too – so you know he’s got his head on straight).

If there’s a downside to Blizzard’s monumental success with World of Warcraft, it’s where they go from here. With reaction to the company’s future endeavors ranging from the justifiably negative to the mostly positive, there’s certainly a fine line to walk for the company.

For their upcoming “next-gen MMO”, Blizzard’s got to win a whole new audience over while not cannibalizing their own properties – what’s their game plan then? Make something different, according to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime.

We’re not trying to replace World of Warcraft with this new MMO. We’re trying to create a different massively multiplayer experience, and hopefully World of Warcraft will still be going strong when that one is released.

Sounds interesting – let’s just hope they don’t sell a different game for every race. Read on for more Morhaime. Read more…