Microsoft Game Studios

Brawny, burly, and beefy, Marcus Fenix and his bros are an abnormally thick necked posse of gun totting, testosterone jacked numbskulls. Only jibes and retorts are sputtered from their mouths, and the sole emotion mustered on their thick skinned faces is either resolute anger or pinched indifference. Even then, it only appears when these guys have crushed a thousand Locusts underfoot. Just like its predecessor, Gears of War 2 simply relishes in its dimwitted machismo. Continue »

While it harkens back to its predecessor with resolute devotion, Fable II has been envisioned with a new sense of clarity. Through redacting the roleplaying genre to its most basic function, Lionhead Studios has crafted a truly blank page experience that awaits players to author as they see fit. Full of humour and charm, unbarred from plodding genre archetypes, the appeal is instant. With a solid combat system, focused freedom, and true simplicity to design, the mirth of the experience is found in painting the world in your colours – even if the consequences aren’t quite as all encompassing as they should be. Continue »

After over a week of romping through Fable II we’ve realized that Albion reflects a solution to economic woes. Early on, the game lets you know that you usurp gold from your owned properties every five minutes, even when the console is powered down. It will accumulate when you’re not playing. So as you lead your current bankrupt existence, take solace in the fact that you’re always making cash… in the digital realm. Continue »

Toward the final moments of Too Human, a horde of enemies so absurdly overpowered were thrown our way that we were cursed by inevitable death every ten seconds, over and over again. But in Too Human you don’t die per se. Instead, a Valkyrie – think of a broad shouldered god nurse with wings – appears out of thin air and revives you a limitless number of times. So, in a brilliant move of beating Too Human at its own dimwitted logic, the right trigger of the controller was taped down – leaving the massive gun firing at the nearly unassailable foes – and the console was left running for two hours or so. Upon returning, those dastardly zombies were finally no more. Continue »

Enough about that ‘Mad World’ advertisement for the original Gears of War, this is that brilliant piece of advertising. The “Rendezvous With Death” trailer premiered at Microsoft’s press conference, followed by some sweeping, city sinking gameplay. And, to finish it all off, Gears of War 2 now has the release date of November 7th.

In a viral marketing move that would more than likely sap the collective brainpower of Gears of War’s Delta Team in one fell swoop, Epic have thrown a new, seemingly mysterious, image on the Gears of War official site.

Give it a closer look and you can can make out the numbers 033-116-117-126-071 etched into one of those dangling dog tags. Which, according to the folks at Kotaku, is just a sneaky way of using ASCII octal values to say that Gears of War 2 hits this November 9th. Scratch 033-116-117-126-071 and make that ESC-N-O-V-9, brainy stuff.

Find out for if all these octal values mean a damn thing when Microsoft holds their E3 Press Conference this coming Monday, where you can bet your bottom dollar Gears of War 2 will be dated.

Despite all the whirling controversy of late surrounding Too Human — specifically the review-like previews and Dennis Dyack’s “social experiment” on the NeoGaf forums — there still lies an undeniably great concept behind all the dust that has been kicked up.

Playing as a reimagining of Norse Mythology with a sci-fi twist, Dyack and his crew at Silicon Knights are looking to craft the narrative as an allegory for the influence of technology on our modern world. While we will have to wait and see whether those lofty ambitions come to fruition, there is always the fantastic mythos of the Norse to fall back on.

Featured in these new screenshots is Tyr, son of Odin and god of war. Further explanations could be given about his role in the real Norse pantheon, but that would just give away key plot twists for those uninitiated in the mythology. Instead, read the character bio, which will keep you guessing until the game’s release later this summer. It will be an interesting event to say the least.