Update your files, adventurers. Developer Idol Minds' hack-and-slash RPG, Ruin, which allows you to share save files and play between PS3 and PS Vita, now has a new name ... and it's about as generic as the previous one. It's called Warrior's Lair now.

We don't know when we'll get to play Warrior's Lair again, and it's not part of the PlayStation Vita launch lineup, but as soon as we hear something we'll leave a message at the tavern. That is how warriors get their information nowadays, right?

Former Gameloft Auckland head studio programmer Glenn Watson alleged in July that Gameloft pushed its employees to work 14-hour days, seven days a week, violating New Zealand's 2002 Health and Safety in Employment Act. The resulting investigation by the New Zealand Labour Department, covered by Develop, has now been closed after finding no substantial evidence of inappropriate crunch time or any breach of health and safety laws, and no legal action will be taken against Gameloft.

This is good news for mobile-game enthusiasts -- and for Gameloft employees.

El Presidente will deal with modernity when Tropico 4: Modern Times hits Xbox 360 and PC this March. Propaganda claims the expansion will feature an "extensive" new single-player campaign. Considering Tropico 4's normal campaign lasted dozens upon dozens of hours, we'll take the officials at their word on this one.

Along with the new campaign, the expansion includes 30 buildings, 12 challenges and 10 edicts to make El Presidente's bank account expand on the labor of the grateful working class. El Presidente's temporal travel to Modern Times will cost 1200 MSP ($15) on Xbox 360, and $19.99 on PC.

Continue Reading

It would be hard to find two more disparate musical acts to combine into one blast of DLC, seeing how The Edgar Winter Group did everything it could to broaden the horizons of rock music, while Korn has done everything it can to narrow them back down.

This week's update includes two iconic singles from both bands, one of which will be a blast from the past for anyone familiar with Harmonix's back catalogue. Both Edgar Winter Group tracks support keyboards, as one would hope.

Continue Reading

Matthias Zarzecki was waiting anxiously for the IGF Student Showcase finalists to be announced on Sunday, Jan. 15, where his game, Unstoppaball, was an entrant. He had steeled himself to endure the five days between finalist announcements for the main competition and the student one by programming new games relentlessly; indie-developer therapy, he described it.

And then the Student Showcase finalists were announced on Friday, Jan. 13. Unstoppaball wasn't on the list, and Zarzecki could have let that pent-up anxiety and excitement explode in a livid email to the IGF for reporting incorrect announcement dates, or in a furious YouTube video calling on all developers to boycott the IGF -- but Zarzecki chose a different response.

"My reaction was something of a 'huh, those games are really good,'" Zarzecki told Joystiq. He was a one-man team and had absolutely no budget, so Zarzecki could see how, out of the 300 games submitted to the IGF student competition, he may have been out-performed. "In that way it is a little disappointing to see that I was probably beaten through factors that were outside my influence," he said.

Continue Reading

We've got the final list of IGF Student Showcase finalists:

• The Bridge (Case Western Reserve University)
• Dust (Art Institute of Phoenix)
• The Floor Is Jelly (Kansas City Art Institute)
• Nous (DigiPen Institute of Technology)
• One and One Story (Liceo Scientifico G.B. Morgagni)
• Pixi (DigiPen Institute of Technology - Singapore)
• The Snowfield (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab)
• Way (Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center)

Of the nearly 300 entrants, these eight were selected to move on to the final stage of the Independent Games Festival. Each receive a cash prize of $500, simply for being selected as finalists. They'll be playable on the show floor at this year's Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, where one will win the top prize of $3,000.

The Ver. 2012 balance update for Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition has been available on consoles and in arcades since early December. PC fighters have had to make due with vanilla SSF4AE and all of the problems that came with it. Thankfully, it looks like a solution is right around the corner. Better late than never, right?

Capcom hopes to have the Ver. 2012 update ready for the PC version of SSF4AE by the end of February, according to an announcement made on Capcom Unity by a dog in a wig. Further information will be announced "in the coming weeks," so we'll just have to wait; something PC fighting game fans have become quite accustomed to over the years.

Need a new theme for your PS3? Run in slow motion over to the PlayStation Store and pick up the "Honey Badger" theme for $2. The PlayStation Blog highlighted this theme today, but upon further inspection, we discovered that it's been on the store since December 20.

We're telling you about it now anyway. We're following the example of the bold honey badger -- by which we mean we don't care.

Following the technical difficulties with the first streaming event for the UFC on Xbox Live app, Microsoft has come up with a consolation. Tomorrow's UFC 142 event will be free for those affected by the outages of UFC 141. All you need to do is sign into the app with the affected Gamertag. It should all work out this time ... we hope.

Users affected will also receive a free month of Xbox Live Gold service. "Our hope is that this gesture conveys our sincere apologies, and helps restore confidence in our customers and fans," a Microsoft spokesperson said. UFC 142 will air live from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at 10pm ET on Saturday, January 14.

The XBLA adaptation of Konami's The Simpsons Arcade Game has yet to be officially announced, but we're learning more details about it regardless. The Achievements have been spotted by Xbox360Achievements -- they include one called "Mr. Sparkle," which requires you to banish dirt to the land of wind and ghosts. Oh, wait, we read that wrong. It requires you to "make it to the stage 3 bosses in Survival Mode with the Japanese ROM."

This suggests that the Japanese version of the arcade game is included. There are a few minor differences from the US release, according to HG101: lower difficulty, more health items, more points, and the ability to jump while holding a weapon. The inclusion of that international version also suggests that developer Backbone is putting a bit of extra care into this update.

Unlike the delicious bowl of sopa above, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA) bill is very bad news to many of your favorite denizens of the internet. Read up on SOPA and find out who is for and against it. And what some are doing to fight it.

What's everyone playing?

Continue Reading

Everyone at Bungie thinks SOPA "sucks," according to a new post on its News board. Bungie, formerly of the Halo franchise, joins a growing list of developers and companies opposing SOPA, and urges its audience to take action against the bill.

"Bungie is opposed to any legislation that curtails free speech, stifles innovation, and prevents the open sharing of information on the Internet," Bungie's position reads. "SOPA fits that bill. If it passes, it will hurt our community, the gaming community at large, and it could very well cripple the kind of games we love to create and play.

"Just like online piracy, that would be downright criminal."

Mojang seems to know that, like sharks, developers must continue to move forward at all times, lest they succumb to an early grave. The company's cuboid-smashing smash-hit Minecraft might be enough to allow Notch and crew a break, but rather than rest on their laurels the team at Mojang continues to plow ahead by working concurrently on three unannounced titles.

One title is, of course, being spearheaded by Notch himself. As Minecraft's shimmering golden crown has been passed to Jens Bergensten, Notch is now free to focus on his new project that, according to Mojang CEO Carl Manneh, is still a complete mystery: "What it is today, I don't think he knows himself," Manneh told Edge. "We certainly don't. It's probably going to be a lot of testing and playing around to see what works."

As for the developer's two other projects, Manneh says that Mojang is currently under non-disclosure agreements with other companies that prevent the developer from being as transparent as it would normally prefer. However, both games will be announced (and potentially even released) during the first half of 2012. Our gut instincts tell us that at least one of these new titles will be a Kinect-enabled rhythm/shmup thrift-store clerk simulator.

The Stop Online Piracy Act has gotten slightly less objectionable. Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has announced that he's removing the DNS blocking provision -- the most controversial aspect of SOPA -- from the bill. So while it is still possible (and easy) under the bill for someone to request the cutoff of revenue sources for a site, it will no longer be possible to obtain a court order to block all access to that site from within the US. It's a pretty sad state of affairs when we consider our continued freedom to visit a website a victory, even a small one.

In a statement on his website, Smith said he's removing the provision "so that the Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision. We will continue to look for ways to ensure that foreign websites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. consumers."

We don't dare truly believe this is evidence that Smith is listening to us, but it's still proof that change is possible. Keep talking to your congresspeople about this.

[Image: Infographic from AmericanCensorship.org]

You won't find any new information in Game Informer's latest piece on XCOM: Enemy Unknown -- the article essentially lays out how XCOM stacks up against other modern day-titles -- but you will find a handful of new screenshots. Let's just scrutinize the beauty above, shall we?

Soldier with obviously auto-generated Russian name? Check. Hit and critical hit percentage chances? Yup. Aim and range bonus stats? Oh, yes. And, upon very close observation, old-school X-COM fans may notice one other feature: Sweet, sweet hope. Head over to Game Informer for two more screens.

This is a column by Jason Schreier dedicated to the analysis (and occasional mocking) of his favorite genre, the Japanese role-playing game. Whether it's because they're too antiquated or just too niche, he believes JRPGs don't get enough attention in the gaming industry today. It's time to change that.
On January 31, Square Enix will release Final Fantasy XIII-2, a direct sequel to Final Fantasy XIII, which the developer shipped several years ago to mixed reactions. Some fans adored the game's gorgeous aesthetics and flashy combat; others cursed Square Enix for daring to defile their beloved series.

Perhaps because of that fan ambivalence, a large part of Square Enix's marketing plan for Final Fantasy XIII-2 has revolved around the message "This is not Final Fantasy XIII!" During preview events and demos, the developer has been careful to show off all of the new elements that the first game did not have: towns, NPCs, sidequests, and so forth.

Will Final Fantasy XIII-2 be worth playing? I'll tell you in a few weeks. But while we wait to see whether or not the newest Final Fantasy is worth our time, let's figure out why Square Enix is so eager to make it feel different than its predecessor.

Just where did Final Fantasy XIII go wrong?

Continue Reading

If someone had told me I'd be spending a peaceful night this week in a stark white room playing with bright blocks, I'd have run before they could wrap the straightjacket around my shoulders and throw me into the back of a windowless van. Instead, I spent a few hours positioning primary-colored cubes around a vast test chamber from the comfort of my own home -- with full mobility of all my extremities -- and I enjoyed my time immensely. Toxic Games' Q.U.B.E. (Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion) joins other puzzlers as the crossword of the plugged-in generation, stimulating spatial, physics and reasoning skills in a direct way that shooters can't touch (or shoot).

Continue Reading

GameTrailers has posted a handful of new videos on Alan Wake's American Nightmare. In the first video (embedded above), Remedy's Oskari Häkinnen discusses the game and its creation. One of the more interesting tidbits he revealed is that the average run through the campaign should last around four to five hours, depending on how much of the optional content you choose to pursue.

You'll find two more videos after the break. The first is a walkthrough of Ghost Town, one of American Nightmare's 'Fight till Dawn" (i.e. Horde Mode) maps. The second is a campaign walkthrough which we refuse to watch because, frankly, we don't want to spoil a single moment before the game launches during Microsoft's Xbox Live House Party event.

Continue Reading