Justin has been a gamer since the Intellivision days back in the early 80′s. He started writing about and covering the video game industry in 2008. In his spare time he is also a bit of a gun-nut and Star Wars nerd.
Capcom announced today that Rachel (who you will best remember as the girl in Resident Evil: Revelations' main story line who is in desperate need of a hair tie, bra, and a replacement zipper) will join Hunk as a playable character in the console HD port's expanded Raid Mode.
Up to this point, domestic Suda 51 fans have largely been forced to rely on bad Google translations of Japanese coverage for news on his latest project, Killer is Dead. This is usually not much an issue, however, Suda 51 games are notoriously (and brilliantly) difficult to understand all on their own -- doubly so when there is a language barrier. Fortunately, the Western marketing for the game is now starting to ramp up thanks to Grasshopper Manufacture's North American publishing partner, XSEED Games, who has just re-released Killer is Dead's debut trailer with the English voice actors.
The U.S. arm of online retailer Amazon seems to have jumped the gun on Square Enix's big PAX East announcement this morning, by posting a Wii U listing for Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut.
The PlayStation Blog has announced that PlayStation Plus subscribers will find Double Fine Production's The Cave added to their free Instant Game Collection when the PS Store updates later this evening.
Crystal Dynamic's Tomb Raider marked its second week in a row as the best-selling video game in the United Kingdom for the week ending March 16th, despite dropping 72 percent in week-over-week sales and having to fend off the release of three high-profile titles; Sony's God of War: Ascension, Activision Blizzard's Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and City Interactive's Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 (which landed in second, third and fourth place respectively).
John Riccitiello has resigned his position as both chief executive officer of Electronic Arts and as a member of the company's board of directors, after almost six years heading up the video game publisher. Riccitiello's final day with EA will be on March 30, 2013.
SimCity's launch two weeks ago was nothing short of a disaster for everyone who purchased the game. Electronic Arts and Maxis' lack of server planning resulted in customers having to wait in 30 minute server queues (which would often reset once the timer ran down) just to play the online-only game. Even those who managed to get into a server often found themselves booted out of their game due to "server maintenance". The server situation was mostly resolved after about a week, which naturally led to the next set of problems. Players soon discovered that the game's traffic AI bordered on being broken, and that they were basically lied to about the SimCity's true population size and its offline capabilities.
We have not heard much about the Sony Japan Studio developed Rain since the title was announced at Gamescom last year, but it appears that the game's marketing efforts are now starting to ramp up with the release of six new screenshots over the weekend.
Bungie went on a bit of a trademark filing spree earlier this month, turning in several applications that may be related to their upcoming persistent-world first-person shooter, Destiny.
During the height of SimCity's server problems Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw plainly stated that "it wouldn't be possible to make the game offline" due to the "significant amount" of calculations that had to be run on EA's servers. That assertion was quickly shot down by an anonymous Maxis insider, then by a modder (going by the handle Azzer) who found a way to get everything but game saves and region features running offline. Bradshaw's next attempt to deflect/spin attention away from EA's anti-consumer tactics was to provide a list of "straight answers", stating the always-on connection was required to process calculations involving SimCity's core region features. This argument has now been challenged by the same modder who figured out how to run SimCity offline, as he believes the entire game could easily be changed to provide the full regional experience in an offline mode.