Dust has been flying under the radar quite considerably for the past few years. Intiially slated to be an Xbox Live Indie title, it was eventually slated to be an Xbox Live release in 2011, only to be delayed into the Summer of Arcade in 2012.

Considering I had relegated it to “that one game with animals in it”, I was utterly shocked at how great Dust really was. Essentially created by a one man studio, Dust outshines nearly every other major studio action platformer on the Xbox Live Arcade: and then some. Read more… »

The NCAA Football franchise has always been a shining example of how yearly iterations of sports games works and works well. One of the top reasons why this was the case was its consistency in innovation. But, as you will notice, the past tense was used here.

NCAA Football 13 fails to do what it always did best. Instead, EA Sports has played it safe this year and brought very little to the table to make veteran players even slightly interested. If you are a newcomer or have not checked out NCAA Football in years though, I’d keep reading. Read more… »

Activision may have stopped making Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero games, but that isn’t stopping former developers who worked on both franchises from creating their newest title: Epic Skater.

The game is going for a targeted release date of December 2012, and will be hitting the iPhone, iPad, and Android platforms. Keep an eye out for some coverage of the upcoming Epic Skater beta, as we’ll be giving you the latest on this intruiging project.

Considering that I’ve been replaying all of Neversoft’s old Tony Hawk games, this announcement couldn’t have come at a better time! If you want to contribute, head on over to their Kickstarter. Read more… »

Can you believe that Kingdom Hearts is celebrating its ten year anniversary in 2012? The mere thought of said celebration is enough to make most of us gamers feel extremely old.

Speaking of dated, recent iterations of the Kingdom Hearts franchise have had their ups and downs, and have had their own share of dated gameplay to boot, leaving gamers to clamor for Kingdom Hearts 3. As time goes on, worlds are reused, and the charm wears off, it’s easy to see the franchise as a relic of the past.

Thankfully, there’s nothing old about Dream Drop Distance. Read more… »

It seems as if the developers of Awesomenauts have an affinity for retro games, as the PC version of Awesomenauts has a hidden 8-bit Smash Bros-esque game embedded in the Steam download. All you have to do is head to the following directory to access the game:

\Steam\steamapps\common\Awesomenauts\Data\Rofl

All in all, it’s great to see indie developers packing in extra content just for fun, rather than gating it behind many industry standards we deal with today. There’s no AI component, and it’s local play only, so grab some friends! You also can’t remap the controls, so try remapping them with a program like Joy2Key, and playing with some gamepads.

Read most headlines regarding Star Wars: The Old Republic Tuesday and you’ll see a lot of attention mongering, with the internet practically shouting at you that the game has gone free-to-play. Before we start running out the door proclaiming from the hilltops, let’s be clear — the MMORPG from BioWare and EA is getting a free-to-play option. This will run side by side with the subscription model already in place.

For a first day buyer and early subscriber like myself, this allays many of the fears and frustrations swirling around the move, one they have been publicly flirting with for several months. It arises new hopes that this pulls SWTOR out of its slump and fans get a MMORPG that is worth the growing pains as well as the money they have already pumped into it.

All speculation and sighing aside, the move itself is quite savvy.

Read more… »

This past weekend, I was able to attend the Washington DC Wii U Experience event, which basically had every Wii U game currently announced for domestic release on display.

That list includes Project P-100, Just Dance 4, ZombiU, New Super Mario Bros. U, Game and Wario, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Ninja Gaiden III, Nintendo Land, Rayman Legends, and Pikmin 3.

Are you curious as to what the event had in store for me? Of course you are! Read more… »

While zombie games are a decidedly flooded market these days, one can’t help but recognize that the majority of them are fairly quality in nature.

TellTale’s The Walking Dead, the Left 4 Dead series, and many more have pushed the boundaries of their respective genres, and transcended the typical “post-apocalyptic” tropes that we’ve seen many times before.

Deadlight will no doubt draw comparisons to Limbo, Oddworld, Out of This World, Blackthorne, and any number of bleak, dark, platformers. The only problem is, Deadlight isn’t as good as any of these games. Read more… »

Have you guys given Awesomenauts a try yet? What’d you think? I enjoyed it a lot. Well, there’s good news for those who don’t own a 360 and haven’t gotten a chance to play it yet. Awesomenauts will be out on Steam on August 1st.

The game also received a new patch a couple of days ago that added two new characters for free–Coco, who rides a hoverboard, and Derpl, a space slug with a combat walker. If you stopped playing, now might be a perfect time to get back into the fray. There’s no word on pricing, but because Awesomenauts costs $10 on PSN and XBLA, it’s probably a safe bet to say that it’ll cost the same on Steam.

It’s really hard to shop for a pair of inexpensive headphones. There’s so many of them out there, and between “gaming”, “non-gaming”, and “mobile-only” headphones, it’s tough to find something that’s fairly cheap that will suit your needs.

Thankfully, Turtle Beach let us test-drive the Earforce Z11 model , to give us a better feel for their cheaper PC headphone line.

While they have some minor issues, so long as you’re not looking for a top-end pair of PC headphones, you really can’t go wrong with the Z11 model. Read more… »

It’s been a while since we last had our hands on with RaiderZ. To be exact, it’s been one year, one month and 17 days. What has Maiet Entertainment and Perfect World been doing with it since then? They’ve been making it one of the sharpest looking, immersive MMORPGs of course.

Well, if you like what you see from the trailer above, you’d be glad to note that Gamer Limit is having a closed beta key giveaway. Massive cherry on top: one lucky gamer who registers for the closed beta will also nab an all-inclusive trip for two to PAX Prime next month.

We have a limited set of keys so pay attention to the details.

Read more… »

[Update: It seems as if Square-Enix has debunked this rumor. Let's hope that we see some new footage or screenshots sometime soon.]

Hope you’re ready for your daily serving of internet rumor stew, because today’s recipe is pretty juicy. Today Kotaku announced that they learned from several sources that Final Fantasy Versus XIII was officially cancelled.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum, other rumors have come to light that Square Enix will announce Final Fantasy XIII-3 or more Lightning-centric DLC during its Final Fantasy 25th anniversary event on September 1st.

Read more… »