Articles for Will Herring

  • Activision, Bizarre announce James Bond 007: Blood Stone

    With MGM's financial future uncertain, the next James Bond film probably won't see the light of day for some time, but the rubber-burning minds at Bizarre Creations have got all you 00-agents-in-waiting covered with the announcement of James Bond 007: Blood Stone.

  • DeathSpank

    Born of a short series of Flash animations on GrumpyGamer.com, famed SCUMM adventure game designer Ron Gilbert's personal website, archetypal brawns-over-brains hero DeathSpank has never been in the business of taking himself very seriously. Cocky, dense, and strong-headed to a fault, the purple-thonged dispenser of justice would just as soon unintentionally doom the world as he would redeem it, and honestly, that's what makes him such a likable hero.

  • DJ Hero 2 gets its official list of artists

    As you're probably already aware, 2009's spin-savvy music sim DJ Hero is getting an official sequel. What you probably didn't know was the long, long list of cross-genre artists that DJ Hero 2 will feature.

  • Zombrex Dead Rising Sun to see a multi-part digital release

    As reported by the Capcom Unity blog yesterday afternoon, Zombrex Dead Rising Sun, the delightfully campy and wonderfully titled directorial debut from Capcom's own global head of research and development Keiji Inafune, will be seeing a multilingual translation and episodic digital release in both North American and Europe this summer.

  • More Call of Duty Zombies swarm on iPhone sequel

    Because, quite frankly, everything's better with zombies, Activision and Treyarch's official sequel to the wildly popular 2009 iPhone and iPod Touch release, Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies, has just hit the iTunes App Store.

  • Metal Slug XX

    As a gamer that regularly demands innovation from forthcoming IPs, I always feel like a bit of a hypocrite falling back into the familiar gun-toting embrace of SNK Playmore's Metal Slug franchise. Here's a series of games that's hardly altered so much as a pixel since its 1996 arcade cabinet debut and has maintained a substantial fanbase precisely because of it. While the core run-n-gun mechanics have remained largely unchanged since day one, its the off-the-wall humour, colourful characters, inventive weapons, and zany bosses that have earned Metal Slug a special place in the hearts of jaded arcade-dwellers everywhere.

  • BioWare games count down... to what?

    Enigmatic countdowns on the official Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins sites have BioWare diehards engaged in wild speculation. Even more DLC? Yet another retail expansion? Your guess is as good as ours.

  • John Cleese is your butler in Fable 3

    While a new clothing system might not sound like the most exciting GDC announcement, Fable 3 game director Peter Molyneux took just enough time from swapping royal robes and trying on regal trousers to introduce the audience to their new digital butler: John Cleese.

  • Sony motion controller is named the 'Move'

    Sony's SVP of Marketing and PlayStation Network manager Peter Dille took the stage at Sony's GDC press conference to introduce the world to Sony's new motion controller -- the Sony Move.

  • White Knight Chronicles

    White Knight Chronicles serves as a lighthearted and entertaining romp through a colourful medieval world, albeit one that never really breaks the archetypal JRPG mold.

  • BioShock 2

    When BioShock's inevitable sequel was originally teased on the PS3 version, players found themselves split over the need for a continuation of Irrational's objectivism-fuelled epic. Without spoiling too much for the Rapture uninitiated, BioShock didn't exactly leave its dystopian door open for a sequel, with many of the original's characters in no fitting shape to carry on after the credits. While I was initially in the camp that believed BioShock to be a self-contained narrative that didn't need further exploration, it didn't take long for BioShock 2 to unequivocally sell me on the idea of a return-trip to Rapture. After all, there are many stories in the underwater city, and Jack Ryan's was only one of them.

  • BioShock 2 primer

    In preparation for BioShock 2's release, we've rounded up the most important aspects, ideas, and faces behind Andrew Ryan's ruined utopia. The following primer is a short refresher for fans of the original, as well as a quick crash course for gamers who missed out on Jack Ryan's initial trip to Rapture.

  • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

    An ambitious deconstruction of the tired hack-n-slash genre, 2008's No More Heroes introduced gamers to hot-headed otaku-turned-assassin Travis Touchdown's blood-soaked trek to the top of the United Assassins Association charts. Wildly successful in North America and Europe, No More Heroes brought already established Grasshopper Manufacture and director Suda51 into the stateside spotlight once more with its absurd sense of humor, bucketfuls of blood, and plethora of pop culture references. It was a bona fide hit, even though it debuted on the Wii, a platform where "mature" titles usually don't succeed, and its close-quarters combat, eye-popping art-style, and killer soundtrack makes it one of the most innovative titles to date.

  • Casual gaming on the go with the Apple Tablet, Amazon Kindle

    With Apple recently marketing their iPhone and iPod Touch portable devices as gaming platforms, casual gaming on the go has seen a bit of a twilight. Independent developers have been enjoying increased exposure thanks to low prices and easy availability on Apple's App Store, and with the recent rumors that Apple's soon-to-be-announced Tablet will also feature a wide variety of games (many rumored to come straight from top shelf developer Electronic Arts), it's become evident that the multimedia conglomerate has recognized the importance of the gaming dollar.

  • Cryptic announces subscription fees for Star Trek Online

    Trekkies, rejoice! Cryptic Studios has announced the official subscription prices for their highly anticipated upcoming MMORPG, Star Trek Online.

  • The Saboteur

    While it's no secret that World War II has been explored, excavated and over-exploited in the modern day gaming industry, developers keep heading back to its tragic embrace like moths to a particularly disastrous flame. Home to a regular blitzkrieg of RTS and FPS entries, the stealth shooter genre has remained relatively unaffected from an onslaught of World War II games, with only a few—most notably SouthPeak's Velvet Assassin—taking a stab at portraying the conflict. Like the aforementioned Velvet Assassin, which actually carried the name 'Sabotage' early on in its development cycle, Saboteur is based on the exploits of a real-life war hero William Grove-Williams who is tasked with single-handedly taking down the malevolent Nazi forces.

  • Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

    My first exposure to Konami's Silent Hill series of scare-fests was back in 1999, fresh off of a week-long bender of Resident Evil 2. Ready for even more malformed monsters and mutant crocodile menaces, I was somewhat surprised when I powered my Playstation on to find an incredibly different environment than RE2's Raccoon City.

  • Rogue Warrior

    Disliking Rogue Warrior as much as I did puts me in a pretty awkward position. On one hand, I feel that it's my job as a critic to warn gamers of titles as poorly assembled as Rebellion's latest effort; but on the other hand, I certainly don't want to offend ex-Navy SEAL and all around badass Richard "Demo Dick" Marcinko, the man whose real life exploits served as the basis for the game. He could easily sneak into my apartment and kill me in any number of unfathomably gruesome (yet undeniably awesome) ways, but as much as I respect, admire and fear Commander Marcinko, I'm going to bite the bullet and call Rogue Warrior for what it is: a horrible, horrible game.

  • Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter

    Sick and tired of unexpected story altering plot twists? In-depth analysis of the nuclear arms race got you down? Never want to hear the word "nanomachine" again? As much progress as the current generation of gaming has made for the medium of digital storytelling, there's no denying that its quite easy to get bogged down by the heavy-handed ethical lectures many triple A games force upon their players. It can be undeniably sobering and intriguing to see your protagonist's morality brought into question in a half-hour long cutscene, but sometimes... well, sometimes you just wanna kill stuff.

  • Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time

    Few gaming franchises have maintained the consistent high quality found in Insomniac's Ratchet & Clank series of action platformers. From Ratchet & Clank's Playstation 2 debut to last year's short, but oh-so sweet downloadable continuation in Quest for Booty, the lombax/robot duo has set some well-earned high standards for other third person action hybrids to follow. A Crack in Time proudly continues this tradition with a slew of innovative new additions to the game's tried and true core formula, all the while keeping the trademark wit and charm that's served the series so well.

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