It’s becoming pretty clear thatBlack Ops IIis set to become one of this year’s biggest games, with pre-orders for Treyarch’s slightly-in-the-future-shootertripling that of the originalBlack Opson Amazon. It’s pretty much common knowledge that the game will be making its ways onto the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, but Activision seem to have taken an interest in the Wii U and are apparently putting together a version for Nintendo’s upcoming console....

Ubisoft has high hopes forAssassin’s Creed 2, and given the illogical success of the first game, who can blame them? The stab-happy sequel is expected to surpass 9 million sales, and Ubisoft is certain that a geographical ace up its sleevewill seal the deal. “Why? Because of Italy,” claims development boss Patrice Désilets. “Italy has something, really. I’ve met a bunch of people, and Italy has something. Italy is one of the most visited places in the world, and there’s a reason for that....

The full version launched today This is not the sameStarboundI remember playing two-plus years ago. Not even close! As of today, Chucklefish’s extraterrestrial sandbox adventure game isno longeron Steam Early Access because, well, it’s finished. The full release version for PC and Mac is out now acrossSteam,Humble, andGOG.comfor $14.99. This has been such a long time coming, but they kept at it. “We could not have made it this far without the support of our wonderful community,” said the developer....

While a certain game from a certain unknown individualrecently broke 2 million concurrent players on Steam, Cliff Bleszinski’s latest game,LawBreakers, is unfortunately bottoming out after two months. Admittedly, the game’s numbers were never all that great to begin with, even at launch.Lawbreakers‘ concurrent player peak was only around the 3,000 mark. For added context, the free weekend recently was averaging at a peak of 1,000 concurrent players, but that immediately dropped off, and just yesterday the game had dropped below 100 concurrent players for the first time....

Famitsu has released screensof aMega Man XiOS remake coming later this month in Japan. Aside from touch controls, online rankings, and 80 challenges, the game also features completely redrawn graphics. By “redrawn,” I mean “traced” — it looks like someone just drew over the outlines of the original sprites with a felt-tip pen, and the result is more than slightly jarring. I mean, is it just me or does X’s head seem fatter than usual?...

If you just can’t wait to play it yourself In the recentdelay announcement, director Hajime Tabata said they would release a 30-minute video on August 16. He lied: it’s 52 minutes. If you’re itching for anythingFinal Fantasy XV-related, this should tide you over. I’m here to share it with you guys, but personally I won’t be watching it. For me, I like to go in to games I want to play knowing as little as possible, and believe me, Ireallywant to playFinal Fantasy XV....

With Microsoft’s and Sony’s press E3 press conferences today, it might be easy to forget that Nintendo has a major event scheduled for today as well. Of course, we have the regularly scheduled set of WiiWare and DSiWare releases, but the real event for today is the pending release of the 3DS eShop, which according to Nintendo, is set to go live “later this evening”. We’vealready checked it out, (along withthe free gamesthatcome with it) so if you wantmore detailson what you’ll be getting tonight, we have you covered....

One of the more pleasant surprises of New York Comic Con ’09 was the appearance of a playable build ofOverlord: Dark Legend. When I came upon the game, it was sitting unattended, with no one around to demo it, or no controllers to play it with. I had to sneak some controllers out in order to play the game, but since it’s in pre-alpha mode, I couldn’t even get the thing out of debug mode....

Get a closer look at the Lands Between For super fans, buying an art book can be one of the most gratifying pieces of merch you’re able to collect, whether it’s for their favorite show, film, or of course, game. I’m someone who really loves to see how the sausage gets made, and having a book I can flip through from time to time and get a peek at the artistic process behind one of my favorite things is weirdly important to me....

Fighting game balance, like the quality of a videogame, is one of those things that people desperately want to assess with some quantifiable form of measurement. Just as some gamers turn to Metacritic the second a game is released to find out how much better or worse it is than some other game, some gamers are quick to cite tier lists to prove that a particular fighting game character is “better” than some other fighting game character or that some games are more balanced overall than others....

Bunnies killing rats A lot can happen in a decade. Ten years ago, I was a bright-eyed high school student with big dreams and no idea what blogging was. Now, I’m older, a bit heavier, and writing aboutOvergrowth‘s campaign. Nine-plus years after development began on the game, its story mode is finally playable from start to finish. If you’re not in the know aboutOvergrowth(we did anEarly Accessreview in 2014!), suffice to say it’s one of the indie gaming world’s longest-running attractions....

[Header and thumbnail byamandaisacat] It’s weird to see something that you and your colleagues have known for yourfor your entire adult livesget announced by a mainsteam media outlet like it’s a hot news, but there you go. PBS just told us that theSuper Mario Bros.games are the most influential and well accepted pieces of surrealist art in the world. As Donald Rumsfeld would say, the fact that theMariois the most popular surrealist icon in the world is a “known known....

Last year, the makers ofSoldner-X: Himmelssturmer,Eastasiasoft,gave me a peek at their side-scrolling shooter, and I was blown away. I saw it running on a laptop, played with an Xbox 360 controller. These impressions hit me in this order: It wasreleased for PClast year, and is still available. And now there’s a pretty good chance that this title will reach the PlayStation Network.Gaming Bitsnoticed a single picture of Soldner-X on the US PlayStation Web site, which is a pretty good indicator....