Eurogamer previews BioShock 2

There's not much in the way of new information, but Mr. Donlan provides some reassuring color commentary:

The studio's gift for disquieting juxtaposition helps, too: any game that shoves you into a blood-soaked street fight against waves of women in pearls and sensible calf-length skirts while "How Much is that Doggy in the Window?" plays in the background must be doing something right.

We've good reason to expect that the world of Rapture will be every bit the lead character it was in the first BioShock. As it should be.

Read the full preview here. 

Red Dead Trepidation

From Joystiq:

When we recently spoke with our trusted sources from Rockstar San Diego, in addition to yesterday's information regarding the Midnight Club franchise, we were also told about the allegedly troubled state of Red Dead Redemption. One source said that the game "was a complete disaster for most of 2009 and previous ... it has since turned around a little bit, but there are huge problems with it still." Unsurprisingly, the issues with the game are repeatedly claimed to be the result of mismanagement -- along the same lines as what was mentioned in the recent "Rockstar spouse" letter.

"Red Dead [Redemption] has been in production for six years (mainly because of horrible management/lack of direction due to fear of disrespecting Rockstar NY) and it will never get the money back in sales it cost to create for those six years," claimed another source.

Don't expect Red Dead Redemption to make its end of April 2010 release target. 

This too shall pass ... to you

From Develop:

New research suggests development budgets are soaring dangerously fast.

The average development budget for a multiplatform next-gen game is $18-$28 million, according to new data.

A study by entertainment analyst group M2 Research also puts development costs for single-platform projects at an averge of $10 million.

The figures themselves may not be too surprising, with high-profile games often breaking the $40 million barrier.

Polyphony’s Gran Turismo 5 budget is said to be hovering around the $60 million mark, while Modern Warfare 2's budget was said to be as high as $50 million.

The new figures put into focus concerns often fired out by the development community.

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Robert Walsh, the CEO of Australian outfit Krome, recently told Develop that game budgets are rising at a frightening pace.

“I think that’s one thing that the press, to a certain extent, is forgetting,” said Walsh in an interview.

“They’re saying sales have increased over ten percent since last year or whatever; I mean, dev costs have probably doubled or tripled in the console transition.”

Walsh’s Krome studio has recently announced layoffs across all three of its studios, citing poor sales that – presumably – failed to satisfy investments.

Restructuring Rebellion

From Shack News:

Claiming that it is positioning itself for growth, independent developer Rebellion (Aliens vs. Predator, Rogue Warrior) today revealed that it is in the process of "corporate restructuring" and may close one of its three existing offices.

"Positioning itself for growth" is catchy euphemism, isn't it? I also like Jason Kingsley's description of Rebellion's pending layoffs as its understanding "that a number of staff have already been made redundant."

So will AvP be the "maximum absorbency garment" that Rebellion so desperately needs? Or will it be the "controlled flight into terrain" that was Rogue Warrior? We shall see.

Metro 2033 - technical Q & A

Games.on.net scored an interview with Metro 2033's Chief Technical Officer, Olez Shishkovtsov. There's no doubt about it: this game is going to be a beast for anything but high-end hardware. The most impressive bits: multithreading will (theoretically, at least) scale up to 16 cores, and tessellation for character models.

Nvidia demos Fermi GPU

The evolution of Warcraft's cinematics

The Games Radar "Anti-Awards"

The gaming industry's 2009 roster sported more than enough finger-in-the-butt moments to fill a six page article.  Games Radar was up to the task of writing that article, and it's a pretty entertaining read.  The categories and the respective "winners" follow. (Be careful to note how many time Activision is mentioned.)

Worst game with the best story

• Winner - Eat Lead
• Runner Up - Darkest of Days

Stupidest plot twist, possibly ever

• Winner - Bionic Commando ("the Wife Arm")
• Runner Up - Modern Warfare 2

Fanboys totally losing it

• Winner - Killzone 2 shi*tstorm
• Runner Up - Flaccid L4D2 boycott

Coolest trailer that LIED

• Winner - Halo 3: ODST
• Runner Up - Star Wars: the Old Republic

"There's a patch for that" award

• Winner - Modern Warfare 2
• Runner Up - Ghostbusters: the Video Game

READ MORE

BC2 dedicated server FAQ

This FAQ has apparently been available for a while, but I only found it today. In short, you will be able to rent and remotely administer dedicated servers, and players will be able to connect to your server through a server browser.

With no access to the dedicated server app itself, and no mod tools, it's safe to say that there will be no (or extremely limited) FTP access. Presumably, configuration will be handled through a web interface like TCAdmin. Although DICE's Gordon Van Dyke has said that "a majority of the the games [sic] logic is controlled by the server," the only settings that are confirmed at this point are: (1) custom server name, (2) reserved slots, and (3) password protection. The option to enable "hardcore" mode is probably a given, though.

The game also lacks demo recording and first-person spectating. The absence of those two features will diminish the game's suitability for competitive play, and may reduce the effectiveness of the Punkbuster implementation (along with the aforementioned absence of support for PB streaming; at least for now).

While the inability to mod the game is disappointing, Bad Company 2's online component should be vastly superior to Modern Warfare 2's. Dedicated boxes will still sit in datacenters and move packets through nice, fat pipes. In that regard, the only major source of apprehension that remains is pricing: as far as I know, no GSP has announced what these things are going to cost per slot.

Check out this pricing list from Game Servers if you wish to speculate.

IGN reviews Mad Moxxi

Short and to the point, Eric Bridvig's review of the second Borderlands DLC confirms both my presumptions and my decision to save $10. There's a gameplay video, too, if you're still on the fence.