General gaming

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• Weekend Deals: The Witcher II, Game of Thrones, and Blood Bowl
• Game of Thrones RPG Slated for an Early 2012 Release
• Missing Mascots: Gaming Personalities that Slipped Off the Radar
• Portal 2's Tardy DLC Comes Out on Tuesday
• Gotham City Impostors Beta Begins October 5
• Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Gets the Limited Edition Treatment
• Fez Delayed Until Early 2012
• Vita 3G Service Limits the Size of What Can be Downloaded
• Capcom's Always-Online PSN DRM Decided on a Case-by-Case Basis
• Get an Email Talking About The Old Republic Beta? It Doesn't Mean You're In

Weekend Deals: The Witcher II, Game of Thrones, and Blood Bowl Posted: 30 Sep 2011 03:41 PM PDT Amazon's deals on PC downloads continue with some of the same titles we've seen in recent weeks -- Dead Island ($36.99), Deus Ex: Human Revolution ($39.99), and Tropico 4 ($31.99). One noteworthy addition is the newly-released real-time strategy game based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, A Game of Thrones: Genesis, for $31.99. The Witcher II is being offered on the cheap at a number of places, though Amazon seems to have the best price at $23.99. Steam, GamersGate, and Good Old Games all have it for $29.99. Steam is offering 80% off the Legendary Edition of Blood Bowl this weekend, bringing its price down to just $8.00 from $39.99. Also of note is Good Old Games giving away Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templar until tomorrow morning, so be sure to jump on that deal as quickly as possible.

Game of Thrones RPG Slated for an Early 2012 Release Posted: 30 Sep 2011 02:41 PM PDT Cyanide hasn't hid the fact that it's working on a multiplaform RPG based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series -- it just hasn't said much about it. That was understandable with its RTS based on the same franchise, A Game of Thrones: Genesis, in development. With that now out on PC, it's opened up on the subject of its next project. The Paris, France-based Cyanide obtained the rights to produce multiple games based on the series back in 2009. It's had a listing for a Game of Thrones RPG on its website for some time now, but beyond the two screenshots seen in this story and platforms listed as PC and consoles, there wasn't much to go on. Kotaku today spoke with studio director Yves Bordeleau who revealed some of the first details about the project which, like Genesis, is coming much sooner than you might expect. The game is described as being a Mass Effect-style RPG set during the time of the first book, A Game of Thrones. Its story follows two different characters who don't come from the book or TV show, though you will have the chance to run into some established characters. Combat uses an "active pause system" similar to that of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The game was compared with KotOR and the first Mass Effect; it features "less action than Mass Effect 2" and is instead "all about the storyline," which can be affected by your decisions.

Missing Mascots: Gaming Personalities that Slipped Off the Radar Posted: 30 Sep 2011 02:13 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet Missing Mascots: Gaming Personalities that Slipped Off the Radar Mario and Sonic might have made it, but these guys definitely didn't. By: Todd Ciolek September 30, 2011 Once upon a time, they were important. They were more than just video-game characters scrambling to be the next Pac-Man or Mario. They were the symbols of game companies, seen in logos and commercials and as many cameo appearances as possible. Then they dropped out of the spotlight, thrown aside by a game industry that just didn't have a place for a bald cave-child or a cross-eyed pink dinosaur. They're the fallen mascots of game generations past. Some were too bland to survive. Some hit a streak of lousy games. Some were just hitched to the wrong company. But all of them were mascots in the true sense. They served as the public faces of developers and publishers, and that makes the difference between a Bonk and a Battletoad. Here's a chronicle of the once-proud mascots worth remembering today.

Portal 2's Tardy DLC Comes Out on Tuesday Posted: 30 Sep 2011 01:27 PM PDT Though it took longer than expected, the first downloadable content pack for Portal 2 will soon be here on all three of the game's platforms. Portal 2: Peer Review, as it's been officially titled, was announced shortly after the game's release in April. It was scheduled for a summer release, and when it began to look like Valve wouldn't meet that date, it reassured fans it would be out by mid-September. That date, too, came and went, but we now have an actual, hard date, and one that's far too close for it to slip once again.

Gotham City Impostors Beta Begins October 5 Posted: 30 Sep 2011 12:08 PM PDT Beta testers have just been informed by email the schedule for the upcoming PC beta of Gotham City Impostors. Steam codes have been emailed out to those who were accepted today, and although the client can be downloaded now, the beta itself won't begin until next week -- and even then, it will only be available at select times. The beta will be playable nightly beginning Wednesday, October 5. It'll last only until October 9, and is playable from 7PM - 12AM Eastern for those five days. As it's a closed beta, testers won't be free to share information about the game.

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Gets the Limited Edition Treatment Posted: 30 Sep 2011 11:44 AM PDT Just because it doesn't contain any new games doesn't mean the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection can't get its own special edition bundle. The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Limited Edition was announced by Konami today and is fairly modest in terms of its contents. In addition to the games themselves, you'll get specialized packaging created by Yoji Shinkawa, the series' lead artist, and an exclusive, 248-page art book titled The Art of Metal Gear Solid. Unfortunately today's announcement didn't include any pictures of the book's contents, though based on its title and length it sounds like it could be a must-have item for fans of the franchise.

Fez Delayed Until Early 2012 Posted: 30 Sep 2011 10:38 AM PDT It was over three years ago that we first got our eyes on 2D/3D hybrid platformer Fez. Although it had been planned to be out before the year's end, designer Phil Fish revealed on Twitter yesterday that its release has been pushed back by a month or two. Fish didn't provide an exact date for the game, only saying it's coming to XBLA in "early 2012." He explained, "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever," which prompted him to get a number of tweets about 3D Realms and the oft-delayed Duke Nukem Forever. His response? "ALWAYS BET ON FEZ." As for what prompted the delay, he stated that time spent on things like debugging, certification, and waiting on Microsoft adds up.

Vita 3G Service Limits the Size of What Can be Downloaded Posted: 30 Sep 2011 10:02 AM PDT You might be paying for access to PlayStation Vita's 3G service (in addition to paying more for a 3G-equipped system), but you won't have free reign to download anything over a 3G connection on Sony's new handheld. A Sony Computer Entertainment Japan representative revealed in an interview with Japanese website ASCII that only files up to 20MB can be downloaded over 3G, according to a translation by Andriasang. It's entirely possible that figure could be changed in the future, but at launch, that's what Japanese gamers can expect to be limited to. The iPhone, by comparison, originally limited users to downloading files no larger than 10MB. That limit was later increased to 20MB ahead of the iPad's launch early last year.

Capcom's Always-Online PSN DRM Decided on a Case-by-Case Basis Posted: 30 Sep 2011 09:33 AM PDT Capcom doesn't have a blanket policy when it comes to deciding whether or not to include a particularly annoying form of DRM with its PlayStation Network games. And at least for the time being, it's going to stay that way. "Sony has a form of network DRM that we have chosen to use on a couple of titles, really as much as an experiment as anything else, to see what the impact was," Capcom's U.S. vice president Christian Svensson told Eurogamer. The DRM requires users to be connected to the Internet in order to play. This style of DRM is typically seen in computer games. Deemed a success by Ubisoft, it was planned to be used in Driver: San Francisco on PC before a public outcry led to the requirement being dropped so that players would only need to be online to open the game.

Get an Email Talking About The Old Republic Beta? It Doesn't Mean You're In Posted: 30 Sep 2011 08:40 AM PDT If you've received any emails suggesting you're in the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta but had previously gotten no indication you were actually in the beta, you don't have to worry about them coming from spammers. They also don't mean you're now in the beta. A pair of emails were sent out to a number of people yesterday who had signed up for the beta. One provided some encouragement to pre-order and mentioned, "Now that you've had a chance to experience your own Star Wars: The Old Republic saga, make sure you don't miss out when the game launches." The other offered thanks for participating in the beta and provided a link to a survey about the game. This left many people wondering if they had been added to the beta and not been informed. In a post on the official TOR forums, senior community coordinator Allison Berryman explained that the emails were accidentally sent out to more people than intended. Having received the email doesn't mean you're in the beta right now, nor does it guarantee an invite is on the way.

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