The previous release date for the title, the much-anticipated follow-up to Metro 2033, was originally scheduled to be at the back end of 2012. The delay has been caused as a result of the games developer, 4A Games, wanting more time to refine the title.

The news comes during a time of mounting problems for THQ, including the possibility of being delisted from the NASDAQ stock exchange.

Metro 2033 scored well with reviewers, earning a rating of 81% on Metacritic. The game is held in high regard especially by PC gamers, who find their computers pushed to the limit by the game over three years after the games initial launch.

Here’s hoping the world doesn’t end in 2012 then. Stay with GGS for the latest.

That said, some of the games from that era are still classics for what they tried to do, and two of those games are The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, two games that came out of Trilobyte Studios. The games used crude FMV to round out what were essentially, puzzle games. Surprisingly, both were pretty good, and both are soon to arrive on Good Old Games.

Each of these classic titles will hit the Good Old Games storefront for $9.99, and are guaranteed to run on all current machines with no DRM and a lot of little extras that the Good Old Games team throws in for making the purchase. Okay, so maybe the actors and actresses were not of the A-list caliber and then hammed it up a bit, but at the time, we were just marveled by what this new tech was going to bring to gaming.

I’ve been effectively spamming news about Christine Love’s latest offering: Analogue: A Hate Story and thankfully I feel vindicated in my eagerness. The game places you, anonymously, aboard a spaceship which has been empty and abandoned for many hundreds of years. It’s your job to search the records with the help of the AI on the ship’s computer to discover what happened. But really you can decide what the main story should be. You can decide to assume the role of a criminal investigator or you may find the AI more interesting as people, if that’s not a contradiction in terms (which it absolutely is). It’s a testament to Christine Love’s skill as a writer that she makes the player feel this way. It’s hard enough to get the player/reader to empathise with a fictional character, but to achieve this when that character is also not alive within the conceit of the game is truly extraordinary.

Now not to gush too much about Love’s work, after all it’s not completely perfect. The start of the game is rather confusing. Almost akin to a Dickens novel or one of the later unedited Harry Potter books, there’s a wealth of characters that floods the player’s mind and it’s very difficult to keep track of. This is further amplified by the cultural boundary between the player and those characters. This is necessary as Love is, to some extent, addressing the nature of feminism: the society that the player reads about is so far removed from ours. It’s based upon the Joseon Dynasty in Korea: the medieval oppression of women makes many of the characters entirely unlikeable (this, of course, being the point).

As you discover more about the AI and the what happened to the spaceship so the AI discover more about you. Without providing a character build screen the characters gradually learn more about you as you choose what to tell them about where you come from and why you’re here. I’ve only played one playthrough, and I must say that the inclusion of a timer for one sequence really put the stress on. This was something I was not expecting from a gentle visual novel and it was a welcome change. As for my ending, I was satisfied, although the way I played it meant I didn’t feel quite as much of a sleuth as I could have had I played it differently. That’s the advantage of having five different endings to a game: though it may not be very long I will certainly go back repeatedly to unlock them all, and if Love’s prior games are anything to go by, I’ll have a totally different response next time around.

Speaking of prior games, how does Analogue stand up against Love’s former work. Well, don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story is certainly a hard act to follow. Objectively I’d say it’s not as engaging a story for me, perhaps because it wasn’t as easy to relate to and the plot twists didn’t feel so shocking. But that may be more of a comment on my ignorance and gullibility when I was playing DTIPB. I would say that Analogue felt like much more of a game than a visual novel (though don’t go expecting any platform sections) and in this way it is, as its name suggests, much more akin to Digital: A Love Story. I’d say this game is Digital, with a more engaging plot, nicer graphics and music, and a far less abstruse gameplay mechanic.

Graphics and music are aids to the story here. With DTIPB the occasional shoddy art really ruined some people’s immersion, but no such complaints can be launched at Analogue. It’s gorgeous throughout as is the music. Subtle and elegant, much like in DTIPB, though I’ll admit while I imported the music files from that game into “My Music”, the musical score for Analogue belongs more in the game than iTunes. The gameplay includes a fair bit of coding, but everything is taught to you. At one point I got an error message from Renpy (the game’s engine) and wasn’t quite sure whether I’d managed to screw up the coding that badly or the fourth wall had just fallen into a black hole.

Check out this masterpiece in plot and get your MSDOS fingers ready for Analogue: A Hate Story. Though not as great as last year’s Christine Love release, it’s a damn sight sharper and cleaner, and it tackles moral issues the rest of the industry might not consider for another thirty years.

Good stuff

• Engaging plot
• Attractive layout
• Impeccable art and music

Bad stuff

• Story a little slow to get into
• Number of characters could be confusing

Family Focus

Tackles some adult themes, but nothing too explicit. Being an indie game there’s no PEGI rating but I’d imagine it would be given a “12″.

Alan Wake is set to arrive on Steam initially for $29.99 for the standard version, and $34.99 for the collectors edition. Both versions will include the two DLC chapters that came to the Xbox 360 in the package.

Several of the improvements that PC players will receive are simple like mouse and keyboard support and higher resolutions, but others include multithreaded processor support to make use of dual and quad core processor systems and full Eyefinity and Nvision2 3D Stereoscopic support.

While Alan Wake is set to debut on Steam, it will be coming to other digital platforms as well as in a retail boxed package as well.

Check out several new screens for Alan Wake on the PC below. Alan Wake is developed by Remedy Entertainment.

This is clearly a win for consumers though, as Ubisoft’s DRM helps protect you from the predations of rampant piracy. You should actually be thanking Ubisoft for providing such a great service. Who knows what would happen if they didn’t have such great DRM. How else would your Digital Rights be managed? Obviously, customers can’t be trusted to manage them. No one would ever buy a game if you could just download it whenever you liked.

Take a moment to just imagine what the world would be like if Ubisoft ceased to exist tomorrow? Why, you would never be able to play an Ubisoft game ever again, even the ones you already bought! Doesn’t DRM make you feel so secure. Like RPS pointed out, evil pirates won’t even know anything is happening Tuesday, while legitimate customers will get an error message. If there wasn’t any DRM, how would you even know there was a problem? See how great it is!

The novels are not canonized versions of the game, but instead, compliment it with side narratives that flesh out the universe. Think of what the Star Wars novels have done for that universe and you get the idea. First was Revelations, which followed a young David Anderson and Saren working together. This was followed up by Ascension, which looked in depth at Cerberus, and gave us a deeper understanding of the Quarian migrant fleet. The last book was Retribution, which gave us a long look at the Illusive Man and his views on the universe in regards to humanity and how far he would go to protect it.

I would be lying if I said I was not anticipating the newest novel which came out this past Tuesday, titled, Mass Effect Deception. I knew that a new writer was coming on board, William C. Dietz taking over for Drew Karpyshyn, but I was still hyped on this novel as it was about Mass Effect.

Unfortunately, something got lost in translation, and things have not gone quite right with this new novel. While I have not started into the new novel yet, I was greeted with an appalling one star rating on Amazon. At first, I thought this was some sort of campaign by someone not happy about Karpyshyn’s departure from the novel series, but upon reading deeper into the reviews, it seems that the book is flat out bad when it comes to Mass Effect canon. Wholesale parts of the fiction have been retconned at will by Dietz, including turning characters that were known to be homosexual into straight characters, a child that merely grew out of Autism and little things like Volus with open masks, which in reality would kill them.

Even with all of this, I felt I wanted to read this book, and I am planning to put up a review, but it astounds me that a series of books that have been so strong across so many mediums could get off track with one shot. I have to ask if anyone at Bioware actually vetted the book before print, because the list of errors and lore misconceptions is long, with some going as far to create a Google Doc that lists all the different errors, ranging from mild to completely wrong. It also seems in poor taste and somewhat offensive to dismiss things like homosexuality, when the franchise and Bioware in general have normally embraced the idea of same sex parings in their games (Mass Effect 2 withstanding).

I hope that I can at least find my way through the mess to get a decent experience out of this, and even though it only set me back $7.99 in the spirit of reviewing the book, I can’t help feeling a little dirty by supporting this book. I really do hope that the people at Bioware read all of this feedback and find a way to fix this or at the least, keep Dietz away from this franchise if this is the havok that he is going to reap on the Mass Effect books. I know some have a hate for Dietz from his work on the Halo books, but I found those novels to be entertaining, but it looks like his grasp on the Mass Effect lore is less than flattering.

Look here for a review on Mass Effect Deception as soon as I have a chance to plow through the entire book.

Gamers might be in luck, especially if they like his music, because Sir Paul said in an interview with German publication Zeit Online that he’s been working on some tunes for an upcoming computer game.

“Actually, I’m currently working on music for a computer game,” said McCartney. “I was asked, and found it exciting. Moreover, this is a fascinating market. A new computer game is selling these days so much better than a new CD. And you reach a different audience.

“Probably, in this way, [for] many young people [this is] the first time my music will be heard in a video game.”

Sir Paul hopes that his work will maybe inspire gamers the way that Jazz was such an inspiration for him. While he didn’t reveal what game he has been working on, chances are we’ll hear about it before long. Here’s to a great game with a great score.

Via VG 24/7.

With the Creation Kit’s upcoming release, which is available in English only, we have just posted a new developer diary by Production Director, Ashley Cheng as well as a video highlighting some of the new features that will be made available to our modding community through the Skyrim Workshop on Steam. The Skyrim Workshop will allow users to easily upload, download, and install their mods, making sharing custom content easier than ever before.

To check out the latest developer diary below.

The game is a download only title available on the Xbox Live Market Place and Playstation Network.

For more information take a glance at www.gothamcityimpostors.com