Live (Action) By The Creed: Assassin's Creed 2 Webseries

The PR machine for Assassin's Creed 2 ramped up its efforts today with the release of the first part in an on-going, live action webseries detailing the cloak-and-dagger exploits of the father, Giovanni, of the game's main character, Ezio Auditore.

It looks really very interesting just by itself, using a blend of live-action, green-screen backgrounds (a technique pioneered online by the web-then-TV-series Sanctuary) and fully CG footage from the game's other trailers. This episode is 14 minutes long and we can expect at least two more before they complete telling the story.

You can catch the short trailer for Legacy below the jump, and see the first episode HERE.

Going Underground (Again, And In Moscow)

Take an ounce of vault-dwelling hero thrust into the greater world from Fallout, a kilogram of subterranean network of subway train tunnels from Hellgate: London and all the grit, bleak horror and vodka you can extract from a serving of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., mix it all together and you might come out with something that strongly resembles Metro 2033, THQ's newly announced post-apocalyptic shooter from their Ukranian developers, 4A Games.

World of Goo for £X.XX

Late to the party as always, I can reveal to you that 2D Boy's wonderful, delightful physics and hilarity game World of Goo is now available for... well, whatever you want/can afford! This is in celebration of WoG's first birthday - has it really been that long? My, how it's grown.

Get over to its site immediately - just be sure to offer at least 50p, else my understand is that 2D boy will lose money because of the transaction fee charged by PayPal. And we don't want that!

Buy!

Korsakovia (So You've Decided To Become a Lunatic)

Late to the party it seems. I had meant to play Korsakovia immediately upon its release on 20th Sept but what with starting uni it got pushed back and then forgotten until now. So I am fresh to this but the world is not - perhaps most of you too are unfamiliar with it. The rest of you, take the day off.

(Korsakovia concept art by Ben Andrews)

Korsakovia is the new mod for Half-Life 2 from games research group thechineseroom. Like their previous work, Korsakovia is intended as an experiment in games design, this time specifically in 'madness, reality and the end of the world' and 'in seeing just how far you can push things'.

FATALE - Released, Pseudo-Review

Very last on Monday night, FATALE (creators' capitalisation) was released to a small but expectant audience. It is the third commercial release from Belgian developers Tale of Tales who you might remember for delivering Red Riding Hood tale The Path. It is an 'interactive vignette' based around the Biblical tale of the young dancing girl who called for the head of John the Baptist and jumping off from Oscar Wilde's interpration, the play Salome.

Why Do You Play What You Play?

Through the wonders of the Twitter I have been directed to an interesting little personality test of sorts for gamers. BrainHex is intended to help 'study the reasons why players enjoy different gaming experiences'. You just answer a couple of pages of short questions and they tell you what kind of gamer you are (Daredevil, Seeker, Mastermind etc).

The Clan Mentality - Thrill of the Kill in UT2k4

New Scientist magazine has published a poorly titled article describing what most of us already knew though we may not have consciously examined it before. It describes how gamers, when playing popular multiplayer action game Unreal Tournament 2004 again first an opposing team of strangers and then against their own friends, display markedly raised testosterone levels after a victory in the first condition but lower levels in the second. Simply put - defeating faceless enemies is more physically exciting than defeating your companions.

Let's Go Fly a House!

Up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear! Oh, let's go... fly a house!

Higher! is one of the those games that you'll just start playing to see what it's like and when you next look up your clock appears to have jumped an hour or two.