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Holy Lego Cartoon Series, Batman!

Batman will be hitting the TV again, and I’m not talking about The Batman here. Instead, Traveller’s Tales, developers of all those great Lego games will be handling this. Yes, that’s right, we’re talking about a Lego Batman cartoon series by a video game developer! Awesome!

“We’re looking to do… a Lego Batman series. I think they’re looking at doing a one-off initially,” Rich Earl, producer at TT said. The series will use the game’s engine itself, and the characters will animated fresh from Maya.

Earl claims that this will be quite different, and that’s totally fine by me. Traveller’s Tales earlier announced that they had their minds on a TV cartoon series, but did not mention any specifics. This news confirms that a 20-minute Batman cartoon will be on, and hopefully make its way to its own series!

I hope LucasArts looks at this and decides that a Lego Star Wars TV series will be worth its salt. Hell, from what I can tell, that might even end up better than that battlefest kid’s show The Clone Wars. Well, it’s not that bad, but a Lego Star Wars TV series might end up somewhere. Or not.

Chris Taylor: PC Gaming is Rediscovering Itself

In an age where pretty much everyone believes that PC gaming is dying a slow death, it’s nice to see some optimism from developers. While Blizzard and Valve have already shown their love for PC, there’s another developer scurring behind them, and that’s Gas Powered Games, known for their PC-exclusive games, such as the Dungeon Siege series, Supreme Commander and last year’s Space Siege.

Chris Taylor, supreme commander of GPG said in an interview that he believes that PC gaming is, in fact, rediscovering itself. The last 10 years of it, have been all about breaking system requirements, and the audience was also crazy enough to buy the latest gear for it. That is starting to change.

“We have to be careful we don’t create games that require four gigs of RAM to run. It’s just not responsible. It kind of was, in the old days; now, well, hardware’s pretty quick. We don’t really need to do that. We should be focusing on the characters, the story, the UI, the design.”

Nice to see it come honest and clear from a game developer. While console gamers have only to buy a disc and pop it into their drives, PC gamers have to inspect the game, compare the requirements, install it, and then hope it’ll run as it should. No wonder even the most hardcore PC gamers have been taking to consoles!

Taylor also thinks that Blizzard has the right idea, “using art direction rather than pure technical showmanship to create visually appealing but less-demanding games.” He says that GPG is working on something very similar with Demigod, their upcoming RPG-Strategy hybrid.

We’ll just hope Taylor’s optimistic tone holds up. Long live PC gaming!

Far Cry 3 Set in Africa

Wow, it seems like only yesterday I brought you the news of Ubisoft Montreal announcing Far Cry 2. With that game coming close to release now, Ubisoft Montreal goes further to announce another addition to the franchise. No, it’s not the Far Cry: Africa Pet Zoo for the DS, it’s a full-fledged Far Cry 3.

Announced at Leipzig, it has been confirmed that the game will be set in Africa. Ubisoft Montreal seems to be keen on boosting African tourism industries with their repeated interest in African wildlife and the promise it holds. I agree with that, too: you can only fight so much in Normandy! Still, I was expecting a Far Cry set in, say, an East European urban setting, or maybe the Great Wall of China or someplace equally exotic.

The team has made a commitment to Africa, supposedly, but shows interest in the Antarctic setting as well, which would be totally cool in my opinion, no pun intended. They also admit that the Africa setting will save time. Hmm.

The game will use the same engine as Far Cry 2 and we don’t have any more details on it, as usual. Suffice to say, it’ll involve lots of exotic, open-world, instinct-based action. Crytek is, as usual, out of the picture, probably too busy working on Crysis 2 or some such.

Terry Deary’s “Horrible Histories” to get Video Games!

Now if one of my favourite book series as a kid are Goosebumps, another will be Horrible Histories. Written by Terry Deary, Horrible Histories are essentially history books. They tell you history. But there’s a twist. They tell you the more horrible, the gorier, the more twisted parts of history. The sort your history teacher doesn’t.

Interestingly, there’s going to be an expansion to the franchise. While we won’t be seeing a movie for it, like Goosebumps (hmm, interesting idea), Horrible Histories will be going into the video games arena, with developer Slitherine Strategies taking it up.

If you’ve never heard of Slitherine, do not despair, for you haven’t missed anything. Slitherine’s previous works appear to be rather obscure titles I’ve never heard of either. Still, I think it should be in the right hands, since all of Slitherine’s previous works have been historical strategy games.

To be entirely honest. I’m not sure how a strategy game on Horrible Histories will work out. HH is more about the obscure facts and secrets of histories that were either distorted or maybe censored in time. How can you convert a series like that into a strategy game?

And the second focus of Horrible Histories is humour (and black humour at that). The last game I’ve seen that was actually funny would be Psychonauts. Okay, there’s Portal too. My point being, comedy in video games is an art. How well will Slitherine capture it?

Gearbox Working on Halo 4 for Next Xbox?!

One of the industry’s best upcoming FPS studios, Gearbox Software has been long rumoured to be working on a secret project that is “bigger” than anything they’ve ever tried. Since this is the team that made the entire Brothers in Arms series, the Halo PC port and many awesome expansions of Half-Life, this is something.

Rumour has it that they’re working on nothing but a Halo 4. Apparently the fight isn’t quite finished. Supposedly, the game is in development for a next-generation Xbox console. It should be noted that while we don’t have any announcements of a new console generation, we haven’t even heard talks about anything like that.

The rumour comes from the Official XBox Magazine, and there doesn’t seem to be any hard verification. Still, it doesn’t seem unbelievable or contradictory. Gearbox only has one product on their plate, Borderlands and Bungie announced that they’re done with the Halo franchise.

In any case, Microsoft milking out the Halo franchise definitely isn’t news, what will all that promotion during Halo 3‘s launch. What is news is the weird, outlandish rumour. So is Microsoft working on a next-gen Xbox? How powerful is it? Is Gearbox actually working on a sequel to Halo 3? Will it come anytime before 2015? Questions galore.

We have no doubt that Microsoft has an answer to them all. ‘Microsoft does not respond to rumors’ or some such.

Fallout 3 Available October 28

Not much else to say after writing that title. If you haven’t heard about Fallout 3 already, you don’t play video games. Prepare to fire up your Xbox 360, PC, or PS3 systems soon enough!

“We are very excited to let gamers get their hands on Fallout 3, the latest chapter in this beloved and highly acclaimed franchise,” said Vlatko Andonov, president of Bethesda Softworks. “To meet the huge demand for this title by our fans worldwide, we are planning one of the biggest launches of any game released this year.”

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

Fallout 3 features one of the most realized game worlds ever created. Set more than 200 years following a nuclear war, you can create any kind of character you want and explore the open wastes of Washington, D.C. however you choose. Every minute is a fight for survival as you encounter Super Mutants, Ghouls, Raiders, and other dangers of the Wasteland.

Hailed as one of the most anticipated games for 2008, Fallout 3 has already won numerous awards including Best of Show from the official Game Critics Awards at E3 2008, a selection voted on by an independent group of journalists from 36 leading North American media outlets that cover the videogame industry.