Halo 4 fans spread across NeoGAF and Reddit have pieced together the box art for the game in an example of PR gone right from Microsoft and 343 Industries.  Fans were sent a piece of the puzzle, 32 pieces in all, and before long they had gotten together to complete it.

I’ve got to say, the result isn’t half bad is it?

The message came courtesy of Darrell Gallagher, Head of Studio at Crystal Dynamics, via the official Eidos Games forums.  Darrell assured fans that the delay was to ensure that the game would be of the very highest quality.

“Our priority now is to make sure we fully deliver the very highest quality game. In order to do this, we have decided to move the game’s release date by a few months, from Fall 2012 to the first quarter of 2013,

“We’re doing things that are completely new to Tomb Raider in this game and the additional development time will allow us to put the finishing touches into the game and polish it to a level that you deserve. We believe this is the right choice and I guarantee it will be worth the wait. The game is looking amazing and we can’t wait to show it to everyone at E3 in a few weeks.”

It’s a great shame we won’t be able to get our Lara fix as soon as we’d hoped, but at least the developers have given themselves no excuse for not delivering a really high quality experience.  To make up for it they’ve also released a brand new screenshot of what we can expect from the game at E3 this year.

At least now we know where Lara got that kick-ass bow from

Keep an eye out for more info on Tomb Raider at E3 in June.

(source: Gamespot)

More than 1000 excited Diablo fans turned up to wait outside HMV Oxford Street to get a hold of the latest entry in their favourite series.  When they were allowed entry at 11pm they had the chance to meet with developers on-stage and have their copies signed surrounded by figures dressed appropriately as Diablo characters.

HMV’s head of technology and games Ewan Pinder said, “”The launch of Diablo III has to rank alongside World of Warcraft as our biggest ever official product launch at an HMV store,”

“Only games have the power and the passion to deliver this kind of result and level of engagement.”

It really is a testament to the medium that individuals show the level of passion that results in over a thousand men and women turning up to a shop at 11pm to spend their hard-earned cash.

(source: MCV)

You start the game by being dropped in the middle of a vast, unloving randomly generated world surrounded by trees and wildlife.  From then you go from punching trees for wood, to mining for coal and iron, to diving into cavernous underground labyrinths desperately seeking minerals and adventure.  Of course you could just stay above ground and use nothing but wood and dirt to create that wood and dirt kingdom you’ve always dreamt of, and that’s the beauty of Minecraft.  The game lets you move completely at your own pace.

Once you have the right materials your can use them to craft items like pick-axes, swords, and even armour.  The system for doing this is greatly simplified on the 360 when compared to the PC original.  Gone is the 3×3 ‘put random items in random places and hope for the best’ system, replaced by an incredibly simple interface that simply shows what it’s possible to craft and grey out what you don’t have the ingredients for.  It’s a great compromise for the limitations that controllers bring about, but it does take a lot of the wonder out of crafting and a lot of the reward with it.

The castle Jonabob

That is until night falls, because once the sun has gone down you’ll be surrounded less by pigs and cows and more by skeleton archers, zombies and the ever panic inducing Creepers, which are essentially suicide bombers that can blow you up alongside your house if you’re unlucky enough.

If you really want to you can set the game to peaceful mode, and not have to do with any enemies whatsoever, but thankfully if you choose to go the hazardous route you’ve always got the option of bringing a friend along with you.  Minecraft XBLA edition is willing to let you play with up to eight friends over split screens or the internet to back you up against all the nasties and help you build things a lot faster.

It’s when you’re playing with a horde of buddies that Minecraft really comes to life, with everyone helping one another with minerals and materials, or conversely fighting over minerals and materials.  You can play pranks on one another, although it’s recommended you don’t take it as far as burning down your friend’s beloved creations.  Especially if that friend happens to be inside his or her building or not.  It’s also the best way to go caving (the Minecraft equivalent of running an instance) with as many people as possible to fend of the zombie and skeleton hordes, or to give a sneaky Creeper a well-earned monster kill if they’re not careful.

This is why you shouldn't invite a man like me into your Minecraft world

It has an element of required teamwork that quickly works out who the weak links are and exposes them.  It only takes one idiot to wander out the front door in the dead of night and get the front of the fortress blown to smithereens.  It similarly only takes on foolish move to unleash a stream of lava that quickly washes over your team to escort them from this mortal realm.

But when the poo hits the particle accelerator your creations can always be preserved in the screenshots taken in the pause menu and shared instantly on your Facebook account.  I used the service to take the screenshots you’ll see on this review and you can see they’re of a decent quality.  It’s nice to be able to share your creations with friends, and add to the endless baby picture spam slideshow that is my Facebook account.  This was a feature touted by Microsoft when the first NXE update was announced on the Xbox (the one that brought avatars) and it’s a shame that so few games have used it (I can’t think of a single one) but it fits perfectly in with Minecraft’s focus on creativity and sharing that creativity with your friends.

If you’re looking for any other type of game other than simply “Minecraft” then you’re probably not interested, but I urge you to at least give Minecraft a chance to change your mind.  It’s charming, humble, sedate, intense, challenging, and easy all at the same time making it worth the elevated price tag of 1600msp.  It’s quite simply wonderful, and if you don’t at least try it then you really need to re-assess your priorities.

NXT Score: 9/10

We liked:

• Strong emphasis on creativity
• Challenging
• Truly open world gameplay
• Fantastic multiplayer

We disliked:

• Has been simplified for console audiences and limitations
• A tad unforgiving at times

Excited Diablo fans were seen camping out on Oxford Street yesterday for HMV’s midnight release of Diablo 3 (which is tomorrow night) fully kitted out for the long haul.  The patient few were stocked with camping chairs, sleeping bags, food, drink and one man even brought out his own tent.

The happy campers at 4am last night

Their numbers increased as the day went on, and no doubt they’ll continue to increase.  Let’s hope their iron will tides them over for tonight and tomorrow so they can finally get a hold of a game they’re willing to waste three days of their lives over before even owning it.

One of the crew even compared the release of Diablo 3 to the “birth of a child”, and you can take that however you will.  Personally I just hope that one day I’ll learn to love like that.

• Download of the finished game DRM free on PC, Mac, Linux, and/or Android
• Steam code for the finished game on PC or Mac
• Access to the PC/Mac Beta on Steam
• HD streaming versions of the documentary series
• Access to the private backer forums to follow development of the game

This is great news for both adventure game fans that didn’t kick any money Tim Schafer’s way, and will hopefully allow the team at Double Fine to make the game even more sparkly-fantastic than it would otherwise be.

(Source – DoubleFine.com)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, there’ll be no more of that Inside Xbox programming the vast majority of us know and love.  After years of producing and hosting video content the service’s fate has been decided and it’s not good.

Xbox Live’s Larry ‘MajorNelson’ Herb wrote on his blog:

“Following the news last week that Inside Xbox in the US was to cease production, the team in Europe has been investigating what makes most sense for them and the Xbox Live community as they continue to strive to deliver the latest gaming and entertainment news for users across the region.

“As such, they have decided to move away from the current first-party produced content model and transition to a third-party content model, which will provide timely and locally-relevant content to users across more of the EMEA markets.

“Whilst this means that the Inside Xbox brand will effectively be retired in Europe, the focus remains on continuing to provide the Xbox Live community with the latest and best in games and entertainment news and information.”

Inside Xbox has hosted video content from Gamespot, Official Xbox Magazine, and IGN in its time alongside well received first-party content like Sent U A Message and The Nexus hosted by Inside Xbox Editor Dan Maher and Producer Andy Farrant.  Both have become well known and respected names in the industry and it will be sad to switch on our Xboxes and not find their terrible puns and goofy humour to greet us.

They’re not the only victims though, Xbox Live producers Ashley Denton, Gareth Wild, and Assistant Producer Dean Samways will also feel the brunt of the shutting down of the service.

Thanks for all the entertainment Inside Xbox, you’ve been great.

Fable Heroes is a kid’s game through and through.  The characters and landscapes are offensively colourful, the soundtrack is twee and predictable, and the gameplay is shallow to accommodate for young minds.  These might seem like negative points, but that’s because there’s a good chance you’re a big grown up and thus about as far from this game’s core audience as can be.

The key to enjoying Fable Heroes as a grown up is being at one with one’s inner child.  If you can’t take your mind back to simpler times then this game is going to be a real slog for you as you won’t find anything simpler than Fable Heroes in this day and age.  After choosing a character from an initial line-up of The Hero, Hammer, Garth, and Reaver (with more unlockable characters) you’ll enter the world of Albion.  You press X to perform a fast attack, Y to perform a flourish (a heavy attack), and B to dodge in whichever direction the left stick is leaning.  It works really well, although sometimes it feels as if the flourish serves no purpose whatsoever, given that it usually only takes one or two fast attacks to kill an enemy.

Combat can get a bit hectic at times

Once you’re done with all the hack ‘n’ slashing of a level you’re given a choice between two paths.  At the end of one is a boss fight that pits you against one of the bigger, more menacing enemies of the Fable universe and down the other is a minigame of some sort.  These minigames come in different forms, from a button-bashing boat race to dodging exploding chickens and, while they’re perfect for 4-player with friends, they’re more of an annoyance in single player.  Once you’ve finished all the normal levels you move on to the dark versions of each level, which are basically the same but harder.

After you’ve made your choice and beaten up a big baddy/mashed buttons enough, you’re scored based on the amount of money you’ve horded throughout the level from damaging enemies, building up multipliers, and bashing barrels full of cash, and given a bronze, silver, or gold medal to let you know how well you played.  It feels unbalanced though, as you’ll need to gather an enormous amount of cash to get anything higher than bronze, and without the character upgrades that allow you to gain more money from enemies it seems impossible to get a silver or a gold.

Character upgrades are purchased through a post-level board game type interface.  Different squares on the board contain different upgrades to purchase and you roll a dice to decide which square you land on.  After purchasing all upgrades from certain squares new squares are unlocked with more powerful upgrades and so on.  It’s a strange and annoying system that gives you little control over how your character progresses, and dents the game’s RPG elements in favour of random character improvements.  You may find yourself just sinking all of your money into whatever rather than face the frustration of waiting to land on a square you want by chance.

In all Fable Heroes is a good laugh for any kids who are nearby, but grown ups won’t get much enjoyment out of it.  Its combat system is too simplistic to be satisfying, the levels are short and linear, and the upgrades system is downright unhelpful.  If you’ve got a child who wants a new game and you’re on a fixed budget you could do worse than Fable Heroes, but if you’re an adult looking for a bit of hack ‘n’ slash fun you might want to look elsewhere.

NXT Score: 7/10

We liked:

• Cute visuals and sound effects
• Interesting new spin on the Fable formula
• Great for kids

We disliked:

• Incredibly simplistic gameplay
• Adults will likely find it boring

You’ve watched Olga Kay kick up dirt, observed Tobuscus murdering dudes, and witnessed Katers17 stabbing puppets but now it’s time to view SeaNanners building a house and cowering in it when night falls.  That’s right, SeaNanners is finishing up the All-Stars line up with Minecraft and you get to look in from the outside and judge everything he does.

Sounds great, right?  Well it gets better.  If you join the live streaming event you’ll have the opportunity to win an Xbox signed by the creator of Minecraft, Markus ‘Notch’ Persson.

To join in the fun just head over to the Xbox Live Arcade Twitch TV account at 6pm PST this evening (2am GMT).

If you missed last week’s Fable Heroes stream with Katers17 you can click right here to watch it on her channel.

The demo, out now on Xbox 360, PS3, and Steam, consists of one single player race and one multiplayer event reminiscent of Destruction Derby.  At first players only have access to the solo race but once they’ve sent a challenge to a friend over their online service of choice they’re given access to the ‘Rampage’ multiplayer mode.

EA used a similar trick in their demo of SSX earlier this year, requiring players to invite a friend to download the demo in order to unlock more parts of it.

If you remember Destruction Derby on the original Playstation Rampage will be like greeting an old friend and smashing his car up.  Eight players go head to head in an arena, brawling to gain points for shunts and takedowns.  It’s not as brutal as Destruction Derby though, as players simply respawn once their car has died and off they go back into the fray.

Downloading the demo also gets you an invite to RaceNet, a Call of Duty: Elite type service that gives players a profile across all future Codemasters racing games and gives them the opportunity to take part in events and win real prizes.

(source: CVG)