When I first received Fez, I have to say I wasn’t excited, mainly because 2D puzzle platformers have never quite hit the mark for me. Braid, Cave Story and Limbo didn’t excite me the way I wanted them to. Something seemed off and while others were praising their originality I simply found them annoying. So it was with some trepidation that I began my journey into the world of Fez. Was I going to once again fail to see what the fuss was about or was this the game to convince me that there is a lot of fun to be had with this format? Read the rest of this entry »

You stand in the middle of an endless ocean of sand. Your identity is unknown and your purpose is unclear. This is where your journey begins.

Some of the screenshots give the impression that Journey offers nothing more than a huge, static and dead expanse of yellow sand. These images can’t embody one of the essential truths about the gane, namely, that it feels alive. Gently shifting sands, robes dancing in the breeze and the subtle shift in colour as you leave one area of the desert and arrive in another combine to form a peaceful, almost melancholy sense of place. Read the rest of this entry »

Presented in glorious alphabetical order, New Media: Retail Roundup is your indispensible checklist of the home console and handheld titles arriving in stores this week. What will you be playing?

MICROSOFT Xbox 360 Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion * Max Payne 3

NINTENDO Wii Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion XL 3DS Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion

SONY PS3 Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion * Max Payne 3 PSV Nothing

VARIOUS PC Diablo III * Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Ultimate Collection

 
New Media: Downloadable Digest is your handy reminder of the downloadable titles released during the past week.

MICROSOFT XBLA Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition Games on Demand Driver: San Francisco * Nickelodeon Dance

NINTENDO WiiWare Nothing Wii VC Monster World IV (MD) * Wonder Boy in Monster Land (Arc) 3DS eShop Nothing 3DS VC Sonic Labyrinth (GG)

SONY PSN Datura Full PS3 Games Binary Domain * Dead Space Super Bundle PS1 Classics Arc Arena Monster Tournament PS2 Classics Just Cause PSV Titles Nothing Minis Nothing

VALVE Steam Avernum 4 * Avernum 5 * Avernum 6 * Bontanicula * The Dream Machine Chapter 1 and 2 * Dynamite Jack * Offspring Fling * Street Fighter X Tekken * Warlock: Master of the Arcane

Welcome to The Black List, your one stop shop for the stories published on the site this week.

SUNDAY JUST ANNOUNCED Call of Duty: Black Ops II It’s that time of year again, folks. Activision has unveiled its latest Call of Duty offering. The announcement of Call of Duty: Black Ops II was accompanied by a surprisingly revelatory trailer. The apocalyptic scenes presented in the two minute clip take place in 2025, more than five decades after the events depicted in the first Black Ops title and eight years beyond those seen in last year’s Modern Warfare III. READ MORE

MONDAY PREVIEW Path of Exile > Over the past few weeks, I have slowly been getting acquainted with the semi-closed beta for Path of Exile, the debut action RPG from New Zealand based developer Grinding Gear Games. I say semi-closed, because Grinding Gear has taken a rather strange approach for what is a free to play game by selling beta keys to the general public. READ MORE

TUESDAY JUST ANNOUNCED The Unfinished Swan > Indie studio Giant Sparrow is teaming with Sony to create a Move compatible PSN exclusive. Already four years into development, The Unfinished Swan is a first person adventure in which you reveal your surrounds by flooding them with paint. While the game appears to consist predominantly of blacks, whites and greys, you’ll also come across the occasional splash of colour, such as the multihued hot air balloon at the announcement trailer’s denouement. READ MORE

WEDNESDAY PREVIEW Dragon’s Dogma > If I took one thing away from my time with Dragon’s Dogma, it was that it was designed to deliver wall to wall combat. I couldn’t wander more than 100 metres from a waypoint without being assailed by all manner of monstrosities. My stroll along a mountain path ended abruptly when a lumbering Cyclops tumbled over the edge with me still clinging to its leg. Any notion of enjoying a picnic in the woods was dashed when a vicious three headed chimera invited itself to the party. READ MORE

THURSDAY NEWS nanoBITES 79 > EA has confirmed that new instalments of its Dead Space and Need For Speed franchises are in production. As reported by Joystiq, these titles are scheduled to land on shelves before April 2013. This is just one of the stories in the latest edition of nanoBITES, our ongoing feature devoted to small but important news items. READ MORE

FRIDAY JUST ANNOUNCED Company of Heroes 2 > Even as the gaming community began to tire of the endless precession of World War II titles, one release was welcomed with open arms. Storming the battlefield back in 2006, Relic Entertainment’s Company of Heroes featured smaller armies than other strategy games of the era. This encouraged players to focus on (and become more attached to) individual units. Despite the popularity of the original game, a full scale sequel wasn’t forthcoming, until now, that is. READ MORE