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

MONDAY JUST ANNOUNCED Grim Dawn > Kickstarter has hit it big. Thanks to Tim Schafer, developers have seen the potential in crowd funding and have flocked to the service. Being quite interested in the phenomenon, I’ve been looking for the right game to slap my hard earned dollars on. Well, I found it with Grim Dawn. READ MORE

TUESDAY NEWS Developer reveals WiiWare headaches > A recent WiiWare developer has emphatically ruled out creating further content for the service. Beamdog ported decade old BioWare shooter MDK2 to the platform in 2011, but as reported by Gamasutra, the studio has been repeatedly frustrated by Nintendo’s approach to downloadable games. READ MORE

WEDNESDAY REVIEW Cry of Fear > There’s a charm to Cry of Fear’s crude textures and straight angles, the ones that it inherits from the Half Life 1 engine that it’s built upon. But there, really, is where the charm stops, replaced instantaneously, and for the rest of the game, by its obsession with a smart, deeply creepy, sometimes sick brand of horror. For those of you now clicking on that download icon, I can only say good luck. READ MORE

THURSDAY PREVIEW Dragon’s Dogma > Despite being a new IP, Dragon’s Dogma is a game clearly influenced by the heavyweights of the third person action RPG genre which have come before it. Much like the first Darksiders did, it wears these colours with pride, showcasing some of the best aspects of the games it imitates. READ MORE

FRIDAY JUST ANNOUNCED Crysis 3 > Twenty four years have passed since alien marauders made a mess of The Big Apple in Crysis 2.  While it probably should have used that time to clean up the mess, the sinister Cell Corporation instead decided to erect some sort of Bio-Dome over the entire city. It didn’t work for Pauly Shore and Kylie Minogue, and if the announcement trailer for Crysis 3 is any guide, it sure has hell hasn’t worked for NYC either. READ MORE

Twenty four years have passed since alien marauders made a mess of The Big Apple in Crysis 2.  While it probably should have used that time to clean up the mess, the sinister Cell Corporation instead decided to erect some sort of Bio-Dome over the entire city. It didn’t work for Pauly Shore and Kylie Minogue, and if the announcement trailer for Crysis 3 is any guide, it sure has hell hasn’t worked for NYC either.

Much like its predecessors, Crysis 3 will be a sandbox first person shooter. As series regular Laurence “Prophet” Barnes, you’ll be tasked with ridding the urban jungle of both native and extraterrestrial security forces. Though pre-release publicity has focused heavily on the availability of a hunting bow, you can rest assured that you’ll still have access to plenty of futuristic gadgets, including the series’ iconic nanosuit.

This collaboration between developer Crytek and publisher EA is scheduled to arrive on 360, PS3 and PC in autumn 2013.

Despite being a new IP, Dragon’s Dogma is a game clearly influenced by the heavyweights of the third person action RPG genre which have come before it. Much like the first Darksiders did, it wears these colours with pride, showcasing some of the best aspects of the games it imitates. The storyline takes the familiar ‘chosen one’ route, the demo kicking off with the player’s goal being to traverse a fallen castle in order to destroy a dragon. There is an option to create and edit both the main character and a companion known as a ‘pawn’ using a system which provides many choices without the levels of customisation becoming overwhelming, something which never made much sense given that the hours of time spent crafting a character goes to waste once they are wearing full body armour. The demo provides two options: the Prologue Quest and Countryside Quest, highlighting the gameplay in interior situations and on the expansive overworld respectively. Read the rest of this entry »

The hunt for the ingredients to the perfect horror game is as arduous and trap-laden a path as the one we end up walking when that experience comes together. The rustling bushes. The distraction of fast moving shadows. Mundane combat that stumbles gracelessly into dull repetition. The shock of cheap scares. Those looking for the true call of horror find it somewhere else, wrapped up neatly in nine simple, blood ridden words. “Is it really going to make me do that?” As a community built Half-Life 1 mod, Cry of Fear arrives with as much an opportunity to solidify genre clichés as it does to break free from them. Fortunately it manages, early, to scare that other form of fear away. Read the rest of this entry »