At the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX East 2014) today, the company announced plans for their fourth PAX event – PAX South, set for arrival on January 23-25, 2015 in San Antonio, Texas. PAX East 2014 is still going on right now (and we’ve got full coverage, as with all US PAX events), but South will bring welcome refuge to those who can’t make it to Prime in Seattle or East in Boston. The event’s scheduling puts it just before East, which is always held in the March / April spring timeframe, and just after Prime, which is held in the August / September timeframe. The fourth PAX event, PAX Australia, is held during the US summer.

It’s awesome to see studios like 2k Games continuing to support their existing IPs while the new generation of consoles emerges. 2k announced Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, a completely new Borderlands game, earlier this week, and they’re already showing off the game at PAX East 2014 this weekend. The game is being developed by 2k Australia and Gearbox, makers of Borderlands 1 and 2.

Cloud Imperium Games’ PAX East pre-show saw the unveiling of a (somewhat) functional multiplayer dogfighting module (DFM), as helmed by the game’s visionary and renowned industry veteran Chris Roberts. We were able to get an exclusive video interview in a very quick run-n-gun format after the event to collect Roberts’ thoughts on the somewhat shaky unveil, embedded below; we’ll also be covering the immediate roadmap for the dogfighting module, plans for multi-crew combat, and plans for initial FPS gameplay mechanics (boarding).

The fan event today collected journalists and monetary backers of Star Citizen, which we’ve written about extensively in three previous interviews:

When Telltale Games announced last Wednesday that it would release Episode 3 of The Wolf Among Us on April 8, I let out a sigh of relief and commented: “Thanks for not leaving me hanging off the cliff for too long!”

You can find our reviews of the previous two episodes here:

• The Wolf Among Us: Episode 1 - Faith Review & Gameplay
• The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 - Smoke & Mirrors Review & Gameplay

It's the end of an era. Glu Mobile has officially announced that they are shutting down GameSpy effective May 31, 2014.

For well over 15 years, GameSpy has worked with game publishers to ensure some form of multiplayer functionality. They have hosted servers, leaderboards, and “improved” online game play for well over 1,000 games, ranging from mobile platforms to consoles and computers. In some cases, they were the only way (short of LAN parties) to link up with  more than 1 person for multiplayer or to find new friends who played your favorite games. For an idea of how influential GameSpy is (or, rather, was) within the industry, this site shows a list of the titles that have used GameSpy from 2002 to 2010. The service that GameSpy has done is huge. If you were a gamer from 1996/1997 on, chances are good that you used it at some point and probably enjoyed seeing your name crawl up in the rankings. Chances are also high that you hated the service and longed for integrated server browsers.

I’m always incredibly skeptical when presented with any form of MMO, especially of the F2P variety; so many dwell within a realm of repetition and disguised bypass-this-grind-with-a-microtransaction mechanics that it’s tough to get excited about them anymore. This is a classic instance of abuse by the industry – abuse so pervasive that it turns players off before they’ve even laid hands on the game. Some games shine through the pile of opportunists – like ArcheAge, which has deeply interesting economy and warfare mechanics – but they’re big productions and tough to pull-off.

World of Speed is a bit different in that it’s a closed-world MMO racing game driven primarily by player skill. At least, that’s what they tell me. I got a hands-on with the game at GDC 2014 and had a chance to speak with Sean Fitzpatrick of Slightly Mad Studios, a company you might recognize for its work on the high-fidelity “Project Cars” game. Slightly Mad’s track-record with Project Cars – to include widespread use by nVidia as a graphics demonstration – carries over to World of Speed as the teams share experience internally.

Active game-buyers of the 2006-2007 era would likely recognize Dreamfall’s box art immediately, whether or not they played it; Zoë’s pink tank-top and contrasting dark hair made for perhaps one of the only game boxes of the period to present a female character in, y’know, clothes. The game received critical acclaim for its narrative-driven approach to play, and although it did have some scrutinized combat and stealth mechanics, it was always about the story. Players were left hanging at the end of the game, eagerly awaiting the continuation of the story in what would become Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey.

But then all went silent.

After the typically groggy-Monday start, San Francisco’s Game Developers Conference enjoyed its most bustling day on Tuesday, March 18th. We met with Paradox, Obsidian, and Sony Online Entertainment for the day, with SOE stealing the show on the topic of their impending EverQuest Next and EverQuest Next: Landmark titles.

The original EverQuest from 99 had impressive concept art. It is also home to my favorite game soundtrack of all time.

I previously posted a quick EQNL specifications and requirements article, but aside from that, our coverage of Landmark has been pretty thin. This post should very quickly get you up to speed on the basics and provide some interesting developer commentary for existing fans. In taking with Dave Georgeson, Director of Development for the EQ Franchise at SOE, we covered several fan-requested topics within EverQuest Next: Landmark (EQNL) and the far-future EverQuest Next (EQN) launch.

A couple key discussion points addressed in the video interview below include client-server I/O optimization, modding support, water and accompanying static vs. dynamic physics, griefing countermeasures, the future of EQNL, NPCs, and a bit more.

You should also check back on Thursday for another EQNL article from us.

Ubisoft's upcoming multiplayer open-world game, Watch_Dogs, has been set for a May 27 release date and just had its system requirements and recommended specs detailed.

Watch_Dogs Creative Director Jonathan Morin recently tweeted that the requirements are as below; we'll analyze the Watch_Dogs minimum system requirements & recommended system specs, hopefully providing some insight as to why the game requires so much RAM.

There's been a lot of discussion about Titanfall's performance lately. Our most recent Titanfall GPU performance benchmark showed that the game still exhibits serious issues on certain devices; nVidia cards showed severe stuttering, SLI has micro-stuttering and works better disabled, and the game is simply needlessly large. All these taken into account, the performance issues feel almost unjustified for the visuals -- the game looks fine, sure, but it's not melt-your-GPU level of graphics and certainly isn't spectacular to look at. It's another Source Engine game with adequate graphics. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, so please don't get me wrong -- just that the performance isn't perfectly-tuned, at least, not yet. More drivers and patches will smooth that out.

I don't want to come off as too harsh, though. The mechanics are enjoyable for certain types of players and the game overall seems 'good,' it's just experiencing some (now-standard) launch issues with PC optimization. All is survivable, though.