BioShock Infinite’s Delay Of Game Is Actually GREAT News…

…Especially IF you’re Arkane Studios and Bethesda Softworks, that is. Dishonored, the absolutely gorgeous and innovative upcoming first-person stealth action game (which some are unfairly over-comparing to Irrational’s game), is coming later this year, and as it’s equally well-crafted and also shares a few MINOR similarities with BI (both games take place in fictional worlds based loosely on 19th Century America or a Victorian-themed pseudo London setting, both have a steampunk aesthetic to them, and both look amazing), it SHOULD be on your old-timey radarscope thingamajig too, I say.

The big deals about Dishonored are its stellar art direction and is its more flexible gameplay that allows players to possess people or certain animals or play the entire story without killing a single person, plus a lot more that has to be seen to be believed. Yeah, yeah – my preview is late, but that’s because I’ve been occupied with some other stuff. Still, stick around, as I’m going through my notes now and should have something up soon….

Dishonored Trailer Drops, Bethesda Gets My Fingers Tingling…

(shakes fist at monitor)… Blast you, Bethesdaaaaaaa! Showing off such an awesome game to us yesterday here in NYC, slapping us with an embargo until next week THEN unloading this spectacular trailer on the masses! Grrrr! Anyway (very fake rant over and done with), Dishonored is going to be a game that gets talked about quite a lot, especially as it’s definitely one of the more intriguing games I’ve seen this year that’s NOT a sequel or reboot of an older IP. Arkane Studios’ hard work blew me away and I hope it will do the same to you once more news gets out about how amazing it is.

Arkane Studies Releases Final Arx Fatalis Patch, Source Code

One of the best PC role-playing games of the last decade, was Arx Fatalis, Arkane Studios’ homage to the classic PC games Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld II. In case you’ve never played it, it’s time you finally did. It’s still around today as a downloadable game over at Steam, gog.com and Direct2Drive or you can probably track down a physical copy on ebay for either PC or original Xbox (but I don’t think it’s backward compatible on the 360, so you may want to check that out first).

Arkane has just released the final patch as well as the complete source code for the game (it’s now Vista and Windows 7 compatible), which means the mod community now has another game to take apart and improve into an even better experience. I hadn’t played the game in about a year or so, but after downloading the new patch and firing up an old save and playing for an hour or so, it’s still a solid chunk of gaming. I’m not a fan of the window mode that’s been patched in, but I’m sure there’s a quick fix for that. Anyway, yes – another great game to try if you haven’t yet – enjoy!