We’ve long known that Kingdoms of Amalur is going to be big. The action RPG has frequently been described as a cross between God of War and Oblivion, and that guarantees a lot to do. But even with that in mind, the true scope of this game is a little surprising. In an interview with Strategy Informer, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning lead designer Ian Frazier offered a lot of interesting information Reckoning, all plenty interesting, but the confirmation of its size has us picking our jaws off the floor. How much is in it? Try 10 full days worth. Over 200 hours of stuff to do. And apparently this is on a speed run.

“We recently had a content completion play through about two months ago,” Frazier says. “QA guys, they’ve been playing the game for years, they know all there is to know about it, it’s ins and outs, etc… their goal is to play everything. Do every quest, every dungeon, everything possible, but as fast as possible. That means easy difficulty, skip all cut scenes and dialogue, sprint everywhere that’s sprintable, fast travel everywhere you can…don’t do any combat you don’t need to do… that all took around 200 hours, and that was a speed run. For a normal person, it’ll be way more than that.”

That is… a lot of content. But is it too much? “The other side of that,” Frazier said, “is ‘how much content in general is too much?’ – I don’t have an answer to that. It’s a question I ask myself regularly as we got to the end of this game and thought ‘my god, did we make it too big?’” I think we covered this ground earlier in the week. When even the developers are wondering if something might go a little too far, expect to feel overstuffed. But is this a bad thing? As someone who would gladly keep playing new Mass Effect 2 content – at least until the horrible The Arrival DLC – I think not.

What do you think? Let us know in comments.

Source: Gaming Today

Redditor “CaptainPlanetEater” passed this hero on his way to Dallas, and decided to snap a photo. Where are you going, Mariocyclist? Where did you come from? Chances are that both places are TOTALLY AWESOME.

On the heels of a Mario flash mob, and this awesome rendition of Mario and Luigi in the Unreal engine, one wonders — will Mario madness ever die?

Source: Gaming Today

Playing the ponies isn’t easy when you have to train the ponies yourself. That’s right, back by popular demand, FF7′s premiere mechanic is back. Chocobo Racing, for those too young, was a pastime where players would capture then take care of their chocobo on a farm in order to make them better at winning races. Well, things have changed just a tad in the 10+ years since FF7. If you’re in need of a primer, just browse below and feast your eyes and ears on the melodic feast that is Mitchell from our very own Game Front video team, which you can check out on their Youtube Channel! Don’t forget to subscribe!

For even more Final Fantasy goodness, stop by our massive text and video walkthrough. Or, if you’re in need of secrets, hints, tips and tricks, make your way to the cheats page.

Chocobo Racing Guide

Goodluck!

Source: Gaming Today

That first-run copy of Mass Effect: Deception you picked up may just be turning into an odd collector’s item. Bioware has issued a statement on the slew of errors fans have found in the novel, stating that all will be fixed in future editions of Deception.

“The teams at Del Rey and BioWare would like to extend our sincerest apologies to the Mass Effect fans for any errors and oversights made in the recent novel Mass Effect: Deception,” the apology post on Bioware’s forums reads. “We are currently working on a number of changes that will appear in future editions of the novel.”

Currently, there’s no word on when the revised edition will be available.

Bioware fixing Mass Effect: Deception novel mistakes in future editions originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: Joystiq

The second part of our tour of the Finnish games industry, in which Patrick Garratt sees Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, travels from Helsinki to Tampere and tries to navigate a blizzard using a game on an ancient Nokia phone. Remedy Entertainment If one company signifies just how quickly the Finnish games industry is deserting discs, [...]
Source: VG247

Activision has announced that its first content drops for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 that go to Call of Duty: Elite subscribers will occur on Feb. 28.

Up to now, Xbox 360 Elite subscribers have gotten hold of their early content out ahead of everyone else — and in fact, players who weren’t on 360 didn’t know when to expect the content they were promised with their Elite subscription. Activision put out a press release this week narrowing down the date to the end of the month, and detailed what PS3 players can expect:

Call of Duty Elite Drop 1: Liberation, a militarized Central Park in the heart of NYC, featuring a vast landscape ripe for long-range sniper and LMG kills. Mounted turrets on opposing ends of the map offer overwhelming firepower to anyone brave enough to man them. Elite Drop 2: Piazza, set in an idyllic seaside village, Italian getaway gone rogue, where blind corners and a complex network of branching pathways pose danger at every turn. Visceral close-quarters combat dominates in Piazza, and attacks from above and below are an ever-constant threat.

Source: Gaming Today

If you were like me – and chances are, if your name is Ross and your grew up in the sticks, you are – then you spent a lot of your formative years playing the game that helped make Fable maestro Peter Molyneux a household name, Populous. (Or perhaps Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods, which was even better.) Possibly – probably – the first God game, populous created the template followed by later Gods-eye view sims like Civilization, Sim city and, well, name the game that fits the format. Unfortunately, the franchise has been property of Electronic Arts since its beginning, and in typical EA style they kind of mismanaged it. The last PC version of the game, 1998′s Populous: The Beginning was badly botched due to it having also been intended for use on the original Playstation. And the less said about Populous DS, the better.

So Populous has lain largely dormant for 14 years. But if information dug up by an enterprising Neogaf forum member named Kifimbo pans out, it may be due for a triumphant return. They searching for more information about a rumored Insomniac title called Outernauts and stumbled onto a wiki page bearing the name “EAP Marketing FY13 Home Page“. Searching around this site,they claim to have located references to the following games:

*The Secret World
*Overstrike
*Populous
*Outernauts
*Respawn

The Secret World (Funcom) and Overstrike (Insomniac) are already scheduled to be published in partnership with EA. The other three are not confirmed titles, though Outernauts’ doman registration has been confirmed by VG 24/7. As for the other two, Kifimbo speculates that Respawn probably refers to a new game from Respawn entertainment, a guess that sounds as good as anything we’re likely to offer.

We were not able to replicate Kifimbo’s results on the site, so take all of this with a grain of salt. That won’t stop us, however, from being excited about the possibility of a new Populous game. We really need this to happen. We’ll even pray, if it helps.

Source: Gaming Today

If you were like me – and chances are, if your name is Ross and your grew up in the sticks, you are – then you spent a lot of your formative years playing the game that helped make Fable maestro Peter Molyneux a household name, Populous. (Or perhaps Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods, which was even better.) Possibly – probably – the first God game, populous created the template followed by later Gods-eye view sims like Civilization, Sim city and, well, name the game that fits the format. Unfortunately, the franchise has been property of Electronic Arts since its beginning, and in typical EA style they kind of mismanaged it. The last PC version of the game, 1998′s Populous: The Beginning was badly botched due to it having also been intended for use on the original Playstation. And the less said about Populous DS, the better.

So Populous has lain largely dormant for 14 years. But if information dug up by an enterprising Neogaf forum member named Kifimbo pans out, it may be due for a triumphant return. They searching for more information about a rumored Insomniac title called Outernauts and stumbled onto a wiki page bearing the name “EAP Marketing FY13 Home Page“. Searching around this site,they claim to have located references to the following games:

*The Secret World
*Overstrike
*Populous
*Outernauts
*Respawn

The Secret World (Funcom) and Overstrike (Insomniac) are already scheduled to be published in partnership with EA. The other three are not confirmed titles, though Outernauts’ doman registration has been confirmed by VG 24/7. As for the other two, Kifimbo speculates that Respawn probably refers to a new game from Respawn entertainment, a guess that sounds as good as anything we’re likely to offer.

We were not able to replicate Kifimbo’s results on the site, so take all of this with a grain of salt. That won’t stop us, however, from being excited about the possibility of a new Populous game. We really need this to happen. We’ll even pray, if it helps.

Source: Gaming Today

Square Enix has released its financial results for the nine-month period ending December 31, 2011, and the firm reported increases in both revenue and profit thanks to its games division as well as its social and online offerings. While sales across all sectors were rather flat in comparison year-over-year, its games sector grew 6% with [...]
Source: VG247

If you’ve overdosed on Skyrim, your next big hit of western RPG goodness is coming in the form of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Promising to take the stolid conventions of RPGs and give them a hardy kick in the rear, Amalur looks more like a action-adventure than an RPG. Mixing God of War with Oblivion, and throwing in a dose of Fable’s art style, you’ll start to get a better picture of what this title has to offer.

Starting as a silent blank slate, the unique class system has three main ability trees. How you level up these three ability trees unlocks distinct new classes called ‘destinies’ — giving nearly limitless control over how you want to combine your abilities. Want a sneaky warrior with a giant axe? Or how about a heavily armored wizard? Want to be a Jack-Of-All-Trades? There’s a destiny for that too. There’s so much choice, you might want to check out our text and video walkthrough below to get some strategies.

That isn’t all the Kingdom of Amalur has to offer. Check out our achievements, trophies, and cheats.

Check back soon for new updates!

Source: Gaming Today