Gary Gannon tells potential noobs everything they need to know about the game in this ARMA 3 Gameplay.

If you’ve been thinking about picking up ARMA 3 and you’re just not sure… Or perhaps, you’ve seen Gary’s been playing it via one of Raptr’s lovely little announcements and you want to know what the game’s like Gary’s got you covered with this episode of ARMA 3 gameplay.

Basically, the game is a sandbox military sim. So no… It’s not just an FPS shooter. The game mechanics emulate real life.

Gary gives a pretty basic overview of the game, highlighting its major functions — including the map editor.

For those wanting to try the game out for themselves, the alpha client is available via Steam for about $33.

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Want any hotsauce for that? It looks like the gang is in a bit of trouble, as Gary Gannon, Mike B aka Fony and Mike Schaffnit have been swallowed whole by a giant beast. Watch as they take on the Trine 2: Goblin Menace DLC!

Trine 2: Goblin Menace introduces six new skills to the Trine 2 game world and an all-new campaign, spanning six unique levels, further improving the award-winning visuals of the original Trine 2. All the new skills are also playable in the original game and provide additional fun in multiplayer for all Trine 2 players. The Goblin Menace campaign thrusts the heroic trio of Amadeus the Wizard, Pontius the Knight and Zoya the Thief into an adventure chock full of goblin villainy.

Find out what happens in this episode of Gameplay!

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The gang is back at it again, dodging boulders and goblins like it’s going out of style. Can you guess how many times they’ll die as Gary Gannon, Mike B aka Fony and Mike Schaffnit take on the Trine 2: Goblin Menace DLC?

Trine 2: Goblin Menace introduces six new skills to the Trine 2 game world and an all-new campaign, spanning six unique levels, further improving the award-winning visuals of the original Trine 2. All the new skills are also playable in the original game and provide additional fun in multiplayer for all Trine 2 players. The Goblin Menace campaign thrusts the heroic trio of Amadeus the Wizard, Pontius the Knight and Zoya the Thief into an adventure chock full of goblin villainy.

Find out what happens in this episode of Gameplay!

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It’s Trine time again, so we all know what is about to happen. Taking bets on who is the first to die as Gary Gannon, Mike B aka Fony and Mike Schaffnit take on the Trine 2: Goblin Menace DLC.

Trine 2: Goblin Menace introduces six new skills to the Trine 2 game world and an all-new campaign, spanning six unique levels, further improving the award-winning visuals of the original Trine 2. All the new skills are also playable in the original game and provide additional fun in multiplayer for all Trine 2 players. The Goblin Menace campaign thrusts the heroic trio of Amadeus the Wizard, Pontius the Knight and Zoya the Thief into an adventure chock full of goblin villainy.

Find out what happens in this episode of Gameplay!

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With practically zero coordination, Gary Gannon,  Schaffnit and Mike B attempt to clear through another dungeon in Torchlight II.

Like the original Torchlight, Torchlight II features randomly-generated dungeons for the player to explore, and numerous types of monsters to fight for experience and loot. Torchlight II maintains the same basic gameplay as its predecessor, but features overland areas with multiple hub towns, and a longer campaign. Other new features include time of day cycles, weather effects, and a redesigned user interface. Players are able to customize character appearance with choice of sex, face, hair style and hair color. Additionally, several elements from the first game return, such as pets, fishing, and a retirement system.

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Gary Gannon,  Schaffnit and Mike B team up and try their luck with Runic Games latest release, Torchlight II.

Like the original Torchlight, Torchlight II features randomly-generated dungeons for the player to explore, and numerous types of monsters to fight for experience and loot. Torchlight II maintains the same basic gameplay as its predecessor, but features overland areas with multiple hub towns, and a longer campaign. Other new features include time of day cycles, weather effects, and a redesigned user interface. Players are able to customize character appearance with choice of sex, face, hair style and hair color. Additionally, several elements from the first game return, such as pets, fishing, and a retirement system.

The post Gameplay Is Back! appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

Don’t fall in the lava!

Gary Gannon, Mike B aka Fony and Mike Schaffnit are back in Magicka. The Yetis are gone this time, but now the guys are up against some even nastier foes. The guys have to fight their way through lots of very mean spell-casting dwarves and fire-breathing lizards. Oh, and they have to fight these baddies while walking over thing bridges suspended over seas of lava.

Any bets on who will be the first to fall in?

Find out in this episode of Gameplay!

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Here we go again.

The gang dusted off their staffs and wizard robes, so you should probably take cover. Between dodging angry Yetis, Gary’s rocks and their own thunder bolts, it looks like they’ve got their hands full in Magicka. How have their W A and Space keys not worn off of their keyboards yet?

The hordes of Yetis they face this week are very, very angry and like to rip things apart. Can Gary Gannon conjure up enough rocks to fight them off? Will Mike B aka Fony figure out which spell does what? Is Mike Schaffnit going to be able to resurrect them both fast enough?

Find out in this weeks episode of Gameplay!

The post Need More Rocks! appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

Jason Schwartz of Boston Magazine recently penned a very lengthy piece that describes what happened inside 38 Studios in its early, middle, and final days. His article included interviews with several former employees, including Curt Schilling himself, in what Schwartz describes as an “emotional, two-hour-long autopsy” of the doomed game company.

Throughout the piece, Schilling is painted as a benevolent, but misguided, chief, who wanted to treat his employees like Major League ballplayers, with some of the best benefits corporate life could offer and a series of extravagant perks that ran into the millions of dollars.

Schilling himself was always supremely confident of the possibility of success, with failure never entering into his mind, saying:

“My whole life was spent doing things that people didn’t believe were possible, because God blessed me with the ability to throw a baseball. And I carried that same mentality into everything I did here.”

Schwartz details several meetings Schilling had with investors, which Schwartz says Schilling always “emerged from… thinking he’d hit a home run,” including one with an executive from a top venture capital firm, who said after a visit to the 38 Studios offices:

“38 Studios didn’t have “the ‘A’ team that I thought you’d want to see developing such a difficult game… Curt was not the CEO, but you could see he was quite involved and had a lot of control. I was a little nervous.”

As for the “mystery investor” that was supposedly scared off by Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee‘s statements in mid-May, that’s identified as Take-Two Interactive. Schilling says the deal for funding was ready for “final sign-off,” but a Take-Two representative says that he was “not aware” of any prospective deal.

Indeed, the nature of Schilling’s control would seem to be a recurring point of contention. In interviews with other employees, Schwartz would say that Schilling would hire top talent but then would frequently not accept their input. At other times, he would interject himself into matters which were not his domain:

One [former employee] says that he’d undermine managers by randomly dipping in to give direct orders to employees: “His requests added significant work, and were often contrary to the direction given by other people.”

As for Copernicus itself, the reason we saw so little of it is because Schilling didn’t think the game was ready to be shown:

“The game wasn’t fun,” he says, unprompted, beside the softball field. “It was my biggest gripe for probably the past eight to 12 months.” Visually, Copernicus was stunning, but the actual things you could do in the game weren’t engaging enough. The combat aspects especially lagged. Schilling — who never wavered in his belief that the game would be great — says the MMO was improving, but after six years, it still wasn’t there. When Schilling walked around during lunch hour, he says, nobody was playing Copernicus’s internal demos. They were all on some other game.

In all, the nine-page report is generally positive in its depiction of Curt Schilling the man, who wanted only the best for his people and product and was willing to do whatever it took to achieve it. Curt Schilling, the businessman, however, is another story — a tale of a man who was repeatedly in over his head and had no idea he needed a life preserver.

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Today marks the midway point of 2012 – and what a year it’s been already!

We’ve picked out what we think are the top 10 MMO headlines for the first half of 2012, arranged in order by general importance and “wow factor” – which is not to be confused with “WoW factor.” We’re totally and completely sure you’ll agree, but if you don’t, let us know in the comments below!

Sorry, The Secret World fans, but we’re counting the launch as happening on July 3, which means it doesn’t make the cut. Maybe next time!

1. 38 Studios Disintegrates

Few stories grabbed the headlines in 2012 like the sad saga of 38 Studios. For a brief time, it seemed like there was a new disaster every day coming out of Curt Schilling‘s doomed game company, which was working on an MMO in the Amalur universe, codenamed Copernicus.

First it was a visit from the governor of Rhode Island… then rumors of missed paychecks… then a shocking release date announcement… then a flythrough trailer… then some screenshots… then, all of a sudden, *poof*… it was all gone.

We likely haven’t seen the end of this yet, nor do we know all the answers. Some lawsuits have already been initiated, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see more coming. And there’s a chance that Copernicus could still live on, if someone ponies up the $20 million or so it’ll take to buy the IP from the state of Rhode Island.

In the meantime, a lot of people are out of jobs and the state of Rhode Island is out about $100 million. Oh, and Schilling describes his own finances as “tapped out.” Somehow, this all seems like it’s going to get uglier before it gets prettier.

2. ArenaNet Announces Guild Wars 2 Release Date

After five years of waiting – and about five million false dates – ArenaNet finally let anxious gamers off the hook, announcing an August 28 release date for Guild Wars 2.

The game was originally reported as launching in “late 2009,” and while that was so far off as to be laughable, once the game was confirmed for 2012, all sorts of dates seemed to pop up. There were the jerseys (6/28), GameStop’s overeager promotions (6/26), and more.

But, as we were told time and time again, no date is official unless it comes from ArenaNet – leading this writer, at least to check and double-check and verify that the 8/28 date was from a legitimate source. In some ways, I’m still not sure it’s real…

3. SWTOR’s Slide

Perhaps expectations were unrealistically high, maybe there wasn’t enough endgame, or maybe the parade of voiced cut scenes wasn’t enough to mask the gameplay shortcomings. Whatever the case, BioWare has seen a steady decline of players since Star Wars: The Old Republic‘s December 2011 launch.

After selling two million box copies of the game, sub numbers dropped to 1.7 million and then 1.3 million — even though the drops were denied. Patches either confused or frustrated players, fixing things that weren’t broken or not fixing things that were.

And then there were the layoffs and all that time spent running around in spaceports. Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?

With an estimated $300 million sunk into the game’s development BioWare’s not going to give up hope just yet. But the game needs to turn around its negative trend quickly or risk being labeled as one of, if not the, biggest flops in MMO history.

4. The Elder Scrolls Online Announced

Rarely has the announcement of an MMO based on a pre-existing properly been met with such disinterest – and, in some cases, outright loathing – from its built-in fan base.

But that was the case when Bethesda Softworks and ZeniMax Online Studios announced The Elder Scrolls Online. Cries of “WoW clone” popped up almost immediately, and they haven’t been helped by a questionable PR campaign that has unleashed lots of words but very little in the way of a direct look at the game.

With the game slated for a 2013 release, one would think we should start getting substantial looks at the game very soon. Until then, all we’ll have is a lot of guesswork – and, if the recent months are any indication, those guesses will be overwhelmingly on the negative side.

5. TERA’s Tribulations

If you want to divide a roomful of MMO gamers, just mention TERA.

The game didn’t lack for pre-launch controversy, from its suit with NCSoft to the general skimpiness of female – especially Elin – armor to its puzzling lack of PvP options.

Once it launched in May, the game was lauded for its action-based combat and rich graphics, but it also had its fair share of detractors, many of whom saw the game as too closely related to other shiny, but ultimately empty, Asian grinders.

Right now, the game appears to be holding fairly steady but probably doesn’t have much room to falter. And you know the jackals will be out in force if any sign of weakness – like a F2P switch – pops up. Rawr.

6. BlizzCon canceled

It was a shock to the collective systems of Blizzard fans everywhere when the company announced that its yearly BlizzCon shindig would not take place in 2012, as the company was concentrating its efforts on Diablo III and expansions for World of Warcraft and StarCraft II.

BlizzCon is expected to return in 2013, which should be just about the right time to announce the post-Mists of Pandaria expansion and maybe even Titan.

7. EVE Fans Burn Jita

Oh, you crazy EVE Online fans. This year’s dramatic moment was brought to you by the lovable rogues of Goonswarm, who plotted a firefight to end all firefights in the highly populated Jita system. Why would they do this? Because they could.

In the end, some 15,000 ships unleashed about 250,000 rounds dealing 45 million points of damage, according to CCP’s own accounting of the incident. Who says EVE is just about spreadsheets and cargo running?

8. Rift Revives

It wasn’t quite as steep a decline as SWTOR‘s, but Rift definitely bled fans after its March 2011 launch. Trion Worlds stayed mostly quiet in 2012 until E3, when a gameplay trailer showing off the new expansion, Storm Legion, and the new PvP zone – as it was thrashed by a giant… well, whatever that was – captivated fans old and new.

With Storm Legion coming later this year – and the many advances the game has made in its multitudinous updates – Rift may very well be “ascending” in the latter half of 2012 and beyond.

9. DDO Expands

Most MMOs don’t go six years without a full-fledged expansion. Then again, most MMOs don’t nearly die, go F2P, and then witness a revival like Dungeons & Dragons Online did.

Turbine finally released the game’s first full expansion, Menace of the Underdark, in June, taking players to the classic Forgotten Realms D&D setting and pitting them against some foes that are well-known to long-time D&D fans. It was a long wait for devoted players, but most of them would say it was well worth it.

10. Trion Defiantly Forges Ahead

Hey, you got TV show in my video game! You got video game in my TV show!

So far, we’ve only gotten glimpses of what Trion Worlds and SyFy are planning with Defiance, but it’s enough to intrigue us. If the two media companies can properly execute joint venture — and pull in a TV-watching audience — it could make the game one of the sleeper hits of 2013.

The post Top 10 Stories Of 2012 appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.