Note: This list is in random order. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

Remember the Legacy of Kain series? The action adventure cult classic was developed by Crystal Dynamics and if you head to the Future Past Antiky shop in Prague, hack the door leading to the basement and look around, a cover for the video game will be discovered. What’s the relation to Deus Ex? As it turns out, Eidos Interactive actually published the Legacy of Kain series with Eidos Montreal having developed Mankind Divided. The more you know.

Just Cause 2, heralded by some as a GTA knockoff, has a new trailer out which advertises an all new feature: Multiplayer. To be more specific, the multiplayer version of the game is actually a fan made mod, but it is now fully available on Steam. The trailer text reads as follows:

“At first there was only … one man wreaking havoc in Panau, but then a team of modders came with one goal: that some day, all of this would be playable with thousands of players. This day has come.”

The trailer itself is pretty exciting, and shows off some of the more unique features that distinguish Just Cause 2 from its action open world adventuring counterparts. Specifically the parachute that the player has on them at all times is an excellent unique feature. But as far as the trailer goes really, all we’ve got is what looks like a bunch of characters in the standard Just Cause 2 environment at the same time.

We’re certain there are plenty of other multiplayer goodies thrown in there. You’ll have to play to find them.

Avalanche Studios have released a new video which shows developers from the company traveling to Costa Rica for various forms of research, all of which seems to hint at the development of Just Cause 3. Specifically these developers discuss their research in terms of “complex environments for future games.”

Andreas Oberg, the associate art director for Avalanche Studio gave a statement:

“In the Just Cause games we’re in a tropical paradise. And one really important component of tropical paradises is beaches and water. However, water is one of the most complicated things to simulate in movies and computer games. So, yesterday, we were down at the beach and we were recording the water in super slow motion. These are all really interesting questions that we’re doing research about so that we can improve things for the future.”

Although this is now the second time that Just Cause 3 development has been teased. We still await for a concrete confirmation from Avalanche Studios.

Revealed to OXM, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII gameplay director Yuji Abe stated that, “Obviously, Square Enix bought out Eidos a number of years ago, and now we have direct access to American development team. That’s certainly been discussed within the company, the possibility of say, Eidos or maybe someone else to look after or maybe take on the Final Fantasy series. And we obviously haven’t decided anything concrete, but if we find the right team of developers, the right people who really wanted to do it, and we had the right game, then yes, certainly we’d think about it.”

Director Motomu Toriyama added that since each game is developed by a different team, it would be interesting to see just how different an Eidos-developed game would be. “The whole thing about the Final Fantasy series is that for every iteration, for every game we do, we have a very different game. So the development team is also different every time, so that there’s different ideas and different concepts driving it. So obviously within that framework, having a very different type of team could work. So if we got the right team of people, it could produce something very interesting in the end.”

“Nosgoth is not an MMO. It’s a competitive online multiplayer experience (…with a bit of a twist). Nosgoth will not be an MMORPG and Nosgoth doesn’t look or play anything like Dota 2 or LOL [League of Legends]” adding that the “closest comparison is probably Unreal Championship 2.

“Not sure if Nosgoth is all that similar, but I suppose it’s closer to that than a traditional LoK game, an MMO or a MOBA.”

Also, for those looking for a brand new Soul Reaver single-player experience, despite Legacy of Kain being an inspiration for Nosgoth, it will not be playable offline nor will it be open world. It will debut on PC first but might head to other platforms laterr.

“We announced the game early and gave details on its context, but I’m afraid there’s gonna be a bit of a gap between now and the time we release screenshots etc. Right now, we’re all heads-down and nose to the grindstone in the preparation phase, getting all the various materials in place etc, and we want to make sure that the game feels right before speaking about it more plainly and openly.”

Stay tuned for more. It’s going to be a long wait.

The trailer revolves around Garrett and who he is. Garret is a master thief who’s main objective is to always steal from the rich and take advantage of the current circumstances. In Thief people will be able to pickpocket, rob, and eliminate their enemies in a stealthy manner. Thief is first and foremost is a pure rogue-like experience that you won’t find anywhere else.

Thief  franchise will finally be returning to the video gaming scene after a long absence sometime in 2014 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

GamingBolt will be covering Thief thoroughly next week at E3 2013 so stay tuned.

Let us know if you’re excited for Thief in the comments below.

Check back on GamingBolt for more details on Thief in the very near future.

Updated with E3 screenshots:

The first Just Cause came out in 2006 and was published Eidos Interactive for the Xbox, PS2, PC and even the Xbox 360. Like Grand Theft Auto, it aimed to introduce an open world in which players could go where they please and do as they please.

Taking place in the 391 square mile island of San Esperito, Just Cause had you playing as Agency operative Rico Rodriguez as he works to overthrow the dictator, Salvador Mendoza. Mendoza, like any despot, has weapons of mass destruction and it’s up to Rico to put a stop to his scheme. With extreme prejudice, of course.

Just Cause featured a rather short storyline campaign but prospered with over 300 different side missions to take part in. The basic elements of a signature gameplay were beginning to take form here, as players could pilot a variety of vehicles and perform all manner of stunts like base jumping, skydiving and even parasailing by latching on to a car or boat and deploying the parachute.

Such antics proved an aside from the usual mundane chores of Grand Theft Auto.

But it wasn’t until Just Cause 2 that things really kicked into gear.

The sequel was published by Eidos Interactive in 2010 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, but now distributed by Square Enix. It also introduced the new Avalanche Engine 2.0 and implemented Havok Physics into the mix. Rico Rodriguez returned again, aiming to overthrow another dictator – Pandak “Baby” Panay – on the island of Panau and also facing off against his mentor from the previous game, Tom Sheldon.

Unlike the original, Just Cause 2 embraced its open world nature and rather than progressing through simple campaign missions, players had to generate Chaos. With enough Chaos, one could unlock new Agency missions and proceed to assault strongholds that held their sway over the island.

And how did one generate Chaos?

You could go around collecting items. That’s one way. You could also perform different side missions. That’s another way. Or you could assault bases, blow shit up while parachuting into territories, hijack and lasso a jet for transportation, string several baddies together and execute them with whip attacks, ramming a helicopter into an airport hangar, pilot vehicles into sub-orbital base jumps onto bridges where cars await to be jacked, and even blow up a whale.

We haven’t even gotten to holding off the super tankers.

The grappling hook quickly became one of the more awesome additions to the game. Despite the lack of super powers, as was seen in games like Prototype and inFamous released around the same time, Just Cause 2’s grappling hook was enough to give Rico an edge over an entire island army. You could either grapple towards objects normally, using the hook to assist in glides with the parachute, or as a melee weapon.

One of the more innovative uses of the hook was to pull enemies towards you and shoot them up, along with attaching one end of the hook to an enemy while attaching the other to a random object that they would then be pulled towards. Much hilarity ensued, especially when you knocked two enemies’ heads together (literally). And who hasn’t hooked an enemy on to a passing aircraft and watched them sail off into the wild blue yonder?

The level of destruction in the game was nothing to scoff at either. Entire bases could be levelled with the use of explosives and well-timed vehicular violence. And unlike some games where the level of violence, the level of Chaos was meant to be fun in its own right, it served a purpose in Just Cause 2. Avalanche Studios wanted you to have fun in the world they created – all 400 square miles of it.

In a way, Just Cause felt like a tribute to all the old school action movies we grew up with. Movies like Commando, Rambo and Predator, where the point was balls to the wall action at every turn. It was ridiculous, it was clever, it was fun and it got the blood pumping. Shit blew up good, and never stopped blowing up for any reason.

As it stands, open world action adventure games will come and go. Upcoming games like Saints Row IV and Grand Theft Auto V add elements of chaos and randomicity to their inner workings, the former taking it to hilarious levels of over-reaction and the latter looking to employ its own action movie style of adrenaline, referencing films like Heat with its heists.

Despite this, Just Cause, especially the sequel, will always hold a fond place in our hearts for the pure, lucid simplicity of Chaos it presented. Because, seriously, how many games let you blow up whales?

As Eidos Life President Ian Livingstone points out, it’s high time to just focus on software for Nintendo. They could easily make it happen, and the response would be terrific.

Speaking to Pocket Gamer, Livingstone stated that, “Nintendo should have their IP on every platform. Otherwise a whole generation of young people will miss out on their games.

“They could easily put Mario on the iPad tomorrow if they so wished. They’ve got lots of options, lots of IP, and a tremendous amount of cash.”

This isn’t to say that Nintendo will go and do just that (all indications and public statements in fact say otherwise). As such, Nintendo has managed to shake off slow starts, like with the 3DS, to deliver compelling games. We’ll just have to wait and see how the Wii U performs in the long run for the company.

According to the recent find via AMD Driver Update a title called ‘War for Nosgoth’ has been spotted. Nosgoth is the name of the world in the Legacy of Kain franchise that dates way back in the mid 90s starting on Sony’s PlayStation. The game is also found in steam’s database history and was last updated on May 27th.

Back in February of 2013 Kotaku’s superannuation twitter discovered a warfornosgoth.com domain that was registered by Square Enix.

This suggest that Nosgoth might be the next entry in the Legacy of Kain series after its overdue absence from the gaming world. This would be amazing news for the fans of the franchise all over the planet. Hopefully this is true, thankfully we have a lot of evidence that a new Legacy of Kain game is nearing a reality.

Let us know what you think of Nosgoth findings in Steam’s database, in the comments below.

Check back on GamingBolt as the story develops

Hitman: Absolution has received it’s own free companion app, Square Enix announced today. The companion app “Hitman: ICA” allows players to purchase and upgrade weapons, queue up contracts and get in-game hints.

Hitman: ICA is now available on both iOS and Android stores/devices. This app packs achievement info, stats on assassinations and even shortcuts to the YouTube channel.

Launch trailer has also been released and you can watch it below. The video is a whopping of two minutes long and it demonstrates how the features work in Hitman: ICA. This app track’s players progress throughout the game and unlocks in-game rewards.

Hopefully, this will games feel what it’s like to be a hitman in real life.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more news and updates.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.