The Big Round-up: Monday, June 16

Posted Jun 16th 2008 12:00PM by Dan O'Halloran
Filed under: Biz, Features, Screenshots, Meta BD, Spore

Your daily wrap-up of the hottest stories in PC gaming over the weekend.

	Full Spore Creature Creator delayed a day; demo leaked For a game that is not really a game, Maxis and Electronic Arts' Spore Creature Creator is generating a ton of buzz ahead of its release this coming week. Already the free demo of the game (which has a quarter of the content of the full $9.99 version) has apparently been leaked onto the Internet according to fan site Sporenormous.
	Blizzard to announce new title at Worldwide Invitational? Yet another rumor surrounding a new Blizzard Entertainment title has been unearthed this morning, pointing to a big announcement at the upcoming Blizzard Worldwide Invitational. This latest update, found on Xfire.com, states that users should follow the Invitational's opening ceremony to "discover what new game will be announced."
	Grid 1.1 demo released A GRID 1.1 demo has been released, perfect for those who are curious as to what the new Codemasters racer brings to the genre. The behemoth download includes fixes for issues such as wheels turning properly for players in Spectator mode, support for Xinput wheel and Logitech Rumblepad 2 hardware, a several compatibility tweaks.
	New trailer and screenshots show off more characters in Lego Batman This fall developer Traveller's Tales and publisher Warner Bros. Interactive will be giving us the next Lego themed game and this time it won't be based on anything made by George Lucas. Lego Batman will feature a ton of characters from the DC Comics super hero franchise and today we have some new screenshots and a high-def trailer to show you today.
	New Velvet Assassin screenshots come forth We wish World War II had spies that looked as good as the lead character in Velvet Assassin. Violette Summer is her name and stealth action is her game and the newest screenshots from the PC action title show off more of her and her actions.

	Casually Speaking: The death of the arcade and the birth of the MMO Long before there were home consoles or Flash-based and downloadable games accessible via the Internet, the only place to get your gaming fix was the venerable video arcade. For those of our readers who may be too young to remember the arcade boom of the 1980s, these were spacious, sometimes dimly-lit buildings filled with games housed in large cabinets; some later games were contained in sit-down, glass-topped tables. These spaces were home to the grand, seminal casual games that have become enshrined within gamers' memories as the first great games of our time. Titles like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac Man, Joust, Dig Dug, etc., and the gameplay they embodied, have been the basis for all games that have followed since.
	Freeware Friday: Dwarf Fortress There are two kinds of games nowadays. Those which tell you a story, and those which let you make your own story. Most mainstream games tend to fall in the former category, including stuff like Devil May Cry 4 or Call of Duty 4. Strictly linear affairs with cool cutscenes and refined gameplay. On the other hand, there is Dwarf Fortress, which almost single-handedly defines the latter category of game. It's a freeware RTS/RPG with the freedom to do just about anything you want. In fact, it's so open that it's almost paralyzing.
	Are Ken Levine and Take Two in contract talks? 2K Boston/Australia head Ken Levine has been one of the more open people to talk to in the gaming press, always willing to chat with journalists about everything from his hit game BioShock to game design and writing to pretty much anything else. But lately even Levine has been strangely silent despite a lot of recent BioShock related news, including a sequel announcement and a BioShock movie. Why the clamp down?
	New Wheelman screenshots give us more Diesel action Midway's action-driving game Wheelman is coming out this fall and will be the second game from the mind of action and major game fan Vin Diesel. Since the first game he had a hand in designing was the impressive The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay we are looking forward to this sophomore effort.
	New Sacred 2 screenshots show off some major RPG action Ascaron's upcoming action-RPG sequel Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is coming to stores this fall and this past week some new screenshots from the game were released, showing off more of the graphical goodness of this sequel to the 2004 game that sold well in Europe but didn't make much of an impact in the US.