bioshock-infinite posts

BioShock Infinite is already one of the most talked about games due out in 2010. While developer Irrational Games hasn't revealed much about the game since it was first announced last summer this week the developer revealed that one of you might find your name in the game.

Irrational's web site has posted up word that they are looking to put a fan's name in the game. As it states, "You could end up as the namesake of a building, a character, a business–whatever our artists come up with. It's the ultimate bragging rights." And all you have to do is send in your name and email address by the end of the day on April 13. How simple is that?

The annual Toy Fair is happening right now in New York City and for the 2011 edition action figure companies are breaking out plans to release new figures based on current and upcoming games. NECA always has a ton of game-related action figures coming down the pike and Figures.com has a gallery full of what the company is showing off at Toy Fair this year.

As you can see one of the upcoming NECA figures is a highly detailed Duke Nukem that's slated for release in April just before Duke Nukem Forever comes out in May. It also showed off some upcoming figures from its BioShock line and announced that in 2012 it would be releasing figures based on the next game in the series BioShock Infinite.

Over at Kotaku they have posted up a video showing off some current and upcoming collectible statues from Gaming Heads, who have previously released statues based on Valve's games. Upcoming products in the video include a Smoker Infected from the Left 4 Dead series and a Portal 2 turret. Gaming Heads is also working on more Valve-based statues including a Gordon Freeman statue from Half-Life 2 that we suspect will sell out quickly.

[Picture credit: Figures.com]

Irrational Games' head man Ken Levine has now completed the promised task of providing the forward for BioShock Rapture, the long awaited prose novel that will serve as a back story for the events in the BioShock and BioShock 2 first person shooters.

On his personal Twitter page, Levine wrote, "I wrote my tiny corner of the BioShock novel last night. Hard to describe the feeling of writing for Ryan again after 3 years." He's referring to Andrew Ryan, the creator of the underwater city of Rapture at the heart of the first two games in the BioShock series. When asked by another person if it was hard to write the character again Levine replied with, "It wasn't difficult, but I had to say something about him that I hadn't said already. I think I found a tiny, tiny new corner."

As we have reported before the BioShock prose novel was first announced back in 2009. John Shirley wrote the bulk of the novel and it's currently scheduled to be released via Tor Books in July.

[Via VG247.com]

Publisher Take Two Interactive's latest financial results are now available for the company's quarter that ended on December 31, 2010. The company exceeded its own guidence with revenues of $334.3 million, slightly lower than the revenues of $360.4 million for the same period a year ago. Take Two had a profit of $40.86 million for the time period, which is slightly higher than the profit of $37.92 million for the same period a year ago.

The company's press release had no major changes to its release scheduled other than today's addition of 2K Games' The Darkness II for fall 2011. Duke Nukem Forever is still due for release on May 3. Spec Ops The Line and XCom have a more vague release window of "Fiscal 2012" which means anytime between April, 1 2011 and March 3, 2012. Finally BioShock Infinite is still scheduled for release in the calendar year of 2012. The long awaited Max Payne 3 still does not have a release date although the publisher has confirmed the game is still in the works.

2010 was a year that served as a bit of a comeback for the PC game industry. We saw the digital download market for games, which already had gained traction in the last couple of year, really explode in the last 12 months. We saw the rise of free-to-play online games in a variety of genres as it gained a large foothold in the Western markets. Indie game development continued to expand as small game teams and studios bypassed the big publishers and found success in directly selling games to consumers.

Yet not everything was wine and roses in the last 12 months. Games that were supposed to become big hits had launch issues that, in one major case, caused the game's developer to close its doors. Piracy continues to be a major PC game issue but some publishers used DRM set-ups that are seen by many as too harsh for the average consumer. In many cases developers who made multi-platform games treated the PC port like an unwanted step-child, denying that version post-DLC support, releasing the PC version months after the console ports and more.

However the truth is that overall PC gaming got a second look from many in the overall game industry. While console game sales are on the whole down for the year, a case could be made that the PC side of the business is actually gaining strength. So what were the big news stories for the PC game industry in 2010? Big Download has gone back and picked 10 stories over the past 12 months that we think rose above the normal press release noise and were significant in 2010. Check out our picks after the jump:

BioShock Infinite may be using Unreal Engine 3 as its graphical basis but that doesn't mean the upcoming first person shooter from Irrational Games is just using the engine' stock features. In a message board post on the Irrational Games forums, the developer's technical director Chris Kline gives some more info about the changes and improvements that are being made for the game's unique features.

These changes include a new AI system that is "both more efficient and gave designers the ability to author their own behaviors." BioShock Infinite also has a new animation system, a new deferred lighting renderer, a new audio system based on the WWise technology from AudioKinetic and new tech that will allow the game "to take advantage of as many cores as you can throw at it." With BioShock Infinite not due for release until 2012 that could mean a whole lot of processor cores.

BioShock Infinite is very high on most gamers' watch lists, and here comes a new trailer. Much like the original BioShock trailers, this one shows off gameplay, albeit in a heavily scripted fashion. It follows the player character after he has already arrived in Columbia, and his fight to rescue Elizabeth. There's a lot of really cool sequences, such as fighting off a politician with a newfound gun, a bar fight where you steal a shotgun with telekinesis, and the clockwork beasts at the end, so it's definitely a must-watch trailer. The only real issue is the overuse of motion blur, which can be a bit disorienting

GoG.com's surprising shut down today took us off guard. While there's hope that the site will continue in some form we wonder if it will relaunch with its "no DRM policy". We certainly think that's the way to go with selling older PC games:

• GamersGate now supports browsing its library of games via Facebook although you have to go to the main GamersGate.com site to actually complete your purchase.
• Want to unlock your Intel CPU for more performance? You can likely do it yourself for free or you can get a $50 card from Intel to do it.
• BioShock Infinite meets Minecraft. Very cool indeed.

While the full gameplay trailer is still a few days away, GameTrailersTV's latest episode gave us a few seconds of teaser footage from BioShock Infinite, the upcoming "cool art style combined with cool gameplay (we hope)" first person shooter from developer Irrational Games.

The teaser footage shows off more of the floating city of Columbia and especially how your character will get around a city that's about 10,000 feet up in the air. In the meantime Irrational Games' web site continues to post up small bits of info about the game every day until the release of the full gameplay trailer early next week.

As the world awaits the release next week of the first in-game trailer for BioShock Infinite, developer Irrational Games continues to reveal more about its already highly anticipated shooter game. Game Informer's web site has now posted up some images showing the "ads" that might be seen in the game's floating city of Columbia. The ads, made to look like propaganda from the early 20th century, certainly show more than a hint of racism in this alternate world.

Meanwhile the Irrational Games web site continues to offer little snippets of info from BioShock Infinite ahead of the trailer release. They include using the city's Sky-Lines, info about your in-game companion Elizabeth and more.