You wake up at sea. The quiet water around you melds into the peaceful tones of a horn-based melody. You spot an island in the distance, and decide to swim towards it. Once you step foot on the warm sands of the beach, the music changes into something less ephemeral and more tangible. You spot a group of crabs just down the way, and when you approach them, the sound of bongo drums enters your ears. As they scurry away, so does the percussion. You distance yourself from the water and head towards a grove of cherry blossoms in the midst of a snowfall of petals. Immersing yourself in the floating colors brings entirely new instruments into the mix of sounds. This is Proteus.

Over the past few weeks, there have been many debates over whether Proteus is a game or not. Our buddy Dan Stapleton over at GameSpy argues that the PC title's inherent lack of any a defined objective stops it from being a game. Others have stated that the lack of interaction that the player has with the world is what causes Proteus to lose its moniker.

My favorite works of horror are all built upon the foundation of three solid principles: a strong sense of place, clearly defined consequences, and an ability to create expectations while simultaneously defying them. It doesn't matter if it's Halloween, The Colour Out of Space, or Silent Hill -- the medium makes no difference. These three elements are at the core of every work I consider to be truly horrifying, so it's with that in mind that the upcoming PC title Routine has piqued my interest.

Unveiled at last year's Gamescom, Routine is the first work from the UK-based Lunar Software. It's a survival horror game set in an abandoned lunar base. Yep, that's a pretty strong sense of place. And there are no extra lives in the game -- permadeath means that one wrong move, and you're starting over. Well, those are some clearly defined consequences. And just take one look at the trailer, and you'll see that Routine is filled with the unexpected. It's this last element that left me searching for answers, and who better to turn to than Lead Artist and Designer Aaron Foster.

In terms of creativity, particularly world-building, I find that the game developers that nail those the best are the Japanese and the French. So it comes as little surprise to see big Japanese publisher Capcom sign small French developer Dontnod and their debut action-adventure game, Remember Me. What is surprising is how instantly risky the game looks, though not necessarily because of creative ambition. Rather, does Remember Me even fit the label of "Capcom game?"

The nature of the "exclusive" has been an increasingly hot topic among game fans since at least the 2000s. One game can be seen as the savior of the platform; the one that will boost it to new heights, because watching big companies make money is fun, right? But in this generation, more and more exclusive games end up becoming multiplatform titles available to anyone, where it doesn't matter which system you bought. Eventually, the scorned fanboys move on to their next point of contention, and everybody expects it to happen to big-budget third-party console games. But what happens when an exclusive handheld game goes straight to consoles in just over a year?

As one of the most highly funded videogame projects on Kickstarter -- only Obsidian's Project Eternity and Double Fine Adventure have collected more through Kickstarter alone -- a lot of eyeballs are going to be on Wasteland 2 as it approaches its release. That's even truer because this is a game that aspires to be a worthy follow-up to a classic game that led to the creation of the original Fallout. Now that we've finally gotten a real look at it, so far, so good, it would seem.

Over the weekend, developer inXile released the first gameplay footage of Wasteland 2. While it was sure to attract complaints from those who didn't get precisely what they wanted (like having it mirror everything the original game did), it does look promising. And that's reassuring news -- inXile's track record has been inconsistent, with past projects including The Bard's Tale (a solid game) and Hunted: The Demon's Forge (not so much). No definitive conclusions can or should be drawn from a single 15-minute video demonstration, particularly when the game in question is far from complete, but we can better glean what the game is shooting for. ]]>Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:40:00 PSTPREVIEWhttp://localhost/previews?cId=3188224Marty Sliva We know that the future is nigh. We already shared all of our insight into what Sony has planned for February 20, and it's all-but assured that Microsoft will be holding some form of equally-profound event at some point in the near future. But while you dream about the number of strange technical numbers associated with your console du jour, Game Informer has given us a tangible glimpse at what those the next-gen hardware is capable of via their most recent cover story centered around The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

We know that CD Projekt is working on it, and that the game will wrap up Geralt's trilogy. We also know that it's supposed to be big (at least one million Skyrims). But the real information can be gleaned from the handful of screenshots that GI gathered. Take a look.

I believe in Brendon Chung. The designer of Thirty Flights of Loving, one of my favorite games of 2012, views our medium in a way that few do. He eschews the norm, tells stories in intriguing ways, and has no problem making short form games. Your first trip through Thirty Flights of Loving is likely to take you less than 15 minutes to complete, but damn if it isn't worth it.

So it's with great pleasure that I present you with the first trailer for Quadrilateral Cowboy, Chung's newest effort that's set to release sometime later on in the year. QC continues the story of Citizen Abel, the La Nouvelle Vague-inspired hero of Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving. Despite the fact that he may or may not die at the end of each prior installment, he certainly looks alive and kicking in this brief montage. The game is centered around the concept of hacking, going as far as to including mechanics that force the player to use programming languages in order to press on. Chung has also noted that QC has an open, sandbox design, which is a departure from the much narrower experiences of his previous games.

Up until the end, you would've sworn that I was a ghost. The way that I moved through the streets of Benghazi and London made my Sam Fisher seem like little more than a wisp of smoke. I was neither seen nor heard; the perfect Milford Man. When I did find a guard that I needed to go through, I used my own agility and momentum to knock them out, quickly hid the bodies, and continued on with my mission. I chose to never raise my firearm, and though certain scenarios could've been easily passed with a well-placed bullet, that's not how my Sam conducted his business.

That's what 95% of my time with Splinter Cell: Blacklist was like, and I was really impressed with how the game handled the concepts of stealth, motion, and non-violence in a technical and narrative way. Sadly, the other 5% of my demo stripped away my decision to play as a non-lethal ghost, and forced me to engage in a shootout that went against everything I'd loved about the game up until that point. It was a clumsy final beat in a mission that felt removed from the rest of the level -- a checkmark on some arbitrary list of what a AAA game in 2013 needs to include. While it certainly didn't ruin my experience with the game, that forced section left a bad final taste in my mouth.

Since the game's announcement, EA and Visceral Games have been adamant that the cooperative mode in Dead Space 3 will toy with the idea of mental instability in a way that few other shooters have ever attempted. When you go through the campaign with a buddy, one of you might begin to experience hallucinations that go completely unnoticed by the other. You'll hear noises, see visions, and even be attacked by imaginary adversaries, all while partner watches on in confusion. They will have to aid you through these episodes in order to carry on with your mission about the frozen planet of Tau Volantis. I haven't played any of DS3 cooperatively yet, but this unique gameplay schism sounds absolutely fascinating. What I have played is the game's opening few hours, and though indisputably gorgeous, it left me with much worry regarding the lack of a strong central voice across all facets of the experience.

During the first few hours of DS3, I killed gun-totting humans, weird bugs, a pulsating fungal mass, and a whole bunch of Necromorphs. I traveled through neon shopping malls, office buildings, and derelict ships. I gathered materials, built complex weapons, and fortified my spacesuit. I jumped through time, floated in zero gravity, and had a moment reminiscent of Space Harrier. But despite doing all of this, the one thing that I never encountered was fear. At no point did anxiety, dread, or any sort of tension creep into me, and I'm still trying to figure out why. Maybe it's because I spent far more time navigating the various systems and mechanics than I did actually soaking in the atmosphere, which is honestly a shame given how great the game looks. Horror shouldn't overload you with menus, options and cumbersome additions. The scariest things in life are often the simplest. This is something that the original Dead Space knew perfectly, and yet DS3 seems to completely ignore this basic principle.

Despite the best intentions of publishers, hands-on preview sessions don't make for the most comfortable way to break in a new game. A thick fog of anxiety clouds the air, stemming from developers and journalists alike: the former, nervous about placing their unfinished projects in the hands of people with the power to tear them apart, and the latter, anxious to discover as much as they can in their limited time, all while memorizing the important details for write-ups published days or weeks down the road. This inside baseball shouldn't concern you, outside of one important contradiction from business-as-usual; despite the stress-heavy atmosphere within Maxis' Emeryville studio, SimCity sucked me in for six solid hours, and rarely let go.