This Week in Gaming - October 25-31st

Each Monday I plan to cover the past week's latest news surrounding the world of gaming, including major tournament results, headline gaming news and notable gaming releases and updates.


Gaming News

The biggest news for most people with an interest in games will be the announcement of Grand Theft Auto V. The new splash was splattered all over the official Rockstar website with the declaration: TRAILER 11.02.11. As of today the the trailer is 2 days away and the specifics of the new title are widely speculated. All we know so far is what you see in the logo and that alone has been the subject of much deliberation. The long-standing rumours are that GTA V will be set in Los Angeles or a fictional iteration of it, taking players back to Los Santos and bringing with it the same modernisation that GTA IV gave to the Liberty City of GTA III. While the rumours are only rumours, they aren't hard to believe given that Rockstar themselves have so much recent experience with the City of Angels - after working with Team Bondi they created a mid 20th century L.A. for L.A. Noire, they had us racing around the streets with Midnight Club L.A. and of-course had us cleaning up the hood (and 'Big Smoke') in GTA: San Andreas.

In following the Grand Theft Auto series it's easy to spot that as with many other popular franchises, the names switch between numbers and titles. According to Rockstar this is to signify the importance of progression. We all loved GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas but Rockstar claims that it was GTA III that was the pioneer of the 3D era and the more recent titles owe everything to the switch. GTA IV represented the move to next-gen consoles and with that came massive graphical improvements and a huge increase in scale. We can hope that by donning the number for GTA V Rockstar plans another paradigm shift for the series, perhaps by giving the player a much wider scope for their adventure - an entire state, perhaps? More than one playable character? Co-op?

While the popularity of the series is unquestionable, GTA IV had its critics. To quote my favourite video game critic: "as recently as Vice City the feel was still exaggerated and colourful, since then though the series has taken a right corner at the corner of Gritty & Realism, which I'm not convinced is the best direction for it." I, for one, spent hours of my teenage years mowing down hookers and causing mayhem in Vice City - a prospect which I didn't find half as appealing in GTA IV. Saints Row has overtaken Grand Theft Auto as the sandbox game, but perhaps Rockstar really don't mind that much. Hopefully in GTA V we will see the series return to wacky sandbox and series mission structure, but I somehow doubt it.


eSports

Despite being held last weekend, the finals of the Electronic Sports World Cup held in Paris, France didn't finish until after last Monday, so the results for the final days belong in this week. The finals of the Dota 2 tournament saw Na'Vi victorious over EHOME. By many people the semi-final between Na'Vi and monkeybusiness was seen as the true final, as the former crushed EHOME in the grand finals. Dota 2 continues to give us great games despite still being in the closed beta and with thousands of fans out there struggling to get a beta key, we will try to get some keys to give away here on Crossfire.


Notable Releases

This week saw the release of Battlefield 3, the sequel to the Bad Company 2 and the latest in Electronic Arts first person shooter series. Ever since Activision's Call of Duty franchise became a success story, EA has been desperately fighting to gain a leading share of the FPS market. Medal of Honour and Crysis 2 have both been put forward but it is with Battlefield 3 that EA hopes to pose a series threat to their market rivals. I've already had my say about the issues surrounding EA's Origin and there is enough anti-EA/anti-Origin hate out there so we'll try to look past that for now. Battlefield 3 is currently boasting a score of 90/100 on Metacritic and the common concesus is that if EA hadn't dropped the ball with Origin, the score would be above 95. It appears that no-one has a problem with the game itself. The new Frostbite 2 engine is breathtakingly beautiful, offers smooth gameplay and the best in game audio of any game out there today. The single-player leaves a lot to be desired, but honestly, who buys Battlefield 3 to play single player? Not that I'm trying to justify games selling a multi-player experience with a shoddy single player tacked on, but such is the market place in 2011.

[img=right]Steam announced that Bloodline Champions is now free-to-play. This fast-paced arena combat game is less than 1GB and is up there with Team Fortress 2 as one of the best games available free of charge. If you've ever enjoyed controlling your hero in Dota/LoL/HoN OR enjoyed the frenetic pace and skill of Quake then you owe it to yourself to give Bloodline Champions a try.

(banner designed by nebu)

For all the latest gaming news check out crossfire.nu