Andy Robinson for CVG UK interviews David Wise:

I wasn’t sure which direction to take things in, so I put together a demonstration tape of three different possible styles for the jungle level. I played these to Tim Stamper, who asked me to take the breaks out between the three pieces. That’s the jungle tune.

Fascinating insight on some of Wise’s most famous compositions as well as a short retrospective on his extraordinary career.

Kyle Orland:

This one issue causes a somewhat comical amount of frustration for a small segment of vocal gamers. They fill up comment threads and messages boards with outrage at the injustice of it all. Kotaku commenter TreyTable summed up the level of vitriol nicely when he described his reaction to on-disc DLC, “The best way to fight this trend is to put a company out of business, even Capcom. That’s how one can fight this bullshit.” Another commenter MarkoPolos put it more bluntly, “How about fuck Capcom?” But the most common complaints about on-disc DLC start to break down once you take a closer look at them.

I basically agree with his reasoning, but I think he misses the bigger point – DLC is how publishers have managed to raise game prices without creating a giant backlash. It’s a good thing for everyone. Developers who might otherwise be laid off have the opportunity to justify their continued paycheck. Consumers who don’t want the extra content aren’t forced to pay for it, and continue to pay the same retail prices they’ve been paying for the past three decades. The studios and publishers are able to appeal to a wider portion of the gamer spectrum by providing a way for those who love their game and are willing to pay more to see more of it to send them money, not to mention letting them tap into the used market to some extent. I’m not aware of any data on how DLC has affected the average total price paid by consumers for games this generation, but I suspect the model’s success is reflected in the enormous budgets companies have been investing in development.

Just wanted to say that.

Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade fame is working on a card game with Cryptozoic.

In Thornwatch enemies deal wound cards that get shuffled into your deck and since they cannot be discarded begin to build up in your hand. When a vampire picked a wound card from a player the vampire was healed and the wound card went back to the player. They could also smell blood so I let them teleport to any player who had a wound in their hand. When a player hit a vampire they could choose to either deal damage or strip off one of the vampire’s buff cards. It made for some fun choices and I could not have been happier with the way they worked.

Color me intrigued.

Adam Smith at Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

Every development update makes Cube World’s differences from Minecraft more apparent, although it’s not too far removed from what I imagined the adventure mode of Mojang’s game might be – a block-based world of exploration, combat and questing.

It’s nice to see a game not only try to move away from its inspiration’s teat but at the same time not release as a quarter featured paid alpha.

Tracy Lien at Polygon:

While this doesn’t mean that adult games won’t be playable on Windows 8, it does mean that games with adult ratings will not be available from the Windows 8 Marketplace, which could potentially mean that players will miss out on special Windows 8 functionality for certain games.

So it looks like you’ll have to go straight to the publisher for your copy of Singles: Flirt Up Your Life.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Fucking finally.

From Eric Caoili at Gamasutra:

The PS3 version’s average review score on Metacritic, 63, is quite low for such a high-profile, triple-A release, and many critics have gone further, savaging the game for straying too far from the franchise’s roots. Polygon’s review called the release “a desperate, ugly bid to appeal to as many people as possible.”

Yet in Japan, Resident Evil 6 received a near perfect 39 out of 40 review score from Famitsu, one of the country’s most prominent video game magazines and review outlets. And in the UK, it became the fourth biggest seller of 2012, according to Chart-Track.

In my opinion, this will go down as one of the most underrated games of this generation. It’s a great distillation of the problems with the way games are reviewed here – cram the whole thing down a single reviewer’s gullet as quickly as possible, then demand they write insightful feedback. Pathetic.

John Walker over at RPS:

It seems things were getting pretty desperate, with OnLive ready to liquidate its assets, stopped at the last moment by the seemingly paltry offer from venture capitalist Gary Lauder. For just $4.8m he picked up, well, a big pile of debt, but the belief that the problem was a lack of initial investment.

Ouch.