The new Wolfenstein game is having a fairly positive reception right now. The more we’re told, the more the fans of the franchise are looking forward to it, although some remain to be convinced. A new detail has emerged though which might win a few over.

Jens Matthies the creator took part in a Reddit Ask Me Anything recently, in which he revealed that the singleplayer-only game will have something of an ‘alternate timeline’ function in the game, in which one early decision can alter how the rest of the game will play out although he described it more of a ‘tone’ change rather than a story change, noting that the end cinematic will remain the same. However he does encourage players to do a second playthrough so they can see what would happen if they chose the other option.

He has also said that even the first playthrough of the game could take up to 20 hours for those people who need to find every last thing within a game, adding that there should still be enough incentive on top of the ‘alternate timeline’ to make players want to do a replay of the game.

A game with thought put into the story certainly sounds interesting. We’ll have to see how well it delivers on the promises being made.

Wolfenstein: The New Order will be out on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on May 20^th in Europe, North America and Australia.

Just as we thought everything was going to be okay after Gamespy shut down…

EA have just recently made public the fact that due to the imminent closure of the service and thanks to technical challenges and concerns for the player experience several of their older games will effectively be going offline at the end of the month as they haven’t come up with a plan for continued support “at this time”.

This announcement comes a few days after Gameranger had said they would support all games left high and dry though, and it’s entirely possible that the games left without a planned future could still be saved by this although EA have stated there are significant hurdles on the technical side to overcome. In fact, one of the games on the list below Gameranger have already stated they will be supporting after May 31st. Keep your fingers crossed people.

Games affected:

• Battlefield 1942 for PC and Mac (including The Road to Rome and Secret Weapons of WW2 expansions)

• Battlefield 2 for PC (including Special Forces expansion)

• Battlefield 2: Modern Combat for PlayStation 2

• Battlefield 2142 for PC and Mac (including Northern Strike expansion)

• Battlefield Vietnam for PC

• Bejeweled (r) 2 for the Wii

• Bulletstorm for PlayStation 3

• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars for PC and Mac (including Kane’s Wrath expansion)

• Command & Conquer: Generals for PC and Mac (including Zero Hour expansion)

• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 for PC and Mac

• Crysis 2 for PC

• Crysis for PC

• Crysis Wars for PC

• Dracula – Undead Awakening for the Wii

• Dragon Sakura for Nintendo DS

• EA Sports 06 for PC

• F1 2002 for PC

• FIFA Soccer 08 (KOR) for the Wii

• FIFA Soccer 08 for Nintendo DS

• FIFA Soccer 09 for Nintendo DS

• FIFA Soccer 10 for Nintendo DS

• FIFA Street 3 for Nintendo DS

• Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers for PlayStation 2

• Global Operations for PC

• GREEN DAY: ROCK BAND for the Wii

• James Bond: Nightfire for PC

• Madden NFL 08 for Nintendo DS

• Madden NFL 09 for Nintendo DS

• Master of Orion III for PC

• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for PC and Mac (including Breakthrough and Spearhead expansions)

• MySims Party for Wii

• MySims Racing for Nintendo DS

• MySims SkyHeroes for the Wii and DS

• NASCAR Sim Racing for PC

• NASCAR Thunder 2003 for PC

• NASCAR Thunder 2004 for PC

• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 for PC

• Need for Speed: ProStreet for Nintendo DS

• Need for Speed: Undercover for Nintendo DS

• Neverwinter Nights 2 for PC and Mac

• Neverwinter Nights for PC, Mac and Linux (including Hordes of the Underdark and Shadows of Undrentide expansions)

• SimCity Creator for Wii

• Skate It for Nintendo DS

• Sneezies for the Wii

• Spore Creatures for Nintendo DS

• Spore Hero Arena for Nintendo DS

• Star Wars: Battlefront for PC and PlayStation 2

• Star Wars: Battlefront II for PC and PlayStation 2

• THE BEATLES: ROCK BAND for the Wii

• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 for Nintendo DS

In 2004, we had Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, remakes of the original Pokémon titles Red and Green. Then in 2010 (2009 for Japan) followed Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, remakes of the original Gold and Silver. While both had their own reasons for existing – FireRed and LeafGreen were to introduce Kanto Pokémon into Gen III games after all the previous games were rendered incompatible with the GBA due to hardware changes; while HeartGold and SoulSilver did the same for Gen IV due to the removal of the GBA slot for the DSi and 3DS, though fan demand was also obviously a factor – to many people’s eyes, a trend was emerging; and barely a few months into the release of HeartGold and SoulSilver, many people were speculating whether Nintendo would reboot the next games in the timeline – Ruby and Sapphire – with a DS or 3DS remake.

The logic was sound – with both Johto and Kanto getting their appearance updated to modern standards, Hoenn was now the only region NOT to have its own redesign. Many speculated we’d hear news of such a remake some time after Black and White – following the “two generations later” trend of the previous games – but instead, after two Black and White sequels, Generation V ended with not a whisper. Then came X and Y and the start of Generation VI; and suddenly people noticed teasers in the game that reignited the belief. 14 berries only obtainable from other regions? A backpacker who talked about a region that isn’t any of the known ones (even though this included Hoenn)?

It all added up to something; and now finally, Nintendo has delivered. Strangely timed to coincide with their annual earnings call and pre-dating E3 (itself subject to many speculations of its own) by many weeks, Nintendo this week revealed it is to launch two new Pokémon Titles, Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, worldwide this year.

At first, all we had to go on was the names of the games and some tentative box art, revealed in a short trailer; nothing of the game itself was shown. However, as of today, that’s changed. The first trailer showing actual footage from the game was posted on Pokémon’s official Youtube channel this morning. Strangely silent apart from dubbed-over sound effects which the trailer makes clear aren’t from the game, the Trailer appears to show Groudon and Kyogre activating their respective abilities – though whether these are cutscenes, or actual in-battle animations is unclear.

The trailer’s subtext also confirms that these titles will be 2D with “some areas in 3D”; this combined with the visual style of Groudon and Kyogre shown seems to suggest these games are built upon the same visual engine as X & Y.

While the new Trailer answers a few questions about the game so far, much else remains to be seen. First of all, is it ACTUALLY Hoenn? Many assume so, but the first Trailer talked about “a whole new World”; and what about that Backpacker saying he didn’t come from Hoenn? Plus, we still haven’t seen any game play. E3, anyone? Let’s just say, the next few months just got very interesting…

Nowadays fighter games aren’t a particularly active genre of games… at least, they’re not really in the spotlight as much as they were in the heyday of Mortal Kombat and Tekken. So when an Italian studio who traded mainly in a sub-genre of indie horror films known as ‘splatter films’ announced in 2011 that they were planning to make a fighter called Death Cargo, the fans of those fighters got excited. Even more so when supposed beta footage was released showing that the studio’s previous works was going to have an effect on the game itself – it was going to be a gorefest.

Problems have only emerged recently when people who purchased the game found that despite receiving e-mails confirming their purchase, and downloads being available… they’re still not actually getting to play the game. What’s more, some of these people claim to have been banned from the forums set up for the players of Death Cargo when they tried to bring this up there.

The company in question is called Necrostorm, and the instructions they’ve been sending out for the download of the game are a little bit… odd. They claim that it’s all in the name of stopping piracy, and honestly they’re pretty standard up until the point it asks for you to e-mail back to THEM a code provided by the .exe file downloaded to which they will reply with an activation code. They will then provide a further code a few hours later for the ‘file creator’, although it could take up to five days for the ‘file creation’ process to be completed. Many of said that they still don’t have a working game even after that time has passed though, taking to other popular gaming forums to talk about their troubles.

Necrostorm have protested against people accusing them of running a scam, saying that anyone who was banned from the forum was so due to people making such accusations of their intents. And indeed they have been providing everything they should… except for an actual working game.

Sony have reversed a controversial new plan for the DriveClub game that tied access to the game with users’ Playstation Plus accounts. Users would have been able to get the game as a demo for free, and upgrade to the full game for only £42.99… only to lose access if they ever let their membership to PS Plus lapse.

Unsurprisingly this was not popular among Sony’s fans and they took to the forums and the Internet to make their thoughts heard. And it seems that their protests have worked.

UPDATE: Our priority for DRIVECLUB is to enable you to play and enjoy everything it has to offer and PlayStation recognises that the prior plan for DRIVECLUB entitlement for the upgrade to the PS Plus edition was not appropriate. As a result, we have adjusted the PlayStation Plus terms for DRIVECLUB.

Now, If you intend on downloading DRIVECLUB PlayStation Plus Edition, and upgrading to the full game experience, you will have access to the full game even if your PlayStation Plus subscription runs out.

Who says that the consumer can’t make a difference?