The Pulse Beats Once More

After rumours last week about a discovered Final Fantasy XIII-2 website, Square Enix officially announced the game at the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premiere press event. Not only is the game in the works, but it must be a fair way into production already as the game has been slated for a 2011 release. So presuming we don't see any delays, we'll be seeing the 2nd true Final Fantasy sequel hit shelves before the end of the year.

Numeric Squared

Actual sequels are a somewhat rare thing amongst the games of the Final Fantasy franchise. Only one game in the main series has received a direct sequel (Final Fantasy X) and there haven't even been many in the spin-off games. Well that number may go up soon, as it was noticed that Corporation Service Company, the company who acts as Square Enix's registrar, recently purchased the online domain of FinalFantasy13-2Game.com... This would seem a sequel is in the works for Final Fantasy XIII, and while Square Enix has yet to confirm anything, they have a event coming up where it's rumoured other Final Fantasy titles including Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy XIII Agito will be making an appearance, so maybe we'll find out soon.

Dirt and Grime Have Never Looked So Good

Following the reveal of the new Tomb Raider reboot in Game Informer, we now have the first pictures of the game and boy does it look shiny. There's a few of them, so rather than putting them all here and making the home page a mile long, i'll put them after the break, so click through to check them out...

Lara Leaks

So i already showed you the GameInformer cover revealing the new Tomb Raider, and told you i would bring you the details when i got them... Well, turns out that is a bit of a lie. Someone over at a blog labelled Playstation Informer has been kind enough to scan and upload every page from the GameInformer article, and rather than copy them to here, i'm just going to point you in Playstation Informer's direction. As expected the article tells about how the game will show us a whole new Lara Croft, fresh to the world of tomb raiding, etc. so it's not really much you couldn't have already guessed, but if you've got a few spare minutes, why not read through it and let me know what you think.

Return To The Tomb

A few days ago i went ahead and posted what would technically be a spoiler by suggesting that the next GameInformer magazine would reveal a new Tomb Raider game...

Guess who was right. The new Tomb Raider is looking to be a gritty reboot to the series, with this game acting as an origins story to Lara Croft and supposedly "takes her on a character defining journey like no other" (according to Darrell Gallagher of Crystal Dynamics). You can find out more in the January issue of GameInformer, or wait till i pick up the details and post them here.

Industrial Augmentation

A viral advertising site has popped up for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and it looks very shiny. sarifindustries.com is the website for fictional company Sarif Industries and gives plenty of information on the type of augmentations we'll likely be seeing in the game. Plus, keep your eye out for a fun little hacking game which will give you a few pieces of concept art.

Lara's Back

If you're one of the people who read Gameinformer (but seriously, why would you when you can just wait for me to poach their info and put it up here for free) then you may have caught a big double page spread at the back. The picture shows a large oil tanker which seems to have run aground and the line "A Survivor Is Born". The meaning behind this will be revealed on the cover of their December issue, but allow me to jump right ahead and spoil it (oh wait, i probably already did with that title, my bad). Rumour is that next month's GI will reveal the brand new Tomb Raider game which is RUMOURED to be going back to Lara's roots and showing how she got her start in the tomb raiding business.

Are You In Control?

For all i've heard about Mindjack until now, it may as well have not existed... However, Square Enix's shooter is now firmly on my radar and will definitely be something i look out for next year. Mindjack sees you take control of... well some sort of floating cloud-like thing. OK, that may sound stupid but the idea seems to be that through this cloud you can take over the body of anyone you find, be it a happy civilian who was passing by, a trained soldier or what appears to be the early predecessor of the Brutes from Halo. Check out the trailer below and see if you can explain things better than me...

Inspirational Choir Music Not Included

Next month PC gamers will be able to get their hands on the next installment of the Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy XIV (14)  follows in the footsteps of Final Fantasy XI (11) in being a cross-platform MMORPG. However, due to some issues between Square Enix and Microsoft regarding the Xbox LIVE system, the game will be making it's way to PC and PS3. The PC version will be hitting shelves in roughly a months time, but PS3 gamers will have to wait till March next year. The whole point of this post though is to show off the shiny new trailer...



I've only just started getting into PC gaming and MMO's in particular, but i'm definitely considering giving this one a go... presuming my computer will run it. If not, look out for me on a realm near you come March. You can find me by looking for the character with a name relating to Scoot or 338... he'll probably also be acting like a noob :)