The GameShadow Blog

Electronic Arts has revealed the official release date for Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twighlight.

March 16th 2010 for the US and the 19th for Europe.

It will be one of the big titles in 2010 and will be PC only, bringing  a conclusion to the highly popular strategy series.

The successful development team at Dice are in full flow at the moment, with three Battlefield titles due before the end of the year.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is the follow up to the 2008 original, due for release on PC, XBOX 360 and PS3 in the latter part of the year.

Battlefield 1943 is aiming to throw players into an all-new World War 2 multiplayer experience, with its launch due before the second Bad Company.

Thirdly, the Play 4 Free, cartoon-style shooter, Battlefield Heroes, has been floating around for sometime now and is still due for launch before the middle of the year.

Electronic Arts has released confirmation news on its action RPG title Mass Effect 2.

The sequel will be launching around the first quarter of 2010 for the PC and XBOX 360 only and aims to bring “intensified combat and expanded weapon options, as well as increased depth of planet exploration.”

A teaser for this second part of the Mass Effect trilogy has already been released.

After massive console sales, this week sees Grand Theft Auto IV finally hit the PC.

A lot of talk surfaced about whether it would or wouldn’t be released on the PC, but after a slight delay from the original November release date, it is now here.

The video editor looks a quality addition to the game, allowing the capturing, editing and sharing of in-game footage.

It will be interesting to see how it performs against the other big titles in the busiest time of the retail year.

So, Braid’s finally arrived on Xbox Live, and shot straight to the top of the charts. Developer Jonathan Blow is rightly chuffed - he’s reporting in the region of 30,000 sales and counting, and I haven’t seen so many 10/10 scores in a long time. In fact, Braid is rated the 10th best Xbox 360 game ever and, to be honest, I’d say it was better than most of those anyway - though in a very different way.

Blow has a habit of coming over a bit preachy, but this release has pretty much justified every evil he may ever have done. The game - or at least, the gameplay - is a true triumph of design over budget, and, as Blow points out, goes further than most indie games to reinforce the idea that an independent game can be more than just another retro shooter.

Clearly, though, Blow has an advantage in Braid over the AAA titles - it’s one of simplicity. The core concepts of the game may be fresh, and the level design astounding, but nonetheless its relative simplicity compared to a Bioshock or an Oblivion make it somewhat easier to achieve those 10/10 scores.

The major flaw to the thing is its writing. Blow’s high aspirations are in full, overly verbose flow, and the abstract, intentionally murky story really undermines his lofty intentions - it’s as if he’s saying his story is so artistic it doesn’t need to make sense. For a time it looks like it’s going to go somewhere exciting, somewhere valuable for gaming as a whole, and then it drifts off into Lynchian obscurity, breeding endless discussions of what it all really means. There’s nothing wrong with a subtle piece of story telling and some healthy interpretation on the part of the reader, but hiding your big picture beneath endless layers of confusion doesn’t make you an artist, it just makes people think you are.

Still, it’s nice to see people trying, and I’d take Braid’s writing and plot over 99% of the crap that’s usually turned out by this industry. And I wouldn’t dismiss the gameplay’s quality for a moment - play this thing.

It’s that time again: when Valve showers us with gifts in a way few other developers are prepared to do.

Today’s update is centred around the Pyro, where the last one was aimed at the Medic, and will see 35 new Pyro achievements, three new unlockable weapons, a new alt fire for the flamethrower, the bundling of two community developed maps, and the release of the Meet the Sniper vid. Quality, the lot of it.

Valve’s ongoing support for TF2 makes a lot of sense, but it’s still outstanding in comparison to some of the other online shooters out there - no names mentioned, EA. The weapons are hilarious, the achievements giving new life to a game still in its prime.

I used to love the Pyro, but I went off the little bastard in favour of the Heavy, and Sniper. Something tells me I might be paying him a little visit this weekend.

You can find more details here, and don’t forget, if you’re not yet a TF2 convert, the game’s free to play all this weekend on Steam.

The Call of Duty 4 Variety Map Pack is confirmed to be arriving on PC this Thursday.

PC gamers have one up on the 360 audience in that the release is sponsored by Nvidia, meaning the pack can be released for free. To be honest, the idea of PC gamers forking out for a map pack is pretty far fetched anyway - although if any game’s going to get away with it, it’s CoD4 - so it’s a good thing it’s arriving gratis.

The pack will include Broadcast, Chinatown, Killhouse, and Creek, and coincide with the launch of the v1.6 patch.

EA’s run a press release details all the games the company plans to release in or before Christmas ‘08 - and it’s awesome. Is that news?

They’re all games we know about already, but given the flack EA receives on a regular basis, it’s nice to revel a little in the release calendar, and remind ourselves that, at the end of the day, it’s only because of publishers and their funding that great games can be made at all.

Coming Very Soon: Battlefield: Bad Company (Consoles), Mass Effect (PC), Burnout Paradise (PC), Rock Band (360), Spore Creature Creator (PC)

Christmas Time: Mercenaries 2, Spore, Battlefield Heroes, Mirror’s Edge, Warhammer Online

That’s three (count ‘em - three) actually inventive, exciting and creative projects: Rock Band, Spore and Mirror’s Edge. What’s more, while the rest of the releases are the usual barrage of sequels and copy cats, it looks as if most will at least be of a decent quality.

Nice one.

After a wait of suitably Valve-like proportions, the first major update for Team Fortress 2 went live today.

The update includes a new map type - Goldrush - and three achievement-based unlocks for the medic class - one for each weapon.

I could tell you all about it, or wax on about the gameplay implications, but you may as well just read about it, then play it.

Oh, and the whole shebang goes free for this weekend only, so if you’ve not yet bought TF2, now’s the time to jump in.