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PSA: Realms of Ancient War hits XBLM today, PSN next week
Should you prefer your dungeon crawlers even more traditional than Torchlight 2, or if you just want your absolute fill of the stuff, Realms of Ancient War may be worth a gander. French studio Wizarbox, who developed RAW over the last two years, is openly proud of its game's familiar blueprints."We catered every aspect of RAW towards action lovers," says Wizarbox project manager Julien Millet on the PlayStation Blog. "You won't find a lot of dialogue boxes or tiresome side quests. While the story will keep you intrigued, there are no drawn-out conversations to get in the way of the monster-slaying. Our three character classes are instantly familiar: barbarian, wizard and a female rogue. But we've added a ton of unique skills and spells to keep things feeling fresh. The goal was to develop our own 'best case scenario' of the hack-and-slash games we have all loved since Gauntlet."RAW (we prefer its fullest title) is available today on XBLM for 1200 MSP. While the game becomes available for European PSN users today, it won't hit the American PlayStation Store until September 25. Finally, it also becomes available for PC on October 4.%Gallery-165919%
RAW is WAR...riors and wizards and stuff
We've long believed that Diablo fans would glom on to any Diablo-esque game no matter what it was called, but Wizarbox and Focus Home Interactive are really putting that to the test with R.A.W. And yes, as the trailer after the break clearly demonstrates, it's really, honestly called that. As you'll see, the XBLA, PSN and PC release (due in 2012) doesn't stray too far from its demonic source material. In fact, the only real question we're left with is whether or not the fact that "R.A.W." literally stands for "Realms of Ancient War" makes the title better or worse. ... Oh, actually, scratch that. We just decided on "way, way better."
Gray Matter confirmed for February launch on PC in North America
Gray Matter, the first adventure game by Jane Jensen since Gabriel Knight 3, is set for a PC launch in North America for $29.99 in February, which should finally end years of the game pulling a delay out of its hat. We can't currently point and click you toward a stateside launch for the Xbox 360 version. The full game (with a heftier Euro price) and demo for the PC version have been available across the Atlantic for a few months now. Thankfully, despite the game's German launch, that version comes with English voiceovers.
Gray Matter slips to February 2011
UK-based adventure game publisher Lace Mamba Global has announced another unfortunate "slippage" of Gray Matter. As developer WizarBox and co-publisher dtp entertainment work to get the hard-to-handle contents of Jane Jensen's game in order, Lace Mamba has "no alternative but to delay the release until the chosen date," according to an announcement. (Prior to today's delay, the game was scheduled for release this month.) The latest chosen date for both the PC and Xbox 360 versions? February 25, 2011 in the UK (which, by the standard retail calendar, would put Gray Matter in North America on February 22.) "[W]e now know for certain that the date we have is the date Gray Matter will be available," declared Lace Mamba's Jason Codd, perhaps jinxing the project again. "[D]ue to the tight time frames, and the need for more polishing of the game we had no alternative but to make a quick decision and delay the product until February," Codd explained. "This will give the development team more time in ensuring that the game measures up to the standards that have been set" -- now, are those the original 2004 standards, or ...?
March is the latest release date for Gray Matter
The last release date given for Jane Jensen's comeback adventure game, Gray Matter, was "2009," following delays in 2007 and 2008. However, the hot new trend for games coming out in 2009 is not coming out in 2009, and publisher dtp entertainment has adjusted its schedule accordingly.According to a new press release, the publisher now plans to release Gray Matter in March. Eventually, we suppose, one of these release dates is going to be the real one, but we have no way of knowing which until the game comes out. At least progress is being made: dtp announced that voice work for the English version is complete.[Via Eurogamer]
Jane Jensen's Gray Matter may puzzle Wii owners
Jane Jensen's Gabriel Knight games were rare commodities: mid-'90s FMV-based games that weren't amazingly terrible (okay, so just the second one was FMV-based). While Vivendi has the rights to that series, Jensen has been working on a new adventure game, Gray Matter, for a few years. Gray Matter is the story of a neurobiologist and his assistant, who must investigate both his reappearing dead wife and his history of creepy experiments. And also solve puzzles, obviously.In a retrospective Gabriel Knight interview with Edge, Jensen said that Wii fans may have reason to watch the constant delays of the point-and-click adventure game: "There are plans for a Wii port of Gray Matter, and I hope it happens." The website currently says it's "coming soon 2009", so, barring further delays, we can expect to hear more about this purported Wii version ... sometime this year.[Via Cubed3]
Jane Jensen's Gray Matter delayed once more
Adventure game fans looking for signs of life in their dwindling genre of choice have a bitter pill to swallow today as Gray Matter, the next adventure game from iconic Gabriel Knight scribe Jane Jensen, has once again been pushed back. She explains on her newly launched Gray Matter blog that the game is bring retooled after changing developers last year, a shift that, according to Jensen, set the project back some 9 months.Jensen writes that the new developer, Wizarbox, is "raising the quality bar" on the project, the devs having worked in various capacities on a number of titles already, from Nightmare Creatures and Arx Fatalis, to handling programming duties on Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. Numbing the sting left by the delay somewhat, Jensen also put up some nifty Gray Matter concept art up on the blog as well, adding that going forward she plans to use the site to keep those of us with an itch for pointing and clicking up to speed on the game's progress.
