Every Tuesday, Sony drops a bunch of new stuff onto the PlayStation Network. Those with a PlayStation 3, Vita or PSP can download these goodies, which include PSN games, movies, themes and more. While the Official PlayStation Blog outlines these updates in full each week, we thought we'd help truncate the good news into something more digestible.

PSN Games

Here are this week’s new games for PS3.

• Planets Under Attack ($14.99)
• PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale ($59.99 - Preorder)
• SingStar Digital ($0.00)
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 ($49.99)
• Wicked Monster Blast! HD ($9.99)

Vita Games

And here's a new game for your Vita.

• Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified ($49.99)

PlayStation Plus

Here are this week’s new PlayStation Plus perks. Remember that some of the perks from previous weeks are also still available.

• Quantic Conundrum (PSN, Free)
• Machinarium (PSN, Discount)
• Choplifter HD (PSN, Discount)
• Super Stacker Party (PSN, Discount)

PSone Classics

There aren’t any new PSone Classics this week.

PS2 Classics

No PS2 Classics this time.

DLC

As always, let’s examine this week’s new DLC offerings.

First, for PS3 and PSN...

• 007 Legends - Various (Free)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II – Season Pass ($49.99)
• Darksiders 2 - Maker Armor ($2.99)
• Dead or Alive 5 Swimwear Packs ($4.99 - $12.99)
• F1 Race Stars Accessory Packs ($0.99 - $4.99)
• Just Dance 4 - Sorcerer ($2.99)
• Mugen Souls Equipment Packs (Free - $2.99)
• Naughty Bear Panic in Paradise Pennybear Costume ($0.99)
• Pure Chess Easter Island Chess Set ($2.49)
• Rock Band 3 – Various Tracks ($0.99 - $17.99)
• RockSmith – Various Tracks ($2.99 - $11.99)
• Sleeping Dogs – Various Mission Packs ($2.99 - $7.99)
• Sniper Elite V2 -- Multiplayer Expansion (Free)
• Street Fighter X Tekken -- Shared Assist Gem Pack 5 ($2.99)
• Zen Pinball 2 -- Fantastic Four ($2.99)

Now, Vita DLC…

• New Little King’s Story – Various Weapons and Clothes ($0.99-$1.99)
• Pure Chess -- Easter Island Chess Set ($2.49)
• Street Fighter X Tekken – Palettes and Gem Packs (Free - $2.99)
• Zen Pinball 2 -- Fantastic Four ($2.99)

Demos

A couple of PS3 demos for you…

• Need For Speed Most Wanted
• F1 Race Stars
• Planets Under Attack
• Zen Pinball 2

And how about a Vita demo?

• Ragnarok Odyssey

Discounts

Finally, some fresh discounts and sales.

• Choplifter HD (PSN)
• Super Stacker Party (PSN)
• Dragon’s Lair (PSN)
• Family Feud (PSN)
• Family Feud Decades (PSN)
• Hollywood Squares (PSN)
• Press Your Luck (PSN)
• The Price is Right (PSN)
• The Price is Right Decades (PSN)
• Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (PSN)
• Game Show Party Bundle (PSN)

Greg is the executive editor of IGN PlayStation, cohost of Podcast Beyond and host of Up at Noon. Follow IGN on Twitter, and keep track of Greg's shenanigans on IGN and Twitter. Beyond!

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Blizzard is being sued over the Battle.net authentication used in multiple games including Diablo III. A class action suit led by plaintiff Benjamin Bell is seeking damages for "consumer fraud, unjust enrichment, negligence, breach of contract and bailment," claiming that Blizzard is "deceptively and unfairly" charging some users to secure their data from hackers.

Bell is specifically referring to Blizzard’s $6.50 keychain authenticators, alleging that Blizzard has made $26 million by selling them. The suit accuses Blizzard of unfairly requiring users to use Battle.net and says the company has continued to “negligently, deliberately, and/or recklessly fail to ensure that adequate, reasonable procedures safeguard the private information stored on this website.” Bell points to multiple hacking incidents -- including May’s Diablo III hacks -- as evidence that Blizzard failed to take "the legally required steps to alert" players.

Bell is seeking damages and an injunction to bar Blizzard from “tacking on” costs after games have already been purchased. He also seeks to stop Blizzard from requiring players to sign up for a Battle.net account.

We reached out to Blizzard about the suit and a spokesperson sent IGN the following statement:

"This suit is without merit and filled with patently false information, and we will vigorously defend ourselves through the appropriate legal channels.

We want to reiterate that we take the security of our players’ data very seriously, and we’re fully committed to defending our network infrastructure. We also recognize that the cyber-threat landscape is always evolving, and we’re constantly working to track the latest developments and make improvements to our defenses.

The suit’s claim that we didn’t properly notify players regarding the August 2012 security breach is not true. Not only did Blizzard act quickly to provide information to the public about the situation, we explained the actions we were taking and let players know how the incident affected them, including the fact that no names, credit card numbers, or other sensitive financial information was disclosed. You can read our letter to players and a comprehensive FAQ related to the situation on our website.

The suit also claims that the Battle.net Authenticator is required in order to maintain a minimal level of security on the player’s Battle.net account information that’s stored on Blizzard’s network systems. This claim is also completely untrue and apparently based on a misunderstanding of the Authenticator’s purpose. The Battle.net Authenticator is an optional tool that players can use to further protect their Battle.net accounts in the event that their login credentials are compromised outside of Blizzard’s network infrastructure. Available as a physical device or as a free app for iOS or Android devices, it offers players an added level of security against account-theft attempts that stem from sources such as phishing attacks, viruses packaged with seemingly harmless file downloads, and websites embedded with malicious code.

When a player attaches an Authenticator to his or her account, it means that logging in to Battle.net will require the use of a random code generated by the Authenticator in addition to the player’s login credentials. This helps our systems identify when it’s actually the player who is logging in and not someone who might have stolen the player’s credentials by means of one of the external theft measures mentioned above, or as a result of the player using the same account name and password on another website or service that was compromised. Considering that players are ultimately responsible for securing their own computers, and that the extra step required by the Authenticator is an added inconvenience during the log in process, we ultimately leave it up to the players to decide whether they want to add an Authenticator to their account. However, we always strongly encourage it, and we try to make it as easy as possible to do.

Many players have voiced strong approval for our security-related efforts. Blizzard deeply appreciates the outpouring of support it has received from its players related to the frivolous claims in this particular suit."

Source: Courthouse News

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.

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In a fan-driven IGN interview, Disney Epic Mickey creator Warren Spector revealed a handful of games he’s love to build around popular properties, within Disney and beyond. First up, Spector is enthusiastic about re-releasing the original Epic Mickey for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. To get Disney’s attention, “everybody needs to send cards and letters and emails to the Disney Corporation saying ‘we want Disney Epic Mickey 1 on high-definition platforms,’” he said.

What's after that?

Spector explained that he pesters Disney weekly about a Mickey HD –which is about as often as he brings up developing a Duck Tales game, something he mentioned numerous times throughout the interview. Spector has experience here – he’s previously written Duck Tales comics. His game “might be a little more cinematic than adventure-y,” Spector said. The diversity of the universe’s settings means “it has to be this really big, epic, Indiana Jones kind of adventure thing.” Of course, story driven gameplay powered by player choice with “more than two-player co-op,” perhaps even one player controlling the Duck Tales triplets on their own while others play as Launchpad McQuack or Donald Duck.

Marvel is another world Spector would like to have a hand in. “Honestly, there have been some pretty good Marvel games, but I don’t think there’s ever been a great one,” he said. “I think I know why that is,” said Spector, without elaborating, “and I think I’d like to tackle that.”

Spector is so passionate about working on a Marvel game that he’d put that project ahead of any Star Wars game he could develop. Other Spector fantasies include going back to a near-future sci-fi game he’d cooked up called Necessary Evil. Spector joked that it’s comparable to “Deus Ex with the serial number filed off.”

With Disney having recently purchased Marvel and Lucasfilm, the opportunities for Spector’s Junction Point Studio at Disney stretch beyond Mickey – though he’s thrilled about creating more Oswald-centric titles after this month’s release of Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two.

Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor at IGN. He’s also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.

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Silicon Knights has been ordered to “recall and destroy” all unsold copies of its games built on Unreal Engine 3. According to a recent ruling by the North Carolina District Court, Silicon Knights shall “cease producing or distributing” and “recall and destroy” all unsold copies of Too Human, The Box/Ritualyst, The Sandman, X-Men: Destiny and Siren in the Maelstrom at its own expense.

A judge also ruled that Silicon Knights must now pay Epic an additional $278,000 in court costs, $2.09 million in attorney fees and $2.3 million in pre-judgment interest. Joined with the previous ruling that Silicon Knights owes Epic $4.45 million, Epic is now owed approximately $9 million.

"Epic Games appreciates the court's careful consideration of the motions and is gratified by the order," an Epic spokesperson told IGN.

The ruling comes more than five years after Silicon Knights sued Epic, alleging that Unreal Engine did not work as it was supposed to. Epic later counter-sued and the case went to trial earlier this year. While Epic eventually won, a judge ruled that even if Silicon Knights had proved victorious, they could only earn $1.

Of the five titles listed in the ruling, Too Human was released in 2008 and X-Men Destiny came out last year. The Box/Ritualyst refers to a canceled psychological thriller project, while Siren in the Maelstrom is the name of a project leaked back in 2009 and The Sandman is presumably an unreleased title.

We’ve reached out to Silicon Knights about the ruling and will update with any comment we receive.

Thanks to the NeoGAF forums for the heads up.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.

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Old games. They keep coming back, don't they? Here's another one, clawing its way up through the damp graveyard soil, grasping for new life. Shadowgate is a 1980s point-and-click adventure, being remade by its original authors. It looks like a good thing, a game that merits existence.

“

Here's another old game, clawing its way up through the damp graveyard soil, grasping for new life.

But there are bigger questions. Are we experiencing one of those nostalgia frenzies that sweeps through gaming every now and again? Or is re-invention of the past an integral part of gaming's present?

There's that famous phrase. "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

This melancholy opening line has become a good deal better-known than the novel that followed. In The Go-Between, an elderly man in mid-20th Century Britain looks back at childhood events from 1900. The world he nostalgically recalls shows little resemblance to the one he lives in now, and yet its legacies are inescapable.

The Go-Between is set in an idyllic high summer, but it’s a dark tale that explores the idea that we are not who we were. Our past isn’t merely a different place, it’s inhabited by a different person.

In gaming terms, the past is everywhere, nostalgia is experiencing a boom, aided by digital distribution and crowd-funding. It’s an emotional phenomenon, a fad, one that’s worth exploring.

Alas, it’s one that may falter as each of us comes to the understanding that playing a HD Kickstarted remake of some decades-old game is somehow missing a critical element; that being the person who so enjoyed the original, your former self, now gone.

This is not a universal law. Many games are endlessly playable in their own right, mostly those that have continued to be played down the years, that have never really left us. In 1983, I played Defender every single day, and I have played it at least once a year since then. It is not a dusty article of nostalgia to me, but a living piece of my rolling present. (By the way, I get a little worse at it, every year.)

Leaving aside period-enthusiasts (they are entitled to their fancies, and I make no criticism of them), we might all be able to name a few dozen old games that we’d happily play today, because they stand the test of time. But gaming has produced countless thousands of games that were enjoyed in their day, and that probably deserve to remain there.

In 1985, I played a hundreds of hours of a Sinclair Spectrum game called Spitfire 40. I loved that game, but have not seen or played it in more than 25 years. To pick up Spitfire 40 today, to even examine it on YouTube, would be to damage a cherished memory. It’s not merely that I have played a few dozen flight sims since then, all better, all that they have progressively improved the genre to an almost infinite degree, it’s that the 15-year-old me who owned a Speccy in 1985, and the world that I inhabited, is too far distant to make an emotional connection through that particular experience, or, in fact, through almost any medium, save the odd song or smell or photograph.

And so the endlessly crashing waves of nostalgia leave me unmoved, faintly perplexed. My 12-year-old niece posts Tweets about TV shows she watched when she “was a kid”. Twenty-year-olds infest sub-Reddits with images of mistily-recalled games and toys from the Proterozoic era of 2003. Kickstarter is besieged by developers menacing us with threatened remakes of mediocre mid-1990s RTSes. If the past is a foreign country, it’s a destination that other travellers seem to enjoy a lot more than I do.

I turn to Dave Marsh for some answers. He has been making games since the 1980s and has been, as they say, around the block, covering everything from his own hit games to online MMOs and cartoon platformers.

His most famous work is e aforementioned Shadowgate, a 1987 dungeon-adventure in which the player interacted with on-screen images (a chest, a door, a pile of bones) and either died (most probable outcome) or progressed. The game was wittily written, artfully painted and well-liked. Although launched for Mac, it enjoyed its greatest success on NES. YouTube vids of Shadowgate have garnered tens of thousands of views and many warm comments of the 'oh, man, I loved this game back in the day' variety.

Marsh and partners have launched a Kickstarter to remake the game for PC, possibly tablet, and perhaps even console, for the 21st Century. Point-and-click adventuring, games from the past, well-regarded developers exploring an entrepreneurial outlet, these are all meat, potatoes and gravy to Kickstarter.

Marsh understands that the final game he produces will need to appeal to people who played the original, overwhelmingly the guys stumping up the cash. And this is exactly why he knows that the very last thing he wants to do is remake the exact same game.

To do so, would be to disappoint his audience. They may understand this, or they may not. It makes no difference. As the game’s creator, he appreciates the subtleties of the term “remake”.

He says, “The first thing we had to figure out was whether or not players are interested in playing a game that was something they loved in their childhood, whether or not it holds up today. A lot of the things you remember from your childhood are about where you were, how it felt in that place in your life. It’s very difficult to recreate that, so we decided we just wouldn’t try.”

“

A lot of the things you remember from your childhood are about how it felt in that place in your life.

He adds, “We asked ourselves, ‘Are we going to make an exact port of the game? Or are we going to change the majority of the puzzles, but keep some of those iconic locations that people remember?’ We went with the latter, because if somebody really wants to play Shadowgate on the NES, they can find an emulated version out there. But just re-creating exactly what they saw before didn’t seem very fun to us.”

So the new Shadowgate cannot afford to rely on the dated puzzles of the 1980s and early 1990s, even though they seemed fine at the time. Too much has changed. The player’s sense of power within the world is too important to be left in the past. Players today just don’t want to progress through worlds on a trial-by-error basis. They want to feel like they’re smart, like they are in control and no amount of nostalgia is going to change that.

The puzzles have advanced but they do not fall into line with what we think of in modern gaming as ‘puzzles’, that being collecting things and arranging them in a certain order. Marsh explains, “There are plenty of games out there, where you go into a location and you play a game of Concentration or some hidden object game and you open the door. That doesn’t interest us. We’re more interested in story puzzles. We’ve been spending more time saying, 'If we were to have an area here that requires that you come in, and there’s water filling the room, how would we get by that?' What would we do? What is a logical puzzle that we could create that doesn’t require you to put together ten stones, or whatever.

“For the most part, we just look at it and say, 'What’s a logical progression?' What can we do that feels like it’s pulling from the storyline, rather than some abstract thing that you could do on Pogo? The word ‘puzzle’ now comes across as something that you put together with blocks. I guess we’re just saying that it’s more of a storyline puzzle.”

So the idea of ‘puzzles’ has changed, But what remains is the sense of place, the locations, the characters, the art-style and the writing because even if they are not wholly timeless, they have a forgiving quality of timelessness.

He explains, “It still needs to fit well with what players remember Shadowgate being. That’s always a thing you have to be careful about. If I tried to turn Shadowgate into a third-person RPG, people would say, ‘this isn’t what I remember.’”

“

We want to go for an art style that has a more painterly feel.

Marsh and team looked at the possibility of rendering environments in a more three-dimensional fashion, but decided to go with a look that chimed with the original, even if it makes use of the advantages of modern computing.

“It’s the same in that you walk into a room, you solve the puzzle, and then you walk into the next room. We didn’t want to deviate a lot from that. We like that feeling of being able to solve something in the room without worrying about whether we were positioning the camera correctly and looking exactly in the right corner. We want to go for an art style that has a more painterly feel.”

We have reached a point in gaming where graphical fidelity to the real world, even in games that portray three-dimensional spaces involving corridors and cauldrons and dragons, does not need to aspire to absolute ‘realism’ in order to quality for serious consideration. Gaming is a broad creative idea.

It’s curious that when Shadowgate first came out, games did not represent the world as well as, say, color illustrations in a book. So Shadowgate’s blocky-looks were state of the art, then. Now games are amazing at rendering complexity. And yet we find room for art that does not aspire to complexity for its own sake, because it is pleasurable. Shadowgate seeks to flourish in the modern world, not by looking like a 25-year-old game, or like a brand new game, but by looking like itself, by standing outside the confines of technological progress.

“

In the 1980s, adventure games were, literally, stories. How strange this feels to us today.

And finally there’s the writing. If you look at a gameplay video from the original, you’ll be struck by just how many words are in the game, and how strange this feels to us today. In the 1980s, adventure games were, literally, stories. Narratives and consequences were delivered in words. Again, a modern audience won’t suffer to sit through text unspooling endlessly on screen and so more use will be made of voice-overs. But also, there is room for games that embrace words and text and don’t treat them as if they were nasty glyphs from the imagination of a child.

Marsh says, “Not everything has to be about sound bites and instant gratification. Many people want to go ahead and enjoy an intelligent game, something where you invest your time in the story, instead of just launching a bird at some pigs. Certainly there are games that are really fun to play for a brief amount of time, but we are more interested in saying, ‘How can we expand the narrative?’

“Some people aren’t really willing to invest that much time, but I think there are people who are interested in getting to the prose and understanding it and building a richer environment – or, in the case of Shadowgate and these types of adventure games, a richer game – by having a little bit more text. A lot of players care about understanding what the world is like.”

There is clearly some enthusiasm for bringing back this game. Shadowgate is currently more than mid-way towards its Kickstarter goal of $120,000. And yet, the Shadowgate of 1987 remains back there, a memory for many of its fans and an inspiration for this new game that seeks to progress the idea of adventures, rather than encase point-and-clicking in the glass cabinet of nostalgia.

For daily opinions, debates and interviews on games you can follow Colin Campbell on Twitter or at IGN. 

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Video games have come a long way since their humble beginnings all those decades ago. What started with splotches of color and pixels in days gone by now only stops at the edges of our collective imagination. And as technology continues to grow, so too will our grasp on video game visuals and the art that coincides.

We pulled together a few of our favorite characters that have seen some changes, big and small, between their early years and their modern incarnations. Check out our collection below and get ready for a trip down memory lane.

Wild, right? If we left out your favorite character, don't forget to sound off in the comments thread below. Also, tell us what you think of these transformers. Are you an advocate of the old-school, or the new-school? Pick a side, and let us know.

Brian Altano holds it down at IGN. Follow him and his old-school love on Twitter at @AgentBizzle.

Ryan Clements works with Altano and wishes we could all just get along. Follow him on Twitter at @PwamCider.

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Lucas' Note: I originally wrote this piece in the wake of September's Wii U release date confirmation, to help me sort through my thoughts on just which games I wanted to buy alongside my new Wii U on Launch Day. Now that we're 10 days away, I still haven't fully decided. But this list may help remind you all to factor the download-only eShop games into your decision-making, so we're bringing it back for an encore appearance as part of our Countdown to Wii U article series. We kicked off this set of features two days ago with The Platformers We Can't Wait to Play, then kept things rolling yesterday with The Excellent Wii U Action Lineup. Now, once again, please enjoy What Excites Us About Wii U's eShop:

I'm in a classic conundrum. I've got my Wii U pre-order taken care of, so I'm assured that the system itself will be mine as soon as it launches – no problem there. But now I've got to decide which of the many launch titles I'm going to get too. ZombiU? Scribblenauts Unlimited? Tank! Tank! Tank!? The options are already overwhelming my mind and wallet, and I'm worried that I might miss out on beating the crowd and bringing home a critical game if I don't decide soon and get those pre-orders in place as well.

In the middle of this mental chaos, though, I am experiencing some comfort – because not every Wii U launch title will be available in those brick-and-mortar stores. I won't have to fight off any other gamers or put any pre-order money down for these games, because inventory never runs out for them. And I won't even have to go outside to get them.

I speak, of course, of the Wii U's eShop games.

These download-only options have been overshadowed in the talk about Wii U's launch so far, and that's understandable – most people, like me, are still focused on the physical and what they need to do to get their hands tangibly on the games they want to play. But Nintendo is positioning the new console's new eShop to be live and active on Day 1, right alongside all that real-world chaos. And there should be enough digital goodness immediately available that, if you wanted to, you could ignore those discs entirely and just enjoy the eShop-only choices.

(Nintendo has also announced a plan to offer retail titles like New Super Mario Bros. U in eShop download form as well, so it's possible that all those same disc-media games will be available digitally too. But for the purpose of this article, we're focused on just eShop exclusives – games that will only be available by download alone.)

All set? Alright, let's dive in. Here are 10 Wii U eShop titles to be looking out for in the new system's "launch window."

Mutant Mudds Deluxe

Just announced this past Thursday during the Wii U Preview Event, Mutant Mudds Deluxe is an upgraded port of the 3DS eShop hit, Mutant Mudds. Developed and published by Renegade Kid (the makers of Dementium: The Ward, Moon and ATV Wild Ride, among others), Mutant Mudds is a retro-styled platforming challenge that demands an exacting degree of precision – you've got to be nearly pixel-perfect if you're going to earn a 100% completion rate in this quest to rid the Earth of an army of invading mud monsters.

Fans of this game are suckers for a challenge, though, so even after finishing the tough-as-nails set of stages found in the original 3DS download, they demanded more. Renegade Kid delivered, developing a new set of 20 extra-challenging "Grannie Edition" levels where our hero Max sits on the sidelines and his energetic grandma grabs the jetpack and water cannon to blast the Mudds herself. Those new levels are set to be delivered to the 3DS game as a free update in the near future, and they'll be integrated from the beginning in Wii U's Mutant Mudds Deluxe.

But Deluxe won't stop there. Renegade Kid's Jools Watsham has confirmed that this new edition of the game will include even more new content that will be unique to Wii U, and that anyone concerned about how the portable game's visuals will translate to the big screen shouldn't be worried. "We're paying special attention to making sure the 16:9 display of the Wii U is taken advantage of while making sure the pixels are super crisp and delicious for those who have HDTVs," he said. Sounds good to us.

Mighty Switch Force! HD

Another 3DS eShop hit that will be making the transition to the new home console is WayForward's Mighty Switch Force! – though it's taking the opposite approach in adapting its visuals for the big screen. Whereas Mutant Mudds will focus on preserving pixel precision in its translation, Mighty Switch Force! is having each and every one of its visual elements redrawn by hand. It will arrive on Wii U as Mighty Switch Force! HD.

The new graphics promise to make intergalactic police officer Patricia Wagon look more like she's a comic book character come to life, making her – and her enemies, the Hooligan Sisters – appear as more in line with their original concept art. Anyone who played the magical A Boy & His Blob remake on the Wii already knows what wonders WayForward can work with 2D art on a home console, and it's great that the Nintendo canvas they'll be painting on now finally supports high-definition resolutions.

The original Mighty Switch Force! had some extra levels added as a free update after its launch in the 3DS eShop too, and this new Wii U version will include those – along with some Wii U GamePad functionality, like seeing a map displayed in your hands or being able to play the game entirely on the Pad, if you choose. There may also be some extra Wii U-only content added as well, but we'll have to wait until a little bit closer to launch to know that for sure.

Little Inferno

Now that we're at the end of the road for the original Wii, it's probably safe to say that its original download games service, WiiWare, didn't exactly set the world on fire. There were a handful of must-have hits spread out over the years, but most of the time it was safe to ignore the Wii Shop's wares. The biggest exception to that rule? World of Goo, a download-only Wii title that was so good we awarded it the overall Game of the Year award back in 2008.

Now, World of Goo's spiritual successor is on the way. Little Inferno is being developed by one of Goo's creators in partnership with one of the creators of Henry Hatsworth & The Puzzling Adventure, and that new combination of indie talent is setting out to set the world on fire – literally, this time. Little Inferno builds its gameplay on a mechanic of burning objects and interacting with them as the flames engulf them, all the way echoing the same kind of darkly comedic tone that defined World of Goo's world gone bad.

Few specifics are known about Little Inferno beyond that general description, though, as Tomorrow Corporation is hoping to keep as many details about it obscured as possible in order to preserve the mystery and sense of discovery for players' first playthroughs of it. (So it sounds like there will be much more to it than just burning things.) Check out its teaser trailer below and start trying to solve the mystery yourself:

Toki Tori 2

Speaking of excellent games of Nintendo systems past, we can never miss the opportunity to trot Two Tribes' Toki Tori back out into the spotlight. This brilliant little platformer/puzzler was cursed with a release on the Game Boy Color so late into the life cycle of that portable that almost no one paid attention to it – the Game Boy Advance had already been released months earlier, and most Nintendo gamers had moved on.

The game then had a second chance to shine thanks to a WiiWare port a couple of years ago, but we've already established that WiiWare never really did a great job of drawing attention to itself either.

Which is why we're so excited about the potential for Toki Tori 2. We encourage you to go back and check out the original if you missed it – it just got an encore release through the 3DS eShop, making it easier to find than ever before – but even gamers who've still been unable to introduce themselves to the little yellow chick's original adventure can get in on the ground floor with his second. Toki Tori 2 has the best release date possible for getting itself noticed on Wii U – Day 1 – and as an all-new adventure with all-new puzzles, every fan new and old should be planning an instant purchase the minute their new Wii U machines grab onto the nearest Wi-Fi signal.

Trine 2: Director's Cut

Nintendo has offered a lot of great options for gamers looking for engaging local co-op experiences these past several years, and the Wii U will keep that trend moving forward with titles like Nintendo Land, New Super Mario Bros. U and Rayman Legends. If you happen to be looking for a specifically three-player adventure, though, and would like something a little more mature in tone than those other, more cartoony options, you've got to check out Trine 2: Director's Cut.

Trine 2 brings together three classic fantasy characters types – a wizard, a thief and a fighter – and forces them to work as one cohesive unit. If you play it alone, you'll swap between the three characters on the fly and use their unique abilities – like the fighter's power to bash through walls – to progress through the game world. If you toss a couple of Wiimotes to two of your buddies and take on the game as a trio, though, all three of you will have defined, individual roles to play.

Trine 2 first launched late last year and earned huge praise in our review of its PC and Xbox Live Arcade versions – 9s out of 10s. The "Director's Cut" subtitle and a extra year of polish promise an even better experience than that on Wii U too, so stay tuned for more on this one.

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Epic Games has revealed the lifetime sales for the Gears of War series -- the 19 million copies sold span three releases since November 2006. In its first week alone, Gears of War 3 sold 3 million, while Gears of War 2 garnered 2 million sales in its first weekend. Not bad.

This is the second Xbox-exclusive series to share its significant success in the past weeks. Microsoft recently detailed the record sales for its Halo franchise, which cracked the 46 million mark leading up to Halo 4's release.

Coincidentally, today marks the sixth anniversary for Gears of War.The first Gears of War prequel entry, called Gears of War: Judgment, will release for Xbox 360 on March 19, 2013.

Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor at IGN. He loves Gears a lot. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.

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Editor's Note: this article contains ending spoilers for Papo y Yo and Demon's Souls.

Video games are addictive, but they also offer an opportunity to reconsider what addiction actually is; to ask ourselves why we fear it, and why it produces guilt in those who suffer from it. And video games can actually do something unprecedented: they make addiction a directed part of the player's experience. In games, addiction can become a familiar and survivable part of the human experience, not a devastating weakness lying dormant in our genealogies. And in that way, games can both translate addiction into art and make addiction itself an art.

The Fallout games used the basic tension between moderate consumption and full-blown dependence as a way of balancing its buffs and boosts. Drinking wine or whiskey before a fight, for instance, provides a temporary boost to strength and defense but comes at the cost of intelligence and precision. If this trade-off suits your play style, the game will eventually punish you for the preference, simulating an addiction withdrawal state with impaired vision and inhibited movement. The same mechanic applies to a number of substances in the game, from Stimpaks to Med-X.

Max Payne 3 ties its health regeneration system to the plot point of haggard Max's addiction to pain pills. When he's wounded he can take a bottle of pain pills to numb the effects of damage and bring him back to a state where he can be maximally aggressive. In a way, drugs are the engine of postponement in Max Payne, keeping the monstrous hero from confronting the consequences of his lifestyle for a few moments longer.

Rockstar's other cynical opus, Grand Theft Auto IV, depicts its impression of drunkenness when Nico take dates to a local bar. After a few drinks even basic actions like walking or aiming a reticule in a game of darts can become overwhelmingly imprecise, mired in controls that respond late to inputs and then wildly overcompensate for them. The sequence is at its best when drunk Nico gets back into a car and tries to drive drunkenly, turning the game's already loose driving mechanics into an impossible-to-control mess of dead pedestrians, side-swiped cars, and broken traffic laws.

The recently released Papo y Yo makes addiction a central metaphor for its mechanics. A young boy must use coconuts and poisonous frogs to bait a giant monster through environmental puzzles. The innocuous coconuts cause the monster to feel full and fall asleep, which allows the boy to use his belly as a trampoline to reach new areas, but the poisonous frogs turn the monster into a flaming beast who becomes obsessed with hunting the boy down and throwing him into the ground again and again.

Developed by Vander Caballero, a former Army of Two designer, the game can be taken as a petite fantasy diorama the child of an alcoholic and abusive father might make. The boy in the game occasionally slips into black and white flashbacks where his drunk father appears to have killed someone on a drive home. The ending directly connects the boy's cowering in fear of the frog-dosed monster to his hiding from his drunken father, who is trying to whip him with a belt. This is as naked as metaphors come, and its conclusion -- in which the boy sacrifices a mirror image of himself to the monster, lures it into a trap, and kills it -- is an effigial cutting of ties with the worst of his past.

In the broadest terms, addiction can be bisected into those that involve chemicals that actively change a person's body chemistry, and psychological/behavioral addictions more closely associated with the dependence video games can engender. With Papo y Yo we have a game that might lightly trigger some behaviorally addictive people, used as an evocation of the suffering that can come from chemical addiction. This distinction actually offers some insight into just how superstitiously we approach chemical addiction in the first place, an affliction which is rooted in biology and yet has its most successful treatment in the form of 12 step programs and group therapy.

Alcohol is an ideal substance to capture this duality -- the biological malaise that can only be healed through psychoanalysis. For all the daydreams of hedonistic house parties and amber-lit happy hours, there is a dark but constant acknowledgement that all of that joy is also a loose gamble with one's propensity toward addiction.

“

The easiest and surest self-medication for that guilt and worthlessness is another distracting high.

In many cases this negative interpretation of the act contributes to an addictive cycle, where the person feels guilty and worthless because they have slipped into a category of social derision and shame, and yet the easiest and surest self-medication for that guilt and worthlessness is another distracting high. The stigma exaggerates the distance between someone with an addiction and everyone who identifies as a non-addict.

The word itself derives from Latin, addicere, to assign. Addicts are assigned a new identity, one that separates them from the normal flow of society. They are no longer us, but are defined by their sicknesses, an outwardly normal person who contains an untrustworthy beast within. When we ask whether or not something is addictive -- games for example -- what we're really asking is whether or not we have done something that will label us as an addict. In this view, addiction is not a capacity we all have in varying intensities, but a thing that happens to some of us, something that comes from outside, brands us, and leaves us forever assigned to another category.

Addictive properties are almost imperceptible in Papo y Yo, with its short length and relatively simple puzzle design, yet it offers a decent template for what many posit as the basic addictive formula. Writing in the BBC, Tom Stafford suggests video games' addictive properties can be explained through the Zeigarnik Effect. The phenomenon was first outlined in the 1930s by a Russian psychologist who noticed that waiters had outstanding memories for customer orders, but then completely forgot them after the food had been served. The Effect claims that the human mind is disproportionately more drawn to unfinished tasks and disorder.

“

Video games are a powerful problem delivery device.

By this logic, video games are a powerful problem delivery device, regularly administering new forms of incomplete tasks and unordered items. Our ability to see what remains undone in a game world, and the powerful compulsion to reach in and do it, ordering the disorder, creates the addictive compulsion loop wherein players are drawn to completing one more task in perpetuity. This particular quality of video games can be exceptionally powerful, causing mild hallucinations and obsessive thought patterns, sometimes known as Tetris Syndrome.

Many games edge toward a self-aware commentary on the emptiness in these structures, but Demon's Souls is among the most intense, a near-perfect combination of artistic pathos and inescapable compulsion. The game is a nightmare of subtle complication that besets even simple goals with an exhausting number of secondary requirements and branching alternatives.

To turn your +4 Falchion into a magically charged Crescent Falchion, you'll first need 12 shards of Sharpstone, hoping they'll drop from the Miners in Stonefang Tunnel. Once you've farmed enough by repeating runs in one area, you'll be able to upgrade the Falchion to +6, and then you'll have to go harvest Darkmoonstones from Reapers in the Shrine of Storms, then return to the Stonefang blacksmith and have him convert the weapon. It's not complicated, and at no point is it especially difficult to imagine doing the necessary work to reach your goal. Yet the complications are just significant enough to trigger the part of the brain susceptible to the Zeigarnik Effect.

You can see the desirable endpoint, and the steps between it and your current state are systemically palpable. To this acquisition lust Demon's Souls adds several other systems that ask players to prioritize several simple goals -- each with their own slightly more complicated achievement paths. In the hour or two it will take to farm upgrade stones you could instead grind to increase your strength and dexterity, or else learn to use another weapon already in your inventory. Or else you could simply go on with the quest, choosing to sharpen your technique against the next tough boss and find a way to beat him with your current gear and stats. Demon's Souls is a vast network of simple tasks, and they are insidiously balanced against one another so that even when the player is diligently on her way to completing one, it comes at the cost of knowing there are several others left undone by that choice.

“

Demon's Souls is a vast network of simple tasks, and they are insidiously balanced.

From Software seems to have been well aware of the torturously irresolvable desires Demon's Souls would evoke in players, appointing its lore and art with avaricious bastards, imprisoned liars, and a smothering sense of rot and waste. The game seems to taunt bleary-eyed grinders with its absence of musical accompaniment in most areas, filled with distant echoes that can't immediately be placed (the ghostly ringing of tiny bells in the Tower of Latria, the smoldering of torches in the distant haze of the Valley of Defilement). As one runs through these spaces where everything wants only to kill you, to prevent you from retrieving the ornament of order nested at the far end of the level, one's thoughts drift off into craven, irritable obsessiveness like a drunk returning to the liquor cabinet after everyone's gone to bed.

The game's apparent ending is a masterful play on the anguished but incessant need to solve, order, and advance. The penultimate boss has an attack that can in a few seconds drain an entire level of experience from your character. By the end of the game, each of these levels will have become symbolic of hours of toil, dutiful grinding in overfamiliar locations, falling into the same attack patterns against the same old enemies. It has the emotional effect of seeing a freshly bought bottle of whiskey shatter and spill its precious contents on the floor. And after this overwhelming fight, where players can see the dozens upon dozens of hours preparing to finish the game cruelly erased, they're drawn into the final encounter with the Old One, the source of all the rot and evil. The boss is a writhing, wilted worm of formerly human flesh, who can barely move let alone attack.

After killing him he delivers the game's summary motto, "No one wishes to go on." With this he dies, and the game throws you back to the very start. What seemed like a self-contained heroic epic is, in fact, an endless cycle of obsession, upgrading, grinding, and laboring in ignominy, encountering the same constrained characters that begin to seem more and more like road blocks on an infinite loop. Demon's Souls is an addictive hell. Its modular presentation spoking outward from a central hub, and its thorough absence of beauty in favor of rubble, filth, and toxicity, perfectly evoke the emotional meaning of its nihilistic system. Players become the addict who says he doesn't want to use anymore, knows it's killing him, and then takes another dose.

Addiction is a difficult and irreducible subject, but coded into the language of game systems we find a deployment of addiction's most basic properties in a way that intends to be emotional and artistic rather than destructive and stigma-laden. Games can make addiction art, and in doing so they point us toward an irrational fear we have about addictions in the first place. They begin in us; they are not exogenous spirits that invade us, but ways in which our best and most human characteristics can sometimes turn against us.

We are surrounded by addictive things, most people live with their lives in a matrix of complicated consumption choices with major positive and negative repercussions. We joke about being caffeine junkies, accept the modest thrills of a sugar high, and advertise pretty people having libidinally-charged conversations at cocktail hour.

And so a simple pleasure or a quirk of rationality can become unmoored from its purposeful context and turn into a histrionic tautology, both a means and an end. How this can happen to some of us, and to such extremes, is still unclear enough to leave room for our worst and most parochial superstitions, filling the void with dull stereotypes about zombie-eyed addicts who have abdicated their human dignity.

Games can free us from these separatist desires, if only by nudging us a tiny bit closer toward those we'd subconsciously forced into new identities: addicts, failures, broken people. In games we might yet discover our own weakened seams, which, when led on in the right environment, could rupture and leave us obsessively thinking about our next fix, our next level, our next button press. And with this comes the implicit challenge that everyone must answer for themselves: when will you stop, when will you have gained enough levels, chased after enough rarities, pressed enough buttons? We end with ourselves, after all, and it was only ourselves that we secretly feared when we set out to escape.

Michael Thomsen is a freelance writer based in New York. He subsides entirely on offal and intoxicants. Follow him on Twitter at @mike_thomsen.

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Rockstar Games has announced that the next trailer for Grand Theft Auto V will arrive next week -- check IGN on November 14 to see the second video. In addition to the usual trailer posting, IGN's resident GTA experts will dissect the video frame by frame in an extensive Rewind Theater, digging into every angle of the people, places, and probable anarchy involved.

What are you looking forward to in the next trailer?

This trailer was intended to release sooner, but promotional plans were disrupted in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. As of today, Grand Theft Auto V is officially available for pre-order.

Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor at IGN. He’s also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.

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Miyamoto has talked about how Nintendo is encouraging developers to make games for Wii U in an IGN interview.

It seems that Miyamoto has been meeting personally with developers to encourage them to work with Nintendo's new console. "I am trying to meet with the game developers individually for this matter," he says, asked how the company will be supporting other developers that want to get the best out of the hardware. "The real subject is whether I’ll be able to - we’ll be able to - convince developers inside of the licensing publishers to be excited about the new features of the Wii U, so much so that they’ll be enthused towards making brand new entertainment that I couldn't come up with myself."

It's no secret to anyone that third-party developers struggled to get the most out of the Wii - almost all of the system's truly great games came from within Nintendo's own stables. But Miyamoto does not think that third-party developers lack the know-how to make the most out of the hardware; far from it.

"When it comes to technologies and techniques and skills necessary for working on Wii U, [and] what we can provide, I can count on them that they already have that. They know how to do that," Miyamoto asserts. "They are always skilful, and actually they must have some different know-how from what we have. There might be some misunderstanding - as if Nintendo alone had some special know-how, and because Nintendo has not shared those unique, secret protocols with other, third-party publishers have not been able to create the exciting, unique gameplay on Nintendo hardware. But that was not the case."

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There might be some misunderstanding - as if Nintendo alone had some special know-how...

"The fact of the matter is that most third-party licensees from a business point of view, had to create multi-platform titles – and because Nintendo has been trying to create very unique hardware, oftentimes it was not considered the first choice for them to work on multi-platform software," he explains. "So it’s the entire company decision-making process that is hindering developer’s ability from making unique titles on Wii U hardware. Once again, my job as one of the developers is meet with the individual people and convince that they’ll be able to create brand new entertainment that they really wish to realise. My job is to try to assist them in that fashion.

"I do not think that providing any special technologies, know how or skills would be able to change the situation, because I understand that most third-party developers already have those things."

Look out for our full interview with Miyamoto very soon.

Keza MacDonald is in charge of IGN's games team in the UK. You can follow her onIGN and Twitter.

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The reasons for today’s invigorating renaissance in PC gaming, for the triumphant return of so many of its best development heroes, are threefold...

First, the guys who made those classic games, mostly in the 1990s, are now frustrated creators with a pent-up desire to deliver amazing new experiences.

Second, through crowd-funding, they are suddenly able to sail around the frigid limitations of the publisher-model and deliver those games to the public.

Third, because the people who enjoyed those games are still gamers. We want to re-experience those old game-styles in a 21st Century mode. Our passion raises funds and interest and inspires younger gamers. When it works, it’s a virtuous circle.

Chris Roberts and his famed project Star Citizen is one of those projects. It’s a dazzling, high-end PC game offering space combat and exploration on a monumental scale. This is not the kind of game that would likely get a green-light from a major publisher, but through KickStarter and other crowd-funding outlets, it’s attracted millions of dollars, enough to guarantee enough moolah to magic the game into life. Star Citizen might be two years from launch, but it remains, undoubtedly, one of the most warmly anticipated PC games currently in development.

If you were a serious PC gamer in the 1990s, you probably played one of Roberts’ games, most likely a Wing Commander 3D space shooter or one of his more ‘explore-and-trade’ games like Freelancer or Privateer. These games were central to PC gaming. They were gorgeous and they were great fun. They always made the covers of PC Gamer and its ilk. They were the big-sellers of their day.

Time moves along, most especially in gaming. Today, they look primitive and slow. They also took an unfortunate turn into the world of Full-Motion Video, with grand stories starring Mark Hamill, which seemed like a big deal at the time, but turned out to be a dead-end for gaming.

As the '90s drew to a close, Roberts had fallen in love with filmmaking and went off to be a director and producer for a while. Now he’s hungry again to create huge game-worlds, space-epics pitching alien races against one another, bulking starships spewing streams of buzzing battle-fighters.

The games make the promise to put you in the dog-fightin’ action-sequences reminiscent of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica with the option to toddle off and live a quieter life at the edges of space, trading, exploring, perhaps dabbling in a spot of casual piracy.

Roberts is not afraid to embrace his past and to admit that Star Citizen is an amalgamation of his best previous work, with the added bonus of modern computing power and honed game-design techniques. (There will be no FMV sequences.)

He tells IGN, “If I was going to make another Wing Commander, a lot of what I'm doing now would be in that game. I feel like the tools and technologies have moved on so much that you could go back and do a reboot, the same way they did with Batman or with Star Trek, where you tell the same story again but it’s a different experience. The way that you can present it is on a whole new level.

“For me, there were a lot of things, when I was making Wing Commander or Freelancer or Privateer, that I would have wanted to be able to do, but I was limited by the time and the technology. Now I don't have the same issues. I'm getting to go back and revisit those old ideas and concepts, but greatly expand them in a way that I couldn't in the past.”

He adds, “In the past, you'd build these cool pre-rendered cinematic sequences and you'd do it in high-end software on SGIs. You were always thinking, ‘If only I could do this in real time, it would be amazing.’ That's where we're at right now. You can do a lot of that in real time. It's amazing, and it's fun.”

Star Citizen’s story is typical space-opera. Its single-player campaign, called Squadron 42, puts you in the front-line of a galactic dispute and you’ll do yawing, spinning, turning combat in order to gain enough cash and experience to beef up your ship and / or go gallivanting around the galaxy, raising hell or gathering space-shekels. (The thing to read is Anthony Gallegos’s preview.)

So 3D space-combat is the game’s central mechanic and, of course, this is where it gets interesting. Because videogame and movie space-combat is not quite the same as probable, actual real space combat, and this causes a disturbance in the minds of those who desire not merely physical realism, but absolute realism.

Roberts has clearly given this some thought. When I raise the issue, he is unapologetic. “The model of space combat isn't what it really would be, because it would be at ridiculously high speeds. You'd never see your opponent. It would all be done with computers. You'd basically be flying big spheres around. You’d wait for a blip to appear on the radar screen, lock your missile, hit a button, and watch it blow up.

"But that's not fun. The model is really World War II dogfighting in space. Even though we're doing a bunch of things on the physics side that are actually accurate, we do do things like limiting speeds because it's really the only way where you can have much fun dogfighting. So we take a certain amount of license to bring it down into the fantasy realm of space combat.”

Despite his wanderings in Hollywood - as well as directing the failed Wing Commander movie, he produced a number of films, including Lord of War - Roberts has remained a gamer. There are elements of game design’s evolution that he believes mark a wrong direction, specifically, a lack of consequence for failure.

Clearly, players who invest days into building a snazzy spacecraft, all 25th Century conveniences with a bursting cash-box under the cockpit, are not going to be happy if their life’s work is nabbed by some lurking scumbag space-pirate. And so, anyone venturing into the cosmic badlands can purchase certain insurance packages. Even then, getting blasted in Star Citizen is not going to be a good experience.

“I do miss a certain amount of difficulty in playing games,” he says. “I feel like my sense of achievement in beating a level or beating a boss is almost nothing now, because I know that no matter what I do, I'm going to respawn two seconds before I died. Games like Mass Effect or even Uncharted, I play them all, but I bully my way through the story. I don't really pay that much attention to whether or not I'm running into a room and getting killed in a hail of bullets, because I know I can just do it again.

“I thought Demon's Souls had a really nice, balanced setup. It was hard, it was challenging, but at the same time, it was fair. If you learned what to do and what the techniques and pitfalls were, it was always your own fault if you died. It wasn't an arbitrary thing. There was an immense sense of satisfaction.

“I'd say that Demon's Souls is more difficult than I would want to make one of my games, but it's reminded me of the idea that you should have some level of challenge in your game. It gives you much more of a sense of satisfaction and personal achievement than something that lets you quickly restart like the current generation of console action-adventure games.”

Even if you’re not a massive fan of space-combat, there’s little doubt that Star Citizen is representative of hardcore PC gaming’s rebirth, of the confirmation of PC as a core gaming platform for the future. in his Kickstarter pitch, Roberts makes this point again and again.

“The PC represents constant change and innovation. It doesn't stagnate. It's always challenging you. As someone that likes cool new stuff, I'm much more into it than a platform that's going to be the same for six or seven or 10 years.

“I like the fact that there's a more powerful video card every year, and maybe there's something new I can do that I couldn't have done last year. It's one of the reasons I think I was successful when I was doing the old Wing Commander stuff.  It got to the point where I could see that, alright, it can really do what I want to do now. And, yes, it inspires people to buy new hardware and really geek out. It's all about building the most immersive, cool experience.”

For daily opinions, debates and interviews on games you can follow Colin Campbell on Twitter or at IGN. 

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Actors Karl Urban (Dredd, Star Trek) and Willow Shields (The Hunger Games) are set to star in The Wonder, a family-oriented 3D adventure fantasy film that has Mighty Joe Young helmer Ron Underwood attached to direct. Chinese actor Leehom Wang (Lust, Caution) will also star.

The Hollywood Reporter describes the film, which focuses on "14-year-old Rachel (Shields) who, together with two of her classmates, find the end of a rainbow which, magically, transports them to China. There, they find themselves pursued by local authorities and a mysterious organisation. With unexpected help from Consul William Stanley (Urban), the kids are able to elude their chasers but soon discover that their journey has triggered a major natural disaster. Together with their new friend Cheng (Wang), they find their way back home but still need to race against time to stop the global catastrophe."

Hyde Park International is currently pitching the feature to buyers. Pixomondo, the Oscar-winning VFX house behind Hugo, will handle special effects for The Wonder.

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter, or MaxNicholson on IGN.

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Lionsgate is sticking with Catching Fire director Francis Lawrence, announcing today that they've signed him to direct the series finale The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2.

Lawrence (I Am Legend, Constantine) is currently in production on The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the second film in the Hunger Games saga.

Mockingjay Parts 1 & 2 make up the third and fourth installments of heroine Katniss Everdeen’s journey as she leads the districts of Panem in a rebellion against the tyrannical and corrupt Capitol. As the war that will determine the fate of Panem escalates, Katniss must decipher for herself who she can trust and what needs to be done, with everything she cares for in the balance.

Mockingjay Part 1 opens November 21, 2014 and Part 2 opens November 20, 2015.

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I don't get to write about/play games as often as I'd like, as I'm usually nose-deep in comics 24/7. That being said, there is one franchise that I'll always, always, always make time for: The Legend of Zelda. Hands down, Hyrule has been home to my favorite gaming experiences since I was a kid (I'm wearing a Zelda shirt as I write this, in fact). However, despite IGN's glowing review of last year's Skyward Sword, the game left me cold.

It seems I'm not the only one.

The artist behind the world of Braid (another spectacular gaming experience for me), David Hellman, has partnered with writer Tevis Thompson for a new graphic novel called Second Quest, which aims to take their frustrations with recent entries of the Zelda franchise and create their own fantasy world. It's a 50-page graphic novel that they've taken to Kickstarter for funding. The official synopsis of Second Quest is as follows:

Second Quest takes place in a world that has already been saved. Chaos was banished long ago, and the people were united. It is now the Age of Harmony.

A young woman discovers that she can draw out memories from objects just by touching them. But what these objects show her does not fit the legends she’s always been told. What will she discover about her island home? And what place does a curious, daring young woman have in a world that has already been saved?

Second Quest also engages many conversations that are happening in the videogame community right now – about the representations of women in games, the failures of triple-A titles, the role of achievements and trophies, and why we even play games at all. We hope our comic will offer a unique take on these issues.

The artwork shown thus far looks great, and the project is over the halfway mark of their goal with over two weeks to go. You can see more artwork for Second Quest below. For more on the project, check out their Kickstarter campaign.

Joey is IGN's Comics Editor and a comic book creator himself. Follow Joey on Twitter @JoeyEsposito, or find him on IGN at Joey-IGN. He loves superhero pets so hard.

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Assassin's Creed III is one of the most anticipated games of the year, and for good reason. It takes the series to an exciting new setting and revamps the core gameplay we all know and love. But how did it get to this point? What was the thinking behind the American Revolution setting? Behind the forest free running? Behind naval combat? The videos below are a must-see for any fans of the series and came about as a result of unprecedented access to the core development team at Ubisoft Montreal. Want to know about Assassin's Creed III? Then look no further.

Part One: Origins

In part one, the team takes us back to the very beginning of the project in January 2010, when a small group broke off at the start of the development of AC: Brotherhood to work on ACIII. The basic plan was to take the series somewhere truly fresh, and to make the gameplay and presentation a significant step forward. One of the coolest elements of this video is seeing the original target gameplay footage the team developed to show how the game would look and feel.

Part Two: Refining the Assassin

The second part focuses entirely on Connor, starting with a look into his background and who he is as a character - noble, fighting for justice and with a strong ideology. The team then discuss how that core character flows through into everything he does, from how he moves to how he fights.

Part Three: Into the Wild

One of the most refreshing aspects of Assassin's Creed III is definitely the fact that its frontier setting takes in both cities and the wilderness. Exploring the latter; hunting from the treetops, scaling mountains and dealing with the wildlife is a huge part of ACIII, and in this video we get an incredible insight into this aspect of the game and bringing it to life.

Part Four: The Revolution

The final part of our series delves into the meeting of real history with fiction, and how the team has anchored its story in as authentic a version of colonial America as possible, while also pursuing a compelling narrative and great gameplay. This video also goes into detail on creating the amazing naval battles.

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An Origin account will be required in order to play any of EA's games on the Wii U.

The company was recently found to have updated its privacy policy to address what authentication will be required from Wii U players.

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"If you sign up to play EA games through a Nintendo Wii U console, your Nintendo account information will be provided to EA so that we can establish an Origin Account for you.

In Section V.3, titled "Information Provided To EA By Third Parties – Wii U", the company explains, "If you sign up to play EA games through a Nintendo Wii U console, your Nintendo account information will be provided to EA so that we can establish an Origin Account for you.

"You need an Origin Account to play EA’s titles online.

"By signing up to play EA’s titles, you agree that limited user account information can be transferred to EA. Information transferred to EA includes your Mii information, email address, Nintendo Network ID, friend list, country, language and date of birth but does not include credit card number or other financial account information."

This brings EA's attitude to the Wii U in line with the Xbox 360 and PS3, as owners of those consoles currently face the same rules when playing games such as Mass Effect or Dragon Age online.

What's also of interest is the reference to the "Nintendo Network ID", which is what we're expecting to replace the current friend code system that Nintendo is set to phase out.

The Wii U will launch in America on November 18 and in Europe and Australia on November 30.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

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Huge thanks to EA for setting up this event to allow me to show you some awesome new things! My Twitter: twitter.com My Facebook: www.facebook.com

Subscribe: bit.ly | FIFA 13 out now: bit.ly Stars of the Barclays Premier League, sport and music battled for the prize of UK FIFA 13 champ in our exclusive Celebrity Cup. See their moves, watch those goals and ask yourself: Can Liverpool's Jose Enrique really score against Man City's Joe Hart... with a goalie? Those FIFA 13 celebrity players: Joe Hart, Manchester City Sam Tomkins, Wigan Warriors Elliott Bennett, Norwich City Chris Smalling, Manchester United Josh Franceschi, You Me atSix Ashley Young, Manchester United Andy Hopkins, The Enemy Phil Jones, Manchester United Tom Cleverley, Manchester United Micah Richards, Manchester City Bradley Johnson, Norwich City Cameron Jerome, Stoke City Greg Rutherford, Olympic Long Jumper John Ruddy, Norwich City Jose Enrique, Liverpool Louis Smith, Olympic Gymnast