There’s also quite a bit of information pertaining to the menu system, how the freedom element from previous entries in the series hasn’t been neglected, and how you will apparently also be able to throw a knife into a guard’s skull.

The protagonist in the game, James Brody, has been on the island for years trying to find his kidnapped girlfriend. During his stay, he starts having a mental breakdown, and his actions are accompanied by hallucinations based on an “unreliable perspective.” No word if this is caused by post tramtic stress disorder or not due to his stay on this mad isaland, but surely there is a reason for this strange, mental behavior in the game someplace.

Antagonists on the island are apparently a bit insane as well, as are the allies. Lots of “crazy” permeating the place, then.

Edge was shown two different mission demos, one of which showed a stealth assault and another, described by the magazine as scripted, showed the character escaping from a sinking ship and its volatile enemies.

Players will be able to either kill enemies from afar using a sniper rifle, or run in like Rambo without a jockstrap guns-a-blazing. You can apparently get a bit MacGyver-like with more makeshift techniques such as strapping C4 onto a Jeep and pushing it down a hill into an enemy base. Unlike MacGyver though, you will be killing people.

According to the Edge piece, put in bulletform by GamingEverything, the demos showed quite a bit of both scripted and linear moments, and Edge noted some platforming and exploration.

Far Cry 3 is slated for release on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 sometime this year with some pegging it for late March.

Thanks, PikiGeek.

Thanks, AHA-Lambda, GoNintendo.

Ubisoft Reflections’ last effort Driver: San Francisco for PS3, 360, Wii and PC.

These images were dug up by the enigmatic AllGamesBeta. I Am Alive, a long-delayed survival title from Ubisoft Shanghai, releases via the Xbox Live House Party on March 7, for 1200 Microsoft Points. A PlayStation Network and possible even PC release are expected to follow.

Once the sneak peek has finished, accounts will be wiped in preparation for the first of five closed beta tests, which start on February 17 and will run every weekend until April 15.

The open beta will commence on April 19 and you can sign up for all levels of the beta here.

Those interested in purchasing the game, will will able to pre-order it digitally or through local retailers soon, and doing so grants the player a spot in every beta session scheduled as well as the following:

• Access to head start – Access to the game five days before the launch on the 3rd of May 2012.
• CBT & OBT access – Access to closed & open beta tests of TERA in Europe
• Name reservation – Before the actual head start, players will be able to create a character and reserve their favorite character name.
• Special Items: These vary depending which retailer players chose to purchase from.

A collector’s edition of the MMO is also on the slate, and will include a copy of the game, the soundtrack, a world map, and art book and “much more.”

Standard editions of the game will be priced at €49.95, the digital collector’s edition will be priced at €59.95 and the retail collector’s edition will be sold for a recommended €69.95.

A trailer for the pre-order offerings is posted below.

“Starting February 7, Ubisoft will be transitioning the hosting of many of its online services from a third-party data center to a new facility,” said the company in a statement. “During the transition, some Ubisoft services and online games will not be available – a full list of affected games and services can be found here.

“We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience. This move ultimately will help us improve the maintenance of our infrastructure and deliver better uptime and greatly improved services for our customers.”

The following are the only products to be affected:

• Assassin’s Creed (Mac)
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 (PC)
• Might & Magic : Heroes VI (PC)
• Splinter Cell Conviction (Mac)
• The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom (PC)
• The Settlers (Mac)

It’s not clear how long the transition will take. Uplay PC will be not be available during the switch.

Thanks, Andriasang.

RedLynx has had priors in doing this before, with the studio’s CEO Tero Virtala previously admitting it had uploaded Trials 2 SE onto the website, although insists that was “for a different market and in a different time.”

He told Develop, however, the leaking of Evolution wasn’t from RedLynx, but is unsure of where the leak came from in the first place.

“We want to be clear that [leaking Trials Evolution] is not something we did ourselves,” said Virtala.

He continued: “Trials Evolution is a game that makes full use of being continuously connected. Leader boards, friend challenges, online multiplayer and global track sharing are all integral parts of the game that cannot be experienced before launch.

“We’re continuing to polish and finish up the game, and we’ll have a new trailer coming soon which will give people a much better look into everything the game will hold and when they can expect to see it.”

Trials Evolution is expected later this year for XBLA, is the first game from the studio since it was bought by Ubisoft last November.

According to the source, who claims to be “close to the project”, a glimpse of the game will be shown sometime before March 31.

Hints regarding the next timeline for the franchise popped up last year when a survey was released, asking participants if the the American Revolution along with other entries would be of particular interest.

Those who played Brotherhood’s Da Vinci Disappearance DLC, also noted coordinates pointing to the state of New York, and according to series lore, George Washington is supposedly in possession of the Apple of Eden.

All signs point to a distinct possibility, but Medieval China and Victorian England are also said to be in the running.

At this point, the only way anyone will know for sure, is when it is officially announced.

The next Assassin’s Creed game, according to Ubisoft, is to be the “biggest installment” to date, and was mentioned as in the works as early as last year.

The other main objective, according to Ubisoft Casablanca producer Boujemaa El Hiba, was making sure the title would be part of the new handheld’s launch line-up.

“For this project, we had two main objectives: make Rayman Origins part of the launch lineup for PS Vita and offer PS Vita players the same game experience that Michel Ancel brought to home consoles,” he told us as part of a wide-ranging third-party feature that will accompany a series of articles for the Vita launch in just a few weeks.

“While we are excited that we are able to utilize the touch screen and the Near function, but we really had to keep the core of the controls and game intact.

“We will surely plan to take full advantage of the PS Vita capabilities in our future projects.”

Rayman Origins for Vita launches alongside the handheld on February 22.

Ubisoft’s latest Kill Count Community Unlock Challenge resulted in combined platform assassinations reaching a whopping 15 million.

The Ippokratous Night map variant was already available on PC, but has now been made available to all platforms.

In other AsscReeRev news, a new patch for the PC versions has been released. Version 1.02 resolves a number of bugs and crashes in both single- and multiplayer.

Thanks, Blue, Shack.

Asked by Spong whether Kinect could ever replace traditional control pads, Lacey replied with “That’s like asking whether an inflatable doll replaces a woman.”

Having said that Lacey admitted he could imagine scenarios in which Kinect might rise to prominence.

“Perhaps its uses hinge on one particular gameplay mechanic. Maybe its uses are all about hitting and dodging things with your body. Maybe it’s uses in gameplay can be as subtle as a gesture made with a controller in hand to enhance the traditional experience. Maybe it’ll get so sophisticated that it will replace all traditional methods. We’ll have to wait and see,” he explained.

“Kinect is still in the first stages, so as developers we’re still learning how to explore this. You’ve gone from traditional controllers, to iPads and iPhones in the space of four or five years.

“For us, we’re learning how these things work, so we’ve gone from the dream of Minority Report to actually being able to do it in your living room. So there’s a learning curve for us on the development side.”

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier includes a Kinect-powered feature called Gunsmith, which allows players to customise weapons using gestures, but Lacey is clear that this is an addendum to the core experience, calling it “effectively a toy – something that’s fun”.

“We’ve also ensured that we don’t forget that something like Gunsmith is a mere step. The controller is still very important to the core experience, which is why you do everything else in the game with it,” he added.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier arrives on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in May, with a surprise PC version to follow. Check out an interview feature discussing the game’s delay and platform hopping.

It’ll launch in Europe on March 30 at retail, online and Ubishop. The 3DS version will also launch March 30, after previously being slated for a March 16 release.

The PC SKU is the latest version of the platformer following its launch back in November, which started slowly on PS3, 360 and Wii, but has started to pick up as of late if its positioning on this week’s UK charts are an indicator.

A Vita version launches on February 22.

Minimum and recommended specs are below.

Minimum configuration

OS: Windows® XP SP3 / Windows Vista® SP2 / Windows® 7 SP1
Processor: Intel Pentium IV 3.00 Ghz or AMD Athlon64 3000+ @ 1.8 Ghz
Memory: 1 GB Windows XP / 1.5 GB Windows Vista – Windows 7
Graphics: 128 MB DirectX®9 / Radeon X600XT or GeForce 6800GT
DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c or higher
Sound: DirectX 9.0-compliant sound card

Recommended configuration

OS: Windows® XP SP3 / Windows Vista® SP2 / Windows® 7 SP1
Processor: Intel Core2Duo E4400 @ 2.00 Ghz or AMD Athlon64X2 3800+ @ 2.00Ghz
Memory: 2 GB Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7
Graphics: 256 MB DirectX®9 / Radeon HD 2600XT or GeForce 8600GT
DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c or higher
Sound: DirectX 9.0-compliant sound card

Protracted gestation periods and frequent delays are not novel concepts in video game development. But while the circumstances surrounding postponements do much to inform generalised pre-conceptions of a title, they rarely have a predictable impact on its eventual quality.

Consider the myriad differences between the oft pushed-back but eventually sublime Team Fortress 2 – shown at E3 1999 and released eight years later – and Duke Nukem Forever, which was awarded numerous vapourware titles during its 14 year birthing and received a tepid critical reception upon release.

By comparison, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier’s development period seems entirely reasonable: announced early in 2009 and now due to land on PS3 and 360 in May of 2012. Indeed, little might have been said had its arrival not been repeatedly forecast and delayed without satisfactory explanation throughout that three-year period.

Sitting down with director Eric Couzian and production manager Yann Suquet, I push them for more information regarding the finally-dated console version as well as the PC version that has, by turn, been announced, delayed, cancelled-due to-piracy-concerns, “never existed”, announced again and now slapped with an ominous release date of “later this year”.

“When you begin development, you try out various mechanics and, naturally, some of them work but some don’t,” begins Couzian. “Sometimes, because you are emotionally involved in the process, it can take a long time to admit that it’s not working. You can spend a year making things, not all of them you keep, but you learn from that process.”

“It’s important to acknowledge that it’s an experience you’re creating,” adds Suquet. “While you might know what you want the overall experience to be, it can take time to work out how to achieve that. It’s why the development process is based on iteration”

“Iterative design” is a go-to phrase for many a developer. It describes a basic and well-established work process without revealing any details and is, beyond anything else, blindingly obvious: rarely does a creative work come together all at once in a brilliant flash of inspiration; rarely is the initial execution of an idea considered the best it can be. It’s why writers edit, directors re-shoot, artists erase and architects re-design.

The challenges of iterative design become more apparent the greater the number of people involved in a project. For an individual, or even the most tightly-focused of teams, the temptation to iterate ad infinitum can prove too great and the constant revisiting and refinement of an individual element can jeopardise or delay the process of incorporating it with the overall design.

“Working with stress can be good; it forces you to make decisions. If you know that you’re releasing the game in three years you can procrastinate, you light all of the fires just to see what will work and what won’t. Ultimately, you have to take the decision, even if it turns out to be a wrong one. The worst thing that can happen is to not make a decision.”

“So, at some stage, you have a puzzle of individual elements that work but you must blend those together and do so consistently,” explains Couzian. “You don’t just fit them together mechanically and have it all work.”

“You must always remember that you’re creating an experience, not assembling a car,” agrees Suquet.

I am not a number

At the height of its development, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier has seen upwards of 300 people involved. Numbers like this tend to raise eyebrows, leading the more cynical respondent to question how truly integrated the key features can be and, drawing on Suquet’s own car analogy, conjure images of a huge production plant in which anonymous employees hammer boilerplate features into a generic framework.

For Suquet, it’s imperative that smaller teams with a headcount of around 20 constitute that headline 300, in order to maintain a feeling of individualism and identity.

“Creative people need room to create,” he posits. “If you have a number of smaller teams, each person within that smaller team feels ownership for something, and that motivates them.

“You need them to feel responsible and proud of what they are doing,” Couzian adds.

“Definitely,” Suquet nods. “A creative person that is not proud of what they are doing makes what they are doing worthless, and that harms the project and those around them.”

It sounds like a nourishing environment in which to work, doesn’t it? Time to establish a clear vision, to make mistakes, to learn and adapt during the process – so, why mention release windows at all? Why not let the creative minds run riot and slap on a label that reads “ready when it’s ready”?

Surely, the repeated delay of an announced project can only serve to frustrate your intended audience, building expectation that cannot possibly be met and causing that all-important rich vein of potential customers to become increasingly disenfranchised.

You can look at other high profile Ubisoft titles such as I Am Alive and Beyond Good and Evil 2 for examples of how hungry anticipation can turn to confusion and frustration, but Couzian believes announcing a release date works in favour of development teams overall, even if it can sometimes mean delays are as visible as they are unwelcome.

“Working with stress can be good; it forces you to make decisions,” Couzian insists. “If you know that you’re releasing the game in three years you can procrastinate, you light all of the fires just to see what will work and what won’t. Ultimately, you have to take the decision, even if it turns out to be a wrong one. The worst thing that can happen is to not make a decision.”

PC or not PC?

“We never cancelled it. It was a misunderstanding, genuinely,” Suguet adamantly insists of the PC version of Future Soldier. “Sebastien [Arnoult], the producer of GR: Online, said something in an interview – I don’t remember exactly what it was – and it was misinterpreted, taken out of context and turned in to this scenario where people were not only saying that we weren’t doing Future Soldier on PC but that Ubisoft was going to stop making PC games altogether.

“It just wouldn’t make any sense,” agrees Couzian “Ghost Recon is a great fit for PC and we have many fans on PC, it just wouldn’t make any sense to not do it.”

Ubisoft’s PC misadventures could fill their own article (and thanks to Nathan, they did back in November). Suffice to say, following Sebastien Arnoult’s comments concerning Ghost Recon Online, various media outlets reported the cancellation of the PC version of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Ubisoft itself did not refute the dire news, reportedly stating that it had never confirmed a PC SKU.

Regardless of what has gone before, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier will launch on PC, albeit “at a later date.”

Wrapping up the conversation with Couzian and Suquet, I ask them about balancing Ghost Recon’s gung-ho antics with its stealth-soldiering. Lobbing intel grenades to gather enemy intelligence, hiding in plain sight with optical camouflage and deploying covert remote-control drones is a joy for budding strategists. It also provides a more sedate pace than missions involving close-combat fire-fights in busy Pakistan streets that come with the contrived fail-condition of harming more than a handful of civilians.

“I strongly believe that, as with any movie, you need pacing and contrasts in a videogame,” explains Couzian. “The core of the game is to offer the player this freedom of expression so if they want to be intel-focused, they can. But, if I offer the whole game like this the player doesn’t always know what’s best for their own experience, so it’s our job to sometimes encourage a change of pace. It’s a question of contrast.

“The objective is to bring new people into the game, accessibility is very important to me and was an underlying factor when creating the game. Accessibility doesn’t have to mean less difficult or less challenging, just providing more comfort for the player so that they don’t have to press eight buttons for one function, also to provide more feedback and make the character more reactive.”

The game is finished, Couzian insists, so any time spent on it between now and its May release for 360 and PS3 will be to add those all-important layers of polish. Based on this preview build, the areas in most immediate need of buffing are the optimisation of textures and squishing of bugs.

After three years and numerous delays it seems that Ghost Recon: Future Soldier will finally emerge from the wilderness, packing near-future weaponry and cloaked by optical camouflage; it will be interesting to see if it’s able to creep up on gamers and surprise them or if it passes them by without being noticed.

The firm has handed out over $7 million in cash prizes, four million challenges have been issued, and over 72 minutes are spent by those visiting the official website.

“The numbers are increasing on a daily basis,” said Billy Levy, co-founder and president of Virgin Gaming. “More than 700,000 of those players have signed on in the last four months.”

Virgin started the service in June 2010, and the firm’s partners include 2K Sports, EA Sports, GameStop, Sony and Ubisoft.

Levy said the tournaments could eventually expand into mobile and social games.

Currently, Challenge Series tournaments on PS3 have players competing for over $1 million in cash and prizes playing Madden NFL 12, NHL 12, and FIFA 12, The tournament ends in April with the finals taking place live in New York.

Thanks, VentureBeat.

Speaking to MCV, Guillemot said the company is “pleased” with its continued success with the franchise.

“Assassin’s Creed is an incredible franchise and there are a lot of expectations that it will continue to grow. We are pleased with our continued success so far: in the US, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations was a Top Ten title for the entire calendar year, which shows that the demand is definitely there,” he said.

But he shrugged off suggestions that yearly installments is doing damage to the series.

“We think that delivering regular instalments and expanding the brand to other platforms will continue to satisfy the demand, while at the same time attracting new fans. And we’re confident that the next instalment of Assassin’s Creed will be the biggest to date.”

Guillemot’s comment could be read between the lines as a hint a 2013 title is basically coming, and not opting to take a break with the series after this year, as we suggested at the launch of Revelations.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Additionally, Gravity Rush, the gorgeous-looking adventure, is now officially expected on February 22.

Thanks, Siliconera – twice.