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Those craving a modern dose of classic shooter franchises can earn beta access for the next Doom game by purchasing Wolfenstein: The New Order. Although New Order will reach the PS3 and Xbox 360 in addition to PC, Xbox One and PS4, the Wolfenstein FAQ has revealed that fans will need to own a capable PC or current-generation console in order to partake in the Doom beta.

The page explains that those who have pre-ordered New Order for Xbox 360 or PS3 will still earn beta access, but it will be for the most recent offspring in Sony and Microsoft's families of consoles. Beta access is determined by which console your pre-order is placed for, so you won't be able to get PS4 beta access from a Xbox 360 copy.

Although beta keys will be packed in with physical copies of New Order on its May 20 launch date, a kickoff date for the beta itself has not been shared. [Image: id Software]

Metal Gear creator reveals the films that inspired his games, from Dawn of the Dead to James Bond.

A young boy from San Diego discovered a way to log into Xbox Live accounts without using the proper password, but instead of using this knowledge for evil, Kristoffer Von Hassel turned his exploit over to Microsoft.

According to a report from local ABC affiliate KGTV, the 5-year-old Von Hassel discovered a mind-numbingly simple trick to get around the Xbox Live password verification service. Von Hassel claims that he simply failed the first password check, then was able to trick the second password verification screen by filling its text entry field with blank spaces. Fear of punishment drove Von Hassel to explain to his father what he'd done, but instead of being angry, his father, who works in computer security, was impressed and contacted Microsoft to share the boy's ingenious findings.

In a statement following the precocious breach of Xbox Live security, Microsoft issued the following statement, "We're always listening to our customers and thank them for bringing issues to our attention. We take security seriously at Xbox and fixed the issue as soon as we learned about it." According to KGTV, Microsoft has awarded Kristoffer Von Hassel a one-year Xbox Live Gold membership as well as four games for his efforts. [Image: Microsoft]

Titanfall on Xbox 360 will be "the true experience"

Though dedicated fans have been scouring every inch of Battlefield 4 since its debut last October, no one has yet offered real evidence of the existence of the gigantic Megalodon within EA's shooter - until now.

The footage above comes courtesy of YouTube user "jackfrags" who lays out simple instructions on how to spawn the giant beast within your own Battlefield 4 match. First, you must be playing on the Nansha Strike map which was included with the recent Naval Strike DLC pack. Second, you must find nine other willing players to swim with you out to a specific buoy near the main island. Third, you must all be comfortable with having a giant, supposedly extinct sea creature crush you with its massive bulk.

If that sounds like too much work, just watch that clip again. You won't get the thrill of virtually being there, but it's the only way to really appreciate the inexplicable yet undeniably impressive explosion that accompanies the Megalodon crashing back into the sea. [Image: EA]

French indie studio The Game Atelier has pulled back the curtain on Flying Hamster 2, a side-scrolling action-RPG that bills itself as a spiritual successor to Sega's Monster World series.

Modeled specifically after the 8-bit Monster World series entry Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap, Flying Hamster 2 allows players to transform into animals that each boast their own unique powers and abilities. The Dragon's Trap was a progenitor of the exploration-based gameplay style that would later define Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, challenging players to discover new traversal abilities before they could progress through its storyline. Flying Hamster 2 will follow a similar structure.

The Game Atelier seeks $150,000 to fund a PC version of Flying Hamster 2. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions will be developed if the team's Kickstarter project meets its stretch goal of $350,000.

[Video: The Game Atelier]

We borrow one of Sourcefed's hosts to try and coach Greg in Titanfall. It doesn't work.

I really wish Warner Bros. had released footage of their next Batman game, Arkham Knight, because I'd like you all to see what they're doing with the Batmobile. It's not quite what you'd expect, I don't think.Read more...

Call of Duty fans can square off against movie star and noted extraterrestrial hunter the Predator in the new "Devastation" DLC pack released today for the Xbox One and Xbox 360 versions of Call of Duty: Ghosts.

The Devastation pack adds the new Ruins, Collision, Behemoth, and Unearthed maps to Ghosts' multiplayer component, along with the second chapter in the game's ongoing Extinction storyline. Players who complete the Ruins map's Field Order will earn the ability to become the Predator in combat, gaining access to the alien's dual wrist blades, shoulder-mounted plasma cannon, and infrared target-seeking capabilities.

The Devastation DLC pack is priced at $14.99, and is included as part of Call of Duty: Ghosts' Season Pass.

[Image: Activision]

When Lego: The Hobbit debuts in April, the game will only feature content from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug, though the third film in the Peter Jackson-directed trilogy may appear later as DLC, according to reports from the London Toy Fair.

Brick Fanatics, a UK site focusing on all things Lego, states that developer Traveler's Tales plans to launch a sizable downloadable addition for Lego: The Hobbit right around the same time that The Hobbit: There And Back Again rolls into theaters. The film is currently slated to debut on December 17, giving the developer eight months to cobble together its downloadable content.

As Brick Fanatics points out, this will be a novel situation for the developer. Traveler's Tales has released DLC for its previous Lego games, though so far it's all been minor additions like characters and new costumes. On the other hand, Traveler's Tales has a long history of working with cinematic trilogies, so it makes a certain kind of sense that the developer would want to touch on the final Hobbit film, even if its game will debut eight months prior to the movie's launch.

Lego: The Hobbit will reach the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Vita handheld, Wii U and 3DS on April 8. [Image: WB]

Following last week's Improved Matchmaking Beta, developer Respawn has issued an update for mechanized shooter Titanfall that improves matchmaking in both the "Attrition" and "Hardpoint" game types.

This update has been designed to counter one of Titanfall's most glaring flaws: its seemingly random method of matching would-be titan pilots in multiplayer. Titanfall itself has received glowing praise, but few would argue that the original matchmaking system made any sort of sense. Though this update will not affect matchmaking in the Campaign portion of Titanfall, Respawn claims that further matchmaking updates are on the way, just as soon as the studio can properly test their changes.

Titanfall's matchmaking update is available to all players at no charge and should be installed the next time you fire up your giant robot of choice. [Image: EA]

Find out what cloud computing actually does for Titanfall.

Airtight Games, developer of Murdered: Soul Suspect and Quantum Conundrum, suffered layoffs this week. The studio let go of 14 employees, confirmed by IGN as part of a "necessary restructuring" for the developer.

Airtight's restructuring was deemed "part of the normal ebb and flow of game production" and that the studio's current projects are still on schedule. The developer announced a June 3 release date for Murdered: Soul Suspect roughly one month ago. Square Enix said the "core team is continuing to work towards shipping in June."

One previous employee of Airtight Games, the studio's creative director and Portal Co-Creator Kim Swift, joined Amazon Game Studios yesterday along with Far Cry 2 Lead Designer Clint Hocking. [Image: Airtight Games]

Rage can be one of gaming's sweetest plums. Not the sort of rage where you flip out on a cheater in Titanfall or lose a particularly thorny League of Legends match. Sweet rage comes from classic challenge, when a game asks you to do something extra hard and you come oh-so-close to pulling it off before losing and getting sent back to try again.

RedLynx's Trials Fusion, the latest in the strong run of motocross trick games, produces only the finest rage. Didn't quite land that flip? See your friends getting a better score than you on this track? Trials makes a player see red. No wonder we want to broadcast ourselves face-planting repeatedly in Fusion's new sci-fi themed tracks.

At 4PM EST on the Joystiq Twitch channel, Joystiq Editor-in-Chief Ludwig Kietzmann will stream one solid hour of the Trials Fusion PC beta, providing a veritable smorgasbord of spills and, well, mostly just spills. Anthony John Agnello will be hanging in the chat as usual, feeding your questions to Ludwig.

Want more? We'll be giving away 15 beta codes to the Trials Fusion beta in the Twitch chat while we play. Then you can face-plant with us.

Joystiq Streams broadcasts every Tuesday and Thursday at 4PM EST. [Images: Ubisoft]

Woods darker than night
Shadows lost of light.

Like its watercolor visuals that flow between foreground shadows, etched lines and background shades, Child of Light is a game of several layers. The first is the painting-like look, rendered by the UbiArt engine that powered Rayman Legends, but peel that back and there's the fairy tale story told comprehensively in rhyme, even down to the most incidental bits of dialogue. Peel another layer and there's the distinct turn-based combat inspired by Japanese role-playing games, and behind that, fairly deep crafting and leveling systems, and even co-op play.
I kept peeling through all these layers when I played the first three hours last month, and while a cursory glance might suggest Child of Light is another pretty platformer, the least of the truth is that there's more to it than that. [Images: Ubisoft]

Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima reveals his five favourite movies and how they've influenced him as a creator.

Cult County is a first-person survival horror game that takes cues from Telltale's The Walking Dead and horror classics such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil, according to developer Renegade Kid. That's the studio behind Mutant Mudds, Moon and the DS horror games, Dementium: The Ward and Dementium 2.

Cult County takes place in a small west-Texas town: Gavin Mellick's mother is on her deathbed and he's unable to reach his sister by phone, so he drives six hours to tell her the news in person, just beating a dust storm to his late aunt's house. As the dust gathers, Gavin learns about a new cult in town and the suicide of Father Pearce, and he begins to see shadowy figures on the edge of his vision. The game features melee and firearm combat, and the town deteriorates the longer Gavin sticks around.

"We have wanted to return to the survival horror genre for many years," Renegade Kid writes on its Kickstarter page. "And, our fans have told us the same thing! Many players have contacted us asking for Dementium 3. Without going into any icky details, certain contractual ties from the past make that impossible, unfortunately. So, instead of letting that hold us back, we decided to take matters into our own hands and develop a new survival horror experience with the same spirit."

Renegade Kid's Kickstarter campaign seeks $580,000 to complete the game for PC, Mac, Linux, Wii U, Xbox One, PS4, PS3 and Vita. Cult County is already approved for Steam distribution, and it expects a development period of roughly one year. The studio revealed Cult County at PAX East in 2013, but then it was slated for 3DS only. [Image: Renegade Kid]

Microsoft's monolithic Halo franchise has yet to make it to movie theaters, but that hasn't stopped protagonist Master Chief from stomping onto other, shorter pieces of film. Microsoft and 343 Industries have vaguely announced a new Halo "digital feature project" to be released in 2014, and for all we know it could be a web-series, extravagant commercial, music video or a P90X video designed to wreak havoc on cybernetic glutes. It doesn't sound like a movie, however, and it will likely to be available online.

Dropping Ridley Scott's name certainly helps: Scott, last seen in cinemas with The Councelor and Prometheus and wait-don't-go Blade Runner, is the executive producer on this project, while Sergio Mimica-Gezzan directs. Mimica-Gezzan directed some episodes of Battlestar Galactica, not including (phew) "Scar" or "Black Market," as well as Heroes and Under the Hood.

Microsoft isn't confirming any more details regarding this Halo endeavor, but stresses that it won't hassle the "premium" Halo show underway at Xbox Entertainment Studios, namely the television series attached to Jurassic Park director Steven Spielberg.

The most recent bits of live-action Halo came in the form of "Scanned," a David Fincher-produced short promoting Halo 4 (seen above), and that game's preceding web-series, Forward Unto Dawn. [Image: Microsoft Game Studios]

In the second episode of Call of Duty: Ghosts' Extinction storyline, our heroic human protagonists must dispatch scurrying extraterrestrials, glowing beasts and one very big, very mean alien who wrecks giant ships with the gleeful abandon of a kid playing in the tub. [Image: Activision]

Alongside the above story trailer, developer Monolith Productions has revealed that its upcoming Tolkien-inspired action roleplaying game, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, will reach retail shelves on October 7.

As we mentioned in our lengthy preview from January, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor drops players into the chaotic warfare immortalized in Tolkien's Lord of Rings books (and their subsequent Peter Jackson-directed film adaptations). Players assume the role of a ranger driven by revenge who dispatches foes using agility and combat prowess reminiscent of that seen in the Assassin's Creed franchise.

Those who pre-order Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor will receive the exclusive "Dark Ranger" DLC pack. Included in this bundle is a new character skin, new challenge mode and access to the game's online leaderboards. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is slated to debut on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC platforms. [Image: WB]

Trials Fusion developers John Lloyd and Jack Robson show you the racer's most challenging courses.

Microsoft has announced a range of statistics about Twitch streaming on Xbox One, including the news that on March 11 around 30 percent of those broadcasting on Twitch were doing so via the console.

Transformer's Optimus Prime DLC in Titanfall Trailer & Infamous: Second Son patch bringing new features. Plus, no demo planned for Watch Dogs & April Fools pranks.

This is State of Service, an ongoing review of the online service of a recently launched game. See our scored review of Titanfall here. Tuesday, April 1 | T-minus 9 days until final verdict
Current State of Service: Good
Summary: PC version experiencing limited issues. Matchmaking update in the works. Anti-cheating system enabled on PC.

Apart from a brief server outage last Tuesday, and an issue with Australian servers in particular, Titanfall appears to be humming along on both PC and Xbox One. Servers for both versions went down during the afternoon on March 25, apparently as the result of broader problems with Xbox Live. Servers were back online that evening. Meanwhile, Australian players encountered an issue in which servers would return a ping of -1, making them unusable. The problem was "sporadic," and it was corrected as of March 31, according to official Titanfall Twitter account.

Joystiq staff members have been playing both versions with no significant problems to report.

In other service news, Respawn is working on an update to Titanfall's matchmaking to keep weaker teams from being consistently dominated by stronger teams. Furthermore, the PC version has been updated to combat cheating. Cheaters detected by the game are subsequently only allowed to play with other cheaters, where they will enjoy what Respawn calls "the Wimbledon of aimbot contests."

If you encounter any problems with Titanfall, let us know in the comments or on Joystiq's Twitter or Facebook accounts (use the hashtag #sos and don't forget to specify your platform!).

I watched this guy eat bread for ten minutes. Then I tried to jump on his head, and was thrown into nothingness. Read more...

Over the past few days, Watch Dogs creative director Jonathan Morin has been deluged by anxious fans asking about a potential demo for the open-world adventure - a demo that, Morin claims, is not in development.

"Dude relax, I receive too much tweets," Morin replied to one Twitter user who had repeatedly badgered the developer for an answer. "[There is] no demo planned before release. Sorry for the wait, doing my best," he added. The next day, Morin was asked to explain this lack of a Watch Dogs demo. "Doing Demos take time, the focus is on the game," he tweeted. "You will see more footage before release. Be patient & thanks for your passion."

Watch Dogs is slated for release on May 27. It will debut on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. A Wii U version of Watch Dogs is also in development, but we haven't heard anything on when that version will be released since Ubisoft delayed the game in February. [Image: Ubisoft]

Phil Spencer is the new head of Xbox, which now includes the Xbox, Xbox Live, Xbox Music, Xbox Video and Microsoft Studios teams. He's been with Microsoft for 25 years, starting as a programmer, but his focus has always been on Xbox, he tells Joystiq in a phone interview.

"What I think Xbox is about, is those core gaming fans that are out there, and franchises they know and love, and creating new franchises that they'll fall in love with in the future," Spencer says.

He describes his approach to Xbox as all about the games: "They're putting a gaming person at the head of the division in me, as the head of Xbox. The Xbox brand has always been a gaming brand. People with their consoles use the entertainment offerings of the console every day - something that we will focus on. But I definitely come to this platform with a gaming focus, and I want to make sure that's what your readers hear, and they understand that Xbox is a gaming brand."

By reputation, Spencer is a little more Gears of War, while his predecessor, Marc Whitten, was a little more Angry Birds. Spencer laughs at this comparison. "Is it better to be Angry Birds or Gears of War?"

Spencer says he has relationships with companies across the gaming spectrum, calling out third parties such as EA and Activision, games such as Angry Birds and Clash of Clans, and studios in the ID@Xbox program. The new, all-encompassing Xbox division will support creators, he says.

"Bringing the teams closer together creates that tight feedback loop between platform and content that I think can create unique assets for us as we think about continuing to push the Xbox creative platform forward for all the people out there," Spencer says.

"I look at gaming as a first-class citizen inside this company," the new head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, just told me on the phone on this the day it was announced that he's taking over all things Xbox at Microsoft. "And that's how [Microsoft CEO] Satya [Nadella] has shared it with me."Read more...

Slavery in the Transatlantic of the 1700s was a complex, interconnected network of financial systems, social engineering and psychological repercussions. The Assassin's Creed video games that have dealt with it head-on made good use of that subject matter but also stumbled in particularly clumsy ways. "Collecting freed slaves like they're coins in Mario," for example. Oops.Read more...

Phil Spencer, former VP of Microsoft Studios, is now head of Microsoft's Xbox division, overseeing Xbox, Xbox Live and Microsoft Studios teams. Spencer reports to Software EVP Terry Myerson.

"In this new job, Phil will lead the Xbox, Xbox Live, Xbox Music and Xbox Video teams, and Microsoft Studios," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella writes in an email to employees. "Combining all our software, gaming and content assets across the Xbox team under a single leader and aligning with the OSG team will help ensure we continue to do great work across the Xbox business, and bring more of the magic of Xbox to all form factors, including tablets, PCs and phones."

In February, Microsoft appointed former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop as the head of its Devices and Services division, which included Xbox. Elop is now officially EVP, Microsoft Devices Group, reporting directly to Nadella.