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The presence of Dungeons & Dragons was felt throughout the long, broad halls of Boston’s PAX East convention this past weekend. Wizards of the Coast brought with them this year the traditional tabletop offerings, running tables of D&D Essentials and the new Lords of Waterdeep board game in the convention’s table gaming room. But Dungeons & Dragons also means video games these days. In addition to checking out some new content premiering for the existing Dungeons & Dragons Online, I also got a first look at the newest D&D MMO, which is simply called Neverwinter. My thoughts on the latter lead off a series about the things I saw this past weekend at PAX. Join me past the jump.

I normally don’t post breathless and shocking announcements, but it’s just been brought to my attention that there’s been a huge upset in the world of gaming. Specifically, SWERY65, director of Deadly Premonition, has had his blog taken over by an alternate-dimension doppelganger with a terrifying mustache. And I gotta say, the game that development genius ZVVORY666 is working on now looks incredible.

The Wipeout series has always been dripping with cool. Studio Liverpool’s clinical vision of the future has consistently been supported by industry leading electronic soundtracks and audio design, with it’s original logo’s and and aesthetic created by The Designers Republic setting the tone of the series from 1995 to the present day. It’s the videogame equivalent of a chic underground nightclub, and it’s a vibe that has always resonated with me. This is one of my favourite gaming franchises of all time and is probably the closest thing Sony have to a “system seller” to me. Hence my purchase of a Vita along with Wipeout 2048 last month.

Musical indie Cipher Prime has returned to its roots with a sequel to the firm’s mesmerizing debut, Auditorium. I adored – and still adore – that brilliant, beautiful puzzler. Fractal, Cipher Prime’s sophomore achievement, I could have done without. Still, they’ve made a name (and a living) for themselves in a hard, harsh world… and now they’re Schaferizing, using Kickstarter to help fund Auditorium Duet, a multiplayer sequel to the original.

Do I want it to be multiplayer? No, I hate other people. And Auditorium’s beauty has always been a very single-person thing to me. But still, I wish the best for Cipher Prime, and if you have some change in your couch cushions, you should do the same.

The 3DS is doomed. Nobody wants dedicated portable games consoles anymore. iOS is taking over. Nintendo going third party confirmed. Pack it up guys, it’s over. Well no, actually. Turns out the 3DS is pretty popular. So popular infact that the system has just pushed past the five million mark in Japan alone, a feat managed in just 51 weeks and faster than the Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii. For comparison’s sake, the …

I don’t think there could be a better email in the world on a rather grey Tuesday, than an invitation to take part in the Guild Wars 2 Beta.  Though I can tell you very little (other than it begins this weekend and I’ve already packed off my entire family) rest assured I will be providing some in-depth coverage come Monday the 20th, so be sure to check back here. If you have any suggestions on what …

Super Mario Bros. Crossover is a pretty basic idea: a fan-made Flash game where you play Mario’s levels with other characters. Each character retains the abilities from his or her original game, and power-ups do different things than they would normally!

So a lot of people like Tim Schafer. 19,689 people to be precise, at the time I’m writing this. Perhaps yesterday you heard about this? In case you didn’t I’ll summarize: the folks at Double Fine productions don’t believe it’s possible to receive publisher funding for a “classic adventure game”-type game in 2012. Not going to happen. So instead, they reached out to so called “people” to fund their adventure dreams. $400,000 worth of funding, to be specific. Kotaku figured it wouldn’t take a week. Turns out it didn’t take a day.

Check out Double Fine’s “Kickstarter” page for all the details. Tim’s amusing plea video follows the break.

Right this very second, people are making games. The ripple started in New Zealand, then Australia, then began moving slowly west. By this evening my time, the indie-game development plague will hit the Americas.

I haven’t written anything about Guild Wars 2 in a while. Which makes a change.  But, its been relatively quiet on the news front.  Thankfully ArenaNet havn’t disapointed and today they have officially revealed the final class; the mesmer! Unfortunately for ArenaNet, Gamereactor.dk decided to jump the gun yesterday and release the mesmer skill videos before the big day (resulting in an instant withdrawal on their part) but sadly the damage was done and the mistakenly (or intentially) …

Sports Interactive Studio Director and football gaming man-God Miles Jacobson has revealed that his studio are “looking to hire six to ten engineers” to work on “next generation tech,” but has ruled out a return to consoles with the NextBox and PlayStation 4. The studio will instead work with cloud and mobile based services, with some particularly curious thoughts on the future of tablet devices such as the iPad.

GSC Game World is closed, officially. 1C’s Sergey Galyonkin offers more info here, if you can stand the piteous Google translation. Truly a sad day. Good luck to all of GSC’s former employees.

So it turns out Nintendo consoles are rather popular. I know, pretty wacky right? After all, almost 90 million Wii consoles have been sold around the world and despite a troubled debut year the 3DS has shifted more units within eight months than the DS did in twelve. But enough of those sales figures. Who are we, Nintendo shareholders? The real news is how many Miis are living on all those waggle and three dimensional consoles. …

Wadjet Eye Games yesterday announced that the wonderful Gemini Rue has come to Steam. Indeed, it has already gone live as of yesterday. This is excellent news for people who like great games, but also only like purchasing their computer games through the ever dominant Steam platform. It’s there, it’s 15% off ($8.49), and it could be one of your more memorable adventures this year. So, non-owners, your excuses are running out. Also, if you stroll …

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.. I’ll start with the good news. We finally have a fixed date for the PC version of Batman: Arkham City. Now to the bad news. It’s a full month away. On today of all days, when the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions launch across North America and just three days before the UK launch, Warner Brothers have confirmed that PC gamers will need to wait until November 18 to go hands on with …