According to WPRI.com, 38 Studios has laid off its entire staff in Providence and Maryland yesterday afternoon. An email was sent to all 379 full time employees that said the following: "The Company is experiencing an economic downturn. To avoid further losses and possibility of retrenchment, the Company has decided that a companywide lay off is absolutely necessary. These layoffs are non-voluntary and non-disciplinary. This is your official notice of lay off, effective today, Thursday, May 24th, 2012. Read More...

After almost eleven years since the release of Diablo II, Blizzard's epic dungeon crawling franchise is finally back. Diablo III takes place twenty years after the events of Diablo II and its expansion "Lord of Destruction" in the world of Sanctuary. After picking one of the five classes (I'll touch on those later) you start your journey off in "New Tristram" which is not too far from the original Tristram (which you will be visiting in Act 1). Your character is in search of "The Fallen Star" which happened to crash into the Tristram cathedral. We soon find out that Decard Cain and his niece Leah were in the cathedral at the time, and Leah gives us the task to find her uncle and save Tristram from the living dead (who happened to rise again due to the power of the fallen star). Read More...

Way back in March we got a nice little CGI trailer for Darksiders II. It was cool and beautiful, but it was only the first part of the promotional video. Lucky for us, below we have the next part of the clip which also leaves us wanting and waiting for the continuation of Death's badassitude. Yes it's a word. Deal with it. My only hope is that these kinds of clips will take over for the cut scenes in Darksiders II, at least for major scenes. Read More...

After two hand surgeries, Brian - more importantly, the Aggrocast - is back at full strength. Corey and Matt join Brian for a podcast talking about the great clickfest that is Diablo III. The guys also touch on Bioware/EA's woes with Star Wars: The Old Republic, 38 Studios going into loan default, as well as the various court cases swirling around the industry at this time. Without the law books on the table, the guys also touch on what they've been playing including Wet, Bulletstorm, Witcher 2, Torchlight 2 beta and some game called Diablo III. The best news for Corey came when Brian sprung a short Care/Don't Care on the show. Read More...

Corey and Brian have at it in this first episode of the Diablocast. Another spoilerific venture from Aggrogamer.com, the Diablocast is 60 minutes of back and forth between "The Blizzard Fanboy" (aka Corey) and "The Diablo's Advocate" (aka Brian) on all things Diablo III. Basically, this episode spawned from a discussion between the two guys that began over text message that just happened to spill into a podcast. Sit back, enjoy and leave all your comments in the show notes below or email us at bbentley@aggrogamer.com. Read More...

Mercenary Ops; the new free-to-play 3rd person shooter MMO due out this Summer from Yingpei Games; is now accepting beta applicants. All you have to do is 'Like' their Facebook page and beta hopefuls will be selected and sent out beta codes for the promising game. Beta entrants will be allowed into the servers June 20th. I think Mercenary Ops looks great for being a F2P MMO and being based in the Unreal Engine 3 only helps. Customizable weapons and character perks put this along with other MMOs in terms of gear, but its co-op missions, boss fights and head to head style modes keep this game firmly secured in the world of shooters. Read More...

The guys over at Croteam have been working furiously since the original launch of Serious Sam 3: BFE to get their baby on consoles. We're looking at (maybe) a September / October release for XBLA and an even longer wait for PSN. "Regarding Xbox 360 SS3, it is in development, so we are on it since PC was released... It does require time to do all kinds of optimization's, first to fit all in memory and to get decent frame rate, as 360 is rather old hardware now (512MB RAM, lower range graphics card etc). Please be patient for around 4 more months for 360, we are doing our best to finish it in that time frame. Read More...

It's been a long wait but Prototype 2 has finally landed to the enjoyment of all of us fans from the first game. It's not every game where you get to power bomb someone from atop some of the tallest buildings in the country but this is totally one of them. It has been three years in the works and there have been other titles out like it since, so does Prototype 2 hold up to the franchise's already well set bar. Let's find out. Story It's been fourteen months since the events of Prototype. Read More...

When are publishers and studios going to realize that they cannot trust humans with sensitive information? Call Of Duty: Black Ops II was technically announced before the company made the announcement or gave us the announcement trailer. Retailers who got information early let things slip. Game sites that received information in terms to prep the news let things "leak." I swear if Treyarch and Activision ran things like the governments they make games for we'd be seeing quite a few unmarked graves around the globe. But I digress. Read More...

In a world where most people are dominated by their right hand it makes sense that most game heroes are represented as righties and not lefties. That's why I find it interesting that in the new screens for Bethesda's Dishonored it shows the main character holding the firearms in his left hand and secondary or melee weapons in his right. Not shown very well in the announcement trailer or in many of the other original assets, but here in these game play shots it looks like it is going to be the case. Is it a big deal? Read More...

Kind of an odd question to be asked huh but it is pretty much the question posed to you in the most recent trailer for Hitman: Absolution that showcases the star of the franchise, Agent 47. Outside of that it also shows off a bit of game play as well as the different ways you can control the original assassin through the game. It is also full of a lot of blood and violence so send the youngin's out of the room before watching it. If you are waiting to actually watch the clip and still reading, let me break it down a bit. Read More...

Rebellion Developments just gave us a "reboot" or "remake" of the 2005 shooter of the same name, Sniper Elite: V2 which takes place in the same time frame. This time rather than infiltrating the Nazi Army in disguise, you are a lone sniper against both the German and Russian WW2 militaries. Referencing the real life "Operation Paper," you must sneak behind lines and kill, or rescue, German scientists from creating and launching deadly V2 rockets. The game plays very smoothly; only on few occasions, and probably at my provoking the system, did I experience any spots of being stuck or absurd clipping. Sniper Elite plays as you would hope and expect any 3rd person shooter to play. Read More...

Developed and Published by Telltale Games this episodic game takes place within The Walking Dead universe. While some characters share the names of those in the comic and TV show, it is a whole new story. The Walking Dead is a point and click game with "precision" quick-time events. Instead of simply hitting a button you have to aim in a specific spot and then hit a button. I sat down to play The Walking Dead expecting a quick little hour or so session but I soon found myself sucked in to the characters and their story. I actually finished the game in one session. Read More...

It's been about eight months since we last heard anything of substance from Digital Extreme's Star Trek. Why don't we go check in and see what is new? Or if anything, see if there is anything all that spectacularly new since the E3 demo recording. Well… Um… We have a couple new pieces of concept art and a teaser trailer for the game that shows roughly a minute of new stuff. Outside of the fact that it will be able to be played completely in stereoscopic 3D, there isn't really all that much to say or show. Everything is below. Read More...

In Assassin's Creed III it has been announced that one of the ways to make some scratch to upgrade will be through the form of hunting in the wilderness. Connor can collect pelts and the like and sell them and depending on the quality of the pelt and kill he can make a lot of cash. Cash he will most likely need to use to upgrade all of his stuff. It has also been talked about that Connor can technically assassinate these creature for the best results. So what do we have to talk about here today? Read More...