Random Wednesdays

Rock, Paper, Shotgun have continued their preview of BioShock Infinite with commentary on the game’s combat system. The game releases in March, but apparently promotional figurines will hit stores later this month. It was also announced this week that series composer Garry Schyman would be returning to score BioShock Infinite.

PC Gamer is excited about the game, to say the least. So is RPS.

Over in Korea, open-world MMORPG ArcheAge is apparently in open beta. The intro cinematic is awesome, but the queues are evidently quite lengthy.

Grant Kirkhope, formerly the composer at Big Huge Games, was interviewed in a MuscleTower podcast, and is evidently scoring a Ninja Gaiden game at present. The man certainly moves around the industry in interesting ways, to say the least. (Speaking of Big Huge Games, Destructoid wrapped up their Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning playthrough recently.)

Reviews for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition are still coming in. Overall, the re-release seems to review well, although it doesn’t manage to stay about an 80% score in every case.

Eurogamer has an interesting piece looking at the “why” of the re-release and the people behind it, the ex-BioWare veterans at Overhaul Games in Edmonton. Overhaul’s Trent Oster also let slip a little bit more detail about why the game was considered — and ultimately rejected — for PlayStation 3.

Oh, and hey…Torchlight 2 sold over a million copies.

And this is interesting: Sheldon J. Pacotti, lead writer of Deus Ex (and now an instructor at the University of Texas), has developed a tool called GameBlocks, which attempts to introduce aspiring coders to game development in a visually appealing way. It actually reminds me a lot of how Stencyl abstracts basic coding…except it’s by the writer of Deus Ex.

PC Gamer is also excited for Neverwinter, by the way. And EverQuest Next.