Many of the branches have already been They’re not going quietly into that good night- their Newcastle studio has revealed their last hope at getting a financial backer who can help them pull out of their slump. It’s an open-world action game called Necessary Force, set in the film cliche of a maverick cop in the city who makes his own rules. They’re looking to explore the ‘troubled morality’ of the situation with the game and feature the sort of choice/consequence idea that’s becoming increasingly popular these days.

The website for the game is up and features a trailer which looks good so far, though it seems to be long on rendered environments, concept art and cutscenes and short on actualy gameplay footage, but it does look good. Will this be enough to get someone interested in the studio? Can a non-fantastic open world title that lacks the familiar GTA branding succeed?

If you were one of those people who grew up reading Nancy Drew and find themselves watching unhealthy amounts of CSI, this game is for you.

Recently announced to be shipping for the Nintendo DS this winter, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth puts you in the shoes of a prosecutor as he searches for evidence to support his various cases.

Capcom is saying that this game will feature more than 15 hours of gameplay broken down into various episodes. Each episode will feature a different case in which players will have to rake the crime scence for evidence and question witnesses using said evidence.

Read (Kotaku)

As one might expect, the lawyers attempted to blame the crime on Petric’s video game addiction, which had something to do with why his parents instructed him not to buy Halo 3. They were going for the insanity defense, but the murder-suicide plot and the fact that Petric admitted to thinking about killing his parents in the weeks before the crime generally eroded his claim of insanity and he was convicted.

Daniel Petric now faces sentencing with life in prison without parole as the maximum sentence. While this is a terrible tragedy and I send my sympathies to Mr. Petric and his family, it’s good to see that the spirit of accountability is still alive in a country that’s all together too quick to blame others.

For example, look at this story in the Dailymail site about a 13 year old who set some cars on fire.

“A teenager who torched three cars in Lyon, France, told police he was wanted to imitate scenes from the Grand Theft Auto video game.

The 13-year-old schoolboy used petrol to set light to three vehicles after playing on the violent GTA 4: Liberty City game on his home PC.

The game awards points creating as much as crime and destruction as possible in a city.”

To get the obvious point out of the way first: Why was a 13 year old playing an M-rated game in the first place? Secondly, how did he get the PC version, which hasn’t even been completed, let alone shipped. Finally, the game does not award any points for causing destruction and crime. The only thing the game has ever awarded me was having my weapons confiscated, and that was only for shooting out someone’s tire.