Wired News: Joystick - RSS Feed

A new online service for Call of Duty will give players a massive cache of statistics about their performance in the popular war games and offer social networking features in an attempt to build a community around the critically acclaimed series.

An advance demo shows the game to be built around sword fights and an interesting parrying mechanic. Besides the merciless slaying of foes, Shinobi will also test your platforming prowess.

The upcoming role-playing game boasts a few interesting features, but its biggest draw is its narrator. An old codger tells the tale of the game's hero as he goes about his old-school adventuring, and nothing seems to slip by the eerily prescient storyteller.

The story swings dramatically depending on decisions your character makes in this sequel to The Witcher, a 2007 action role-playing game based on German fantasy stories. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings makes the most of this gameplay mechanic.

After more than a decade of development hell, the perpetually delayed shooter is off to the manufacturing plant.

Ubisoft will publish a free-to-play version of its popular special-ops shooter series for the PC later this year. A new trailer and screenshots offer a taste of the trimmed-down but intense action.

A supposedly tongue-in-cheek memo suggests that employees at videogame developer High Voltage might have "Amazon-bombed" the book of a reviewer who panned one of the studio's games.

Sony has revealed which games it will give away as compensation for the last four weeks of PlayStation Network downtime.

With characters created using motion-capture technology, Rockstar's new hard-boiled crime game transports you back to 1940s Los Angeles. Unlike Grand Theft Auto's unrepentant shooting sprees, the emphasis here is on gumshoe investigation, as you question the game's unnervingly realistic inhabitants.

Usually in the Weekend Thrifting column, we showcase old videogames purchased in thrift stores. But San Francisco's bargain bins have been dry lately, so here's something a bit less random but possibly more interesting: a selection of weird, obscure or otherwise notable retro games we've sought out over the past few months.