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Here’s why you loved killing Nazis in the new Wolfenstein

The short answer is: historical accuracy. Wait, what? OK, so granted Wolfenstein: The New Order features some pretty outrageous stuff, like cyborg guard dogs and a mad scientist that has engineered human mechas. But as Wolfenstein’s creative director Jens Matthies tells Giant Bomb, a lot of research on proper historical representation went into that 80s’ action-hero, alternate-history framework: It’s far too convenient to put a swastika on somebody and say “shoot them!” For us, it was incredibly important to show what Nazi ideology was about. He elaborates that though the Nazis in Wolfenstein are sort of ridiculous, as villains in…

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New PBS Game/Show asks if the FPS is dying or ascending

The first-person shooter had a good run. Ever since players got a taste of the recoil on Doom’s shotgun, the genre has been firmly planted at the forefront of the industry. They’ve consistently been the biggest moneymakers, pushed technical boundaries, and ushered us into in the era of online play.  But as recent trends and sales figures indicate (ahem, Titanfall), their grip is weakening, like an aging gunslinger with an arthritic trigger finger who must be pushed by his posse into a nursing home.  Yeah, plenty of people still get their kicks from dropping and head-shotting, but increasingly players are…

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Military training sim looks almost as realistic as next-gen games, probably not as fun

GameSim makes war videogames that look an awful lot like, well, just big rad war videogames. But they’re actually, according to the company, “virtual training simulators.” Edge has an interesting profile on them that touches on how the tech of fun videogames is increasingly being used for un-fun purposes like war. Part of the reason, it explains, is that it’s much less expensive to have soldiers train on a game, rather than out in the field. There is of course that old, lingering ethical issue at play, that we collectively as videogame enthusiasts have indirectly funded and fueled tools that result…

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Harmonix is making a rhythmic FPS with plenty of dubstep

Rock Band developer Harmonix has been venturing out into new territory since the music-instrument-game craze fizzled, jettisoning a wall of plastic guitars at your local Best Buy. Announced yesterday, Chroma is the most unbridled departure yet: a rhythm-game and an FPS with a Tron-like battle arena and dubstep. Yes, that is a sentence you just read.  “How the fuck does that work?” you may rightly ask. Well, guns and characters are dedicated to different music genres, say hip-hop or free jazz. They shoot sequences of musical notes, presumably based on which buttons you press. Ultimately it comes down to killing…