Star Wars: First Assault Domain and Trademarks Registered

LucasArt's parent company has registered trademarks and domain names for something titled Star Wars: First Assault.

Originally spotted by Fusible, the domain names include the likes of StarWarsFirstAssault.com while the trademarks apparently pertain to "interactive entertainment software", including video games, for use on both computers and mobile phones.

There's also the standard array of supporting merchandise, including pencil sharpeners. The discovery of the First Assault domain and trademarks echoes what happened when Star Wars 1313 was first uncovered before its E3 announcement. The question becomes, then, whether this title is a new franchise set in the Star Wars universe, or if it builds on a previously known series.

There's not much we can guess from the name alone, though the possibility of it being an aerial combat game along the lines of Star Wars: Rebel Assault shouldn't be ruled out. The name certainly suggests an action packed game that seems unlikely to focus on the Jedi as playable characters, though how this would be differentiated from the bounty hunting exploits promised by Star Wars 1313 remains to be seen.

But there's also a sliver of hope that this may be the long-awaited reappearance of Star Wars: Battlefront III. We heard reports earlier this year that the title was still in development since being canned after the studio behind Timesplitters, Free Radical, closed.

Until LucasArts chooses to reveal more, all we can do is speculate. For all we know it could be another Kinect-based title, but with rumours rife that Star Wars 1313 is in development for next-gen machines, could this perhaps be LucasArts last hurrah on this batch of consoles?

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant and was named after a certain famous Jedi. Probably. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

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Why eSports Are Like Dubstep and Pro Gaming Isn't For Gamers

There’s something in the air at the World Championship Series StarCraft II Oceania Finals at the Australian Technology Park. It is, in fact, the roof of the Australian Technology Park. Or was, rather. 100km/h winds had blown a section of it off the converted locomotive workshop earlier.

But there’s definitely a buzz down here, and it’s not just the iron sheets above us vibrating as they cling to the roof while the gale outside tries to peel them off like a stubborn nether-hair from a bar of soap. People seem excited. Excited about StarCraft II. They’re sitting in clusters fixated on the big screen while a man brings around platters of tiny chicken schnitzels on tiny pieces of toast. The crowd is small today, but it’s a Friday. The show isn’t open to the public until tomorrow, when we’re assured things will get a lot more boisterous. All 600 tickets for the event were snapped up inside of 11 minutes. Tomorrow the crowd of people cheering on a man in a small glass booth playing a video game against another man in a different glass booth will be a lot larger and louder.

Larger. Louder.

There’s very little about this experience that would seem real to your everyday everyman. It barely makes sense to me. I’m watching two people I don’t know battling against one another on a video game I’ve never played. The commentators aren’t called commentators, I can’t quite figure out why everyone is cheering and I don’t actually understand what anybody is talking about.

This must be how my wife feels when I play video games at home. Or perhaps a more potent example would be what my sister feels like when she watches cricket. She doesn’t understand the game and she doesn’t understand the rules.

Two of the expert StarCraft II shoutcasters brought in to provide commentary for the event, Nick ‘Tasteless’ Plott and Dan ‘Artosis’ Stemkoski, laugh when I confirm with them they don’t know anything about cricket.

“No, we don’t!” says Plott. “Basically our jobs are to try and make that as accessible as possible to a viewer like you, for instance. We’re just trying to translate, ‘Okay what’s this guy trying to do? What’s this guy’s dilemma? What’s the other guy’s advantage? We’re there to navigate the viewer through the experience so they can enjoy it.”

Thus far I’m still working on volume. When the commentators start shouting I figure something exciting is happening. Plott and Stemkoski are the commentators I’d know all about if I knew anything about StarCraft. The pair are currently based in South Korea.

“

[In South Korea] if I say I’m a StarCraft commentator that doesn’t require an explanation.

“Out there,” says Plott, “if I say I’m a StarCraft commentator that doesn’t require an explanation. If I say I’m a pro-gamer that doesn’t require an explanation. They did a poll a few years ago where they asked young Korean boys, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ and the number one response was professional gamer.”

“We live in this world where it one of the most watched things on TV, completely culturally accepted. It’s not a taboo, it’s not weird and there’s an ecosystem there that supports it.”

Peter Neate is 31. He’s from Brisbane. For three years, however, Peter Neate lived in South Korea and everyone called him Legionnaire.

After qualifying for the first World Cyber Games main event in 2001 Neate found himself in South Korea.

“I went overseas to Seoul in Korea and I was the only Australian to win a match,” says Neate. “They set up a show match afterwards and I was the only one to win versus a Korean pro-gamer. They offered me [a chance] to stay, just out of the blue. I really did not expect it and I didn’t really understand just how big professional gaming was in Korea at the time, so I turned it down.”

“I did a bit of research after that; I started playing a lot more. The next year, WCG came around again, I qualified, I went to Korea, I extended my Visa out for the full three months and I just went around trying to play as much as I could. We got very fortunate, I was there with another Australian... we got picked up by a sponsor a couple of days before our Visas were to expire.

“We were sponsored for three months and we played non-stop. At the end of the three months there was a big tournament – 512 players I believe – in Korea and I went through to the top eight where I got noticed by one of the professional teams. I became friends with them and they asked me to join so I leaped at the opportunity. From that time on I spent three years playing professionally in Korea.”

Neate out of retirement for another crack.

Neate illustrates just how hardcore South Koreans are about eSports.

“Back then they had an event down in Busan, the second largest city in Korea,” he says. “They did a custom built stadium, on the beach; they brought the players in on rafts, up onto the beach.”

“There were 90,000 spectators. So if you think about that, it’s like an AFL Grand Final. That many people were turning up just to watch a computer game.

That’s Australian Rules football, for non-antipodeans.

“It’s amazing,” Neate continues. “It’s really hard for people who haven’t seen anything like it to understand how big it is. In Korea, it is considered a sport; it’s a real sport, it’s the fourth biggest sport in Korea after soccer, baseball and basketball I believe.”

Neate retired after three years, conceding many players stay in the scene for longer.

“It’s a full-time job over there, so a lot of Koreans stick with it for a lot longer,” he says. “For me it was long enough. I’d done everything I’d wanted, my brother was getting married and I’d never actually met his fiancé because I’d been over there for so long. I’d had a lot fun, I’d travelled around everywhere and I just felt it was time to move on and get back to normal life.”

Normal is probably not a term you’d apply to the life of fellow finalist Andrew Pender. Pender has a nickname for his nickname, but that’s not what makes his life so fascinating. No, it’s because Andrew ‘mOOnGLaDe’ Pender, or GLaDe, quit his job to play StarCraft II eight to 12 hours a day in the lead up to this tournament.

Pender’s first real-time strategy game was the original StarCraft.

“As that went on Brood War came out and I continued to play during high school and I stumbled across pro gaming on the Internet, and I thought that was an amazing thing at the time,” he says. “That was the thing I wanted to be as a kid. Pro-gaming; it sounded so amazing.”

Dream job(?)

“From there after StarCraft I jumped into WarCraft III as fast as I could and started competitive playing there in the hopes that one day I could be a pro gamer, but at the time it was only a hobby. For six years I was competitive playing WarCraft III and I managed to travel around the world for it and do rather well, nothing too amazing, and then StarCraft II was on the horizon so I quit WarCraft III, worked for a couple of years until StarCraft II came out and then pretty much put all my time into StarCraft II and tried my best to go pro gamer with it.

“Basically from there I started to do very well and I joined a pretty good team and I managed to travel around the world with a salary and make some money and some fame and do pretty well. For the last two years I’ve just been travelling around the world for StarCraft II.”

The prospect of being paid to play games might be a tempting one for many. It sounds like the perfect job for someone who loves games. However, one of the more interesting things is how few games pro gamers actually play.

“If you’re a pro gamer you’re probably only playing StarCraft,” says Plott.

Stemkoski agrees; he spends his free gaming time playing StarCraft too.

“Yeah, it’s definitely mostly StarCraft,” he says. “I find that I’m so involved in StarCraft, I enjoy it so much that I find if I have some free time I don’t necessarily want to pick up a PlayStation controller. I want to go and play some more StarCraft. There’s a reason why this is the biggest eSport; it’s because it’s the best game.”

Pender tends to avoid other games too.

“

I used to play many, many games before I became a professional gamer. Once you become a professional gamer it’s a lot harder to just jump on another game.

“I used to be a gamer, he says. “I used to play a lot more other games; I used to play many, many games before I became a professional gamer. Once you become a professional gamer it’s a lot harder to just jump on another game.”

“In the back of your mind you’re worried that it’s going to affect your StarCraft, or your mouse movements or whatever. But that’s not really the main reason I don’t play many other games. Currently I don’t have time for it, and when I do have time for it I kinda don’t want to be in front of the computer, more than anything. I like to do physical things. Anything but be on a computer.

“I do love exercising. I do a lot of boxing; not so much the getting hit in the head, but the training for it I really enjoy.”

There are other misconceptions about pro gaming.

Though probably not ones shared by these rabid fans.

“I think that the biggest misconception about pro gamers and especially about this industry as a whole is that it’s a bunch of geeks or nerds or something like that,” says Stemkoski. “We have such a diverse line-up of humans that play this game and complete professionally at it.”

“We had people that worked at McDonalds, we had people that were bodybuilders, we had people that play basketball, just every type of person. There are dog catchers that turned into professional video game players. This is not something like some of these other sports where, ‘Well, you have to be born this tall to do this’. No, anyone can do it.”

So where to now for eSport? Speaking to GamesIndustry International at Gamescom Riot Games co-founder Brandon Beck believes that the popularity of eSports could grow to the point where video games are actually played at the Olympics.

“We don't have our sights set on replacing soccer right now, but we definitely think that eSports has a place as a large, important, mainstream competitive activity,” he said. “I fundamentally believe that eSports will be an Olympic event in my lifetime.”

Plott and Stemkoski stop a few miles short of anything as monstrously optimistic as this, but both agree eSports are on the rise.

First, you win the StarCraft. Then you get the power. Then you get the women.

“It’s gonna take some more time,” says Stemkoski. “Some places are starting to catch up, like China and Germany, and to a lesser extent Sweden. These places are starting to get more and more there. You need to get the word out, you need a lot of tournaments, and the more that you have the more people will see it and the more it’ll be in the news.”

Plott picks up from Stemkoski.

“The way I would look at it is, are you familiar with dubstep?” he asks. “So like, dubstep started out in the UK and it’s actually been around for a long period of time now. Imagine the UK is to dubstep what South Korea is to eSports.”

“

Imagine the UK is to dubstep what South Korea is to eSports.

“They had the right club scene, they had the right attitude; progressive, electronic music was taking over there. Nowadays everybody knows what dubstep is right, but it just took time for it to catch on. If you imagine video games as music, I feel like eventually there’s just gonna be a point in time where this is kinda a genre of gaming that’s just gonna take over everywhere.

“I mean, two years ago this was so niche outside of South Korea it was mind-boggling how long it took me to explain to anybody how big my job was. Now I’ve ping-ponged all over the globe, we’re going to Germany right after this, and I would say I don’t know whether it’s going to be two years, five years or 10 years, it’s gonna be a genre of gaming. “

Looking at just how heavily the likes of Black Ops II are becoming geared towards the competitive player, I’m inclined to agree. It’s not going to matter if you or I are interested or not. Enough people are.

I leave to find the foul weather has knocked over a tree just outside the building. If a tree falls in the park and everyone is inside watching two men play StarCraft II, does it make a sound?

Apparently not.

While veteran Peter Neate’s tournament was ended early, Andrew Pender came in as runner-up in the Australian National championship and was the overall winner of the Oceania Finals the following day. He and his fellow finalist will advance to the StarCraft II World Championship Series Global Final at the Battle.net World Championship in Shanghai, China in November.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can chat to him about games, cars and other stuff on IGN here or find him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.

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Left 4 Dead 2: Cold Stream Review

You know that feeling when you jump into a pool that’s heated to the perfect temperature? Swimming around feels like something you should have been doing your entire life, and it’s just plain wonderful. Cold Stream, Left 4 Dead 2’s new community-created map turned official DLC, is much less like its frigid namesake and much more like a soothing warm-water swim. It feels just about right.

You know Left 4 Dead 2. You know how great it is. You still shoot hundreds of zombies, co-op style, on your way through a series of maps to get to a safe point where you can rest and reload. Special zombies like the Spitter and the Hunter are still around to screw with your plans, Tanks will still ambush you at the worst possible moments, and setting off car alarms still draws the horde to the location of your oh-so-tasty brains.

So, you’ll likely still have a great time with Cold Stream. It’s a competently put together new campaign, and definitely scratches that new Left 4 Dead itch. But, there’s just something missing. It lacks the usual magic that Valve games tend to attain. I’ve been struggling to put my finger on exactly what it is, but it’s honestly fairly difficult to say.

Perhaps it’s the lack of new voice work for the campaign. The map’s creators very cleverly put together old dialogue to estimate more or less what it would sound like, but it’s just not the same.

Perhaps it’s the slightly uneven difficulty. In Valve-designed maps, you constantly feel one step ahead of death. The zombies bear down on you, and you barely survive each encounter. Those moments exist in Cold Stream, but they’re definitely not common. And when they come, they come with fury. There’s a moment early in the campaign where you’re forced to fight your way down a raging deluge of water, all the while fighting off zombies. It sounds thrilling, but instead it’s far too chaotic and far too difficult.

Perhaps, even, it’s notable lack of witches. It seems like a not-so-huge deal at first glance, but I really missed the moments of turning a corner and finding myself face-to-face with one of the terrifying she-devils. The air seems lacking in tension without her cries echoing in the distance.

None of this is to say that Cold Stream isn’t very good. In fact, quite the opposite. It’s still Left 4 Dead 2, and shooting, chopping, and chainsawing your way through is still just as much fun as ever. The new four-map set is varied, well-designed, and definitely gets the job done. It’s just not up to the level of the game’s other campaigns.

For the Left 4 Dead veterans, however, the true value of the DLC lies in the re-release of four campaigns from the original game. Crash Course, Death Toll, Dead Air, and Blood Harvest are back, along with Zoey, Louis, Bill, and Francis. I know right? I missed those guys too. Plus, you get to play with the new toys that Left 4 Dead 2 introduced, like melee weapons and the ever-useless defibrillator, all in an attempt to survive the new Special Infected that seem to have invaded the old areas. Fresh!

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What You Won't See in Assassin's Creed III

In December 2010, Ubisoft created a video that represented its ambitions for Assassin's Creed III - something known as target footage. Creative Director Alex Hutchinson insists that developers should always aim for exactly what they intend to ship, never over-estimating their capabilities or falling short of their own expectations. Hutchinson presented the Assassin's Creed III target gameplay render during his GDC Europe Keynote, and it was almost indistinguishable from what we've all seen from the near-finished game. In just a few short minutes, it establishes traversal and combat animation routines, the hunting mechanics, jumping through trees and climbing any cliff. But it isn't exactly Assassin's Creed III; a lot has changed along the way.

“

For a while we took the bow out of the game

"Some of the notable cuts from that footage include the idea of scalping," Hutchinson explained. It was something that was "historically defensible", but in the context of gameplay it was too gruesome and didn't serve much purpose for the character. For a while the bow was taken out of the game, too, because it wasn't historically supported enough to give Ubisoft the confidence to include it. Additional research eventually gave Assassin's Creed III's development team enough evidence to include it. There was originally a hook-blade as well, an extension of one of Ezio's tools, which you'd throw it at enemies to pull them toward you. "People on the team kept saying 'Get over here!' every time they used it," said Hutchinson. He took it out of the game, but a version of the device stayed in Assassin's Creed III -- you can hook enemies to yank them up tree branches.

Philadelphia was prototyped for Assassin's Creed III, but ultimately cut because "it just wasn't very much fun." Hutchinson said Philadelphia is "very, very flat, it's very, very rigid. The streets were too wide." It also would have represented the first "planned city" in the series -- Philadelphia was built on a grid, unlike the more unpredictable nature of past settings. Instead, Philly is a town you'll visit in cutscenes rather than suffer through in gameplay.

When it came to creating a main character, Hutchinson wanted a hero that could hang with Altair and Ezio. "I believe, even as someone who didn't work on [Assassin's Creed II], that Ezio is one of the best characters in games." Connor, therefore, had to be as iconic as Ezio and Altair. He was always intended to be Native American -- "We didn't want to make Mel Gibson from The Patriot fighting for America, nor did we want someone fighting for king and country -- but he wasn't always the guy we know now.

Early concepts deliberately went to artistic extremes. The "full on eagle outfit was never going to fly," Hutchinson said. In that particular image, Connor was decked out in wide-spreading feathers and had an an animal head for a hat. Ubisoft concepted him in all sorts of animal skins as well as minimalist robes before ultimately settling on subtle cultural twists on a classic white robe.

Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor for IGN's Xbox 360 team. He’s also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.

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Konami Employee Wins Gold Medal at Olympics

Have you been watching the Olympics? Here’s something you might not know about the gold medal winner in men’s individual all-around gymnastics: he works for Konami. Uchimara is an employee of Konami Sports & Life Co., a subsidiary of Konami that aims at “providing you an enjoyable and valuable time within your daily life through health and fitness,” according to message from the program’s representative director.

A post on Konami’s official site explains that Uchimara is one of three Konami employees who competed in the Olympics representing Japan, joining Koji Yamamuro and Yusuke Tanaka in gymnastics and Takuro Fujii in swimming. “Konami Sports & Life Co., Ltd. would like to congratulate Uchimura on this great accomplishment, and extend appreciation to his many supporters and fans,” the blog post reads. “Konami will continue to aid in the further development and popularization of sports.”

You can watch Uchimara's performance at the Olympics below:

Konami, of course, is famous for developing Metal Gear Solid in addition to Castlevania, Dance Dance Revolution and many more. More recently, Konami has been exploring social gaming partnerships in addition to expanding the company through ventures like Konami Sports & Life. The publisher’s upcoming slate includes Metal Gear Rising Revengeance and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

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PEGI Ratings: What Does It All Mean?

This week something important happened. PEGI replaced the BBFC as the legally-enforceable ratings body for video games in the UK. Its 12, 16, and 18 age ratings are now enforceable under British law, meaning a fine of up to £5,000 or six months in jail awaits the retailer or individual responsible for selling games to those too young to play them.

To be honest, it was all something of a mess. The two systems had coincided for way too long, creating foggy confusion – the exact opposite of what such regulatory bodies are supposed to do. Which ratings were parents supposed to trust: the familiar BBFC ratings or the new PEGI ratings? And if indeed it was was the latter, what good was a classification system that didn't have the law on its side. After all, it’s very unlikely that a number 18 stamped on the back of the game box would be capable of deterring a 12-year old from playing Battlefield 3 on Christmas day. No font is that disapproving.

The Byron Review (Safer Children in a Digital World) came to a similar, if somewhat less flippant conclusion. Delivered in March 2008, the report examined how video games were consumed by children, and how they should be responsibly licensed and distributed. One of the main issues tackled by the report was the very confusion that arose from having two conflicting systems.

BBFC Ratings System

Many parents, because of their familiarity, recognised the BBFC ratings on the front of boxes as indicators of ‘suitability’; however, this led to some parents inferring that the PEGI ratings had something to do with the game’s perceived difficulty. This led to a ludicrous situation: the very ratings that were supposed to protect children were actually doing the very opposite.

From an administrative perspective, the two bodies have always worked amicably together, but there needed to be a clearer solution to help the game-buying British public.

Overall the report is a measured assessment of a topic that normally courts hysteria. It concludes by recommending the government consolidates the existing systems into a new hybrid system, with a prominent leaning on the existing BBFC system because of its familiarity and the reputation and experience of the BBFC.

This didn’t happen. Probably because it would have required significant investment in the BBFC to ensure it could function as the sole arbiter of video games in the UK, but there was also concerns that the decision to support the BBFC could undermine PEGI and even precipitate its demise.

PEGI Ratings System

I’m not saying that choosing to go with PEGI is a bad or wrong decision; indeed, there are plenty advantages to adopting PEGI, but the loss of the BBFC’s ratings and general involvement in the regulatory process is significant for a number of reasons.

Firsty, PEGI is a European-minded ratings agency. This potentially removes the ability to ban a game in the UK if it's awarded a rating by PEGI. This is unlikely, since PEGI tends to be much sterner when awarding ratings; it has consistently awarded higher ratings for games than the BBFC.

This comes down to the way in which PEGI assesses individual titles. Publishers are asked to submit their games along with an assessment form, declaring all of the content which could influence the final rating. The form has 50 categories, detailing all imaginable types of sexual content, violence, drug abuse, even gambling. They are spread across the five different age ratings.

So “Depictions of nudity in a non-sexual context”, which includes breast feeding and sunbathing, receive the lowest rating of 3. But games depicting “sexual activity with visible genital organs” or “sexual violence or threats” rightly receive the highest rating of 18.

“

The licensing body which deemed the violence to be ‘moderate’ has been replaced by one that considers it to be ‘extreme’.

This declaration form, submitted by the publisher, is then used as the basis for a subsequent review; essentially, it lets the ‘administrator’ focus on the elements of the game that will most likely influence the final rating. PEGI refers to this content declaration aspect as a “significant strength as only the developer/publisher of a game has a complete overview of the content in the game”.

While it might streamline the process, it could also be one of the system’s biggest disadvantages.

As always, this is more apparent when you give real world examples. A conspicuous, often-cited case is that of Mass Effect. The BBFC passed the first part of EA’s space odyssey as a 12; PEGI certified the same game as an 18, the highest rating it can award.

Mass Effect. BBFC rating (left). PEGI rating (right).

Evaluating what age rating a game or film should receive is a complex process. It should take into account a multitude of factors. It shouldn’t just be based on instinct. But if you’ve played Mass Effect, which one sounds more appropriate to you? I imagine most of you are thinking it’s a 15. It doesn’t revel in its violence, nor is it particularly gruesome. It doesn’t incentivise the dismemberment of an enemy’s limbs, like Dead Space.

The BBFC describes Mass Effect as containing “moderate violence and one moderate sex scene”; PEGI describes the same game as containing “extreme violence” and “sexual activity without visible genitalia”. This disparity is potentially worrying. The licensing body which deemed the violence to be ‘moderate’ has been replaced by one that considers it to be ‘extreme’.

“

the limitations of the PEGI system could potentially put even the most sensitive, considered depiction of violence beyond the reach of anyone below 18

Although PEGI’s checklist is capable of distinguishing between a cartoon sprite inflicting a comedy slap and the jaw-smashing right hook of a street brawler, it’s less useful when it comes to grey areas, like Mass Effect. For years the BBFC has provided an exemplary service, consulting with the British public on how films should be certified. It’s a ratings body which crucially takes into account context when deciding what rating to hand out, one which understands that not all forms violence are equal, that context can be a mitigating factor and that audiences can discriminate intelligently.

PEGI isn’t prudish or reactionary. It doesn’t think video games are evil. Its intentions, I have no doubt, are thoroughly good. But since its inception in 2003, it has consistently awarded higher ratings than the BBFC. And this disparity comes down to PEGI’s ‘significant strength’: that declaration form. It’s a rigid form of certification, which is neither culturally nor contextually sensitive. It’s not about interpretation or consideration, it’s about holding a game against a checklist. Tick any of the 18 boxes and the game is automatically an 18.

So if a game contains "depictions of apparently motiveless killing or serious injury to multiple numbers of innocent human-like characters", it automatically receives an 18. Yet Schindler's List is a 15, and it tackles one of the most senseless, motiveless acts of mass slaughter ever recorded. Arguably video games are still too immature of a medium to depict something as culturally harrowing and historically significant as the holocaust with gravitas that is demanded. But the limitations of the PEGI system could potentially put even the most sensitive, considered depiction of violence beyond the reach of anyone below 18. For instance, if the same rubric was applied to literature, it would be illegal for anyone below the age 18 to read Shakespeare's tragedies, with all their eye-gouging and cannibalism and suicide. Bad luck if you're studying Macbeth for your English GCSE.

There are lots of unseen situations that lie ahead in which the PEGI system might prove unbearably restrictive. Over time, its questionnaire might need to be rephrased or rewritten or torn up completely, as the scope and ambition of video games grow. Otherwise, we could potentially face a ludicrous situation in which the most meaningful games will gated behind a forbidding, blood-red '18' .

The Byron Review itself cited this as major weakness of the PEGI system. It was thought that excessively high (or low) ratings could be a source of mistrust, and nothing could be more damaging to a ratings body in its infancy than suspicion. Hopefully, this won’t be the case, and at least in the short term, the PEGI ratings - now giving the full backing of British law - will make parents think twice before caving to the bouncy hectoring of their children wanting to play Call of Duty.

Daniel is IGN's UK Staff Writer. You can be part of the world's worst cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.

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Report: God of War Saga Coming to PS3

A retail source close to Siliconera has claimed that something called the God of War: Saga Collection is in the works. There's already been a God of War Collection (containing the first two games in the series) and a God of War Collection: Volume 2 (collecting PSP titles Chains of Olympus and Ghosts of Sparta). So is this perhaps a bundle of both collections, with possibly God of War III thrown in?

Well, it's all speculation at this point. But with God of War: Ascension slated for release on March 12, 2013, it would make sense for Sony to release the entire collection as a refresher for newcomers to the series.

According to the source the Saga Collection will be released sometime late in August. Can we expect an announcement at this year's Gamescom? Stay tuned to IGN for updates.

Daniel is IGN's UK Games Writer. You can be part of the world's worst cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.

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