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I’ll admit, it’s been a heck of a long time since I’ve played and enjoyed a true action RPG. The last one I actually played to completion wasFable; the last one Ireallyenjoyed wasDiablo II. It was with a great deal of hesistant interest, then, that I sank my teeth into the preview build forThe Witcher— a game which, according to its press release, “return[s] to the roots of the role-playing genre with a fresh and modern approach” and seeks to implementrealmoral dilemmas into the story, rather than the shallow, black-and-white, good-or-evil choices available in every nonlinear RPG....

You are so not ready for this episode. So not ready. We guarantee that you’ll laugh, cry, and have to clean your ceiling fan after listening to Podtoid 18. This week your Destructoid editors defecate onMega Man ZX, discuss corporate greed as it relates to the now-dead Clover Studios,Okami Wiirumors,Gears of WarAtari 2600 rumors, we get priceless moving advice from Rob Summa, and then Ron shatters Robert’s world live on the air as a big secret is finally let out of the bag....

AfterseeingCursed Mountainat Deep Silver’s press event, I also got a chance to spend some time withRisen, a PC/360 fantasy RPG that’sapparently bannedin Australia. Before going into this, I knew about as much as we hadpostedalready, which is to say not that much. Thankfully, all the other journalists in the room were in the same boat, so we got a nice full walkthrough on the title. Like many in the fantasy genre, this RPG has you rise as a nameless hero from the rubble of a shipwreck to become a man of legend....

Last summer, I sawWantedin theaters. I thought it was an above-average balls-to-the-wall action flick with some fantastic special effects sequences and ridiculous gunfights — in fact, I like to call the film “gun porn.” I also thought it could make a fantastic videogame, and was curious as to why there wasn’t a licensed adaptation with the film’s theatrical release. But of course, one was in the works —Wanted: Weapons of Fateis being developed by the Barcelona arm of GRIN, the Swedish studio behindBionic Commando RearmedandBionic Commando....

Peter Molyneux’s tease thatFable IIIwould hitin early 2010doesn’t seem that far off base. In a recent interview with Develop, the Lionhead Studios boss and creator of theFableseries said that the nextFabletitle is “almost at its final edit.” One thought: this game came together fast. Are we looking atFable IIwith a new skin, or something as revolutionary — andNatal-ly— as Molyneux has teased?

David “I won some BAFTAs and now I know everything” Cage may be working on a game calledFiv5, if various domain registrations and online profiles are anything to be believed. Two URLS —playseries.netandfiv5.net— have been discovered bySuperannuation, both of them belonging to Quantic Dream. In addition, the studio’sLinkedIn pagereveals a man called Benoit Goode, a concept artist who provided work for a game listed as Five. As if that wasn’t enough,SCEE trademarked Fiv5under “computer and videogame software” last September....

“Ever since the last Halo game we’ve had so many inquiries about plain chant, we’ve even been asked by festival organizers if we’ve got nuns or monks on our roster.” Now I remember quite well back in 1994 when Enigma started the chant wave with their popularReturn To Innocencesong, but didn’t that kind of overstay its welcome? I could be wrong, but the armchair analyst in me says that this is going to be a flop ofHalo-like proportions....

Red 5 Studios announced today a new team-based shooter,FireFall,due to be released some time in 2011. And it has bugs. Nasty, disgusting bugs. I can only assume that they must all die. The game is being developed by a team made up of designers from theTribesseries and the lead designer ofWorld of Warcraft. Quite appropriately, the game is a mixture of the design philosophies of these two series: take a dude shooting stuff and toss him online shooting at stuff with a ton of other people....

Like many, I’ve been playing a lot ofCastle Crashersin the last couple of weeks and it has me thinking about other 2D brawler games I’ve enjoyed over the years. When these games were popular, I played every one I could get my hands on. TheTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesseries,The Simpsonsarcade game,Double Dragonand the landmark, cult classicRiver City Ransomwere all considerations for this week’s RetRose Tinted. I settled onStreets of Rage 2because I probably played it more than any other game of its type....

Art Style: PiCTOBiTSis the first in what will hopefully be a long line of illogically capitalized DSiWare puzzle games about recreating sprites from classic NES games. As is becoming commonplace for first-party Nintendo releases, the game came out of nowhere, with no pre-release hype or promotion of any kind. That’s okay, because here’s all the hype you need:PiCTOBiTStakes the best parts ofTetrisandPlanet Puzzle Leagueand combines them with a multitude of classic NES sprites....

I almost went with “Love is a Battlefield” for this, but the music video for “We Belong” was too nonsensical for me to resist. When the six-track Pat Benatar Pack 01 goes live on February 22 for Xbox 360 and PlaySation 3 (Europe gets it on PS3 a day later), it’ll include the following songs: Bless the people responsible for letting us mark ourselves as “offline” when we play games with an online-enabled account that friends have easy access to....

Damn, talk about a budget! If this is true, I’d love to see the final number on the budget forCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. When you want to talk about the big-time composers in movies, Hans Zimmer’s name is sure to come up.His music has ruled Hollywoodfor a long time now. He has hundreds of score credits on the biggest projects, including movies likeThe Dark Knight, Batman Begins, Pearl Harbor, The Da Vinci Codeand many more....

The Last Storydirector Hironobu Sakaguchi has stated that he might take a step back from game development if his upcoming Wii game receives poor reviews. To the venerableFinal Fantasycreator, a critical failure would indicate that he can no longer meet the demands of the modern gamer. “If the game is received poorly, perhaps my sense does not match with the times,” he says. “In that case, while I won’t go as far as ‘I won’t ever make games again,’ it would be meaningless to make games for a while....