Games

Heart of the Swarm , the first of two expansions for StarCraft II , has had its release date confirmed. The Zerg will attack in force on 12 March 2013 . Staggeringly, this is almost three years after the release date of StarCraft II itself, which seems rather extreme for an expansion. The game will feature at least 20 new missions, with the storyline picking up some two years after the events of Wings of Liberty . The focus of the game will be on the character of Kerrigan and her attempts to regain control of the Zerg following her defeat at the end of StarCraft II itself. Blizzard had previously claimed that Heart of the Swarm would be 'expansion pack-priced', which in the UK is about £19.99. However, the price currently listed for the title is £32.99, or about £3 more expensive than the typical cost of a full-price game in the UK. Blizzard have so far not explained the rather excessive discrepancy.

Cyanide have released a docu-trailer for their Game of Thrones computer RPG. This trailer shows some gameplay with two of the game's developers talking about the title. Game of Thrones: The RPG will be released on 15 May in the United States but, completely inexplicably, won't be out in Europe until 1 June (since clearly it takes two weeks for digital information to cross the Atlantic). The publishers, in their wisdom, have also decided the release the game on the same day as Max Payne 3 (one of the biggest games of the year on both console and PC) and Diablo III (probably the biggest game of the year on PC). In fact, they've somehow managed to cross with both dates for Max Payne 3 (which is out on 15 May on console and 1 June on PC). I can only conclude at this stage that the publishers don't actually want anyone to play the game. There's some very strange decision-making going on there.