At long last, 2K’s Spec Ops: The Line isn’t just a theoretical way to cross the moral event horizon. Today the upcoming virtual bloodbath finally received its release date in a press release: June 26, for those of you keeping score.

Spec Ops: The Line is seems to be aiming for a bit of controversy. The ERSB rating contains such gems as “Injured characters emit blood splashes when hit,” noting that players will be able to keep inflicting damage on an opponent’s body even after killing them. There will also be “at close range” executions, weapons that “cause damage such as dismembered limbs or scattered body parts,” and copious swearing. Could it be 2012′s Bulletstorm? We hope so, kind of. Bulletstorm (released one year ago; we will remember the time!) was The Best, but it also didn’t fly off the shelves. As a result, it’s probably not getting a sequel. Which is to say, if Spec ops: The Line turns out to be awesome, we would actually like to see it sell well.

Incidentally, if you decide to Spec ops: The Line’s premium edition, you’ll get access to bonus multiplayer content. Which will give you an unfair advantage. Even 2K thinks so!

Scattered throughout the corporate world of Syndicate are holographic business cards that provide new intelligence to your in-game database. These tidbits expand on the greater world of Syndicate, and give enterprising players and achievement hunters that extra little search for 100% completion. Avoid a business faux pas and don’t leave these business cards behind — find all 30 cards with our location guide below.

For even more Syndicated information, check out the text and video walkthrough. To go deep and rise to the top of the corporate ladder, take a trip to the cheats page.

Achievement / Trophy Unlocked

Little Black Book (30 points / Bronze): Find all business cards.

Business Card Locations

Milestone 1

• Card 1: After entering the building through the alley and falling down the stairs using a guard to soften your fall, pick up the pistol and look at the stairs leading up to your right. The first glowing holographic card is there for you to take.
• Card 2: Tear the chains off the door ahead and continue through the hallway until entering a dimly lit apartment. Inside, you can find the card on the white table to the right of the kitchen.

Milestone 2

• Card 3: Entering the lobby of the business, your Agent partner will leave through an elevator. Let him go, then turn around and explore the area left of the entrance just as you walk into the lobby. You’ll find the card on a couch near a dragon statue.
• Card 4: Eventually you’ll reach a back storage room with metal shelves. Climb the ladder up, and instead of crawling along the sides, jump from shelf to shelf to reach a card ontop, clearly visible.

Milestone 3

• Card 5: After shooting your way out of the club arena where you’ll be ambushed by a series of Aspari soldiers, the doors will open. As you leave through the breached doors, where two guards with shields attack from, turn immediately left and look in the reception desk for another card.

Milestone 4

• Card 6: Entering into a locker room with lots of red safety deposit boxes, keep your eyes left as you pass through. Between the first set of boxes and the second set, you’ll find the card on the ground near a case.

Milestone 5

• Card 7: Entering the back train car filled with green poison gas, before you leave, look left for this card on one of the tables just before the exit to the train car.

Milestone 6

• Card 8: Entering the lobby of the business, to right and look on the coffee table near a few black couches, just as you step off the elevator.

Milestone 7

• Card 9: Find this card on the black counter inside the kitchen of Drawl’s apartment.

Milestone 8

• Card 10: After the start, you’ll enter into an open area filled with bad guys and a cafe. After clearing the soldiers, check the back left corner for a card on the floor near a table, just left of the cafe on a slightly raised section.

Milestone 9

• Card 11: Entering the floating city, you’ll spot a high-value target typing at a large computer. Before (Or after!) killing him, turn right and look behind slightly to spot a card on one of the blue computer surfaces.

Milestone 10

• Card 12: Just at the start, continue forward and jump into the blue security desk ahead to find a card on the counter.
• Card 13: Jumping down into the open area, you’ll fight a series of guards before the exit doors open. Throught those doors, take the stairs down and around to enter a small lab-like room. On one of the trays to your right as you enter, you’ll find the card.

Milestone 11

• Card 14: At the bottom of the stairwell, you’ll find the business card on a wheeled tray, below a sign, just left and ahead of the steps as you move down.
• Card 15: Through the large vent, you’ll need to stomp on a grating to continue the mission. Don’t stomp it yet, just beyond the grating there’s a card on the floor, in the left corner of the vent shaft.

Milestone 12

• Card 16: Early on, you’ll enter a small warehouse. On the ground floor, search the metal shelves in the back right corner, near the stairs.
• Card 17: Through the underground maintenance tunnels, you’ll hear a man talking to himself. Continuing through, you’ll find a path splitting right. To continue the mission, you’ll need to continue forward, but make a short detour right. Down the path, enter the door to find a small room with a drunk man inside. The business card is in the corner, on the floor right next to him.
• Card 18: Back out onto the rainy streets, you’ll see a club with bright pink lights. Directly across the street from it is an alley with steps leading down. Follow the steps down and look behind the dumpster to find this card.
• Card 19: Inside the cultish building, turn right to spot a card inside the cashier’s booth. To get inside, you’ll need to enter the hallway and go through the door behind.

Milestone 13

• Card 20: Entering into the first large area with the cargo elevator, run to the back of the room where stacks of metal boxes are piled up. On one of those boxes, you can spy a business card.

Milestone 14

• Card 21: After falling through the floor and moving through the small hallway, you’ll enter into a small maintenance backroom with pipes snaking around the center. Head up the steps until you find a point where the pipes open up to form a platform you can crawl onto in the center of the room. Use the two pipes to circle around, and you’ll find your first secret business card.
• Card 22: In the hallway with the first three EMP mines, set off the first mine, then turn left to find an opening in the railings. Jump down and search the back left corner of the alcove ahead to find a card.
• Card 23: After fighting your way through an open area with a flamethrower, you’ll enter into a building’s lobby through two automatic wooden doors. The card is resting ahead in the reception desk.

Milestone 15

• Card 24: Entering the control room after sneaking by the turret for the first time, you’ll find this card left of the switch.
• Card 25: Just before entering to fight the boss, you’ll have to navigate an abandoned office. Check the corner directly behind the door leading to the boss room, and you’ll find this card on the ground.

Milestone 17

• Card 26: Entering the lobby full of bodies, move forward to grab the card off the desk just ahead after getting off the elevator.
• Card 27: Inside the small desked entrance into the main bridge leading into Eurotech’s MegaSkyscraper, you’ll need to hold off several waves of enemies using two central desks as cover. The card is on one of these central desks, in plain sight.

Milestone 18

• Card 28: After the fight against the Eurocorp Agent and two soldiers, exit into another small room with stairs leading down. Behind an overturned table on the right side of the room, you’ll find the business card.

Milestone 19

• Card 29: Enter the maintenance hall behind the desk to the right, and look on the left wall inside the passage. The card is resting on a girder after leaving the room with the wounded civilians.
• Card 30: Before taking the steps up to the top walkway leading to the large vault doors protecting the CEO’s office, look underneath the stairways for a body. The body is leaning against the wall, with the business card nearby.

Blizzard Community Manager Bashiok has told excited fans to lower their expectations for Diablo 3.

In a post on the battle.net forums, Bashiok said:

I too worry that we won’t be able to meet the expectations people have built up for themselves. Part of my job is managing people’s expectations, so… eh… stop it. Stop thinking about how awesome this game could be. Just imagine it’s a new M. Night Shyamalan movie. Sure Sixth Sense was amazing and Unbreakable had it’s moments, but this right here is the sequel to The Village … or The Happening … or Signs … or any of the movies besides the two I first mentioned.

After Diablo 2′s tremendous success — and given a large crowd has been playing this game for a decade — it’s no surprise that expectations for Diablo 3 are stratospheric. No game could possibly live up to the expectations that some diehard fans have built up.

Bashiok concluded by telling us to lower our expectations for Diablo 3:

So just like, lower those expectations, but still definitely buy the game please, and everything will be just fine. K?

While I stand by the adage, “No expectations, no disappointments,” I wonder if Blizzard is concerned about Diablo 3 not being as well-received as Diablo 2.

Are you disappointed with Diablo 3 so far?

If you’re into electronic music, you might want to sit up and take notice of Vessel, a side-scrolling indie puzzler that’s going to feature the music of Jon Hopkins.

Developer Strange Loop Games said in a press release that 10 of Hopkins’ tracks from his albums “Opalescent,” “Contact Note” and “Insides” will appear in the game, but they won’t be how fans know them. Instead, the songs will be broken down and taken apart by an “adaptive music engine,” which will rearrange the pieces to create music on the fly in the game. The musical remixes will match the player’s progress in the game, the press release says.

The music will also be used in-game to give subtle cues to players for things like solving puzzles and fighting bosses, the release says.

Electronica artist Hopkins previously was a keyboardist for Imogen Heap, and has contributed his talents to songs by Coldplay, Brian Eno and David Holmes. He also scored the indie film Monsters, for which he was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award. You can check out his work on his myspace page.

Vessel is hitting Steam on March 1 and cost $14.99, with a release on the Playstation Network and Xbox Live at a later time. The title has players manipulating liquid and utilizing characters composed of liquids called Fluros to solve puzzles. Check out the trailer below.

According to the developer of Runescape, physical retail copies of games will be extinct within 10 years.

Jagex chief Mark Gerhard told an audience at the BAFTA Question Time event:

I think, 10 years out from now, we’ll be talking about [physical] retail nostalgically, as a museum piece. I don’t think there’s much there that would give it a second life.

It’s sad to see an institution decline, but the writing has been on the wall for quite some time – the internet didn’t happen yesterday… People are still playing games. They’re still doing business; they’re just doing it in a different place… If you don’t adapt you die. It’s as simple as that.

The times, they are a-changing. Personally, I miss the big ol’ computer game boxes, complete with giant manual filled with lore, art, and complete instructions. But you can’t argue with the convenience and “production” cost reduction of digital sales.

Good news, MMO fans: a public sign-up page for Guild Wars 2 is now live, but it will only be open for the next 48 hours.

Anyone who gets into the beta is required to sign an NDA — they can’t even disclose the fact that they are a participant. If you get into a Guild Wars 2 Beta Event, you will receive an email that will confirm that you have been accepted and will provide instructions on how to proceed.

There will be more than one Beta Event, so fret not if you aren’t selected for the first. Your information will be kept on file — you don’t need to sign up again at a later date.

Sign up for the beta here.

This week, there’s been quite a significant controversy surrounding BioWare writer Jennifer Hepler, who has been the target of unfortunate abuse by so-called fans of her studio’s games. Alongside being blamed for “forcing” homosexuality into Mass Effect and “ruining” Dragon Age with her writing, Hepler has also caught heat for her confession that she’s not a gamer, admitting that she hates in-game combat and wishes it could be skipped in order to just enjoy the narrative. Now, I won’t focus on the ludicrous abuse she’s been getting, as I’ve talked enough about that elsewhere. Instead, I want to now focus on an argument I’ve seen a lot of this week — the assertion that in order to write for videogames, you need to play them.

Don’t be stupid.

In no way does one have to be a gamer in order to write a story set in a game’s world, especially if it’s a world you’re creating yourself. A writer’s job is to create universes and characters, which can easily be done without having intimate knowledge of a videogame controller, or understanding how hotkeys work. Authors have been doing it for centuries. All a writer needs to be concerned with is making that unique world and populating it with interesting characters who have compelling goals. In other words, you need the experience of a writer, not a gamer. I’d be concerned by a writer who has not read a book, but I don’t give a sh*t whether or not a writer has played a game. In fact, in some situations I’d think that’d help.

Let’s face it, game narrative in the vast majority of titles out there f**king blows. Many of the game plots we have were written by teams of developers, not actual writers. Sometimes that works out fine, but if you want an artistically crafted story, you need to go to an artist who specializes in crafting such art. Just look at some of the professional authors who have been writing for games lately — Rihanna Pratchett, R.A. Salvatore — and ask yourself whether you reckon these people are hardcore gamers. I somehow doubt (though I could always be wrong) that Salvatore spends his time fragging noobs in Halo. The man’s too busy f**king writing for that sh*t. He knows how to craft a story, and that’s what you’re looking for when you need a person to … y’know … write a story. I don’t care how good you are at Demon’s Souls if you can’t write for sh*t, and I don’t care how much you suck at Demon’s Souls if you can write for sh*t. I think most studios who care about exposition would agree.

Like I said, most game writing is pure drivel, so what would a writer truly gain from playing more games? They’d probably gain the knowledge that it’s easy to craft a game story and have idiot gamers lap it up. Just look at how well Heavy Rain’s piece-of-sh*t writing went over with the crowd. That’s the kind of crap we get when a game maker tries to write. I say we need more professional writers, whose first (and sometimes sole) passion in life is writing. We don’t need less of them.

Now, some would argue that the writer needs to play games in order to know how to weave their story into the gameplay. I counter this by saying that it’s not a writer’s job to do anything like that. That is the developer’s job. A writer comes up with a story, a developer makes it work with the game. This is because videogames — at least big budget ones — are team efforts, with different people doing different things. If the writer was also the game director, then sure, he or she should be playing games, but if the person’s only job is putting pen to paper, then I don’t see why they’re required to have those l33t gaming skizzillz. It’s a director’s job to know the difference between an RPG, an FPS or a survival horror. A writer needs to know the difference between fantasy, science fiction and horror. Different jobs, different genres to study.

Not to mention, if you think a writer is totally blind to how games get made, you’re a moron. I dare say that, whether or not a game writer plays these things, they still know more about development than you or I. They talk with developers regularly, probably even daily. They’re in contact with the dev team, they share ideas, they work together. They probably learn more about narrative structure in a videogame just by doing their job than they’d ever learn with a month of playing the damn things. It’s not as if any writer goes in totally blinkered, and it’s not as if the story and the gameplay will be two totally distinct bubbles. There’s a reason why studios like BioWare and Valve and Gearbox have dedicated writers on staff — so they get to know the people who make the actual games. I’m sure there are some folk out there who have rarely ever picked up a controller but still have a more intimate knowledge of narrative structure in interactive entertainment than you will ever have.

It’s naive and childish to demand that everybody involved in the making of a game be gamers themselves. Do you think every coder on staff is a gamer? Do you think the people publishing it are all fans of games? There are some folk who get into game development not because they love games, but because they love what they do best — be it writing, coding, or creating conceptual artwork. You don’t need to play games to do these things well. You just have to do the job you were appointed to do.

Now, I’m not saying a writer shouldn’t be a gamer. If somebody who writes for videogames is also a big fan of them, then that’s fantastic. It’s great to have a writer who is also passionate about the medium. But it’s a bonus, a privilege, a nice option. It’s not mandatory, and it doesn’t change whether or not somebody is a good writer capable of crafting an entertaining story. You no more have to play games to write for them than you have to eat chicken to make KFC commercials. It’s always great if you do, but you shouldn’t have to. Not if you know what you’re doing in the first place.

Now the rest of you, go play some f**king videogames and don’t worry about whether the people who made them do the same.

Two former developers with EA Sports’ Tiburon studio have departed to start their own venture, and the very first thing they’ve done is announce a strategy title coming to PC later this year.

The studio is called Pixel Foundry, founded by Volga Aksoy and Jerry Phaneuf, and their game is called BlackSpace. You can check out a bit of a weird teaser for it below — which seems to be more a graphical test than an actual trailer, so judge it accordingly. But the concept of the game sounds appealing.

According to Pixel Foundry’s website:

BlackSpace is a unique form of real-time strategy, combining elements of action with an emphasis on economic and defensive efficiency. Players will find themselves on the outskirts of explored space, harvesting minerals, and supplying markets, while using the resources around them to sustain their operations as well as the lives of the colonist workers.

The game takes place on X class asteroids, players will control both surface and orbital operations with the use of a specialized low gravity operation support vehicle. The vehicle controls take skill to maneuver safely, but once mastered, it becomes an extension of the players hand, commanding base operations, pilot drilling dig sites, prospecting large and unusual mineral deposits, and if need be, supporting the base’s defense.

Sounds like there’s a lot of potential there. The site also says the game space surrounds each asteroid and extends into orbit, which suggests you’ll have lots of space to work with and planning to do with your bases, as well as stuff like orbital platforms and satellites.

Pixel Foundry said in a press release to VG247 that it hopes to get the game community highly involved in the whole process of the development of BlackSpace, with features and information being released incrementally throughout the year in order to gather feedback. The developer also intends to update a blog about the game on its site, which you can check out right here.

Via VG247.

A posting on the Kojima Productions website brings good news for Metal Gear Solid fans, as well as aspiring game developers — the studio is looking to hire talent for a new MGS title.

The job listing states:

Kojima Productions will be returning to the GDC Career Pavilion (March 6th – 9th) to search for skillful engineers, artists, and game creators including:

• Project engineers for the latest Metal Gear Solid targeted for high-end consoles and PC
• Engineers to help develop next-gen game engine technology for use with the “FOX Engine.
• Kojima Productions Brand Manager

Metal Gear Solid 5 has been hinted at since November, so while this doesn’t come as a big surprise, news that the next MGS is being targeted for the PC platform as well is a treat.

Are you looking forward to another MGS sequel, or should Kojima stop messing with a classic?

The developers at Re-Logic have updated Terraria for the last time, and they’ve decided it’s time to pursue new projects.

According to a couple of blog posts on TerrariaOnline.com, developer Redigit said he’s planning to take a “long holiday” (possibly even years long), but has already started planning for his next project. As PC Gamer reports:

‘I have learned a lot from working on Terraria and plan on using what I’ve learned, building upon it, and moving forward with another, even better project,’ he says. He’s also about to have a baby, which tends to get in the way of coding. And sleep. The other member of Re-Logic, Finn “Tiy” Brice has already moved elsewhere to work on Starbound.

Meanwhile, another post from site admin Kane says that Terraria Online isn’t going anywhere and fans will still be able to play and enjoy it; the dev team just isn’t going to be putting any more work into the game.

However, Terraria has seen plenty of mod support from its community, so it’s likely that even without official support from the developer, the game will subsist for quite a while into the future.

If you were lucky enough to snag the N7 Collector’s Edition of Mass Effect 3 before it effectively sold out, congratulations — you’ll also be getting the Mass Effect 3 DLC that was accidentally leaked on Xbox Live yesterday, called From Ashes (warning: spoilers beyond that link).

Mass Effect 3 Producer Mike Gamble confirmed that the DLC is indeed coming, and will be available without an additional cost to players who buy the collector’s edition, including the digital deluxe edition on PC. Here’s his post on the BioWare forums:

Hi all! We’re happy to confirm that Mass Effect 3: From Ashes DLC will be available at launch for all platforms. For those of you who have purchased the N7 Collector’s Edition (including the PC Digital Deluxe Edition), you will get this content at no extra charge. We’ll have a lot more details for you later this week! Stay Tuned!

No word as to what the DLC will cost or when it will be released just yet, though. I’d guess it’ll run about $10, if other DLC in the series is any indication.

It’s been roughly an hour since there was a cool deal on GOG.com, so it’s high time we had another one. The latest offering is a “buy one, get one free” deal on Dungeons & Dragons games. There are eight titles to choose from, priced at $9.99 each, so you just spend ten bucks and pick any two you like. There are some quality games on offer, including Planescape: Torment and Baldur’s Gate. A great deal for the three GOG customers who don’t already have them.

As if that wasn’t enough, GOG’s sweetened the honey pot by offering a free copy of The Temple of Elemental Evil with any purchase made. So, you get a game, get another of your choosing for nothing, and then get the pre-selected gift title on top of it. Essentially, if you’re a GOG user and you don’t take advantage of this, you’re an idiot. A complete, total, disgusting, despicable idiot. I’ve just done it, and you want to be cool like me, right? Course you do.

So, don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, and get some D&D games for free! That’s what all the cool kids are doing.

Each game in the Mass Effect series has been a big change from its predecessor. When Mass Effect 2 showed up on the scene, it made massive alterations from the original, streamlining combat, removing many of Mass Effect‘s role-playing elements, and basically presenting a sleeker game experience in a lot of ways.

Mass Effect 3 is poised to hit shelves and digital downloads on March 6, and when that happens, the series will yet again undergo some pretty sweeping changes in the way they play and feel. BioWare recently released a demo for Mass Effect 3 that shows off a few of these changes, and we’ve heard quite a bit of what to expect from the game from its creators. So here, in essence, is everything we know about Mass Effect 3 to prepare Mass Effect 2 players for the next installment: what’s going to be different, and what’s going to be the same.

The Similarities

Don’t expect ME3 to be the jump that ME2 was compared to Mass Effect. The streamlining that BioWare did between the first two installments of the series, making it rely much more heavily on run-and-gun action and its cover system than on searching for RPG loot, is still the direction overall in which the series is moving. But where ME2 was a big step in that forward direction, ME3 is a smaller one — refining the elements set out in ME2, paring a few of them back, and overall, attempting to make that direction work better than it did last time round. Still, expect to see a lot that’s the same.

Series Mainstays: Dialog, Interrupts, Choices

It goes without saying that the essential backbone of the Mass Effect experience is its morality-based conversation system, and players will know going in that making tough ethical choices in dialog will still play a major role. The recently released Mass Effect 3 demo actually downplayed this element quite a bit, presenting players with choices that lacked consequences (both “Paragon” and “Renegade” conversation choices at the few stages when they were available resulted in the same action), but personally, I believe that was a design choice specifically for the demo. In essence, BioWare didn’t want to blow its wad on the demo in even the smallest of ways — which resulted in a pretty weak demo, actually. But the overall assumption is that the dialog system will be as robust as ever.

We also expect the return of Mass Effect 2′s conversation “interrupts,” or quick moments when the player has a chance to hit a button to make Shepard take “a bold step,” such as blasting a mouthy character in the face or shoving someone out of the way of danger. Those choices are always tied to either Paragon or Renegade choices.

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As a big fan of Borderlands, I was understandably excited to see that Borderlands 2 was in development. It’s been six months since the game graced the cover of Game Informer magazine, and Gearbox is finally ready to tell us exactly when we’ll be able to try out the much-anticipated sequel.

Borderlands 2 will hit stores September 18th in the US and September 21st internationally. In celebration of the release date, Gearbox has tossed out a brand new trailer showing off three full minutes of Borderlands 2 goodness. Watch it below.

The video outs pre-order bonuses for the upcoming shooter as well, including the Gearbox Gun Pack, a Golden Key and the Vault Hunter’s Relic. If you want to get a jump on things in Paradise, some unique guns, a key to a rare chest and a boost to your gear-hunting are all great ways to do it.

As of Friday, February 24 at noon EST (17:00 GMT), anyone can create an account and download Tribes: Ascend to play in the open beta, without the need for a beta key. This week’s patch adds a new game mode, four new maps, and new regions.

But don’t worry, closed beta players — all XP and unlocks will be preserved, with no planned character wipes.

A significant patch this week will include:

• New gametype, Arena Deathmatch, with two initial maps
• New Capture The Flag map, Temple Ruins
• New Team Deathmatch map, Inferno
• Two new unlockable items for the Soldier class: Proximity Grenade and Utility Pack
• New default suits for Doombringer and Brute
• Ability to view either Blood Eagle or Diamond Sword skins from Class menu
• Service supporting Name Change
• Large number of bug-fixes and balance adjustments.

Todd Harris, Hi-Rez Studios Chief Operating Officer said:

The Tribes: Ascend Closed Beta has exceeded our expectations. Over 300,000 players participated in the Closed Beta and the game has improved greatly based on community feedback. We are now excited to launch Open Beta this Friday. We have expanded capacity in North America, Europe, and Australia and added new local servers to support growing communities in Brazil and Asia.

Having played in the closed beta, I can tell you that Tribes: Ascend promises to be a solid throwback to classic ’90s-era shooters with a modern twist. If you like fast-paced gameplay and aren’t afraid of a learning curve, give the beta a try.