Football-player sheep destroy obstacles in front of them. Ninja sheep jump over obstacles, and gunner sheep have projectiles. With those rules in mind, you must guide your woolly charges to the ewes they've come to rescue.

Idiot Squad by Hydravision, a new PS Mini coming March 27 in North America and March 28 in Europe, seems designed for anyone but idiots. Your three classes of sheep soldier must be directed around grid-based puzzles using a limited selection of arrow items, much like the puzzles in Sega's classic Chu Chu Rocket. But way more complicated! Can anyone's brain handle that?

PSN has a fever, and the only prescription is... well, lots of liquids and rest, probably, and definitely not cowbell. Seriously, have you been near someone playing the cowbell while your head is in a vice grip of feverish pain? It's terrible.

PSN has spring fever, and its only symptoms are offering discounts and special deals on a handful of franchises for the next three weeks. PSN Spring Fever begins tomorrow with the launch of Journey for non-PS Plus members (no discount; just the release) and a sale on the Call of Duty franchise, with Black Ops, Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, and Classic full games on sale, and World at War's map packs on discount.

Check out this week's sale below, as provided by the PlayStation Blog, and play Journey. We think you'll really enjoy it.

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Here's about the limit of our knowledge regarding GREE: it's 1) a Japanese company that 2) does something with cell phone games and 3) has a ton of money. Beyond that, details get a little fuzzy.

So I asked Eros Resmini, SVP of Marketing and Developer Relations at GREE's new American branch, what exactly the company is, and what it does. Basically, it's an expanded take on OpenFeint's existing social platform, plus a new game development studio.

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Fez may just now be undergoing the certification process at Microsoft, but that doesn't mean designer Phil Fish is resting on his laurels. Quite the contrary, in fact; Fish's next project is already in its formative stages, and he's so anxious to begin work that he may use Kickstarter to fund it. Whatever that project might be, however, it won't be an XBLA game.

"Well, our next project is going to be not for XBLA," Fish told us during SXSW Interactive, in response to a question regarding Fez's limited XBLA exclusivity, and the possibility of a similar arrangement for his next title. "I think it's unfortunate that Microsoft works that way, but like I said [during the panel] we gave them what they wanted and they've been backing us up the whole time. I'm sure you've heard many horror stories of people working with XBLA; they've been nothing but understanding and supporting of us this whole entire time."

It's been three months since Fish's work on Fez ended; the game is still being debugged by other members of the team, but in his capacity as a designer he's finished. He hasn't quite known what to do with himself in the interim, and that restlessness has lead him and his team to heavily consider Kickstarter for their next project.

"It's going to take a while before we get money from Microsoft, and I want to get started on this project that I'm making with a couple people, a larger team than just me and another guy," Fish said. "We wouldn't need much and we wouldn't ask for much, but I assume we'll get more than we ask for, having just won the grand prize and Fez about to come out."

The campaign wouldn't start until after the release of Fez, which Fish is concerned about: "I'm afraid people might take [the Kickstarter] the wrong way. Like, 'Why do you need a Kickstarter, you just made Fez?' Yeah, but it takes five months before we get paid, maybe, it's totally variable, but at least three months. The best case scenario is we get paid three months after the release. I don't want to wait three months."

Max Payne 3 sees the titular protagonist trading the cold concrete of New York City for the tropical heat of São Paulo, Brazil. You too can make such a migration: Rockstar is running a promotion granting one lucky individual quite the vacation, starting in NYC and eventually concluding in Brazil. And you won't even have to shoot anybody!

If you're chosen, you'll get to play a pre-release build of Max Payne 3 in New York, then fly down to Sao Paulo, where you'll get to stay in a swank hotel for a few days and attend the Sonar São Paulo music festival. And when you go home, you'll get a custom Max Payne 3 Xbox 360 console, one year of Xbox Live Gold and 1,400 MS Points to spend.

Interested parties can either sign up for Rockstar's Social Club and enter there, or you they can like Rockstar's Facebook page.

The Walking Dead is getting closer -- grab the shotgun! -- and is expected to be submitted for certification on XBLA and PSN this week, with a release soon after, Telltale CEO Dan Connors told Digital Trend at GDC. Connors expects the certification process to take about six weeks, with the launch soon after, placing it in late April or May. He didn't specify the launch process for other platforms, including PC.

Telltale wants to capitalize on the "popularity" of the TV show, whose second season ends March 18, Digital Trend wrote. "Popularity" is of course a loaded term, but personally we've come to enjoy the show with a drinking game -- take a drink every time Lori is mad for a ridiculous reason; take two drinks every time an awkward silence lasts longer than four seconds; finish your drink every time someone shoots more bullets than their gun actually holds.

That said, we're looking forward to Telltale's adaptation; either we'll finally get to enjoy the comic in a new form, or we'll have to buy some more beer.

The first batch of free Gotham City Impostors DLC hit Xbox 360 in February, and it's now available on PC; it includes katanas, pistols, drop-in matchmaking, improved mouse support and a new highrise level, The 25th Floor. There's no word yet on a PS3 DLC launch. Producer Nate Edson and associate producer Lucas Myers explain the new PC content in the above video, wherein they prove they are the best actors in existence, ever.

No, really -- keeping with the "impostors" theme, Edson and Myers obviously want to throw us off and are therefore pretending to be terrible actors in a scene that is painful to watch, and they act horribly so well that they're obviously the best in the business.

This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.

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The most important year in western role-playing history was also its worst. The late 1980s and early 1990s were an obvious Golden Age, as RPGs were the drivers of innovations in graphics, interface, complexity, and narrative in Wizardry, Ultima, and the Gold Box series. That came to a screeching halt in 1995, when the once wildly popular genre suddenly became devoid of games.

The genre was rebuilt after 1995, but it looked very different. The companies and franchises which had dominated withered away, replaced by the ones we know now: Fallout, BioWare, and Blizzard. All these started shortly after 1995, and the only residual series from before, The Elder Scrolls, squeaks in with its first installment in 1994. So what changed, and why did it change?

The chief contributing factor was the rise of the compact disc for storage. Games comprised of a dozen ungainly 1.5 megabyte floppies were growing more and more common, so the CD, with 500 megabytes, was a godsend (or so it seemed). All the other technological advances: better sound and music, voice-over, 3-D polygonal graphics, full-motion video, etc, could be used with CDs. This made games bigger -- but it also made budgets bigger, teams bigger, and development times much longer. Role-playing games and their developers struggled to adapt.

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The 2012 Game Developers Conference broke an attendance record with 22,500 souls spending some amount of time inside San Francisco's Moscone Center. The show saw a 17 percent increase in admissions from the previous year, and hosted over 300 exhibitors and sponsors, along with the 14th Annual IGF and the 12th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards.

"The continued growth of the conference is a great indicator of a healthy and exciting industry," said GDC general manager Meggan Scavio. " We are very proud to provide the forum for game makers to connect, dialogue, showcase, and learn in sessions, summits, expos and pavilions every year."

GDC is already locked and loaded for a return trip to San Francisco from March 25-29, 2013, which means Joystiq already has reservations set for a return trip to the Sausage Factory in the Castro.

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Todd Howard and his clan of designers from Bethesda Game Studios walked off the stage with top honors for 'Game of the Year' at the 2012 Game Developers Coice Awards last week, for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. As the large group shuffled off to party, Howard, the company's boss, took a few moments to speak with the media.

Topics of discussion quickly merged into one frame of thought: what happens next? Everyone wants to know when the first piece of downloadable content will launch, how will it change the award-winning experience, and more.

Howard, being as used to sidestepping media inquires about unannounced items as he is working with a talented team, quickly shot those questions down.

Our focus, however, was slightly different. With a game as large as Skyrim, we wondered what complications arose during development. What is the hardest part about crafting a world meant to live on its own, away from the player's eyes?

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When is Braid creator Jonathan Blow's second game, The Witness, going to launch? None of your damn business is when. "When it's good," Blow told Joystiq during a GDC 2012 preview meetup. He's not even sure where The Witness will end up -- beyond PC and iOS, that is. "PSN a year from now? XBLA a year from now?," Blow said. It's possible, but more of a question of if it's worth the expense. The Witness is Blow's second ambitious attempt at crafting a story built around brilliant yet obvious puzzles, but this time it's a fully 3D world. A beautiful and complex one at that. And expenses are adding up.

He hired two new programmers not so long ago. Blow can't continue development forever, of course. "In the case of this game, the answer is also when I run out of money. Which may happen," he said. But wait a minute -- didn't Braid rake in boatloads of money and cost around quarter of a million bucks to make?

"Like I said, I just hired two more programmers and that's expensive. I'm spending all the Braid money on this game," Blow said. That's right: all the Braid money. Right on time, Chris Hecker -- SpyParty dev, hotel room roommate, and good buddy of Jon's -- shouted, "Crazy person!" To temper the jest at his friend's expense, Hecker admonished, "You attain orbit, and then you stay in orbit!"

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Update: NECA claims that the Portal gun is still being prepared, but fell victim to uncontrolled numbers of pre-orders. After slamming on the brakes with certain retailers, the association aims to deliver the replica between May and June in an "organized and fair manner."

Original story:

NECA -- National Entertainment Collectibles Association -- was set to create a line of replica portal guns for public purchase in May or June this year, but it has stopped production on the piece, citing "issues" and "no longer planning on making it for the foreseeable future," according to information shared via email by distributor Entertainment Earth. "The item was never produced, and to the best of our knowledge will not be delivered to any retailer at this time."

Entertainment Earth has logged a protest with NECA, but for now it seems we'll all be $130 richer and a million-fold more heartbroken.

[Thanks, Matthew.]

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Following the completion of my Dyad demo in a darkened hotel room, I was informed by developer Shawn McGrath that I had likely just experienced synaesthesia. He asked if I'd heard the music change when the visuals abruptly changed, which I had. He then told me the music didn't actually change, meaning that I'd heard the visual effects. My senses had become tangled.

McGrath said this was an unintentional side effect of the way he designed the last level (which he had skipped ahead to show me). Without spoiling it, I'll say that Dyad's ending is a protracted sequence of total visual hypnosis, interrupted only by my pause halfway through to wipe my eyes. Turns out I hadn't been blinking and my eye became irritated and watery.

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Epic believes that the next round of home consoles will have to be "bleeding edge" if the likes of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo want to stay relevant in the video game market. Speaking to CVG, Epic VP Mark Rein noted that the publisher is "pushing" console makers to use the best possible hardware. "Because if they don't," said Rein, "Apple will go right past them."

He added that console gaming is about console makers "delivering something that's way out past the bleeding edge" and making their investment back with software royalties. If console makers don't opt for the latest and greatest tech, he said, there's a chance that consumers "won't want to take the leap" to future consoles.

In Rein's view, it's Epic's job to push console makers with advanced technology demos like the "Samaritan" video shown at GDC 2011 (above). Incidentally, Rein isn't worried that console makers will under-deliver with the next generation, believing that they will instead "blow us all away." With Unreal Engine 4 aimed at next generation consoles, and assuming UE4 is even more impressive than the UE3-powered Samaritan demo, we certainly hope he's right.

Notch seems to be happy with the outcome of Mojang's legal tussle with Bethesda, which allows Mojang to use Scrolls as the title of a coming game that looks and plays nothing like anything in the Elder Scrolls series. Bethesda retains the trademark for "Scrolls," but Mojang can use it for its title, a result that had Notch beaming -- but as with all legal battles, it's not that simple.

After the celebratory "Yaaaay! <3" Notch tweeted, "The actual document I signed was like a billion pages, so at least we know a bunch of lawyers got rich. Good, wouldn't want them to starve." Within those billion-odd pages comes an interesting deal that prohibits Mojang from using "Scrolls" in the title of any sequels to Scrolls:

"ZeniMax has licensed the 'Scrolls' mark to Mojang to be used solely in conjunction with its existing Scrolls digital card game and any add-on material it makes to that game," a Bethesda statement reads. "The terms of the settlement bar Mojang from using the Scrolls mark for any sequel to the current card game, or any other video game."

Either Notch doesn't plan on making more than one iteration of Scrolls, or the subsequent titles will be called "Reams," "Parchments" or "Ancient Paper that One Rolls Up and can Unravel to Read From, Such as a Decree."

Telltale Games' adventure adaptation of the Fables comic series has been delayed until the third quarter of this year, according to an interview with CEO Dan Connors by Digital Trends. Originally scheduled for the first quarter, the game will make its first appearance around E3 in June, followed by more details at San Diego Comic-Con in July.

Fables, not to be confused with Microsoft's Fable series, is about characters from folklore and fairy tales living in New York City. Connors mentioned that the series may have to take on a different name to avoid confusion with the established RPG series, and avoid any communiques from the lawyers of Redmond.

Endless Space is a 4X sci-fi strategy game by Amplitude Games, a new Paris outfit made up of former Electronic Arts and Ubisoft folks. A couple things make this announcement interesting. For starters, given their pedigree, the devs plan to come at this game from the potential blockbuster mentality, a rare occurence in the strategy genre. The other is the developer is looking for the community to get involved in what it's calling the "GAMES2GETHER" initiative.

"Few industries have such a vocal community and even fewer have the luxury of listening to the feedback that it provides," said Amplitude CEO Mathieu Girard. "Now that we're independent and get to call the shots, the whole team shares the dream of bringing this interactivity and support one step further."

Those interested in participating in the process can sign up at the Endless Space site. Given how few and far between good 4X strategy games come along, we won't be mad if this one fails -- we'll just be very disappointed in everyone participating in the process.

Striking that balance of emotional impact and tension in video games is no easy task. For one, video games aren't real, so I generally don't concern myself much when I run over a virtual pedestrian or cut off an AI driver in the final lap. I don't care if I'm a jerk in a video game.

But there's something about watching some thug shoot an innocent virtual person in the face, directly in front of me, that really ticks me off. As Sledgehammer Games community manager Guy Beahm and I ran through the Spec Ops DLC coming to Modern Warfare 3 Elite subscribers tomorrow, and as part of Content Collection #1, I genuinely felt lousy when I was seconds from saving a hostage. I really wanted to save these people.

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