Unfortunately for myself, opportunities like this never happen from where I’m from. Although if you happen to be from California, you are in luck. Combine that geographical requirement with experience of game development and you should apply, regardless of what the rest of this article says. How does working with Sony on a new title sound?

When flicking through the job vacancies online, I highly doubt you came across a job vacancy regarding Sony Santa Monica, who are looking for a ‘Senior Combat Designer’ on a game that is specified as ‘unannounced’.

Is there any suggestion as to what it may be? Well you could look here for yourself, but there’s not too much to get yourself excited about just yet. Under the heading ‘Responsibilities’ is more detail that includes;  character and boss designs, magic distribution, special effect and sound effects.

Boss designs always get me excited before I tear them apart, but alas I am gutted I do not reside in California or even the US. The biggest hint for this well kept secret (makes a change?) is that you are required to have ‘Experience working with, developing or designing for a 1st and/or 3rd person shooter genre.” Pretty generic, but the job also requires you to have “Experience working with, developing or designing vehicle combat in a game.” The vehicle addition cuts it down slightly and it sounds huge and interesting, so apply if you are lucky enough to have acquired all the relevant skills.

Unfortunately for me, I am a mere gaming peasant, a buyer of the product not a producer. Although, at least i meet the criteria where I would need to have  ”a personal understanding of video game fun.” Score.

A large numbers of fans have complained that the finale to the hugely popular saga did not live up expectations and so Bioware have stated that they would provide a number of “game content initiatives” to clarify aspects of the game’s plotline.

Gamers eagerly jumped onto various forums shortly after the game’s release this month to complain that the game’s different endings were underwhelming. Since the series’ debut in 2007, players would make choices over how to continue within the game and have been promised that these decisions, of which there were over 1000, would impact the conclusion. However, thousands complained that Mass Effect 3 only had three alternative endings, with no significant differences between them.

As part of their campaign to have the game changed, supporters have raised more than $70,000 (£44,000) for a children’s charity in order to get the endings they feel are more satisfying.

In a blog post, Bioware co-founder Ray Muzyka described the feedback as “incredibly painful”.

“Our first instinct is to defend our work and point to the high ratings offered by critics – but out of respect to our fans, we need to accept the criticism and feedback with humility,” he said.

Mr Muzyka continued: “Mass Effect 3 concludes a trilogy with so much player control and ownership of the story that it was hard for us to predict the range of emotions players would feel when they finished playing through it.

“The journey you undertake in Mass Effect provokes an intense range of highly personal emotions in the player; even so, the passionate reaction of some of our most loyal players to the current endings in Mass Effect 3 is something that has genuinely surprised us.”

In a short interview, Keza MacDonald, UK games editor for IGN.com, said: “It’s highly unusual for a developer to release downloadable content DLC that actually alters the ending of a game – usually it comes in the form of extra missions or more story details for people who want them.

“Games like Portal 2 and Fallout 3 have had their endings altered slightly to accommodate DLC or a sequel, but that wasn’t a reaction to fan requests. It’s not certain that Bioware actually will change the ending, but if they do, it’d be pretty much unprecedented.”

So far it remains to be seen how Bioware will work in the changes in order to sate the tempers of angry gamers, but for now, only time will tell.

Peter Molyneux has confirmed on his Twitter page that he is leaving Lionhead Studios and Microsoft, and is moving on to “a new independent venture.” But not all is lost for Molyneux as he will swiftly be joining new independent developer; 22 Cans, which was set up last year by former Lionhead CTO Tim Rance.

Molyneux had this to say: “It is with mixed emotions that I made the decision to leave Microsoft and Lionhead Studios, the company that I co-founded in 1997, at the conclusion of development of Fable: The Journey. I remain extremely passionate and proud of the people, products and experiences that we created, from Black & White to Fable to our pioneering work with Milo And Kate for the Kinect platform. However, I felt the time was right to pursue a new independent venture. I’d like to thank the team at Lionhead, as well as our partners at Microsoft Studios for their support, dedication and incredible work over the years.”

In a statement, Microsoft said: “As co-founder of Lionhead and an integral part of Microsoft Studios, Peter was the creative visionary behind the blockbuster Fable franchise, and one of our most passionate and influential developers for the Xbox 360 platform. He has made an indelible mark on the game industry and we wish him all the best of luck in his future endeavours.”

And with this sudden announcement, the only question festering in our minds is what will this veteran developer do next? Only time will tell.

2012 is a huge year for the entertainment/gaming industry, with hundreds of top tier games flying into shops and online retailers from here to Timbuktu. And Microsoft, one of the largest producers and developers within the industry will no doubt be looking to impress. So what better to get those flames of anticipation burning bright than a massive list of Microsoft’s hand picked favourites to look out for throughout the year.

Xbox 360

•    “Halo 4” (343 Industries) – Get an exciting first look at this year’s most anticipated blockbuster, “Halo 4,” through a behind-the-scenes video on HaloWaypoint.com.  Launching worldwide at the end of this year, “Halo 4” takes the iconic franchise in a bold new direction with the return of Master Chief, and the beginning of a new saga.

•    “Forza Horizon” (Playground Games) – “Forza Horizon” is a fast-paced, pick-up-and-play racing game and the newest entry in the “Forza Motorsport” franchise.  Available this Autumn, the game is being created in partnership with acclaimed racing development studio Playground Games.

•    “Forza Motorsport 4” (Turn 10 Studios) – Available this Spring, the Porsche Expansion Pack for “Forza Motorsport 4” will contain 30 modern and classic Porsche vehicles from the iconic German manufacturer, seven of which are new to the “Forza” franchise.

•    “Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City” (Slant Six Games, Capcom) – Program the Nemesis and unleash devastating attacks on your opposing squad in an exclusive fifth online competitive multiplayer versus battle available only for Xbox 360.   

•    “Gears of War 3” (Epic Games) – The curb-stomping fun continues with the release of the “Forces of Nature” map pack for “Gears of War 3” on March 27.  Included in the game’s Season Pass or available for 800 Microsoft Points, “Forces of Nature” will feature five maps, new characters, new weapon skins and a 250 Gamescore. Also, starting March 27, “Gears of War 3” will be available through Games on Demand.

•    “Dragon’s Dogma” (Capcom) – Explore the woodlands surrounding a collapsed fortress and battle against its fearsome inhabitants, including a monstrous Cyclops, a vicious Chimera and a savage Drake Dragon.  Additionally, purchasers of the Xbox 360 version of “Dragon’s Dogma” will be able to redeem a token and download the “Resident Evil 6” demo globally on Xbox LIVE^® Marketplace 60 days earlier than on any other platform, starting July 3.

•    “Darksiders II” (THQ/Vigil Games) – Explore non-playable character gameplay interaction with exclusive fiction reveals from the vast Makers Realm in “Darksiders II.”  Fans who pre-order the game will receive a complimentary upgrade to the Limited Edition, or can pick up the Collector’s Edition.

Kinect on Xbox 360

•    “Fable: The Journey” (Lionhead Studios) – From the creative geniuses at Lionhead, “Fable: The Journey” is a whole new way to experience the deep storyline, heart-pounding action and picturesque world of Albion. “Fable: The Journey” launches this Autumn on Kinect for Xbox 360.

•    “Mass Effect 3” (BioWare, Electronic Arts) – Step into the role of Commander Shepard and use voice controls to direct squad mates during battle and command weapon selection to quickly engage in combat. “Mass Effect 3” supports dozens of commands to interact with the world and the characters, without pausing the action.

•    “Kinect Star Wars” (Microsoft Studios) – In “Kinect Star Wars,” available April 3, Star Wars fans can physically hone their Jedi skills, wield the power of the Force in their hands, pilot iconic ships and vehicles, rampage as a vicious rancor monster and dance with iconic Star Wars characters.

•    “Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 13” (Electronic Arts) – Featuring a more immersive Masters Tournament experience as well as Kinect for Xbox 360 integration, the world’s number one golf video game is back with “Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 13.”

•    “Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor” (Capcom) – Launching on June 19,  fight side by side with your comrades and retake Manhattan Beach from the enemy. Defend your infantry and blast every VT that crosses your path!

•    “Kinect Rush: A Disney•Pixar Adventure” (Microsoft Studios) – Pixar fans will be able to scan themselves into an avatar based on their favourite character from Disney•Pixar’s “Up” and venture into the vast interior of the Spirit of Adventure. Players will also team up with characters from “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,”  “Cars” and “Toy Story” to solve puzzles and uncover secrets.

•    “Dance Central 2” (Harmonix) – Experience new add-on songs from electro-pop sensations LMFAO, including their hit single “Party Rock”.

•    “Kinect Sports: Season Two” (Rare Studios, Big Park) – Launching worldwide on April 3, the all-new basketball game add-on content puts players’ basketball skills to the test by shooting, passing, and scoring with the new activities.

Xbox LIVE Arcade

•   “Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition” (4J Studios, Mojang) – Coming to Xbox LIVE Arcade in Spring 2012, “Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition” brings the global PC phenomenon to gamers for the first time on any console platform.

•     “Wreckateer” (Iron Galaxy) – “Wreckateer” uses Kinect for Xbox 360 to put players in control of a massive castle-wrecking ballista. With the help of Wreck and Tinker, players can travel the land and destroy 60 castles infested with goblins using six magical projectiles.

•    “Fable Heroes” (Lionhead Studios) – “Fable Heroes” delivers a fresh spin on the “Fable” franchise with an action-packed hack-and-slash adventure on Xbox LIVE Arcade.

•    “Trials Evolution” (RedLynx/Ubisoft) – Coming soon are new “Trials Evolution” maps in the next dimension of the smash-hit, award-winning “Trials HD.”

•    “Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD” (Robomodo, Activision) – Activision’s “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD” for Xbox LIVE Arcade takes the best elements of “Tony Hawk Pro Skater” and “Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2” and upgrades them with sharp visuals and fresh content.

•    “South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge” (South Park Digital Studios, Other Ocean Interactive) – Scott Tenorman is back and he wants revenge!  Play multiplayer with Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny to take on Tenorman and his army of Ginger robots before they destroy South Park!

•    “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” (Hidden Path Entertainment, Valve) – The all-new “Demolition” mode in “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” delivers a fast-paced game experience made up of tight small maps to get into the action quickly.

•    “Quantum Conundrum” (Airtight Games, Square Enix) –  Enter a new dimension – the heavy dimension – in  the latest environment-bending feature in the quirky, first-person puzzle game “Quantum Conundrum” from Square Enix and Airtight Games.

•    “Bloodforge” (Climax Studios) – “Bloodforge” combines devastating melee, ranged and magical attacks to deliver a fast-paced, bloodthirsty, brutal combat experience available exclusively on Xbox LIVE Arcade.

•    “Deadlight” (Tequila Works) – “Deadlight,” a brand new experience for Xbox LIVE Arcade, is a narrative-driven puzzle platformer set in the post-apocalyptic 80s devastated by a zombie epidemic.

•    “Diabolical Pitch” (Grasshopper Manufacture) – Available beginning April 4, Kinect for Xbox 360 turns  living rooms into playing fields and the “Diabolical Pitch” is the main attraction.

•    “Joe Danger: The Movie” (Hello Games) – Race jetpacks against hoverboards and skis against skidoos in all-new multiplayer modes in “Joe Danger: The Movie.”

Xbox 360 Hardware

•     Xbox 360 Kinect Family Bundle – The Xbox 360 Kinect Family Bundle features everything a family needs to get started playing together. Available in the UK on May 4^th for £249.99 ERP,  the bundle includes a limited edition all-white Xbox 360 4GB console, white Kinect sensor, white Xbox 360 wireless controller and Kinect family titles.

Games for Windows

•      “Microsoft Flight” (Microsoft Studios) – Available to download for free at www.MicrosoftFlight.com, “Microsoft Flight” is a new Windows PC game that lets players jump into the thrill of flight with no special hardware or past experience. This Spring, fans will be able to purchase the Journey to Alaska Pack, the second in a series of expansion packs for the game with over 1.2 million square miles of captivating scenery, additional missions and new aircraft.

           Windows Phone

•      “Carcassone” (Microsoft Studios) – The award-winning tile-based board game “Carcassonne” is coming to Windows Phone! With the online multiplayer, Xbox LIVE achievements, leaderboards and more, this game never gets old.

•      “Civilization Revolution” (2K) – Award winning Sid Meier’s “Civilization Revolution” is coming to Windows Phone!  Build, Discover, Rule the world.

•      “DODONPACHI” (CAVE) – An original shooter by Arcade veteran CAVE is arriving for Windows Phone.  Can you handle EVAC Industries’ Maximum Bullet Simulator.

•      “GeoDefense Swarm” (Microsoft Studios) – The fast-paced tower defence game “GeoDefense Swarm” for Windows Phone gives the power to obliterate a horde of vibrant, vector-styled enemies with multiple weapons of choice.

•      “Gerbil Physics” (Microsoft Studios) – In “Gerbil Physics,” a physics-based puzzle game that blows up buildings made of gerbils for Windows Phone, it’s all about adorable destruction.

•      “Pinball FX2” (Microsoft Studios) – “Pinball FX2” for Windows Phone features new tables and all-new features including a state-of-the-art physics model and a connection to your Xbox 360 “Pinball FX2” scores.

•      “Pirates!” – Available now on Windows Phone, Sid Meier’s “Pirates!” is an exciting high-seas adventure overflowing with intense pirate action and a treasure chest of gameplay riches!

•      “Pro Evolution Soccer 2012” (Konami) – This Spring, the unrivalled and award-winning football simulation from Konami is entering a new season on Windows Phone!

•      “Shoot 1UP!” (Microsoft Studios) – This Spring, an armada of ships is coming to Windows Phone in “Shoot 1UP.”

•      “Wordament” (Microsoft Studios) – In the world of “Wordament” for Xbox LIVE, Windows Phone word searchers across the whole Internet compete on the same board, in real-time, to get the highest score.

IO Interactives lead physics programmer; Kasper Fauerby, will be introducing the innovative technology behind Hitman: Absolution at this years Game Developers Conference in San Francsico. Fauerby will be outlining the techniques and optimizations used to achieve the 1200 character crowds present in Absolution while still running at 30fps on current-gen consoles. He will also provide an overview of the crowd implementation and discuss both the algorithms used as well as how gameplay considerations affected the design decisions.

Keep checking in for more info on this year’s Game Development Conference and Hitman: Absolution.

Push-Start has finally made it to two years old. The website has grown a lot over the past few years, with a lot of new content and people joining the growing dedicated team. Myself, Daniel Pepper founded the website 2 years ago alongside George Harvey. We appreciate every single click, retweet and comment you leave on the site, you keep us writing and strive Push-Start to becoming better. You lovely website users that have continued to come back over the past two years since we launched, we thank you. We would like to show our appreciation in some exciting form, but sadly we can’t. Instead we have some prizes to give away as a small appreciation of you amazing support. There will be more, Push-Start will have more and better upgrades and changes soon. So remember to keep Pushing-Start.

Now after all that mushy stuff here is what you have been waiting for, the competitions. Insert Coin, who we recently interviewed has managed to provide us with some amazing goodies to give-away. Make sure you have checked out the interview, if you have you already would of known that we are giving away three lucky website users a £10 gift voucher each for the clothing store.

That isn’t all, we are also giving away loads of steam codes donated by Barry from IndieGala and Be Mine. Don’t believe me? here’s the list of awesome games we have up for grabs.

Hacker Evolution, Hacker Evolution:Duality, Hacker Evolution: Untold, Zombie Shooter 1, Zombie Shooter 2, inMomentum, Your Doodles Are Bugged!, Toki Tori and Xotic

And if that isn’t enough then we have also got another competition running to win a copy of Alan Wake for the PC via Steam.
Which you can enter HERE

Thank’s again for choosing Push-Start for your gaming and film content. We hope you stick around for another year, and if you dont? You’ll be missing out on some more exciting competitions.

How to enter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Worldwide revenues generated by Skyrim have placed it among the industry’s most successful titles, and demand for the title shows no signs of slowing. Measured by revenue, Skyrim was the second best selling game of 2011, and 2012 sales remain strong, with continuing digital downloads and large shipments of units to retail. Within the first month following its release in November, Bethesda Softworks reported it had shipped over 10 million units of Skyrim across all platforms, representing approximately $650 million in retail sales, and those results have since increased substantially.

Data from Steam, the digital download service, reveal that the average number of hours that a gamer plays Skyrim exceeds 75 hours, underscoring fan devotion to the game. The PC version of Skyrim in North America outsold all other PC games by a factor of over three to one in the month of its release, and Skyrim is the fastest selling title in Steam’s history.

Console versions of Skyrim reveal equally strong fan demand. The Xbox 360 version of Skyrim outsold all Xbox 360 exclusive titles in 2011 in North America, and the PS3 version of Skyrim outsold all PS3 exclusive titles on that platform.  These strong commercial results match the high scores and widespread praise of critics that the game has received.

The critically-acclaimed title was most recently honoured with the ‘Game of the Year’ award at the 15^th Annual 2012 Interactive Achievement Awards (IAA) held at the 2012 D.I.C.E.  Summit. Skyrim also received top honours in the ‘Outstanding Achievement in Gameplay Engineering’, ‘Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction’, ‘Role-Playing Game of the Year’, and ‘Outstanding Achievement in Story’ categories. The IAA’s focus is on peer-based voting and its awards are considered to be among the highest honours of recognition in the interactive entertainment industry.

Sine Mora, the colourful dieselpunk shoot em’ up by created by Digital Reality and Grasshopper Manufacture, is one of the most visually stunning titles coming to Xbox Live to date. Beyond its intensifying, high-flying gameplay, much of Sine Mora’s greatness is thanks to the intricately designed boss battles derived from the very concept work of famous anime creator, Mahiro Maeda who’s various credits include directing Blue Submarine No. 6, Final Fantasy: Unlimited and The Animatrix , as well as designing art for Neon Genesis Evangelion, Magic User’s Club and many more.

Coming exclusively to XBLA, Sine Mora provides a unique take on the shoot em’ up genre, where time is always the key factor. Intertwining classic shooter sensibilities with next-gen presentation, Sine Mora is a beautiful title that appeals to both hardcore and casual gamers alike. Sine Mora features over 60 combinations of planes, characters and time manipulation devices to complete every intricately-crafted stage with increasing difficulty. All of this is set to an epic score of soaring heights, composed by Akira Yamaoka, acclaimed for his works on Shadows of the Damned and the Silent Hill series.