The clock is ticking for Doctor Who landing on the PlayStation 3. Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock is coming soon, featuring timey-wimey gaming thrills pitting you against the Daleks, Cybermen and Silurians.

In the game you take contol of both the Doctor and companion River Song, voiced by Matt Smith and Alex Kingston, to unravel the mystery of The Eternity Clock. Players sneak, run, swing and jump across rooftops and fog-shrouded London streets, heading “into the belly of the beast” to defeat the nefarious plans of the new-look Cybermen, Daleks, and Silurians, as well as the Silence. Er… what were the Silence supposed to be again?

The trailer offers little clue to the latest travails of the Time Lord, aside from telling us that the TARDIS is at the heart of the maelstrom. Ruined London streets and what looks like a mission into a vast Dalek spaceship have got us a wee bit excited about the game: Allons-y! Er, we mean, Geronimo!

There’s no sign of Amy Pond in the trailer — sorry dads — but you do see plenty of River Song. Press play below to see the action:

There are a bunch of options for Gallifreyan gaming, including cartoony online game Worlds in Time, iPhone and iPad puzzler The Mazes of Time, and various interactive episodes.

You can also play Evacuation Earth on the Nintendo DS and Return to Earth on the Wii.

For all your gaming goodness, check out our button-bashing buddies at GameSpot UK. They may not wear bow-ties very often but they all look great in a fez.

Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock materialises on the PS3 and PS Vita via the PlayStation Network in March 2012, with a PC version to follow later.

Are you hoping to get your hands on a copy of the game? Let us know in the comments below or head over to our Facebook page.

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We’ve gone hands-on with Razer’s sense-defying Project Fiona at the CES trade show in Las Vegas — hit play on the video above to check it out in our analogue-wiggling video.

Project Fiona is basically a Windows tablet with two massive prongs stuck on the side. Each of those prongs plays host to an analogue stick, four face buttons, and shoulder and trigger buttons.

Fire up a game on Fiona and control the on-screen action by holding those two prongs. We played recent smash-hit Skyrim, and were actually rather impressed by how well it ran, as well as the feel of the controller itself.

The idea is that this tablet will appeal to hardcore gaming nuts who wouldn’t be seen dead prodding at an iPad. There’s an Intel Core i7 CPU inside, which could put serious drain on the battery.

The compromise is obvious though — Project Fiona is absolutely massive. The prongs alone mean it’ll take up a huge amount of space in your bag, and even the tablet bit itself is really thick. It’s also expensive, with Razer tentatively pegging it at $1,000 (£650).

We wonder if Project Fiona is really necessary. There are countless brilliant games for Apple’s iPad, and while they might not rely on macro-filled mice or keyboards, they’re still a lot of fun.

It’s just a concept right now though, so let’s see where Project Fiona goes next. Razer says it could be on sale by the end of the year, but previous gaming concepts from the company have failed to hit the shops, so we’re not holding our breath.

Would you buy this if it went on sale? Tell us in the comments or on our Facebook wall.

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An update to Angry Birds Seasons is due to land on Friday, according to a teaser trailer punted out by Rovio. And it’ll tie in with Chinese New Year, which happens three days later, on 23 January.

It seems those green pigs are up to no good again…

The trailer — which you can see here — doesn’t give much away. The green pigs are shown peeping through the floorboards a couple of times, eyeing up lanterns, eggs, and other goodies in an otherwise tranquil setting. A quite terrifying pig mask makes an appearance at the end too.

The description is similarly vague. “Squawk!” it reads. “Fireworks popping, lanterns glowing, red envelopes bursting with money — it’s Chinese New Year! But what are the pigs up to? Stay tuned for more!” So we could see more teasers before the week is over.

It’s the latest update in the massively successful Angry Birds Seasons series. Previous incarnations include an Easter version, and ones for Halloween and Christmas. There’s also a huge range of merchandise, playgrounds themed around the irritated avians, it has its own championship, and you can play it online using the Google Chrome browser. Just before Christmas it was estimated the series had reached over half a billion downloads since launching in 2009. Considering Nintendo has sold about 260 million Mario games in the 30 years it’s been making them, Rovio must be justifiably proud of itself.

Admittedly Angry Birds sells for far cheaper than a full console game, but it’s a huge achievement nonetheless. And maybe a sign that consoles are on the way out — with phones about to become quad-core, expect far more advanced games to come to your handset.

Do you think consoles like the forthcoming PS Vita can compete with the slew of wallet-friendly mobile games? Let us know below, or on our Facebook page.

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2012 is set to be a year of new consoles, with the launch of Vita and Wii U and the possibility of an Xbox 360 follow-up at E3. But amid all this obsession over new machines, what are the devices we cherish from the past?

We haven’t done a Friday question for a while, so let’s remedy that right now. This year is going to be a big one for games hardware. There’s the launch of the PS Vita next month and the arrival of the Nintendo Wii U at some point later on. Plus, everyone is expecting Microsoft to announce its successor to the Xbox 360 at the E3 event in June.

It’s exciting – and it’s an excitement that tends to get lost behind the pervading notion that smart phones are going to kill dedicated gaming machines. I now have a PlayStation Vita for review and it’s a beautiful piece of consumer electronics engineering – stylish, highly specced, wonderfully ergonomic – it is all about the fetishistic qualities of good games hardware.

But what single console, arcade machine or handheld device would you like to own from the annals of interactive entertainment history, and why? I don’t mean just for the games it runs, I mean for the aesthetic appeal of the object – just the look and feel of the thing; I mean something you could almost display as an object d’art. If you’re into that kind of thing.

I’ve provided three of my own choices below. Let’s have some of yours in the comments section!

The Vectrex, 1982

This marvel of early eighties consumer electronics is utterly unique, with its vector-based graphics technology and its series of plastic overlays, which added colour to the otherwise monochrome visuals. I love the arcade-style portrait display, and the formative joypad, with its four-button layout. It looks like it belongs in a seventies sci-fi movie.

Star Wars, 1983

Yet more Vector graphics! But the beauty of this machine is the intricate cabinet design, with its gorgeous illustrations and the authentic instrument panel design inside. The sound is incredible for the era too, with a lively rendering of the soundtrack and clear digitised speech. Despite a cacophony of competing machines, I could always hear the Star Wars attract mode as soon as I wandered into any of the old coin-op arcades along Blackpool’s golden mile… Anyway, check out the video above, I like the way the guy sort of stalks the machine, like he’s about to murder it.

The blue debug PlayStation, 1994

These were littered around the offices of Future publishing when I first joined Edge back in 1995 and they seemed impossibly arcane and glamorous. This is where I would have played the likes of Ridge Racer and Resident Evil for the first time. I also like the chunkier, squarer design of the original PlayStation, before the slim re-model. I liked the array of obscure ports and connection features on the back as well. I’m not sure I like them quite as much as the chap in this YouTube video, though…

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Mike Anderiesz talks character development, building new worlds and epic ambitions with two of the creative minds behind the new RPG on the block

With The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim proving one of our collective games highlights of 2011, and the likes of Witcher 2 and The Old Republic snapping at its heels, a rejuvenated RPG market is suddenly brimming with quality.

Yet debut developer 38 Studios has bold plans with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning – not least by breaking a few of the genres oldest rules.

Founded by former professional baseball pitcher Curt Schilling, 38 Studios established instant kudos in 2009 when it took over Rise of Nations developer Big Huge Games from THQ.

It meant that this first game from the Rhode Island-based studio became a collaborative effort involving two teams, a combined staff of almost 300 and nearly five years of development.

Ahead of the game’s February launch, I caught up with two of the game’s key creative forces – “creator of worlds” R.A. Salvatore, and art director Todd McFarlane.

“Curt [Schilling] and his friends had a basic idea of what they wanted” says Salvatore. “I was responsible for fleshing out a broad history of the world, but there were so many people involved on both teams.

“Even my old D&D group worked for me as research assistants. I was really excited by the potential of coming up with a whole philosophy for how Amular worked – everything had to make sense. You can’t just stick a pile of rocks in a forest and call them ruins, you have to know their history and it has to be consistent with everything else.”

Though better known in the US, Salvatore’s skills at weaving deep, compelling and, above all, plausible sci-fi mythologies underpin Reckoning’s epic ambitions. Certainly, the world of Amular has been carved out in painstaking historical detail.

Key to the look and feel of the world was the guiding influence of renowned comic-book illustrator and entrepreneur McFarlane. Though enthusiastic about the concept, he was in no doubt about the scale of creating a new franchise in today’s RPG-savvy market.

“The hardest task of making an RPG is that if you set down 10 people, you’ll get 10 different reasons why they like them,” he says. “That’s very different to a car racing or even an FPS. Some people want to see the map, others to level up, others to quest. It’s all important to each one, so we decided not to treat any of those areas with less significance.”

As a result, Amular is not just epic in scale (five massive areas – including Forest, Coastal and Desert regions – and more than 150 hand-crafted dungeons) but ambition too. It begins in a conventional way, choosing your character from four playable races – the Human (Almain) Elvish (Dark Dokkalfar and Light Ljosalfar) and the nomadic Varani.

Your hero can then be customised for appearance, before embarking into the game’s mammoth single-player challenge, which Salvatore estimates will last more than 40 hours, excluding the hundreds of optional side quests. Reckoning helpfully puts main quest conversations first, so you can see at a glance which NPCs are most worth interacting with.

Which brings us neatly to combat – by no means the game’s most distinctive feature, but probably the one that gamers will debate the most.

Reckoning uses a hybrid system of simple hack and slash (controller buttons mapped to main weapons such as swords, bows or magic staffs) and quicktime events (for boss battles and some finishing moves). The result is a combat system that veers more towards the more cinematic style of God of War than the more realistic Witcher 2.

This may not please hardcore fans of either game, but it’s a system capable of impressive combos, including the eye-catching “Reckoning Mode” where time slows down and moves can be chained together.

McFarlane is pleased with the balance of fluidity and finesse that Reckoning’s combat system has achieved.

“We wanted to make sure the action was big and huge in an RPG context but at the same time avoiding have to hit six buttons,” he says. “We kept the sequences simplistic to avoid it being a ‘combat game’ – yet doing those exact same sequences with a different character will achieve a completely different effect. It’s cool as hell, but not frustrating.”

However, although much of your game time will undoubtedly be spent in combat and questing, Reckoning’s most innovative feature is the concept of Fates & Destinies. Originating from the game’s mythology, it’s an element that will have a potentially profound effect on the gameplay, depending on how you approach it.

Most RPGs and MMOs treat character progression as something written in stone; indeed, the only way to succeed is to pick an upgrade path and concentrate on maxing out those abilities. Effectively, if you choose to be a warrior, that’s what you are from start to finish.

Reckoning takes a different approach. You start the game as a blank slate, able to buy three main paths – Might, Finesse and Sorcery, with each path containing around 20 upgradeable Abilities. However, at any leveling-up point you can choose to specialise in other areas, creating hybrid characters that may combine Abilities from all three paths.

As you level up you also unlock one of eight Destinies, which help shape define not only your combat style but also your profession. For instance, Rangers are perfect stealthy assassins but if you want to add magic to the mix, you can simply accumulate enough points to switch Destiny to Archanist.

It remains to be seen whether such a dynamic form of character development will either empower or baffle the player, but Salvatore believes it enforces a kind of open world realism and flexibility so far unseen in RPGs.

“Your hero is the first person to come through the well of souls and be reborn,” he says. “But these powers have consequences that affects every aspect of the game: what does that mean to the world? What does it mean to religious institutions who rely on the power of an afterlife or to the parents of the last person who died at the well of souls?”

This flexibility also extends to other areas of the gameplay. Looting and Crafting, for instance, has been designed to cater for fans of both expediency and depth. You don’t need to access the Inventory to select, equip or discard items if you just want their value in credits; but if you want to delve deeper, you can head for a town and start experimenting with the game’s three distinct crafting systems – Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Sagecraft.

Use Sagecraft, for instance, and you can start socketing weapons with magical gems; if not, you can still gain bonus points (and a cool onscreen appearance) from collecting complete sets of armour items.

There are also nine non-combat skills – some which have unexpected affects on the gameplay. Improving Stealth, for instance, not only introduces some fantastic stealth kills, but opens up corrupt career paths like pick-pocketing. Neither are you all alone in your quest. There are six joinable faction, including Nomads, Travelers, Scholars and Warrior Priests.

So, given it’s a game that thwarts easy summaries, how pleased is Salvatore with the way Reckoning has translated his original vision into a living, breathing, role-playing experience?

“I don’t want to say it will raise the bar,” he says. “But it does bring something a little bit different. With Reckoning, I wanted a world that had beauty and horror – something really frightening that was worth fighting against and then giving you all the tools to do it. I think fans are going to like what we’ve achieved.”

And if they do like it, there’s clearly a big future already planned for Amular. Reckoning only features a small part of a persistent world that will be fully revealed in a forthcoming MMO codenamed “Copernicus”, which both development teams – including Salvatore and McFarlane – are already hard at work on.

Although neither would be drawn on an ETA, having made a fortune from multimedia franchises such as Spawn, McFarlane in particular understands the potential value of an original IP. However, it’s also clear that Amular means more to him than just a string of lucrative sequels.

“I appreciate all the 2s, 3s and 4s attached to successful RPGs – you don’t have to spend as much time reminding people what it is,” he says. “But even Hollywood can’t survive on just sequels, so is there’s room for new ideas? That’s a question people have been asking us from day one … now it’s up to the consumers.”

Reckoning sounds like just the kind of start to 2012 RPG fans were hoping for.

• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning will be released for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on 10 February

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Wow. Here’s some very interesting reading from the land of the rising sun. The Nintendo 3DS has sold over 4 million units in the 10 months it’s been on sale in Japan, but perhaps most interestingly, over 500,000 of those were sold in the last week, The Verge reports.

Seeing as the brand new PS Vita sold over 300,000 in its first two days on sale in Japan, it seems the 3DS has some serious staying power.

In comparison, Nintendo sold over 5 million units of the original DS in its first 13 months, but that included two Christmases.

So, which games are selling? Well perhaps unsurprisingly, Mario is king. Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 have each sold more than a million copies, making them the first 3DS titles to do so. That’s all the more surprising considering Mario Kart 7 has been on sale less than a month, and has actually outsold Super Mario 3D Land (1.08 million as opposed to 1.04 million). The release of Mario Kart 7 may well help explain the surge in interest in the console, though no doubt Christmas did its part too.

The stats come from research company Enterbrain.

The PS Vita went on sale last weekend, and while it sold over 300,000 in its first two days, not all units were without problems: some froze, while others had stains on the screen. Sony issued a software update to fix the bugs. It also priced up all the first-party launch titles, though sadly us Brits won’t be getting a 32GB memory card when it touches down on 22 February. Doesn’t Sony trust us with them or something?

Does the PS Vita have enough to knock the 3DS off the top of the handheld podium? Let us know which you prefer in the comments below, or over on our Facebook page.

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The next Xbox could boast DVR capabilities if a Microsoft patent is any indication, letting you record video on your games console.

Shortly after Christmas Microsoft was awarded a patent titled ‘Recording media on gaming consoles’. The patent was filed way back in 2007 and describes “a digital video recorder (DVR) application running alongside a television client component” that “allows users to record media content on the gaming console”.

The patent also specifies that the tech would also let gamers record media while playing games, or when the console is switched off.

What can you record? Microsoft lists TV programming, local and online games, music and DVDs as some of the possibilities. You’ll be able to switch between the type of media you’re seeing while the console is recording.

While it’s prudent not to read too far into these patents, this one could give us a clue as to what the next Xbox will look like. And judging by the features described above, Microsoft could be setting its sights at the TV on-demand market.

Microsoft’s chunky console already boasts loads of video goodies including Sky Player and the Zune movie rental service. LoveFilm and 4oD should be making an appearance shortly, with the BBC’s iPlayer tipped to arrive later this year. But one thing it can’t do is record those tasty bits of video.

Microsoft could also be planning to ape a feature of the OnLive streaming gaming service, which lets you save ‘brag clips’, which are the last 10 seconds of gameplay. That means if something cool or funny happens in-game, you can save it at the press of a button.

Once saved, you can share your clip online. It’s a great feature, and we wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft wanted to plant something similar in its next console.

What do you want to see in the next Xbox console? Tell us in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.

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Stories stating the first wave of PS Vitas are beset by malfunctions are erroneous, says Japanese electronics giant

Sony is fuming after a number of stories appeared online stating that the first PS Vitas sold in Japan have been beset by widespread glitches, allegedly including problems powering the handheld console up and down and frozen touchscreens.

While it acknowledges that a few new PS Vita owners may have experienced isolated malfunctions, it is adamant that users are experiencing no more problems than would be expected given that 325,000 units of the handheld console were sold during its launch weekend in Japan.

David Wilson, head of UK PR at Sony Computer Entertainment, said: “The PS Vita has had a terrific launch and sold in large numbers. We’re annoyed with these stories, because we can’t find any evidence of widespread glitches.

“The stories even said that Sony has issued an apology for PS Vita glitches, which simply isn’t true – there’s an apology on our Japanese website for people who are having trouble getting through to our technical help line, but that’s it.

“And there’s a page showing standard procedures for powering the PS Vita on and off, which has been on our site since before the launch, which has been presented in some news stories as a means of solving the alleged glitches.”

Sony appears to have been a victim of internet Chinese whispers, combined with an element of its Japanese website getting lost in translation.

It has issued a firmware update, but that is only to be expected with a new and complex handheld console such as the PS Vita. There is also a YouTube video showing a PS Vita with a frozen screen, which has been replicated in various places on the web, but that hardly constitutes a welter of malfunctions.

One wonders whether the Sony-haters who hacked the PlayStation Network earlier in the year and aimed a barrage of bile at the company (including threats to senior executives) are up to their old tricks again.

Despite the negative reports, the PS Vita’s future would still appear to be bright: the 325,000 units sold in its opening weekend represents a solid if unspectacular start.

Nintendo’s 3DS handheld sold 371,000 units in its opening weekend, but sales subsequently tailed off swiftly, which was attributed to a lack of compelling games.

The PS Vita, by contrast, launched in Japan with a healthy portfolio of 24 games, and Sony has announced that 33 games will be available for the UK launch on 22 February.

And even if it does turn out that a significant number of the first PS Vitas sold in Japan were faulty, Sony has plenty of time to iron out teething problems before the unit goes on sale in the UK.

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And we’re into the top 10 of our favourite games of the year. Have we got it right, or horribly wrong? Have a look and let us know in the comment section

Tuesday’s countdown from 15-11 prompted an interesting debate on the relative merits of Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3, as well as lots of other juicy issues. What will today’s five titles inspire?

One thing you won’t find is smartphone titles – we’ll be running a separate list for those. But what of your favourite console titles – will they be adequately represented? Judging by some of the excellent games talked about in the comments section for the previous instalment, the answer is a resounding … maybe. Some of them.

Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s continue with our arbitary and highly subjective Top 20!

10. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Activision, PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Oh lord, here we go. Modern Warfare 3 – a glorified map pack, a sullen, cynical insult to gamers, a shameless exercise in pro-imperialist messaging. Or wait, maybe it’s more of what Infinity Ward has been doing really quite brilliantly for the past decade. Super smooth, turbo-charged military mayhem, wrapped around a loopy plot that stretches the game’s naturalistic framework to breaking point. And the multiplayer, with a group of friends and a few hours to kill, is still some of the best fun you can have with virtual firearms and close-proximity combat. Modern Warfare 3 is meaningless, it’s silly, and it has certainly been the most divisive game of the year – we all understand what some people hate about it. But crafted with great care to do exactly what the series always has done and always will, MW3 isn’t part of the problem or the solution, and it certainly isn’t going to destroy the industry – or, indeed, humanity. It’s a game where you shoot baddies, and shoot ‘em good. Frankly, we’ve giving up feeling guilty about enjoying it.

9. Minecraft (PC)

Minecraft isn’t so much a game as an unstoppable indie phenomenon, a sort of reality TV documentary about design, a meta-game, a way of life. There was a time when its creator Notch wasn’t an internet celebrity – how weird is that? But now, with this creative, procedural role-playing build-’em-up, he and is team have not only invented a new sub-genre, they have instigated a movement in which games aren’t simply released, they’re sort of evolved and mutated over months of beta-testing and semi-availability. If Minecraft were an X Factor contestant we’d all be marveling over its “journey” as emotionally manipulative music played in the background and chunkily pixelated figures congratulated each other in slow motion on the screen. Minecraft is quite probably the greatest story indie gaming has ever told.

8. Super Mario 3D Land (Nintendo, 3DS)

Could it be that the world was ready to love 3DS all along – we just, you know, needed the right games? Well, Super Mario 3D Land is the right game. Taking elements of the original Super Mario Land and combining them with a twist of Super Mario Galaxy, this is a platformer in the traditional Nintendo mould – and by that I don’t mean unchanging and stifled, I mean traditional in the sense that it’s filled with magic, innovation and joy. Whereas in other 3DS titles, the stereoscopic effect has been little more than an annoying parlour trick, here it enforces the beautiful level designs, the sense of space and of Mario’s place in the world. Not the most far-reaching or ambitious Mario title, but as a standard-bearer for this maligned platform, it could turn out to be one of the more important.

7. Uncharted 3 (Sony, PS3)

Oh Nathan, there really is something about that boy. Whether he’s leaping across rooftops as a teenage rapscallion, floundering in the desert or navigating through a seemingly endless boat graveyard, he has so much charm he virtually seduces us through the game. Other titles aspire to be cinematic and think it means epic set-pieces and orchestral music; Naughty Dog knows that cinema is as much about relationships. The surrogate father/son interplay with Sully, the touching rapport with Elena – these are human interactions we can really invest in, so much so that they become genuine rewards for our perseverance. But, yeah, the epic set-pieces are astonishing too.

6. Dark Souls (Namco Bandai, PS3, Xbox 360)

The concept of “player skill” has been largely abandoned by mainstream developers keen to just nudge us gently through their narrative adventures, like kindly care home workers on a seaside day out. Not Dark Souls. Namco Bandai’s dungeon romp is a twisted, pitiless exercise in providing a system and then bashing the gamer over the skull with it until they can do it properly. So many disturbing enemies, so many customisation and progression decisions – all housed within a towering gothic world that combines the nightmarish vision of a Piranesi prison etching, with the intricate workings of a Swiss-made watch. We should all get down on our pathetic knees right now and thank the black empty universe that games like this still exist.

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Can Crazy Dave from PopCap’s massive Plants vs Zombies reach the top of the charts this Christmas with ‘hip-hop’ single Wabby Wabbo?

Casual gaming overlord PopCap has teamed up with humanatarian charity Concern Worldwide to release a Christmas single. The song, bizarrely called Wabby Wabbo is based around PopCap’s hit title Plants vs Zombies. It’s “performed” by the game’s narrator and shopkeeper Crazy Dave, a bearded nutcase with a pan on his head. “Wabbo Wabbo is believed to be the first hip-hop single ever released to feature a yodelling solo by a Yeti zombie,” says the press release.

The single is available for download now and PopCap hopes that if enough Plants vs Zombies fans download the track this week, it can beat the inevitable favourite from X-Factor to the top spot. The (let’s say “eccentric”) video accompanying the track has already had almost 600,000 views on YouTube, and 55p from every download fee goes to the charity. And remember, there’s always the chance that it could ruin Christmas for Simon Cowell.

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