To mark the beginning of the Lunar New Year, ArenaNet have made an announcement that will surely set MMO gamers everywhere trembling with squeeish delight.

The latest post on the Guilds Wars 2 blog confirms that the waiting game is nearly over, confirming a full release for their eagerly awaited title some time in 2012. They also say that after a press-only beta next month, future testing events will be “aggressively ramped up” from March onwards. Cor! After five years of anticipation, it’s all starting to kick off!

Best get to polishing those applications, folks. It’s going to be one of the hottest tickets of the year…

Cave Story+, the PC port of a Mac port of a WiiWare port of a PC freeware game, has apparently come full circle and is now available on Steam. I am a huge fan of Cave Story and, I like to hope, a reasonable person. Like many others I admire “Pixel“ - Daisuke Amaya - for creating the original version and releasing it back in 2004. Aeon Genesis deserve some credit as well for the English translation patch. It is a charming game that has done a great service in boosting the indie gaming scene. That said, I will most certainly not be buying into this thinly disguised cash-in – and I’m actually shocked and quite disappointed that Nicalis had the cheek to go so far down this road.

So here’s the story: After a chain of poorly-communicated delays spanning through 2009, the $12 / £10 WiiWare release of the game in North America last year was deservedly well-received but expensive and somewhat glitchy. It included one particularly annoying bug with music playback when the original music tracks were selected instead of the default remixed tracks (which some people – including myself – didn’t like). Not only did it take eight months to get these problems patched out but it took ten months after the NA release for the game to get to Europe. Meh. So far, so mediocre.

Then there was the DSiWare release for portable gamers to enjoy Quote’s adventures. Cool. But a year on from the Japanese and North American releases last November, it still isn’t available in Europe, despite a suggestion from Joystiq it would be out around Q2 of this year. It seems likely that Euro gamers will now never see that version due to the incoming Cave Story 3D for the 3DS (which – who’d have guessed? – has also been delayed). Based on their track record, who knows when the 3DS incarnation will arrive in Euroland…

Surely things can’t get any more ridiculous. But wait! Yes they do!

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I don’t know what game it is, but apparently a beta started for it yesterday or something? Could be anything, really. Has this weird logo though marked “Blitz Hard” on it… or, wait, was it “Blizzard”? Yeah, that’s the one.

I guess with a name like that it must be a racing or driving sim of some kind. The demon-like thing in the screenshot is probably the artwork that appears on your hero’s car bonnet.

I’ll be sure to keep you up to date with any news about this completely new and hitherto unknown game as it arrives on my desk. A bit of breaking news, though – someone just told me it contains zombies! Wow! A driving game with zombies in it! What will they think of next…

(And no, don’t be silly, of course I didn’t get a key. But if you want to watch some videos while you wait for yours to arrive, I recommend this suitably hilarious playthrough courtesy of the Yogscast.)

Stumbling upon PC Gamer‘s Big 10 of 2011 list of the games they’re anticipating for this year, I was rather surprised. PCG is one of, if not the most respected gaming magazine in the industry, and I’m sure there’s more than a little bit of insider knowledge going into this particular article of theirs.

That said, the reason for my surprise was twofold. They think that both Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 are going to be out this year! Whoooooaaa there, Nelly. As much as I’d be in RPG heaven were this to happen, I just really can’t see it… though of course there’s that leaked release schedule document which was all over the interwebz last month suggesting 2011 might be the year after all. Perhaps a combination of waiting this long and being generally cynical about everything has made me over-patient.

Anyhow, as I switched my brain into “lurk” mode in work today, I got to thinking about what games I’d like to play – if elephants could fly – this year. Daydreaming is fun! Keep reading after the jump to find out what I came up with.

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Just hours ago, an entire corner of EVE‘s universe was plunged into confusion when GoonSwarm – a dominant force for several years and one of the game’s longest standing alliances – started disbanding. Judging by the frenzied activity on the game’s official corp and alliance discussion forum, it seems they have now dissolved completely and will not be returning.

GoonSwarm were founded by members of the Something Awful community and achieved notoriety for being one of the least restrictive groups to inhabit the outer reaches of space, operating under the philosophy that anyone, regardless of skill, should be able to get a taste of what life can be like in 0.0 territory. Their sudden departure from the region leaves a massive vacuum that may well trigger a widescale conflict for control of valuable resources.

No official explanation has yet been given for why the alliance has broken up in this way, but whatever the reason, it’s definitely a pivotal moment in EVE‘s history.

One of the  Guild Wars 2 developers recently chimed in on a  forum thread dicussing the sound effects of the game. They went into the details of exactly how they’re going about the job, and revealed that several effects such as footsteps and armor noise are generated procedurally. If you play with sound enabled (especially if you use headphones a lot like me), one of the things that can break the immersion of a game is listening to the same two or three footstep sounds over and over and over again… so it’s good to know that GW2 hopefully won’t have this problem!

They also linked to a selection of photos capturing their sound-recording men in the field. They look like they’re having a great time – I’d love to have their job…

For more Guild Wars 2 news, check out its website.

Straight from Twitter (courtesy of UFHO2) comes  this list of what Nintendo plans to release over the coming three months. There’s some good stuff there, but also some glaring omissions. It’s hard, I know, but do try not to be too surprised when I say…

What, no Wii Cave Story?!

No sign of NIGORO‘s redone version of La-Mulana either, or indeed the blockbuster-in-waiting Super Mario Galaxy 2. But I suppose there’s a whole nine other months which they haven’t mentioned yet…

My pick of the list would have to be  Worms: Battle Islands, ‘cos you just can’t get enough of the classic 2D Worms action. But I really wish Team 17 would come back to their roots and bring out an updated PC version (that’s 2D, not those silly 3D versions). Worms Armageddon / World Party are beginning to show their age – they’re over eight years old, after all. Just think what you could do with proper physics! Ragdoll worms! Particles! Water with proper reflections! Bigger, better, more detailed landscapes! Local networking without the annoying lag! Even just the slightly-more-shiny graphics upgrades of the console ports would be nice. Please guys, you know you want to make it happen…

It made me laugh when I heard from a follow gamer in work today that Gran Turismo 5‘s release date of March for Japan has been pushed back yet again, this time indefinitely.

While us poor old westerners have never been given a solid idea of when we might see our version of the game, this announcement isn’t especially encouraging for those who are still waiting. Conspiracy theories abound (in several places) on exactly what the “production-related” issues are that Sony say have caused this latest delay – their unwillingness to set a new release date is a bit unnerving given how long the title has already been in development.

Now, I own a PS3, and although I can’t say GT5 was ever a game I was desperate to play on it, it bugs me how Sony have swung another hammer blow to a nail in the PS3′s coffin. How many more times are they going to drop the ball? Is it even a ball any more, or a mangled, deflated mass after being repeatedly dumped into a spiky burning pit of doom? Did they release the PS3 purely as an exercise in finding out the most cackhanded and drawn out way of systematically ruining a gaming platform? Sometimes it certainly seems that way.

Yes, I exaggerate. It probably isn’t that bad, and the pit wasn’t actually very spiky at all. Look on the bright side: at least Final Fantasy XIII appears to be on schedule…