RPGamers Network: Complete News Coverage

Steam Holiday Sales 2011 are a go!

Kilu — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 02:37:04 EST

Hey hi!
Steam Holiday Sale started today.
It's the usual deal of bunch of games on sale for 24 hours, and then the games switch and the new set is on sale for 24 hours, and so on and so forth. These things last till the 1st of January, so prepare to say goodbye to all that money you probably saved just for this reason.
And to top that off there's of course varying publisher catalogs and pack deals that are on sale during this whole thing as well. So yeah, that's a lot of stuff on sale.

Additionally, there's The Great Gift Pile. How that works is basically like this, a lot of games got holiday updates and achievements, if you earn that achievement, you'll either get a gift or a lump of coal. Gifts seem to either be games, or some kind of coupons. With lump of coal, you can either save up and trade 7 lumps into a proper gift, or save them up and enter into the Epic Holiday Giveaway. The Grand Prize of that is EVERY SINGLE GAME ON STEAM. There's more info about that in the link few lines above this one. Go check it.

This all comes with a price though. Right now, the Steam servers are crawling. You'd think that their past sales would have taught them something, prepared them for this, but nope. It's always the same. It's probably going to take a few hours at least until the service becomes more reliable again.

Personally, I was eying that Pendulo Studios Adventure Pack a bit, that's pretty cheap. But I've played through 3 of those games already, so maybe I'll just pick the Next Big Thing on its own.

Electronic Arts Press Event at E3 2011

Kilu — Tue, 7 Jun 2011 10:00:23 EST

Next up, Electronic Arts.
They start the show with Mass Effect 3, awesome. Also, no mention of the dumb Kinect support, also awesome. Live gameplay, cover based shooting, some melee, looks like Mass Effect for sure. Shepard is sabotaging a Reaper base, which turns out to be an actual Reaper after they try to blow it to hell with a called in aerial bombing run. Followed by a on rails turret sequence. Closing with a release date, March 6, 2012. Neat date, 3.6.12.

Next up is some Need for Speed: The Run, developed by EA's BlackBox studio. The driving seems fast and fine I guess, but there's also sequences that are not in car, and appear to be completely scripted quick-time-events. Not really too exciting.
Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO next, Bioware doctor talks about it on stage, and then they show yet another CGI trailer. Bunch of EA Sports stuff next.
SSX, a snowboarding game makes a return, Peter Moore talks on stage about how they used NASA's satellite imagery to recreate the real world locations in the game. That's pretty impressive, but I'm not going to play that game. Also, new FIFA and a new Madden is talked about, but I tuned out on those. It's football and American football, what more do you really need to know, right? I did however tune quickly back in during the Madden thing when they started playing the Inception Trailer Music (Mind Heist by Jack Hemsey), it was weird. Like really weird. And then some social gaming with Sims Social for Facebook. Sims on Facebook. Great.

Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning, dude speaks about Reckoning on the stage. Shows some video, seems like this might be a pretty neat RPG.
Insomniac, formerly a PS3 only developer, takes the stage to introduce their new multi-platform game called OverStrike. I don't know about that name, to be honest. The CGI trailer makes it seem like some kind of team based game with nice characters.

And finally, Battlefield 3. They start the demo by introducing the new Frostbyte 2 engine, which looks fucking awesome. After a quick multiplayer trailer, they start a pretty long live gameplay demo, a tank sequence in desert. So much dust in the desert. Looks so fine. Release date October 25th.

EA rocked.

Microsoft Press Event at E3 2011

Kilu — Tue, 7 Jun 2011 09:06:00 EST

As you may or may not know, E3 is happening this year as well. Like, right now. You should know, because I just wrote a little pre-E3 thing about Konami.
Anyways, I've been watching all the live streams of various press events that happened on Monday, and here's a summary of what happened Micorsoft, who was the first. Why don't I just list all the things they talked about first? Yeah, sounds good right?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Tomb Raider (reboot)
EA Sports
Mass Effect 3 with Kinect voice command support
Ghost Recon Future Soldier with Kinect support, plus all future Tom Clancy games would have Kinect support
New Xbox 360 dashboard that launches fall 2011 with support for Youtube, Bing, Live TV, also better Kinect support
UFC fights that you can watch on Xbox, or something like that
Cliffy B and Ice T on stage playing Gears of War 3
Kinect game from Crytek (makers of FarCry an Crysis) called Ryse. At least it's not called Cryse.
Halo Anniversary edition, a HD remastered Halo 1 basically
Forza 4, cars cars cars with Kinect support
Fable: The Journey for Kinect, on rails shooter by the looks it
Minecraft for Kinect
Disneyland Adventures for Kinect, some kind of minigame collection
Star Wars for Kinect
Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster for Kinect
Kinect Fun Labs, Microsoft's own Kinect developer environment thing
Kinect Sports Season 2
Dance Central 2 for Kinect
Halo 4, the start of a new trilogy

So that's the list. That's a lot of Kinect, which I couldn't give two shits about. Well, to be fair, a lot of the titles with Kinect support don't require it, so they could still be worth of my time. How about the other stuff then? Modern Warfare 3 looks pretty much like all modern Call of Duty titles have looked like. No surprises there at all. Mass Effect 3 with Kinect support... sure, the idea is neat I guess. But I'll talk about Mass Effect 3 more in the EA post. Same with Future Soldier, Kinect support seems okayish, but not really necessary, and I'll talk about the game more in Ubi post. Gears of War 3 looks like Gears of War, no surprises. It looks like they are upping the ante a lot, and the Unreal Engine looks better than ever. Halo Anniversary edition, well, I guess it's neat. I played through Halo way back when, and they are definitely doing a lot to this game to bring it up the HD, that's about all I can say about that. Also, Halo 4. Start of a new trilogy they say, starring Master Chief again. I guess 343 Industries had to do something. Not too excited about that.

From the games, I'm probably most interested in the Tomb Raider reboot. I like the way it looks for sure, and I'm very curious to find out more. They showed a brief cave gameplay section, but it's hard to say what the final game is going to be about, apparently it's open world jungle or something. I'm looking forward to finding out more. Still not digging the new voice actress though. I heard a rumor that it's Keira Knightley, but I honestly can't tell.

Other interesting thing is the new Dashboard that will launch in Fall 2011. Since the release of first big dash update, they have been bolting on more and more things to it, it has become this massive bloated thing and none of it really works intuitively. So it makes perfect sense that they would refresh it now. It also seems like they are trying to finish the Kinect support for dash that they started with the last update. They only showcased some of the Kinect voice command support and introduced more features like YouTube and Microsoft's own search engine Bing. And some kind of Live TV support, but that's going to be so region specific that I didn't really pay too much attention.

And I guess that's about the end of Microsoft's thing.

E3 is here, but lets start with Konami's pre-E3 video

Kilu — Tue, 7 Jun 2011 07:37:37 EST

Oh hi. Long time no see. E3 is here and if you care about video games at all you should probably keep an eye out on the GameTrailers E3 Portal for all the trailers and gameplay they are going to roll out there.

So here's the thing. I was originally going to write one long ass article that would combine all the press event and highlight the... erm, highlights of each show, but then I decided that I would instead write an article for each of the big conferences, but also start with this pre-E3 Konami post. So, E3. Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Sony and Nintendo all have their live conferences, those are all going to get a post soon.

But I'll start with Konami, who released their hour long pre-E3 video couple days ago. It was not really a press conference as such, but more like a lot of meet the developers/behind the scenes stuff from various games Konami has in the works.

The most interesting news coming out of that one are the HD collections I think. Silent Hill, Zone of the Enders and Metal Gear Solid HD collections for both Xbox 360 and PS3, supporting achievements/trophies, redrawn textures, remastered audio etc etc. Sounds pretty sweet.
MGS collection includes Metal Gear Solid's 2, 3 and Peace Walker, Silent Hill Collection is Silent Hill's 2 and 3, and Zone of the Enders HD collection has ZoE 1 and 2. Also, at the very end of the video there was a Contra teaser. Nothing else about Contra was mentioned, so we'll see what it ends up being.

Other than that, the video showcased some of the upcoming games from Konami, all of which are pretty much known quantities at this point. Those games being Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 3D, Pro Evolution Soccer 2011, NeverDead and Silent Hill: Downpour. They also briefly mention that it's 25th anniversary of Castlevania and some other anniversary of Frogger. Yeah, Frogger.
They also visit Kojima Productions for a pretty absurd and corny section, that ended up revealing that Hideo Kojima's team is working on a multiplatform engine called Fox Engine. It looked pretty good on the brief demo they rolled, but nothing else about that. I would almost recommend checking out the video just for that last 20 minutes, because Kojima is apparently the most corny man in the existence.

And that was Konami.

Creating Video Game Sprites with Beads

Locke — Mon, 7 Mar 2011 05:01:57 EST

I thought I'd come on and post about my new hobby of sorts, beading. Not just any beading, but video game pixel art beading! I just started at it actually a few days ago, but I got inspired by various creations online. If you go over to google image search and punch in "perler" you'll see all sorts of creations by other pixel beaders. Perler is one of the brands of beads used to create these artworks. It's not hard to do, just a bit time consuming, but it can be a lot of fun and gets me away from the computer for awhile. You pretty much have a ton of these little coloured beads and a pegboard (or a few, as some projects can get pretty big) and you place the beads to create pictures.
Read full article at RPGN

Rpgamers Network on Steam

Marona — Thu, 6 Jan 2011 06:17:54 EST

Since we had a few people playing on Steam, I figured I would create a group for RPGN. Just a little place for us to share what games we have been playing on Steam, we can have get-togethers on games, or recommend games.

If any goers of RPGN wish to join, come into the irc channel (for those who are too lazy to figure out: irc.magicite.net #RPGN)

It's 'invite only' to prevent those who are not RPGNers from joining. I assure you it will be the same, friendly feel you have on RPGN.

See you soon!^_^

U.S. Supreme Court vs Computer and Video Games

Mystro — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 04:30:34 EST

Looks like computer and video game titles are getting a hit on there bottoms from the U.S. Supreme Courts in California. In April of this year the Supreme Court has argued that violent video games are not to be sold to minors. Wasn't there an argument about this a while ago, saying that violent video games are what makes "our" children the way they are? With some cases yes that would be true but to most it's the way of life that the children have been raised.

A group called VGVN (Video Game Voters Network), along side with several other companies and people are arguing against this law, saying that it isn't the governments right to set standards.

Quote:

The industry's ESRB rating system, considered the "gold standard" of entertainment ratings by the FTC, already enables consumers to make informed and appropriate purchase decisions.

We believe parents — not the government or industry — should be the ones to decide what games, movies, books are appropriate for their children.

Head over to the VGVN (Video Game Voters Network) to read up on whats happening.

French File-sharers in distress?

Marona — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 06:09:09 EST

Well, I figured this could be site news material since we have our own torrent page. But this just in (or couple of hours later), the French law (codename: Hadopi) of anti-piracy has been taken effect.

The law will have copyrighted infringers will be hunted down in an attempt to decrease piracy. Copyright holders are in the process in sending thousands of IP-addresses of allege infringers to Internet Service Providers and will increase to over a million in a couple of weeks. ISP's will have to hand over identities of the associated accounts within a week, or a fine of 1500 euros per unidentified IP-address.

Couple of comments on a blog says this plan would be a complete failure for serious file-sharers. This is because people could go on another network or wi-fi, or use a fake IP address. They also say it would be a complete waste of money and resources.

Now to come up with a witty comment...

...Spy sappin my torrents? (only few would get this joke) o_O

Kingdom Hearts will never reach to 'III'

Marona — Thu, 9 Sep 2010 01:50:49 EST

Sorry for things being slow around here (of course they have been slow, who couldn't guess it?). There are some games I'd like to post about.

As you can tell by the title, yes you guessed it, another 'Kingdom Hearts' game...well more of a 'port'. It's 'Kingdom Hearts: Coded' being port to the Nintendo DS as 'Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded' ('Re' coded...get it? Haha...) No news or announce date yet.

Speaking of 'Kingdom Hearts', there is a Disney game coming to the Wii.
Read full article at RPGN

Steam "Perils of Summer" sale

Kilu — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:33:30 EST

Just a quickie here, Steam has a sale happening for the next week and half dubbed Perils of Summer. Here's a quote from the news item at Steam.

Quote:

Each year millions of people are lured outdoors by the long, sun-drenched days of summer. With so many people spending the bulk of their time outside, it dramatically raises their risk of getting hurt. We urge you to play it safe, stay inside and save big with the "Perils of Summer" sale beginning today on Steam. Through July 4, gamers will find massive savings on today's top releases, classic titles, and publisher catalogs. In addition, special 1-day sales will offer discounts up to 90% off regular prices. Don't get caught without your sunscreen, the savings are hot.

So basically it looks like it's the same kind of system as the last holiday sales were. Crazy awesome daily deals and some more general but still awesome package deals as well as publisher catalog deals that span the entire sale period. At the time of this writing the first daily deals have 1 hour and 30 minutes left on them, remember to check back every day to see what the daily deals are.

I feel like I'm losing money just by not buying something every day.

Sony's conference doesn't surprise

Kilu — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:38:58 EST

Last of the big three, Sony's conference was some time after Nintendo. Aside from fully expecting to see more information about sequels that we already know about, lots of Move games and confirmation to whether my prediction for the Valve's Portal 2 surprise would pan out, I didn't really have any sense of what Sony would show.

There is some talk about 3D, but I don't think anyone cares about it, so I'll just leave that stuff out.

Killzone 3, as expected. It's more Killzone, more Helghast. Some gameplay is shown, will arrive worldwide in February 2011.

Sorcery, looks like a third person adventure sorcery game. Fitting title.

Heroes on the Move, sounds like a Move title. First party mashup, featuring at least Sly Cooper, Ratched & Clank and Jak & Daxter.

Move pricing and shipping date announced, but I blacked out there for a moment. Also, Kevin Butler was on stage for a moment, being Kevin Butler. You know, the guy who has been in all the awesome PlayStation 3 commercials.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta trailer, no gameplay at all. This is a PSP game I think.

Little Big Planet 2 shown on stage. Looks a lot like the first one.

PlayStation Plus subscription service for PSN. Seems like they are not taking away any of the free features (as in, you can still play online without the Plus subscription), and are just adding bunch of things to try and make a Plus service worthwhile. You can find full list of the features elsewhere, there's probably an official press release somewhere that can better explain it than I can.

The Valve "surprise" was deployed, and Portal 2 is coming to PS3. Called it, so it wasn't really a surprise to me. Gabe made a few jokes about how he has been very outspoken and critical about the PS3. Steam Cloud, Steam Achievements and auto-updating (just like on PC) confirmed for the PS3 version. That's neat, and a new thing on the consoles too. I wonder if Microsoft will respond to this in some way.

Final Fantasy 14 Online trailer shown, looks like Final Fantasy MMO alright.

Gran Turismo 5 lands on November 2nd.

Infamous 2 trailer is shown, as expected, ice powers confirmed.

New Twisted Metal game shown. Really? Car battles? I don't know man, but maybe it still works after all these years.

And that's the Sony's event. So, I totally called the Portal 2 on the PS3 thing a week ago after the second Valve email about the "surprise", and nothing else all that surprising or exciting happened. Check out all the trailers and gameplay at GameTrailers after you've read this post very thoroughly. Not sooner!

Nintendo's E3 event bets on your nostalgic side

Kilu — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:01:09 EST

Nintendo event happened yesterday, I started streaming this fully expecting to see Zelda, at least one Mario game, at least one minigame collection, and a few attempts to push my nostalgia buttons. Here are the highlights.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Short trailer and some gameplay as well as swordplay explanation mechanics explanations. Wii Motion Plus required, it seems. Kind of bummed about that, just give me a new Zelda game that doesn't require motion controls and I might buy the Wii.

Mario Sports Mix. Yet another Mario game. This time it's about sports, if you didn't guess as much from the title.

Wii Party. Some kind of a party game, surprisingly.

Just Dance 2. It's a dance game of sorts, you guessed it.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn for DS. Of what I remember, this looks totally like a Golden Sun game. So I guess that's good, right? Arrives this holiday season, North America, maybe globally.

New GoldenEye game for the Wii. Eh, really? Also, they replaced Pierce Brosnan with the new Bond, Daniel Craig. Weird. Looks GoldenEye alright, just better looking but kind of still looks like ass. I'm not a graphics junkie, but all the Wii games that try to go for a realistic look kind of just look ugly to me.

Epic Mickey demoed, looks okayish I guess. Third person action in the Disney universe could work.

Kirby's Epic Yarn, looks super fresh. This is how you make new games for the less powerful hardware. Definitely check out the trailer for this.

Dragon Quest 9 (for NDS) coming to retailers soon, beginning of July. Worldwide? Maybe?

Metroid: Other M shown, lands in August. This is old news isn't it.

Donkey Kong Country Returns, 2D platformer by the looks of the trailer, looks a lot like the DKC games on the SNES, landing this holiday season.

Nintendo 3DS announced, as was rumored. Dual screen, bottom in the touch screen, higher one is 3D screen, no glasses required.

Kid Icarus for the 3DS. Hate the music in the trailer.

More franchises for 3DS revealed, Metal Gear Solid, Kingdom Hearts, Resident Evil, Saints Row, Assassin's Creed, and Ridge Racer, all coming to 3DS at some point.

And finally, Reggie shows a weird trailer for the 3DS. 3DS is basically eating all the Nintendo guys in this one. So weird.

And that's that. So, my predictions were pretty spot on. Mario and Zelda, plus at least one, if not two, minigame collections, and pushing nostalgia buttons with Kid Icarus, GoldenEye and Donkey Kong Country. Too bad that I'm completely immune to such things! Overall it's was an interesting show I guess, but nothing here makes me want to buy a Wii. As usual, you can check out all the trailers and gameplay at GameTrailers if you feel up to it. I especially recommend that Kirby stuff.

Things from the Ubisoft event

Kilu — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:08:37 EST

This thing happened shortly after the EA thing, and here's a quick summary of what happened. Hoping for the Beyond Good & Evil 2 footage now.

Child of Eden demoed on stage, dude kind of conducted the game, white gloves and all. Strange stuff.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood trailer and gameplay, Ezio jumps on a horse, and the announcer tells us that there will be horse-fighting. That's fighting while riding a horse, not fighting against a horse. Although that would be pretty awesome too.

Shaun White Skateboarding demoed, looks like a skating game with some mechanics to alter the surfaces you skate on. Looks kind of neat I guess.

Battle Tag, which seems to be laser tag, but with some kind of online component thing on your PC. To keep scores and such I guess.

Innergy, looks like Nintendo's Vitality Sensor, except that this one is made by Ubisoft. Seems like a heartbeat sensor, something about controlling your breathing, reducing stress. Sure sure, this totally belongs to a game show.

Some Kinect stuff, some kind of sports games, as well as the same demonstration as they did on the Microsoft's Event for the Your Shape fitness thing.

Raving Rabbids game, Rabbids in Time, essentially. No actual gameplay is shown, just a funny little trailer. Coming only for the Wii.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is shown, seems neat. Active camouflage is always fun. Lots of bad guys getting shot in the head at very close range.

Driver: San Francisco shown. Tanner is back, but he is in coma, so that enabled him to jump to any car in the city. Seems like a neat gameplay mechanic, but coma? Weird. It's probably going to be very significant thing in the story later on. He is basically racing in San Francisco, but in his own head.

Project Dust, nothing much is shown from it. Something about some tribal dudes and how they lost their way and seems like the earth is pretty much imploding on itself on this one spot.

At this point Michel Ancel's name was dropped, so I totally got my hopes up for Beyond Good & Evil 2. Not today I'm afraid. Yves Guillemot (CEO of Ubisoft) was on stage speaking with his super heavy accent, so it was kind of hard to tell what was happening, but I think there are these Ubisoft's Art Tools that Ancel and his team helped to develop.

Rayman Origins. Rayman is back, and apparently it's being developed with the tools I just mentioned. Cool. I don't have any nostalgia for Rayman, but I don't mind this. Seems like a decent 2D platformer, with a co-op.

Trackmania and other Manias. Some kind of social platform thing, for RPG, FPS and racing games. Sure, Trackmania is kind of awesome, if they can duplicate that awesomeness to other genres, why the hell not.

Michael Jackson license, but no actual game is shown. Just some people dancing on stage, I guess they will announce a game later.

And that's that for Ubisoft. No Beyond Good & Evil 2. Future Soldier seemed like it could be a neat game, but overall really disappointing and slightly weird press event. You can check out all the trailers and gameplay at GameTrailers if you feel like it.

Electronic Arts press event happened

Kilu — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:55:56 EST

Sorry for not writing these sooner, but eh. I warned you. Here's what you need to know from Electronic Arts Event.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, developed by Criterion, the fine makers of Burnout games (Burnout Paradise is pretty good) show opening trailer. Cops and racers seems to be the theme in this one, lands November 17.

Dead Space 2: The Return of Isaac. I'm kidding, there's no subtitle in that, but I wish there was. Still, Isaac returns to strategically dismember more necromorphs.

Medal of Honor multiplayer footage, looking at the thing it's pretty clear that DICE is making the multiplayer component for this game. MP beta starts on 21st of June in North America, no idea if other regions get any beta love.

Staying on the shooters, some kind of a downloadable expansion coming to Batllefield: Bad Company 2 this winter. BBC2: Vietnam.

Some EA Sports stuff, MMA, Active 2, Madden 11. That's all I remember, I think I may have hit the can at that time.

Sims 3 on the consoles.

EA Partners hype, Jason West and Vince Zampella (former Infinity Ward heads, the makers of Modern Warfare 2) popped on stage.

Crysis 2 gameplay demo, announced also in 3D on all platforms.

Bulletstorm gameplay demo. Game lands 22nd of February.

Knights of the Old Republic MMO trailer, another FMV thing like last year. Something about everyone having their own ships.

And that's all for EA. You can check out all the trailers and gameplay at GameTrailers if you feel like it.

Highlights from the Microsoft E3 event

Kilu — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:25:15 EST

The event ended a little while ago, and here are the things that you should know about it.

Call of Duty: Black Ops trailer and live demo gameplay. The biggest surprise for me, no more silent protagonist. Seriously, the guy you play as talks. I like that, and the game looks pretty good in general as well. After that they announced an exclusive deal for all Call of Duty DLCs starting after the release of Black Ops. Might have been timed exclusive as well.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising trailer, showing a lot of sword gameplay, and a lot of cutting. Seems like you can slice very freely in that game. Like, there didn't seem to be any specific points in the bodies that piled up. Or any specific points in the watermelon either.

Cliff Bleszinski showed of some Gears of War 3, 4 player co-op, and some weird mutations. Love the lady COGs. Still looks totally like Gears though, no surprises there. I guess I need to play the second one before this comes out. I think that's sometime 2011 though, so I still got time.

Fable 3 trailer, looks totally like Fable 2, graphically and otherwise.

Some kind of an exclusive 360 game from Crytek called Kingdom. Only a live action trailer was shown, so who knows. The guys in it look straight out of Rome, so I guess it's set in that time period.

Halo: Reach single player campaign was shown, looks totally Halo like. Ends in a section with apparently space combat, so that's new.

Then all the Kinect (that's the new name for Project Natal that was announced yesterday on a separate event) stuff. Aside from the motion controls, it has voice recognition. Dude on stage demonstrated the usage in the dashboard as well as when watching movies and such. Seems like it works fine.

Kudo Tsunoda on stage presenting some games for Kinect, sports minigame collection, adventure minigame collection, some kind of kart racer called Joy Ride, and some kind of pet animal thingy, called Kinectimals. Seriously, I didn't make that name up. I don't really care about this stuff, but the animal thingy had this jumping rope part, and they totally did the matrix camera pan around the baby tiger. That was pretty funny, and the crowd love it too. Also, I think Kudo said WTF on stage when some other guy called him Lorenzo Lamas. Some third party Kinect stuff was shown, Your Shape exercise game from Ubisoft, Dance Central from Harmonix and a on-rails Star Wars lightsaber game from Lucas Arts. And Forza Motorsport guys showed some Kinect stuff, some driving and basically a virtual garage. Weird. Kinect launches in North America on November 4th, and they also mention that the worldwide launch is for the holiday season.

The show ended in the reveal of the rumored new slimmer Xbox 360 design. It's black and glossy, an absolute fingerprint magnet. They showed the comparison of size very quickly, but it looks like it's an inch or two shorter and generally slimmer. Not radically smaller though. The guy says that it's silent as well. We'll see about that. The new design looks kind of ugly and weird, not sure how that will look if it's not standing. Here's Major Nelson's Flickr gallery of the thing. I wish that they will eventually come out with something else than this glossy black finish. Ships with 250GB hard-drive, built-in WiFi, and replaces the current Elite SKU's price point, that's $299 I think. After the show they also revealed that the Arcade will get a price cut from $199 to $149, and the current Elite with 120GB hard-drive will go down from $299 to $249. The slim Xbox is shipping to retailers today, and should be available later this week.

Oh yeah, also, apparently everyone who showed up in the event got a free new Xbox 360. I don't think they were handing them out at the exit or anything, they probably shipped one for all the participants. Despite the design and glossy finish, I wouldn't have minded getting one for free.

Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3, is upon us

Kilu — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:41:43 EST

Well, almost. Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3 for short, is closing in fast. I believe the show floor will officially be open from 15th to 17th of June, but if previous years are any indication (and they are), lots of trailers for various games will start pouring out of every orifice you can think of. In fact, it has already started.

I was considering doing some live blogging during the major companies press events, but our posting system isn't really ideal for quick editing, so I don't know if that will happen. I may instead do something on the IRC channel (or make a dedicated channel for it, who knows), but that also remains to be seen. Of one thing you can be fairly sure, it's very likely that I will make summary posts after the important events at least. As usual, I don't have any special access or anything, I'm not on the floor myself, so I'm just going to tune in one of the live streams and see if anything interesting pops up.

But all this depends on whether or not I feel like it. I could be too busy playing Brütal Legend (it's pretty badass) or something. You never know.

In the meantime, here's the GameTrailers' E3 portal, that's a good place to look for the E3 trailers, starting now. I believe that GameTrailers is also one of the sites that is going to live stream the previously mentioned press events from at least Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, and you can probably find similar streams from GameSpot, G4TV and IGN, just to name a few.

I'm personally not really looking forward to a whole lot during the conference. Obviously a lot of focus this year will be on Sony's Move and Microsoft's Natal, both of which I couldn't care less about. I just have this sinking feeling that the focus will be too big and we won't get to see anything that is of interested to the "core gamer", as they say. Natal is still going to get renamed by the way, so that's one thing that's going to happen at MS's press event. I don't feel like there are a lot of games that we will see that we don't already know about, have already seen gameplay of, or just generally have a good idea of it.

Few things I'm looking forward to are the Valve's "surprise" event, one rumor has it that it's going to be the unveiling of Source Engine 2, which is entirely possible of course, but my money right now is still on the PlayStation 3 Portal 2, no matter how much I feel that it isn't really worth this big of a announcement.
Another thing that I'm hoping to see is Beyond Good & Evil 2. Anything from that game would be awesome, if only to put the rumors to rest that its development has been canned.
And the booth babes of course. Always looking forward to the galleries of booth babes.

Portal 2 not immune to Valve Time™, delayed to 2011

Kilu — Wed, 9 Jun 2010 05:39:04 EST

This is unfortunate, if somewhat expected, news. A little over a week ago Valve told us that the planned Portal 2 E3 event would be canceled, but it would be replaced by a "surprise". Today they have sent out another press release, that confirms what many were probably expecting, Portal 2 release has been delayed to 2011. I can't say I'm shocked or anything, and I can't really be all too bummed about it either, because of that awesome press release.

Quote:

VALVE ANNOUNCES MAKING GAMES IS HARD

June 9, 2010 -- Aperture Science, doing business as Aperture Laboratories LLC, in partnership with Valve today announced the successful completion of an ethics-review-panel-supervised release date restructuring process. Portal 2, the sequel to the ground-breaking title that earned over 30 Game of the Year awards despite missing its original ship date, is now targeted for a 2011 release.

Representatives from both companies acknowledged that public safety concerns factored into the decision. They went on to say that even though Portal 2 will arrive slightly later than planned, all life on earth won't instantaneously stop as every molecule in your body explodes at the speed of light, which is what would happen should a rip ever appear in the fabric of Valve Time.

"Also, the game will be even better," they added, missing an historic opportunity to create the first product delay press release to mention that a product is being delayed to make it worse.

To ask questions about how close we all came to dying, or to ask futile questions about the previously announced E3 ***PORTAL-2-THEMED-FOR-GOD'S SAKE*** surprise or, less futilely, to schedule an appointment to attend a Portal 2 screening at the Valve booth during E3, please contact Valve's delegate to the EU's Valve Time Studies Group, Doug Lombardi.

And there you have it. Even Portal 2 isn't immune to Valve Time™. Also take note that they insist that the "surprise" will be Portal 2 themed. So, if it's not Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or Half-Life 3, what then? A Portal 2 spin-off, starring the two robots that are apparently the co-op characters? Probably not. Portal 2 on PlayStation 3? Maybe. That's the likeliest of things that come to mind. But if it's that, I'm completely baffled that it would need this kind of hype.

Valve's Portal 2 E3 event replaced with a surprise

Kilu — Tue, 1 Jun 2010 04:59:42 EST

This news comes by the way of 1UP, as they, and probably some other gaming news outlets, got this little email from Valve.

Quote:

Dear Subject Name Here,

Aperture Science is pleased to inform you that we have partnered with Valve to announce the gala CANCELLATION of the June 14 Portal 2 event at the Regal Theater. The event will be replaced by a surprise. And even though the cancellation of the event certainly counts as a surprise, we are pleased to further announce that the cancellation of the event is not THE surprise. However, per International treaties regarding the definition of the word "surprise", of which both Aperture Science and Valve are signatories, the time, date and content of the actual surprise will only become available as you experience the surprise.

If you'd like to ask fruitless questions about the E3 Portal 2 surprise or, more fruitfully, schedule an appointment to attend a Portal 2 screening at the Valve booth during E3, please contact Valve's Special Envoy to Surprises, Doug Lombardi.

Thank you for <>

PS: The surprising record scratch is also not the surprise.

So, as you can see from the email (which is written in a very GLaDOS like manner ), the event was originally planned for June 14, but has now been replaced by a surprise. So, Half-Life 2 Episode 3 / Half-Life 3 anyone? I sure hope so. I can't really think what else it could be. A completely new IP is even less likely I think, and I wouldn't think they would cancel a Portal 2 event for anything less. And I also think that with the very recent release of Half-Life 2 and it's Episodes on the MAC, the brand might just have some new wind under it and what better way to make people play the older games than to tell them that "Hey, we are making more of these!", right?

I choose to believe it.

Lufia DS remake coming to North America

Locke — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:29:58 EST

It's been a long time since I first played the Lufia series, I remember picking up a copy of Lufia and the Fortress of Doom for SNES and I was instantly hooked. This remake actually bases itself from the second game, which is actually a prequel to the first game... still a good game, but just doesn't top the original! The Estpolis Biographies II soundtrack (which covers music from both the first and second game) is one of my favourite albums as well. Good games, good music, what more do you need? Anyways, getting off track here, on with the news:

After a long wait, Lufia is returning to North America as a Nintendo DS release. Natsume announced today that they have not forgotten their North American fans, and will be localizing the latest game in the series.

"We're elated that the beloved Lufia series will be making its triumphant return with Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals later this year," said Natsume CEO Hiro Maekawa. "We know players are going to be excited about this title when they get their first peek at it at E3 next month."

I definitely plan to give this game a try when it becomes available later this fall. Current media I have seen for it shows they did make some pretty major changes to the game, but hopefully not so much that the original classic has been lost entirely.

The new Alpha Protocol trailer is pure genius

Kilu — Fri, 21 May 2010 06:20:56 EST

I kind of lost interest in Alpha Protocol a while back, originally it seemed like it would be a cool spy game, but maybe it got delayed or something and I kind of forgot about it. This new trailer totally re-sparked my interest in it though.

Watch it on Youtube.

It's pure genius.

Grab your free Portal before May 24th!

Kilu — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:41:19 EST

Just a quick little ditty here. As you may remember, I wrote about Steam and the Valve games coming to Mac earlier this year. Well, now it's here. Now being a few days ago. But wait, there is more! Unless you somehow magically skipped the actual title of this post, you should by now know what the "more" is.

So, go grab your free copy of Portal, you have until May 24th. For either PC or Mac. Technically both, since it supports SteamPlay. SteamPlay is the thing that if you buy a game that supports it from Steam, you will automatically get versions for both the PC and the Mac. That's pretty sweet. But now you may wonder, "what good is this for me, I already own the game". Well guess what. It's no good to you, but tell your friends!

Here's the text from the official "Portal is FREE!" page, I thought it was pretty funny so I'm pasting it here.

Quote:

Portal used to cost money. Until May 24th, it's free. End of story.

Well, technically speaking, there are some strings attached. Fortunately, they're entirely decorative. We just like the way they look, swaying in the gentle breeze created by a million people simultaneously fainting from shock at the news that Portal is free. Now you have no reason not to try Portal.

"I have a reason," some of you are probably typing into an angry email. "You see, sir, I own a Mac."

Well guess what: For the first time ever, Portal is also available for the Mac.

"Capital news! But the excellent puzzle adventure Portal won over 40 Game of the Year awards; Surely it must cost at least five or six hundred dollars."

You'd think that, especially since it actually won over 70 Game of the Year Awards. But, like we keep saying, Portal is free. Free on the Mac. Free on the PC. But only until May 24th. So you only have a few days to decide if your free copy of Portal is worth the price we're currently charging - which is you ever-so-slightly moving your index finger just barely enough to click the big red "download" button right there to the left.

Capcom trailers flood the internet

Kilu — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:36:24 EST

This is all coming from Captivate 10, a Capcom press event that is apparently happening right now, or maybe it has already happened. I'm not in the loop man, I don't know any of this stuff. Anyways, there is a bunch of new Capcom trailers flooding the internet right now. Some of it is not that interesting, mostly because I feel like we have already seen quite a bit of Lost Planet 2, Super Street Fighter 4 and Dead Rising 2. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty excited about these games, especially SSF4, but I'm even more excited about some other things.

Like Bionic Commando ReArmed 2, Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and Ghost Trick. And I don't even own a DS, but Ghost Trick seems absolutely interesting, the music the trailer just kicks ass. And I'm not even hugely interested in fighting games in general, but the trailer for Marvel vs Capcom 3 looks pretty sweet. And I feel like also pointing out that the game is being done on the MT Framework. You know, the engine that is used in Resident Evil 5, Devil May Cry 4 and Lost Planet 2, among other things? It's going to look gorgeous. On the other hand, I'm not sure how I feel about the revolutionary jump ability on the BC ReArmed 2. It's just so new and magical. If you didn't know, GRIN, the developer of the first ReArmed, went under sometime ago, and as such ReArmed 2 is being developed by a different company called Fatshark. It appears that while some of the former GRIN guys went ahead and formed a new developer called Might and Delight, some also migrated to Fatshark, who happens to also be a Swedish developer like GRIN was. But I don't know any of this stuff, what do you want from me?

Oh right, there is also lot of footage of Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, but I don't know what that is. Looks like something I would not be interested in. At all. And Okamiden for the DS. I loved Okami, but Okamiden looks kind of sad.

So, click on the links on the post guys, and take a look. Maybe I'll link them all here again in a simple list for your convenience.

Lost Planet 2
Super Street Fighter 4
Dead Rising 2
Bionic Commando ReArmed 2
Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
Ghost Trick
Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes
Okamiden

Gears of War 3 coming in April 5, 2011, features ladies

Kilu — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 12:19:31 EST

Gears of War is this little known third-person character action game series with chest-high walls. Perhaps you have heard of it. Well, it's now official, the third Gears game has been announced, officially. I say officially, because of course we all knew that one would be coming eventually. Another reason is that the information of the announcement leaked to Xbox Live the other day through some kind of automatic update thing. The story goes that Cliff Bleszinski was due to appear in the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, to announce the game and show the trailer, but got bumped by another guest. Meanwhile, someone over at the Xbox offices forgot to turn the automatic update thing for Gears 3 off, and people were quick to catch it and take pictures of the dashboard.

Well anyways, the actual announcement came a few days later, as CliffyB was booked again in Jimmy Fallon, and this time didn't get bumped by anyone, and showed the trailer. Officially. The date has been set to April 5, 2011, but who knows if they can keep it. I don't really know Epic's track record in that regard.

I haven't played the second Gears yet, so I don't know what we can gather from this trailer, but what seemed like the obvious thing is the revolutionary addition of female COG soldiers. Yeah, ladies in COG armor, woo! Well, I did just buy used copies of Gears 1 and 2 on the Xbox 360, so I guess I have about a year to get up to date with the fiction.

Here's another link to the trailer, if you missed it when I linked it up there.

Square Enix CEO teases with the possibility of a Final Fantasy VII remake

Locke — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 05:42:57 EST

It's something that gamers ask for often; past favourites to be re-done and brought back with today's technology. Square Enix is familiar with the idea, having re-released many titles over the years. The one game that seems to have the loudest fan uproar is Final Fantasy VII, currently on top of the best sellers list for the PlayStation Portable.

For years now there have been rumors and false hope for the beloved classic to live again, however Square Enix president and CEO Yoichi Wada recently said that he would "explore the possibility" of a remake for Final Fantasy VII. "Right now we don't have a clear direction, but many fans have requested we remake Final Fantasy VII."

Previously Square Enix has said that a remake of the game would be "unrealistic", "tough to do in HD" and simply "not happening". However Yoshinori Kitase and Motomu Toriyama have both expressed a wish to remake Final Fantasy VII in the past.

Read full article at RPGN

Left 4 Dead 2 DLC: The Passing coming this spring

Locke — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:56:25 EST

The upcoming DLC: The Passing for Left 4 Dead 2 has been pushed back slightly. The addon content was previously listed for release in March, however is now listed for release this spring, so you may have to wait a little longer. This new content will find the current survivors meeting up with the original team, with some twists in-between. The original Left 4 Dead game will also be getting its own update later, which will contain story filler to bring us up to the meeting, as well as let us see some of the events from another perspective.

Valve assures us that the new content is much more then just a new campaign, and will include new game modes among other goodies. Some of the new features known thus far are outlined below.

* new firepower with the Gargantuan M60
* new melee weapon: Slashing Golf Club
* Introducing The Fallen Survivor
* Wicked Witch Bride
* L4D1 character cameos
* new game modes, and Valve stressed the plural

Read full article at RPGN