RPGamers Network: Complete News Coverage

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 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

McDonald's in Japan to train new employees using a Nintendo DS and eSmart

Locke — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:42:04 EST

It sounds crazy, but McDonald's restaurants in Japan believe using the Nintendo DS as an employee training tool will cut training time by half when compared to conventional methods. They are currently developing a proprietary software for the DS known as "eSmart". New part-time employees will be trained using software.

Nintendo already has strong ties to McDonald's over in Japan by offering the Nintendo Zone service in its restaurants, which allows customers to grab game demos, information and other exclusive content directly to their handhelds. I guess the employees wanted in on the action too! McDonald's plans to place two DS consoles at each of its locations in Japan, which totals up to about 7,400 new consoles. Excluding the software development, they estimate the program will cost about 200 million yen ($2.2 million USD).

I wonder which edition of the DS they will be using (DS/DSi/DSi XL), and if the systems will have a cool custom skin. Probably not. I hope we get a peek at the software once its ready, I am curious what it will teach and how this will be more effective then 'traditional' training.

Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver released in North America

Locke — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:18:23 EST

Nintendo has brought us some remake goodness today, officially releasing two new Pokémon games to the Nintendo DS line-up in North America, dubbed Pokémon HeartGold and Pokémon SoulSilver. If you haven't guessed yet, these are enhanced remakes of the 1999 video games Pokémon Gold and Silver for the original GameBoy. These new games were previously released in Japan back on September 12th, 2009 and have been commercially successful thus far, selling over 2 million units in the first six weeks. The game is still awaiting release in Australia (March 25th, 2010) and Europe (March 26th, 2010).

This time around the games are bundled with the Pokéwalker, the pedometer device pictured with this article. It interacts with the Nintendo DS game card via infrared signals and can hold one of your Pokémon characters. Walking with the Pokéwalker while it contains one of your Pokémon increases its experience and closeness. The device cannot be used to transfer Pokémon to other games however, as it will only return the Pokémon to the game card it came from. As you walk, you also earn "watts," a type of in-game currency that can be used to catch wild Pokémon and shop for items. The Pokéwalkers can also communicate with each other, allowing each player to get a free gift! So far it appears that this added bonus has not increased the retail game price as compared to previous titles.

Some rom dumps of the North American versions of the games were spotted online a few days prior to their official release by the release group Xenophobia. So far however, it seems that Nintendo's anti-piracy protection has been effective in causing random crashes for gamers trying to dive into the adventure early.

Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver can access the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and are also fully compatible with Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum games. Feel free to post your friend codes in the comments, as I plan to play through the SoulSilver version and wouldn't mind battling fellow visitors!

Gotta catch 'em all!

Final Fantasy XIII now available to the masses, but should you rush to get it?

Locke — Tue, 9 Mar 2010 12:58:54 EST

The day has finally come, we have counted the days. Final Fantasy XIII is now out! Quick, run to your nearest video game retailer and pick up a copy. Wait! Have you really heard what this game brings to the table? Let me share my first few hours of FFXIII experience with you.

Let me start with some basic information. For starters, I am playing the Xbox 360 version of the game, however I don't believe the actual game content differs between the two consoles. Also, I have only clocked a few hours of actual gameplay, so this is kind of a first impressions rant... if you will call it that.

My version of the game came on multiple discs, and some of the content is compressed so I expected some longer load times while playing. I haven't played the PS3 version, but I can say that I was fairly pleased with the game in this aspect. The load screens were brief and mostly just when changing maps or scenes. Battles flows smoothly and the videos present themselves with shine. That's another plus point: the game definitely struts its stuff. The opening video was great and it dives you right into the heat of battle.

But what is this? Instead of gaining experience and money for fighting, I get an arcade-style score and a rating out of 5 stars. This rating seems to be solely based on how fast I complete the battle like its a race, and the rating has some influence on item drops after the fight. Oh, and I forgot to mention I only control the leader of the party. You can have other party members in the fight with you, but they are computer controlled and you really don't have any say in what they do. Oh, and there are some rules you need to be aware of as well: the main character can't fall in battle. Your allies can die and you can revive them, but if you are down its game over, even if the rest of the team is still kickin'.

Read full article at RPGN

Valve games coming to Mac, officially

Kilu — Mon, 8 Mar 2010 11:01:46 EST

I'll keep this one short.

Like I posted just a few days ago, based on the GameInformer article, Portal 2 is coming to PC, Xbox 360 and Mac. Some days before that I posted about the beta testing of the Steam client, which has a new gui, but also dumps the Internet Explorer backend it has been hooked on since the beginning. Valve guys were also teasing us with various pictures that put well known Valve properties in Mac-like situations. And now, since Steam is no longer tied to Windows and IE, Valve has finally officially announced that it's bringing the Steam platform and the Source game engine to Mac. Full news article at the link, but I'll sum it up here for your convenience.

So, all these older Source games, and the Steam platform will be available for Mac in April. That's pretty soon. I don't know anyone who has a Mac, and quite frankly I don't know anything about them. Can you even play games on them? I guess you can. If Valve says so, I must believe it. If Gabe Newell says so, who am I to disagree. Valve considers Mac to be "Tier-1" platform for them, along with PC and Xbox 360. Total zinger at the PS3 camp right there! BOOM!

Additionally, they are introducing a feature called Steam Play. Basically it's a fancy term for your digital copy of a game carrying over from PC to Mac, or vice verca. You buy just one copy, but can play it on both platforms, and with the help of keeping your save games in the Steam Cloud, you can continue the same game from where you left it on the other platform. Apparently this also extends to multiplayer things, so both Mac and PC guys will be able to play against each other in Team Fortress. None of this Steam Play stuff works in Xbox 360, so the console guys will have to continue to play with themselves, err, I mean amongst themselves?

So look forward to it, if you own a Mac.

Portal 2 officially announced for Holiday Season 2010

Kilu — Sun, 7 Mar 2010 10:33:12 EST

You may have heard during the last week that Valve was teasing us with some Portal related mysteries, and the community and fans of Portal went completely bonkers trying to solve all the things Valve threw at them. First they updated the game a few times, added a new Steam Achievement to the game, extended ending, all kinds of crazy things. You can read more about it elsewhere on the internets, there is too much to recap for the purposes of this little news posting.

Well guess what it all was leading to? Yeah, you guessed it (or read the title of this post), Portal 2 is coming, officially. GameInformer magazine has the scoop in the latest print, but you can already find scans of the mag on the internets if you are too cheap (or too foreigner) and can't get your hands on the print. They also have this hub set up to reveal more things about it during the month. So, if you are interested, I'm pretty sure you won't have trouble finding more info about this game.

So, what have they revealed so far? It appears that it's going to be a full priced game this time, co-op multiplayer of sorts at least, starring two robots. Yep, robots. Chell is still the protagonist of the single player experience, don't worry. And that's about all I know right now. I haven't read the GameInformer story myself yet, but based on the images on it that don't seem to be concept art, it seems to be running on a new Valve engine, and looks extremely sharp. Source Engine 2.0 or something? Who can say.

Quite frankly I would have been more excited if they had announced a new Half-Life game in the Portal game. How awesome would that have been? I mean, I'm totally pumped that a new Portal game is coming, but HL2:Ep3 would have been even more awesome. Though Gabe Newell is set to receive the Pioneer Award at GDC next week, so who knows, maybe they'll have more announcements to coincide with that. Maybe? Hopefully.

New Steam UI approaching

Kilu — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:19:06 EST

Hey! Steam interface bogging you down since 2003? Does it depress you that it hasn't really changed at all in the following 7 years?? I guess you (and I) are in luck, because Valve is finally redesigning the UI, and doing some other pretty significant back-end work for their Steam digital delivery/community/multiplayer/store thingamajig. As I implied on the post title, this new UI is not out yet as is, but you can opt-in for the beta right from your Steam app. Just head to settings, and choose the UI update from the beta participation drop-down menu, right in the account tab. This will prompt you to restart Steam, at which point it will update to the beta. Couldn't be easier.

The first thing from the list of changes that really stands out to me, aside from the shiny new look, is that they have finally gotten rid of the Trident rendering engine dependency. For those who are not in the loop, that means Steam will no longer use Internet Explorer to display their shit in. Before, for example, if you would browse a gallery of screenshots through Steam, it would open in a window that would say Internet Explorer on it. This is no more. Their new rendering engine is based on WebKit, which also powers Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers, so that side of things is in good hands now.

Anyone who knows me probably also knows how I feel about web standards, Internet Explorer, etc etc, so I'm all for this change. The major UI changes that come with it is a bonus, but not why I'm excited about this. If you feel like there is something that you don't like about it, you can click the neat button on the upper right corner that says beta on it, which redirects you to the support forums. I'm not entirely sure, but you probably need a separate account for the forums (NOT your Steam account) to actually post in there, but if you really want to get yours heard, that's the way to do it. But keep in mind that this is beta, so if you are uncomfortable with such things, maybe it's not for you, yet.

Here's a little shrunken down image of one of the possible ways that you can use to view your (or mine, in the case of the image) game library now. Click on the image to check out the full list of changes and a scrolling slideshow of other screenies of the interface.

Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx has arrived

Locke — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:43:52 EST

Borderlands continues to grow larger as the third downloadable content arrives this week. If you are willing to cough up another $10 (or 800 MS points) you can grab yourself Gearbox's third addon, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. It has been announced that this should be released today for the Xbox Live Arcade and will come on Thursday for PlayStation Network and PC. Here is a brief list of what this new content brings with it, as well as a few new screens after the break. If you want to see a full list of fixes, check out the official release notes.

* Almost twice the size of The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned
* A brand new class of ultra-rare / kick-ass weapons
* Three new vehicles: the Monster, the Racer, and the Lancer
* the Racer allows for four players to ride at once!
* 40+ new missions
* An exciting story line that picks-up where the original game left off
* Close to 30 new villain types
* A level cap increase from 50 to 61
* More difficult villains and smarter AI

Read full article at RPGN

TrackMania Wii debut trailer is out

Kilu — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:45:55 EST

Hey, ever played this fun game called TrackMania on the PC? Well I have! Quite a while back I played the free (yes, free) TrackMania Nations, with crazy custom loops, jumps and weird weird tracks. Well, as you may know (because we posted about it), TrackMania is coming to Wii, and now they have released a debut trailer for it.

Looks like everything that made TrackMania what it was on the PC is also in the Wii version. Yes, that means track editor as well. I wonder what kind of plans they have for custom tracks though. On the PC you could just run dedicated servers with your own custom tracks and let people join in, but with the way Wii handles the whole internet gaming (friendcodes, gah), it's interesting to see what kind of set up Nadeo is cooking up for this.

The game is going to support Wiimote + Nunchuck combo, Wii Wheel and a "gamepad". Presumably this means only Classic Controller, and not GameCube controller, but the jury is still out on that one. I'd personally instantly opt for the classic pad option, steering a car with a floating wheel just isn't my thing, Wiimote + Nunchuck sounds even less appealing.

Click the image below to watch the debut trailer.

Magicite server downtime, site updates

Locke — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:22:53 EST

For the past two days, we have been completing some maintenance on the Magicite server (which hosts our torrent tracker and IRC chatroom, as well as a few sub-sites) to try and recover data from a damaged hard disk. I did manage to recover some data, but the disk is now toast, and new hardware has been installed. Unfortunately this has also caused the server IP to change, but DNS changes should already be propagating for our domains, and there should be no further downtime regarding this situation.

I also just wanted to post a little blurb letting you all know that we are actually making some progress with the control panel and site back-end. Although most of the changes in the last few weeks are not visible to our general readers, we have been making many fixes and tweaks around the site. For instance, you can now search the news at the bottom of each news page, and can also subscribe to our RSS feeds. Custom feed options such as category sorting will come soon as well. The lyrics search function has also been re-written and works a little better. The control panel is coming along, and has also been given a bit of a facelift. Hopefully we can have it fully functioning soon. (I won't dare guess a date, or we certainly won't make it!) Anyways, just wanted to say that we are not dead!