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| by Timmy Walnuts | April 17th, 2009 - 1:57 pm
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The Xbox Live Arcade has continuously been releasing quality products that help fill the void between official Xbox 360 releases, even offering such classics that demand attention by all gamers alike. Some may stand the test of time, but most must suffer the curse of mediocrity. Some strive to meet that desire for simple addictions, while others vie for innovation in a merging of genres, and if you’re looking for an in-depth story, gripping and significant RPG elements all packaged nicely together in a puzzle game, then Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is not quite right for you.
However, if you’re into Bejeweled and any of its clones, or are a fan of puzzle games in general, then PQ:G may offer a refreshing twist for series veterans, as well as those new to the puzzling phenomenon.
As you begin your journey into Galactrix, you’ll be greeted by a less-than-lackluster story. Four mega-corporations (an allegory for the America’s economy, perhaps?) have gradually overtaken the entire universe as superpowers through their invention of and command over the LeapGates, a warp system utilized by the galaxy’s inhabitants. As a pilot atop his or her class, the protagonist you control will bring you through an atypical science-fiction fare, just as predictable as it is forgettable. Yet, even with the plot’s shortcomings and mediocre RPG elements, PQ:G produces a puzzle scheme similar to its predecessors, but with some tweaked game modes.
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| by Danny Internets | April 15th, 2009 - 3:05 pm
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American director Gore Verbinski recently announced that he will surrender the helm of the extremely successful Pirates of the Caribbean franchise ($2.6 billion international gross) in order to pursue a new oceanic film project entitled Bioshock, after the multi-platform first-person shooter of the same name by 2K Games.
Verbinski was expected to direct a fourth installment of Pirates, but recently broke the news to producer Jerry Bruckheimer that he would prefer to bring the sunken city of Rapture to life on the silver screen. Also signed on to the project is screenwriter John Logan, whose credits include Sweeney Todd, The Last Samurai, and Gladiator.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s gunning for an R rating?
We’re prepared to make it an R-rated movie. I don’t intuitively see it as PG-13. The content and the graphic nature of the story itself is smarter than that. It’s not for young kids.
The utopian references and the way the characters and world are drawn in that delightfully inspired Jules Verne and Ayn Rand style places the film in a more elevated realm. It’s the realm of a graphic novel. It has to have that edge.
Source
If you’re anything like me, you just squealed, flapped your hands around, and maybe peed a little (it happens).
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| by Danny Internets | April 14th, 2009 - 2:26 pm
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Last week, Japanese gaming rag Famitsu revealed a new JRPG called End of Eternity two days in advance of the game’s teaser website, which featured a countdown to the grand unveiling. The full-featured EoE website went live on schedule and now boasts a debut trailer with some impressive CG-rendered video, though no gameplay footage is featured.
Developed by tri-Ace and published by Sega, End of Eternity takes place in the future and, unlike most virtually all of its contemporaries, features gun-based combat, which has already earned it innumerable comparisons to the defunct yet beloved Parasite Eve games. EoE marks the first project that tri-Ace, best known for its Star Ocean franchise, has worked on without Square Enix. It’s also the first time that they’ve developed a game for release on the Playstation 3.
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| by Danny Internets | April 11th, 2009 - 5:29 pm
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It appears as though someone over at Mondoxbox.com has obtained an advance copy of Game Informer and scanned images of the feature story on Assassin’s Creed 2 for public consumption. Earlier this month, Ubisoft unveiled a teaser website for the hotly anticipated sequel, follow up to the 2007 smash hit in which players travel back in time to roleplay as Altair, an assassin in medieval Jerusalem.
This time around, Altair is replaced by Ezio Auditore de Firenze, an Italian protagonist (from Florence) and assassin operating in Venice during the Renaissance. The article describes a number of new features, such as being able to utilize a da Vinci style hangliding device and swimming in the canals to both approach and escape from enemies. It appears that the AI has also been improved, with more intelligent enemies capable of investigating hiding places, especially if they have been used by Ezio before. Perhaps most interesting of all is the fact that players can now use any of the weapons wielded by enemies, as depicted in screenshots where Ezio dispatches foes with a polearm formerly carried by a city guard.
The article over at Mondoxbox can be found here:
http://www.mondoxbox.com/news/16117/assassin-s-creed-2-scan-in-alta-qualita-da-gi.html.
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| by Timmy Walnuts | March 31st, 2009 - 4:04 pm
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If you’re old enough, you may remember the first truly addictive first person shooter developed and published by then fledgling gaming company id Software. This shooter became a staple for the genre, blazing a trail for other landmark titles. Simply known as Wolfenstein 3D, the game blended graphic violence with fantastical story, pitting the protagonist against an entire castle full of Nazis, with only a knife and pistol at your disposal as you break free of your jail cell. With groundbreaking gameplay and plot, the inevitable controversy came to light very soon after the games release. Not only was it deemed too violent, the use of the Nazis and their symbols garnered a banning from Germany on all versions of the game (besides the SNES version, which took out the Nazis. But who wants Wolfenstein without killing them?). Although Wolfensteing 3D received a lot of negative press, id Software never looked back and continued to churn out genre-molding, legendary games in the likeness of Doom and Quake.
With the superior 3D graphical engine created, many developers utilized it to create notable first person shooters/fantasy. One company, however, housed the technical wherewithal to develop further installments of two very popular id Software series. Beginning their career using the Doom engine, Raven Software developed many games under the Heretic/Hexen game series, all formally published by id. Starting as primarily PC developers, Raven has progressed throughout their twenty year lifespan to working with consoles as well, most recently developing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance to generally positive reviews. With their success and collaboration with id, Raven was granted a shared development over Quake 4, and now were given the spotlight again for the next installment of Nazi slaughtering that will be Wolfenstein.
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| by Danny Internets | March 26th, 2009 - 11:15 am
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Survivors get the smack-down with Valve’s most recent patch to its zompocalyptic first-person shooter, Left 4 Dead. Formerly spammable melee attacks by the survivor team now come with a short cooldown, which goes a long way towards addressing incessant whining concerns from the community:
Game and client changes
- Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down
- Boomer vomit will now pass through common infected
- Addressed some surround sound detection issues
- Fixed a rare crash when exiting Left4Dead on Windows Vista
- Fixed a case where the complete all expert campaigns achievement was not being rewarded
Dedicated server changes
- Corrected an issue where Windows based dedicated were sending spurious shutdown notifications to the master causing them to delist temporarily
- Fixed dedicated servers not resetting the versus team swap correctly–you could join a dedicated server that had a previous game that was swapped and arrive on the other team than what was selected in the lobby
- Renamed the tags for sv_search_key to use “key:” in the server tags instead of “sv_search_key.” This should help with issues of the 63 character limit of server tags
- Fixed an occasional server crash related to voting
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| by Danny Internets | March 26th, 2009 - 9:20 am
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While this footage is already featured at virtually every gaming website this side of China, I would be remiss in not posting it here in case some folks haven’t stumbled upon it yet.
A teaser trailer to the sequel to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, one of the greatest first-person shooters ever made (both online and offline), was debuted yesterday at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The phrase “teaser” certainly holds true here; no actual in-game footage is shown, however intense loyalty and respect for the franchise gives it license to be perhaps a bit more coy than usual.
Worth noting is that the Call of Duty prefix seems to have been omitted from the game’s title. No word yet whether or not this is an official change, or just a short-hand way of referring to the game in the trailer.
Release date: 11/10/09.
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| by Danny Internets | March 24th, 2009 - 11:03 am
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Good things come to those who wait. That is, unless you’ve been waiting for Fallout 3’s newest DLC, The Pitt.
After having been delayed until the end of March, The Pitt was finally released today by Bethesda Softworks to Xbox and PC users. To the dismay of its fans, many of whom stayed up past midnight to be the first to experience the DLC hot off the presses, the release is apparently so riddled with bugs that the game is unplayable under most circumstances.
Within minutes of The Pitt’s debut, internet forums buzzed angrily with reports of a myriad of bizarre technical problems ranging from out-of-place smoke stacks to floating objects (trees, barrels, rocks, etc.) to system instability. While not game-breaking, perhaps the most obvious issue with the game is the presence of numerous red exclamation point boxes (pictured above) dotting the landscape, which are used in other Bethesda games (such as Morrowind and Oblivion) to indicate missing texture files.
Apart from its cosmetic problems, a number of serious glitches also plague the expansion. Most notably, users report that the downtown area of the city itself, an activity hub integral to advancing the story among its other uses, causes repeated system crashes at the loading screen upon entry. PC users complain of both constant crashing to the desktop and hard lock-ups requiring a cold reboot. For many, the game is simply unplayable in its current state.
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| by Danny Internets | March 23rd, 2009 - 11:47 am
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In a press release issued this morning, Microsoft has confirmed that Valve’s upcoming DLC for Left 4 Dead, the Left 4 Dead Survival Pack, will be released on April 21. The developer has previously announced that the release will be simultaneous across platforms, so this is equally good news for PC gamers.
This will also coincide with the release of the Critic’s Choice collectors edition of the game.
Best news of all? It’s free.
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| by Danny Internets | March 23rd, 2009 - 9:24 am
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Fans of film noir story-telling and hard-boiled, bullet-dodging detectives rejoice! Rockstar Games officially announced today that Max Payne 3 is on the way:
New York, NY – March 23, 2009 – Rockstar Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), is proud to announce that Max Payne 3 is currently in development and scheduled for a winter 2009 release on the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and PC. Developed by Rockstar Vancouver, Max Payne 3 tells the story of a retired police detective embroiled in a world of corruption, turmoil and intense violence.
The award-winning Max Payne franchise put players in the role of Max Payne, a hard-boiled New York City detective with a penchant for violence, out to avenge the death of his family. The latest installment delivers more of the classic elements and hyper-intense action that fans have come to love, while moving the story of Max in a new direction.
“We’re starting a new chapter of Max’s life with this game,” said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. “This is Max as we’ve never seen him before, a few years older, more world-weary and cynical than ever. We experience the downward spiral of his life after the events of Max Payne 2 and witness his last chance for salvation.”
Since leaving the NYPD and New York itself behind, Max has drifted from bad to worse. Double-crossed and a long way from home, Max is now trapped in a city full of violence and bloodshed, using his weapons and instincts in a desperate search for the truth and a way out.
Max Payne 3 will be available in winter 2009 for Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3 and PC.
For more information, log onto www.rockstargames.com/maxpayne3.
Source
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