Monthly Archives: August 2008

Steam News brings word that puzzle-shooter Portal’s yours for $10 this weekend. If you haven’t already played it, do. ‘Nuff said.

According to Shacknews, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky’s been delayed “a few days” in the US, as copies shipped to stores have been recalled.

The problem, says Bluesnews, is that initial shipments didn’t contain CD keys.

Clear Sky was supposed to release on September 5.

Whoops. IGN’s given Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice 6.7/10, which in real terms means “fail.” Snip:

If you don’t have a huge budget and you need to get a lot of play time out of a single title, Disgaea 3 is certainly a great option, as you’ll be playing it for months — even years. But having to sacrifice so much in terms of graphics and mechanical implementation is unnecessary. Ultimately, I think Absence of Justice is just the repackaging of a formula that’s passed its prime.

Make of that what you will. There are four new movies here, too.

Turbine’s inviting applications for the final stage of the Mines of Moria beta, so go over to the official site and fill in your details if you want to get involved.

The Lord of the Rings Online expansion’s listed as a Q4 release on Gamespress, and there’s a UK press event for it in late September, so you’ll be able to be a non-beta Moria inhabitant before too long, anyway.

On IGN. There’s one called “Dirty, Dirty Horde,” which is obviously great. We haven’t read through the list, but there’s bound to be spoilers there, so don’t blame us if you end up staring out of the window this afternoon dreaming about what could have been.

Speaking to IGN, Gears of War 2 dev lead Cliff Bleszinski has poured cold water on the idea of a PC version of the shooter sequel. Basically, Epix isn’t making one.

“Gears of War is a great franchise first and foremost for Xbox 360, and therefore we’re focusing on that platform for Gears of War 2,” he said. “We’ve decided we’re not going to do a PC version this time around.”

So there you go. Boo hoo PC gamorz, etc.

After the link. The quality’s not amazing, but you can see what’s going on. Basically, poor old Nathan’s in a spot of bother. Don’t spoil yourself if you want to stay fresh for what is almost certainly going to be one of the biggest games of the year. Do if you don’t.

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According to this PS3F story, the Home beta client’s been updated to version 0.98, apparently adding a bunch of new features such as a few redesigned locales, like a brand new Home Square.

“A new music application is being added to the central square as a meeting place for Home’s virtual citizens,” says the piece. “Here, they can listen to music as a group and even virtually dance.”

Did we mention we’re not on the Home beta? Well, we’re not. More through the link.

Mythic’s Mark Jacobs has trashed Bobby’s Kotick’s estimation that it would take $1 billion to compete with World of Warcraft, describing his posturing as “nonsense.”

“When certain people throw out ridiculous numbers, you know they’re throwing out ridiculous numbers because they want to scare off competition or they want to make themselves seem invincible and that sort of nonsense,” he told MTV.

“Realistically, if you’re going into this space for the first time, and you want to compete with WoW and you want to compete with us — because we’re going into that same space — you’ve got to make sure that you have at least 100 million dollars.”

Warhammer Online has now gone gold and will ship in September. More through the link.

East Coast PAX – it was announced at the beginning of August, kids – has been firmed up today, and is now confirmed to be taking place in Boston in 2010.

From 1UP:

The official opening of Penny Arcade Expo 2008 is still a few hours away, but we were able to sit down with Penny Arcade creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik to discuss various and sundry PA-related things. Notably, they dropped the news that their next big project — a second yearly Penny Arcade Expo set on the East Coast — is slated to debut in Boston in 2010. The new PAX, which will complement rather than replace the existing Seattle event, is still in the planning stages, but the duo has been determined to return to the city since delivering a presentation at MIT a few years ago.

Thanks, EvilAvatar.

According to this AFP report, more than 4 million Chinese teenagers are addicted to “unhealthy” online games and the internet in general.

Citing the Beijing Times, the piece said the number accounts for around 10 percent of Chinese internet users under the age of 18.

The report’s asking for measures to log players out from MMOs automatically after set periods.

Tons more through there. Thanks, Edge.

Kotaku’s posted five new Fallout 3 videos here. Apparently this lot totals another 20 minutes of gameplay from the Bethesda RPG.

We’re on a very sketchy 3G connection on the Isle of Wight, so look at them over there and spare us the pain of grabbing the code.

Eurogamer has reviewed Sony’s new set-top box, PlayTV, giving it 8/10.

This of course means the all singing, all dancing, record-the-telly-whilst-you-play-Resistance 2, £69.99 wonder is as good as Halo and MGS4, but not quite as good as GRID or Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

However, if that doesn’t sell it you, you can read more about it through the link.

PlayTV will be available in the UK from September 10.

By Mike Bowden

Square Enix just formally announced its Tecmo bid in an English press release, saying its intentions are “friendly” and consent’s needed for the move from the Tecmno board by September 4.

“We believe that Tecmo will be able to make a great leap forward by joining the Square Enix Group, which will provide the group with further growth opportunities as well,” said the statement.

“We are planning to position Tecmo as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Square Enix Holdings maintaining Tecmo’s current organization and brand as in the cases of Square Enix and Taito.”

Press release after the link. News of the move first emerged this morning.

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BioWare’s announced the first proper details of the content creation tools in upcoming RPG Dragon Age: Origins this morning, the first proper announcement from PAX 08.

In a nutshell:

• Create Original Adventures – Using the rich set of Dragon Age assets and locations as starting blocks, users can modify these stunning areas by adding new quests, characters and scripting to craft their own adventures, fate-defining conversations and cut-scenes.
• Powerful Script Editor – Users can fully customize combat and creature AI, allowing them to create detailed action sequences full of heart-pounding party-based tactical combat.
• Content Creators Community – BioWare plans to have a dedicated community area online where content creators can share content easily and get content updates for the toolset.
• On-Going Toolset Content Updates – BioWare plans to release additional assets and features for the toolset in the future, allowing for expanded creation of new areas.

Sounds groovy. Game’s out for PC early next year.

Press release after the link.

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Both Sony Japan and Level-5 have updated their White Knight Chronicles pages with the (roughly) translated text, “The days of awakening is coming soon.”

TGS please thanks. There’s some new artwork up on the Sony page as well. So look.

Thanks, PS3Hyper.com

Bethesda’s Peter Hines has refused to confirm differences made to the Australian build of Fallout 3, saying talk of cuts made to the game to get it passed the OFLC was “presumptuous.”

“It would be presumptuous to assume what that build did or did not contain at this point,” he told VG247. “We’re still in the process of going through and getting rated everywhere in the world right now and so, I wouldn’t define it as being ‘cut’ or ‘lesser’ [than any other] version.

The game was refused classification in Australia for drug use references, but has subsequently been passed by the board. It was thought that changes were made to the way the player takes drugs in the game, specifically to the animations associated with smoking something that looks like a crack pipe.

Hines, however, wouldn’t be drawn.

“It is the version that’s coming out in Australia,” he added. “We don’t get into describing differences between builds, but it would also be premature to talk about what’s different in this build until we’re done with every build, because we have no idea what’s going to come up with everybody else until we’re done.

“I would just say that we went into the ratings process with our eyes wide open about what that was going to be like with all these different agencies.”

Did Bethesda expect to run into trouble with certain ratings bodies?

“No comment.”

Post apocalyptic RPG Fallout 3′s looking pretty damn swish. The game’s out at the end of October for PC, PS3 and 360.

An Assassins Creed-themed PEGI video hit Danish television this week, of a man dressed as Altair telling parents about violence and the appropriateness of certain games for their children.

This isn’t all the Danes have done to bring parents up to speed, however. A website entitled Mediarådet (Media Advice) has been set up with a special section relating to video games. There’s stuff in there for kids to discuss with their class at school and lots of help and information for adults about how to recognise what games are suitable for their children.

There’s even an article that looks philosophically at the question of whether games are harmful or not. Surprisingly, it’s one that doesn’t jump to conclusions and recognises that there are differing opinions on the matter, and even links to a research note that outlines the empirical data collected so far.

You can see the PEGI video down below, and hopefully soon we’ll be getting some English equivalents on British television before too long. Although, in fairness, the British Government did give itself until autumn 2008 “to begin raising awareness of videogame ratings to the general public.”

The sooner the better.

By Mike Bowden

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Speaking in this fansite interview on MundoRare, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise lead designer Justin Cook has confirmed that there’s no plans for any Viva 2 DLC at the moment, and that the team itself will be moving off onto something completely non-Viva related after the game ships.

“We don’t have any plans for DLC,” he said.

“As far as the team is concerned we are taking a break from VP for a while to make something new. But things change quickly in the software industry so next week it may be a completely different story.”

Hot shit. No Viva 3? The game’s out next Friday. That’s next Friday. Buy the fucking thing. Make the magic happen.

Jonny Ebbert, lead designer on Dawn of War II, has said the reason the Tyranid race didn’t go into the first Dawn of War because there was no time and the game’s tech was young.

“We actually wanted to put them in the original Dawn of War but it was a very quick project and the engine was new, and we weren’t sure that we could do everything with the Tyranids that we wanted to do,” he said.

“With the sequel we got our next generation engine, and we knew that we could roll out the Tyranids in a way that would be really exciting.”

The Tyranids were confirmed for Dawn of War II as THQ’s Leipzig announcement for the game. Watch Ebbert speak after the link.

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