Monthly Archives: January 2009

On sale Tuesday 20th January, the latest issue of Official PlayStation Magazine UK will have the first official Killzone 2 review, Future publishing announced this morning.

Not only do you get a review, you get a “highly collectable” holographic wallet which has an image of a Helghast trooper on it and it also “shifts colour as the light catches it.”

“Killzone 2 is without doubt the best looking game on the PlayStation 3, and we wanted to come up with a treatment that mirrored the visual voodoo which the development team at Guerrilla Games has pulled off,” said Tim Clark, Editor in Chief of Official PlayStation Magazine UK.

“We couldn’t be happier with the finished results.”

David Wilson, UK PR Manager at Sony Computer Entertainment UK, added:

“Killzone 2 has been a long time in the making, and best showcases why PlayStation 3 is the only console powerful enough to deliver a ground-breaking title of this nature. Who better to partner with than the Official PlayStation Magazine, in order to offer the readers a special collectors edition issue. It’s a great way to celebrate the launch of this milestone game.”

Expect the internet to go Killzone 2 crazy from this point onwards. We’ll be doing our level best to keep up.

Full details after the break.

By Mike Bowden

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THQ and Relic have confirmed that Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II has gone gold.

The excellent looking RTS is a PC exclusive and will be released on February 19th.

“Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II will build on the critical acclaim and commercial success of the Dawn of War franchise, letting players experience RTS gaming like never before,” said Kevin Kraff, vice president of global brand management for THQ.

“Combining non-linear gameplay, cooperative multiplayer, cinematic visuals, and destructible battlefields brings a new, innovative dynamic to the genre.”

All our Dawn of War II coverage can be found here.

Full release after the break.

By Mike Bowden

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Communications agency Bastion is auctioning off a life-size Pirates of the Caribbean Jack Sparrow statue in order to raise money for the GamesAid charity.

The bidding on Ebay is now at £130 which is nothing these days, so you’ve really got no excuses.

GamesAid “distributes funds to a diverse range of charities; it is a means of giving something back on behalf of the industry.”

Go bid.

By Mike Bowden

Capcom has announced that the Resident Evil 5 demo will be coming to PlayStation Network on February 2, one week after its released on Xbox Live.

There was some confusion as to whether the demo was making it’s way to PS3 when both Capcom and Sony had nothing to say on the matter last week.

Resident Evil 5 is released on March 13.

By Mike Bowden

Call of Duty World at War developer Treyarch has unlocked the “Nacht der Untoten” playlist meaning that everyone can now fend off wave after wave of zombies with up to three of your mates on Xbox Live or PSN.

This gametype was previously only available to those who completed the single player campaign.

If doubling your XP matters to you, then you still can up until 6pm tonight, Eurogamer informs.

By Mike Bowden

Sony Online Entertainment has release a batch of new images for it’s DC Universe MMO and we’re getting more excited, the more we see of it.

Only last week were we treated to three developer walkthrough videos showing off the game’s character customisation capabilities.

In more SOE news, you can now download its titles from Steam, in case you didn’t already know.

Still no DC date as yet, unfortunately.

Images after the break.

Update: A rather excellent bit of Superman art added and a brand new trailer.

By Mike Bowden

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According to Edge, Rockstar has announced that bar a little bit more spit and polish, work on Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars is complete.

In what is a full hands on with the open world DS game, Edge writes:

Central to life on the streets is player character Huang Lee’s PDA, which is displayed on the DS touchscreen. Taking the place of GTAIV’s mobile phone, it shows the minimap, which is identical to GTAIV’s, even down to the way the sat-nav works. It’s also where you access such staples as emails, the main map and now Ammu-nation. The weapons chain is no longer found scattered around the city – it’s now an online store that delivers goods direct to your safehouse.

Interested? Loads more through the link.

By Mike Bowden

BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka has said the PC gaming market that is actually doing very well, it’s just the money is spread out over different types of games than before.

“I think there are more people playing PC games and more dollars being spent on the PC space than ever before, but it’s taking a different form,” said Ray to CVG.

“MMOs are one way that’s occurring… And there are more people playing flash-based games and casual games, even core games that are played in a casual way, so maybe [they have] a more core experience and you only play them for short bursts or for half an hour or something.

“It’s not a bad thing if people want to play more types of games than they did 20 years ago, it’s natural and normal as the audience and technology evolves… As creators we have to adapt to that and continue to make sure that we’re satisfying the audience, but it doesn’t mean we have to compromise,” he went on.

“We can still make deep rich experiences but we have to make them easy to access, you have make the control system really easy to use, and you have to make people feel like they’re playing an experience that they can play how they want to play it, whether that is long sessions or short sessions.”

After filing for bankruptcy last November, US retailer chain Circuit City is to close all of its 567 stores nationwide.

30,000 people are set to lose their jobs in the US whilst the Canadian wing is still hopeful of a takeover.

More here.

By Mike Bowden

Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos said if he could find the time he’d love to do a sequel of PS2 rhythm-action game, Amplitude.

“I’d love to do a sequel to Amplitude, actually,” Rigopulos told Ars.

“It’s an issue of prioritization. It’s challenging enough to keep the Rock Band train on the tracks. We’ve grown from about 80 or 90 people a couple years ago to more than 300 now, and managing that kind of growth takes focus.

“For us, that lingering question of ‘what are we going to do about Amplitude’ is still very much out there. I would love to come back and do it right for the PlayStation 3, for example,” he said.

More through the link.

By Mike Bowden

The Bethseda Blog reports that you can now download the soundtrack to Fallout 3 via iTunes.

To get it, you have to search for “Fallout” under “iMix” apparently. Once you get there, the following songs will be available:

• Butcher Pete — Roy Brown
• I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire — The Ink Spots
• Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall — The Ink Spots & Ella Fitzgerald
• Way Back Home — Bob Crosby and the Bobcats
• Anything Goes — Cole Porter with Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks
• Maybe — The Ink Spots
• Dear Hearts and Gentle People — Bob Crosby and the Bobcats
• Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo) — Danny Kaye
• Happy Times — Bob Crosby and the Bobcats
• Mighty Mighty Man — Roy Brown
• Easy Living — Billie Holiday
• Crazy He Calls Me — Billie Holiday
• A Wonderful Guy — Tex Beneke

By Mike Bowden

In an interview with Ars, Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos said that EA’s The Beatles isn’t just licensing the band’s music, it’s about delivering the songs through a different medium: an “art object.”

“In the case of the Beatles, the licensing is, of course, complex, ” he said. “But what’s more complex in a product of that sort isn’t just the licensing of the music; we’re trying to create something that is an art object, that’s really an extension of the Beatle’s music into another medium.

“When that’s the case, it’s more than just a licensing question, you need sort of a creative resonance with all the principles involved, and really that was the most intricate part of the project: getting everyone who had a voice in this to understand the potential and feel good about what that potential was and coming together with a common vision about what the thing was going to be.

“It’s more than just a licensing challenge,” Rigopulos concluded.

Full interview through the link.

By Mike Bowden

Cryptic is holding a contest whereby you can win a guaranteed place on the Star Online beta in exchange for a few creative words from your good self.

The Planet Exploration contest requires you to write a no more than 500 word story about the above pictured planet: it’s inhabitants perhaps, or even make a “scientific log entry,” it’s up to you.

The winner will receive a place on the Star Trek Online beta (TBC) and lots of other cool stuff.

Closing date for the competition ends January 29.

By Mike Bowden

Australia’s ever-consistent ratings board, the OFLC, has rated hyper-violent Platinum game Madworld as 15+.

The game has already been passed as an 18 by the BBFC in the UK.

Madworld features some of the most hilariously brutal violence ever seen in a game, which clearly isn’t as offensive to our Australian cousins as the inclusion of a drug pipe in an RPG.

The maximum rating a game can receive in Australia is 15+, so anything deemed unsuitable for school children Down Under gets effectively banned.

Madworld ships in March.

Eidos has announced Mini Ninjas, a new action game from Danish developer, Io Interactive, for PC, DS, Wii and next gen platforms this autumn.

IOI is most famous for the Hitman franchise as well as Kane & Lynch.

You play as Hiro, a very small ninja on “the biggest adventure, as he embarks on an epic and electrifying quest to restore harmony to a world on the brink of chaos,” says the release.

You will learn different fighting skills and be able to master various types of magic as the game progresses.

“Mini Ninjas represents a truly special game for us,” said Niels Jørgensen, General Manager of Io Interactive.

“The whole team is very excited about it, because it is unique in so many ways. From the art style to the characters and the depth of the game – Mini Ninjas has that exceptional appeal, which is sure to keep both young and old very entertained.”

You can find concept art and screenshots for DS, Wii and high def consoles after the break. There’s a trailer too, in case you hadn’t noticed.

By Mike Bowden

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Gamasutra’s published Matt Matthews’ latest NPD analysis feature, which looks at both December’s figures and the full year of 2008.

Armchair analysts would do well to read it. From the outset, it includes statements such as, “The United States videogame market grew to $21.3 billion in 2008 according to industry figures released by the NPD Group on Thursday of last week,” and can be read in its entirety in a “Day Today” voice.

Some solid graphs going on there, including some coloured pies. What’s not to like?

Sony Online Entertainment’s MMOs – including EverQuest, EverQuest II, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Pirates of the Burning Sea – are now available on Steam.

To make the deal even sweeter, Valve’s offering special offers on some of the games while they’re new on the service.

Get details here.

Movie Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete, replete with its Final Fantasy XIII demo, will release on April 16 in Japan.

Square Enix confirmed the date today, IGN reports.

The demo’s exact content is unknown as yet, but should be playable on any PS3 despite only being available in Japan.

The full version of Final Fantasy XIII will release this year in Japan, with overseas versions arriving “in the business year from April 2010 or later,” according to Square Enix president Yoichi Wada recently.

Advent Children complete will be available as a standalone Blu-ray movie or as part of a hardware bundle, for those that bleed Cloud. There’s a shot of the limited edition hardware on Kotaku.

A new study’s claimed that violent content doesn’t, to the average player, provide motivation to consume games.

Researchers at the University of Rochester and the think-tank and consultancy company Immersyve, based in Orlando, Florida, reached their conclusions after conducting two surveys of 2,670 frequent game players and four experiments involving more than 300 undergraduates.

“We wanted to know if the violent content by itself was motivating because these games also do offer compelling challenges and stories,” said Andrew Przybylski, lead author of the report, speaking of the likes of WoW, Halo 3 and Team Fortress 2.

“We found that, on average, violent content didn’t add to motivation for play.”

One part of the study used two versions of Half-Life 2, one violent version and the other less so.

Players either had a weapon that was like a shotgun or they had a psychic power.

“We manipulated the blood level and the gore level, so when people had the gun and they were told that it was going to be a kill or be killed situation, when they actually took out an adversary, it was very bloody, it was a very violent game,” Przybylski explained.

Exhaustive details on MetroNews.

A Sony Ericsson petition to create a PlayStation-branded phone was shot down by Sony Corp late last year, MobileToday’s rumouring.

The forever-speculated PlayStation phone was a logical progression after the success of Cyber-shot and Walkman handsets, says the site, but Sony was apparently having none of it: the December decision has supposedly prompted a “fallout” between the two firms.

The story goes on to guess that the move may bring an end to Sony relationship with Ericsson. Maybe not.

Take a look.