Monthly Archives: March 2009

The ESRB has rated the next installment of Watchmen: The End is Nigh as an M, dropping details in the process.

Part II sees the return of Rorschach and Nite Owl who go around and beat up “bikers, gang members, and thugs” with crowbars, baseball bats and knives it seems.

Storyline revolves around “a villain who has molested an actress appearing in a pornography film” and players will get to frequent a strip club, complete with go-go dancers in a cage and booths specializing in peep shows.

There’s an adult film playing in the background of the club, but according to the ESRB nothing can be seen. You will, however, hear “moaning and suggestive dialogue (‘Ohhh, it’s so big!) echoing from the film”.

OK then.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Namco put out 12 new Tekken 6 screens this evening, along with a run down of of what the characters have been up to since the last game.

Get it all after the break. It’s out for PS3 and 360 in the fourth quarter.

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Platinums’ Atsushi Inaba has said that MadWorld’s a Wii system seller.

“We’ve had positive feedback online from users who’ve said that this is a must-buy, that it’s a reason to buy a Wii,” he told Kikizo.

Why Wii? It all boils down to “pick up and play” ability, apparently.

“The main reason is we wanted to create a new title for the Wii specifically, and if we developed for other platforms, we wouldn’t be able to develop a new title, new ideas,” he said. “We wanted to make something that was easy to pick up and play.”

Game’s out March 10 and 20 in the US and UK respectively.

Thanks, GoNintendo.

Yes, finally, we can tell you that you play as a Big Daddy in BioShock 2.

Subs issues of Game Informer have hit, confirming that you take control of the first gigantic walking chap thing, have changeable weapons for your arm and new, mutated plasmids.

You can now adopt Little Sisters, as well as either killing them or saving them.

There’s more on Shacknews, which is a culmination of stuff from the Gamespot forums and NeoGAF. It’s unconfirmed as yet, but it’s true, if you know what we mean.

On April 9, Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastics will be hitting PSN.

It’s a sequel to Rag Doll Kung Fu, with Trophy support, unlockable body parts, and a Sackboy.

The game is not online multiplayer-enabled because the game’s producer, Josh Miller, said it  “technically could not be done” due to the complexities of the game’s physics engine.

A demo is expected soon. Pictures and a video of the game are through the link.

Looks like teddy bear body parts will be available, but we’ve no idea what’s up with the fish hate.

The Wii Music Program is expected to be in 50 different cities across the country soon, and a Washington, DC elementary school is one of the first to implement the program.

The initiative is not meant to “teach” music, but to get students interested in arts and music by way of interaction.

The new program is being supported by the Washington DC School Chancellor’s policy of making sure every school has a music teacher.

There’s a nice little video of this after the jump, straight from Fox News of all things.

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2K’s put a stop on BioShock 2 rumours dragged of its own forums today, saying they’re simply wrong.

“Please do not believe everything you read on the internet,” said a community manager.

“This rumor circulating is not true. Grab the Game Informer magazine. It’s shipped out and should be to subscribers and on store shelves really soon.”

Talk – spotted by CVG – emerged earlier apparently taken from GI subs issues, saying a Soviet submarine, co-op and more were involved in the game.

Just goes to show, really.

2K has apparently said that BioShock 2 is not going to be an Xbox 360 exclusive.

It will be coming to the PS3 too, so stay calm.

CVG has received confirmation from 2K that it will not be exclusive to any one console. No word about about it being a timed exclusive though.

Rumors were popping up all over the place that Microsoft was pushing a timed exclusive, a result of 2K listing the console schedule as TBA.

Hopefully, if it does come out on Xbox first, PS3 users won’t have to wait another year to get their hands on it like last time.

Microsoft’s Lips gets a content update today with the addition of Coldplay’s “The Scientist,” and from the band’s X&Y album comes “Speed of Sound”.

“The Great Escape” has also been included from the album Boys Like Girls.

The first two will run you 180 MS Points ($2.25) each, while the Boys Like Girls track will cost 160 Ms Points ($2.00).

Keita Takahashiwa is gushing with thanks over player reception of Noby Noby Boy over on the US PS blog, where he also mentions that an offline multiplayer update is currently in the works.

Girl has reached the Moon, but it’s a long way to Mars, he says, so he wants more people to start playing it.

“It would take all the current players a while to reach Mars, so more people have to join in on the fun,” he wrote.

“In the hopes that more people can enjoy the game, we are currently working on an update. A featured addition to the update is going to be offline multiplayer. Some may say, ‘Offline!?’ But it’ll still be fun. Please check it out.”

He also writes about staff reaction to its popularity and being a bit depressed over some of the criticism the game’s received.

Hit the link.

A new trailer for Stormrise, released today, demos the strategic line of sight command, and tips on how to use your environment as an advantage.

It shows helicopters, more laser beam weapons, environment destruction and a flying serpent-looking thingie.

Sega and Creative Assembly’s RTS is out next month for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Hit the jump to watch.

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Transporter 3 debuted on the US PS Movie Store this week, just as promised, along with new additions Shaun of the Dead, Rachel Getting Married (for your girl) and Ground Hog Day.

Loads more of HD, regular movie format and TV shows per usual.

Most notable shows added are Breaking Bad: Season One and Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest — a homage to the 30th anniversary of Star Wars.

Get the full update through the link.

After the break is the list of top downloads for last week.

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Harmonix and MTV announced today that it will add the “Get the Funk Out 01” three-pack to Rock Band next week, featuring Average White Band, Earth, Wind & Fire and James Brown.

Against Me!, The New Pornographers and Papa Roach will be headed to the game next week as well.

Get the Funk Out 01 includes The Godfather of Soul’s, “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine – Pt 1.,” Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Shining Star,” and Scottish funk group Average White Band’s 1974 offering, “Pick Up the Pieces”.

Punk offerings include Against Me!’s “Thrash Unreal,” The New Pornographers’ “All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth” and “Use It”. Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” and newest single “Lifeline” will also be available.

It all goes live March 17 for Xbox and March 19 for PS3.

Expect the usual 160 MS Points ($1.99) per track and 440 MS Points ($5.49) for the track pack.

EA has officially announced Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10.

Real-time weather will be reflected on every course, and a television broadcast style presentation with instantaneous updates will be included

ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt and the Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman will be the announcers.

Implementation of Wii MotionPlus includes the real-life golfing ability to draw and fade, and the ability to “open up your clubface” to take on that “dogleg or tap in that five-foot putt”.

Still coming to PSP, PS2, PS3 and Xbox 360, although most news of it swirls around the Wii version.

Get the press release after the break.

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The official website for Wii’s EA Sports Active has been updated with loads of stuff, including a list of all activities included in the game.

• Basic Dance
• Basketball
• Batting
• Cardio Boxing
• Cardio Dance
• Fast Dance
• High Steps
• Inline Skating
• Jump
• Kickbox
• Kick-Ups
• Lateral Raises
• Lunge
• Lunge Jump
• Pitching and Catching
• Punch Bag
• Punch Target
• Reps
• Run
• Serve Walk
• Side Lunge
• Squat/Calf
• Squat Jump
• Tennis
• Volleyball

Game’s out May 19, and while you are at the site, you can check out Days of Our Lives’ Allison Sweeney and others using it on a “30 day challenge”. They look rather happy.

Thanks, GoNintendo

In a Publishers Weekly list for the best selling comic books of March, a tidbit mentioned that a new Bone game’s coming this spring.

Crown of Horns vol. 9 is the final volume of Jeff Smith’s acclaimed comic fantasy adventure saga. Originally self-published in black & white in 1991, Scholastic/Graphix began publishing the series in full-color in 2005 and it has gone on to sell more than 2 1/2 million copies of the new edition. The Scholastic/Grahix edition released a 100,000 initial printing of the concluding volume and the new edition has been translated and sold in more than 30 countries. Look for a new Bone videogame to be released in the spring.

Telltale created the original Bone games and stopped once it started on the Sam & Max adventures.

A Bone movie is expected sometime next year, so it is speculated that the game, if real, could be a tie-in.

Speaking at last night’s Resident Evil 5 launch party in San Francisco, Capcom dev Masachika Kawata told attendees that Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles will hearken back to the darker, more horror-style of REs past.

“What we’re looking to do is go back to a ‘very dark’ style of Resident Evil,” Kawata said.

“‘Dark’ is really a key word for this game. It will be shown in horror, in the storyline, in the emotions that the characters go through.”

Showing clips of Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy in Racoon City, circa Resident Evil 2, he mentioned that the development team is “putting a lot of care, a lot of attention into how the camera system works in a rail-based shooter.”

These camera improvements were shown by way of “dramatic point-of-view shots of zombies feasting and the player narrowly escaping death with their partner’s help”.

Sounds appealing.

More information on the game is expected later in the year.

The Friday rollercoaster continues to loop-the-loop. Someone just dropped us a link to this, a new version of Sega’s Mega Drive, complete with 15 games, for £38.

It comes with two pads and the following: Alex Kid, Alien Storm, Altered Beast, Arrow Flash, Bonanza Bros., Columns, Crack Down, Decap Attack, E Swat, Fatal Labyrinth, Flicky, Gain Ground, Golden Axe, Shadow Dancer, Sonic And Knuckles.

Not 100 percent on this, but we’ve just been told it plays any-region Mega Drive carts.

Have fun.

Epic has announced that the next title update for Gears of War 2 set to go live on March 24.

The Snowblind Map Pack is set for a March 31 release, the company’s said.

The title update will implement a new experience ranking system, with the TrueSkill system ranks being hidden. It will still be used, though, to “set up the most competitive matches possible.” 

The newest ranking system allows player to earn scoring experience for public matches all the way up to level 100.

When you reach certain predetermined levels, you’ll receive the following Achievements:

• Rookie Gear – level 5
• Seasoned Gear – level 15
• Battle-Tested Gear – level 25
• Battle-Hardened Gear – level 50
• Veteran Gear  – level 100
• Four unnamed achievements

The Snowblind pack includes four new multiplayer maps: Grindyard, Under Hill, Courtyard and Fuel Depot which is a remake of an original Gears level.

The update’s free. No price announced for the map pack yet.

Media Molecule’s Alex Evans has teased Gamasutra with a taste of the firm’s next LBP project.

He said he cannot go into details at the moment, but did say the unannounced title would be “really fucking cool.”

Evans said the idea for the title came to Media Molecule during a “brainstorming session”.

“Then at a certain point, we’re like, ‘We’re gonna just take a character, we’re just gonna try this direction”, he said.

“It’s a quite interesting thing because it was like a magnet. Everyone sort of [joined in] on that thing, then I suddenly saw these people kind of going, ‘Oh my god, far from being tired of LBP, I suddenly see this untapped potential.

“And in ways that hopefully will still be fresh so when it comes back, people won’t be like, ‘Yeah, they just exploited that thing, and it’s really fucking obvious that they would do that.’ I think LBP is in their future, and hopefully in surprising ways.”

A PSP version of LBP has been confirmed to be in development with Sony Cambridge, and is a separate thing from Media Molecule’s in-house work.

User-generated content is “definitely” in Media Molecule’s future Evans said.

“So, it doesn’t have to be LBP-style creativity. It could be musical, or it could be God knows what. I think there’s definitely a fixation at Media Molecule around the idea of engaging players creatively.”

More through the link.