Monthly Archives: July 2009

The best moment of Rebellion’s Aliens Vs Predator, according to European brand manager Rob Bartholomew, is akin to pornography. The spunky bit of pornography.

“It’s got to be the trophy kills on the predator,” Bartholomew said when asked about the game’s signature moment, talking in the official Sega E3 podcast.

“We’ve just been trying it out now, just before the show opens, and we’re just getting familiar with it again, and getting those trophy kills right where you rip the skull off the marines and pull their spines out afterwards and the predator kind of caresses the spinal cord and purrs.

“It’s such a great moment, and it’s something that everyone recognises from the films. The guys we’ve had wondering around already are screaming that it’s fantastic and it’s kind of the money shot. So that’s the perfect kind of picture moment for me.”

We’re hard just thinking about it. Did you know the Sega shooter’s been in development for nearly four years? We didn’t.

“The guys have been working on it for going on three, nearly four years now,” Bartholomew said.

“Sega only recently got involved in the last sort of 12 months.”

The game’s out for PC, PS3 and 360 in the first half of next year.

Hit this, quick. Sports Interactive’s giving away free 21-day trials for Football Manager Live.

There’s just over 2,200 left. It’s free. Free. Do it.

Nintendo’s taken the top four places in terms of first-half sales in the UK this year.

Overall sales are down 5.7 percent however, with 29.7 million units sold compared to 31.5 million units for the same period in 2008.

Top ten below. Get millions more words on GI.

1. Wii Fit
2. Wii Play
3. Mario Kart Wii
4. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
5. Killzone 2
6. Resident Evil 5
7. Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training
8. The Sims 3
9. Call of Duty: World At War
10. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games

A story doing the rounds last week that claimed French retailers were refusing to stock PSP Go was debunked by SCEE this morning.

The original JeuxVideo piece claimed that “major retailers” had possibly forced Sony to not launch the handheld in France thanks to its lack of physical media – which means no ongoing games sales and no secondhand PSP Go games market.

“No French retailers have refused to stock the Go,” we were told by SCEE. The rep added that the story simply wasn’t true.

PSP Go launched in October, priced €249. We’re still waiting for the UK price.

Thanks for the initial tip, Peter.

Dev vet Mike Mika has told Develop that the games industry doesn’t get Twitter. We think it’s actually time to put the “no shit Sherlock” tag into proper action.

“In boardrooms across the world, people are using Facebook and Twitter as a buzzword rather than really understanding why they work so well and what they offer to enhance a game,” he said.

Mika added: “In many ways, the games industry is waking up to what the web has offered for so long, and in doing so, it’s following some of the classic misconceptions.

“Just being where the action is doesn’t make you succeed. You need to integrate, understand, dissect. There’s no magic bullet.”

More through there.

Valve’s Chet Faliszek has told Kikizo that all L4D mods will work with L4D2. Just in case you needed any more Left 4 Dead news.

“For modders, everything they make in Left 4 Dead will work in Left 4 Dead 2,” said Chet.

“It’ll work better if they bring it into Left 4 Dead 2 and recompile it for Left 4 Dead 2, using some of the additions we’ve made, but it’ll work out of the box as well. We just want to make sure that anyone who’s making a mod now knows that their time’s going to be well spent.”

What a bastard. Quick, sign a petition.

Over the weekend, some people got het up at the prospect of PSP Go having a 480Mhz CPU. It doesn’t. The confusion arose from a figure taken from a stats page that, in fact, references something to do with the machine’s USB port.

That’s it. Get more detail from Engadget.

What happens if you get a Wii emulator running at 720p, stick Mario Galaxy on and takes some screenshots of it? This does. Pretty, innit?

Wii HD for 2010, please Nintendo.

Bit late on this. We were asleep. EGM founder Steve Harris has told Publishing Executive that EGM’s relaunch will see digital content at its core.

“First and foremost, we’re planning to incorporate digital content within the magazine,” he said.

“This includes professionally-produced video, audio and other types of content. We’re also going to make this content fully transportable.”

Harris added: “The digital content will be accessible by some directly from the pages of the magazine while other content will be delivered via a digital device included with each issue (that, as I said before, could be used with computers, televisions, etc.).

“I wouldn’t want to over-hype the methods that will be used — no individual element of what we’ll be offering is unique on its own — but the way in which each delivery mechanism will interact with the other, as well as the programming we have to identify our end-reader and their interests, is new.”

Full thing through there. The mag – which Ziff binned despite its 500,000 readership in the US – will reappear later this year.

Valve really isn’t phased by the fact nearly 40,000 people are saying they don’t want Left 4 Dead 2. They’re complain no matter what its plans were, Chet Faliszek told Videogamer last week.

“I once joked that we could put $20 in a box and charge $10 for it, and someone’s going to complain,” he said.

“And that’s just fine – that’s just the way it is.”

Faliszek took to opportunity to yet again affirm that Valve will continue to release Left 4 Dead content, despite bringing a full sequel to market.

“We never thought, ‘We need to say that we’re going to keep updating Left 4 Dead,’ because that was always our plan,“ he said.

“Briefly before that [E3] we’d already posted on our blog about the updates that were coming. We didn’t think people would think, ‘Oh wait, now they’re not going to do that stuff they talked about’. Yes, we are.”

Left 4 Dead 2′s out later this year.

OK, so we are a day late on this one. We’re sorry about that, but to be honest, there is not too much to write home about on the list this week.

An American Haunting, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop round out the movies, while the usual weekly suspects make the TV list.

Here’s the full bit of HD movies and television shows. The rest are over on the US PS Blog.

HD Movies

• Hoodlum
• An American Haunting
• I Know What You Did Last Summer
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• H2 Theatrical Trailer
• Inglourious Basterds Theatrical Trailer
• The Pink Panther (2006)
• District 9 – Theatrical Trailer
• 12 Rounds
• 12 Rounds EXTREME CUT
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li UNRATED
• Paul Blart: Mall Cop

HD TV Shows

• In Plain Sight – Season 2 “Who’s Bugging Mary?”
• In Plain Sight – Season 2 “Miles to Go”
• Jesse James is a Dead Man – Season 1 “Figure 8 World Championships”
• Kings – Season 1 “Pilgrimage”
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent – Season 8 “Salome in Manhattan”
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent – Season 8 “Lady”s Man”
• Rescue Me – Season 5 “Torch”
• 4th and Long – Season 1 “The Rivals”
• The Philanthropist – Season 1 “Episode 2″

Techland has announced via a press event that three bits of DLC are coming for Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.

No date or price point on it yet, but the first two sets will contain multiplayer maps and the third, is to be broader and designed for the single-player mode.

It will be made available for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

More over on Polygamia.

It’s that time again. The MMO news round-up post full of links, and other goodies for the online crowd.

This week, loads of games are having annual summer events full of festivities, fireworks and other shenanigans. Some also got level cap increases, are nerfing classes, launching new servers, going bankrupt, and one has even reminded us it’s still in development.

What a week. Hit the page fold for the rest.

More »

“Sick of ogres, elves and pixies? So are we. Lose the tights. Bury your crystals. Quit playing with your wand. Come get the real deal. Thus ain’t Daddy’s MMO.”

That’s what the debut trailer for Fallen Earth asks the viewers.

It shows off the post-apocalyptic MMO’s settings and effects with a heavy metal guitar hammering in the background.

Interesting concept. Let’s hope the developers pull it off.

No date yet.

Watch it below the break courtesy of GameTrailers.

More »

A video for Section 8 is posted after the jump and features the jumping gimmick and some of the different weapons you can use to take down your hulking enemies.

The PC and Xbox 360 sci-fier will land on shelves August 25 and 28 in the US and UK respectively.

Via D’toid.

More »

Techland (Call of Juarez) has said that its zombie game Dead Island is still in the works, just that details are hush-hush per the unnamed publisher’s request.

“All we are allowed to say is that the game is in development and doing great and that all future updates regarding the game will come directly from the publisher,” Techland’s Blazej Krakowiak told G4TV.

The non-linear first-person shooter allows you to use anything you find in your surroundings as a weapon and is expected to land on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, eventually.

Looks like there’s no sign of the zombie invasion whittling any time soon. Start polishing your shotguns.

Via BigDownload.

According to Ubisoft’s Maxime Bernard, when Steven Spielberg was at E3 he mentioned that he gets some of his ideas from games like Splinter Cell.

“He had an entourage… and he said to his friend ‘it gives us a lot of ideas, it’s very inspiring’” Bernard told OXM. “I was thinking, like, wow. If we made a game that inspires Spielberg then [censored], we’re doing something good here.”

Guess it has to come from somewhere.

Hit the link.

There’s a video posted after the break for Dead Space Extraction showing how to use Will controls and the optional Wii Zapper.

It is also shows off the co-op mode, which doesn’t sound half bad.

The game is expected to land in September.

Thanks, D’toid.

More »

Next Sunday, Best Buy will stock shelves with a lovely PS3 bundle that includes Metal Gear Solid 4 and Killzone 2.

It’s the 80Gb model, and you get all three for $400.

Basically, that’s getting both games free because that particular SKU retails for $399.99.

More over on Kotaku.

Doug Lombardi has said that “free weekend” sales on Steam assist retail and online game stores.

“When we do our free weekends on Steam for our products we see an increase in player numbers, obviously, and then we’ll see a spike in sales at the end of the weekend on Steam and at retail,” he told Gi.biz. “Recently we’ve seen data that shows Left 4 Dead free weekends increase the sales of Left 4 Dead on Steam, at retail and on the Xbox 360, which we would never have guessed could have happened, but it’s just that word of mouth.

“A lot of the ‘Steam is there to compete with retail’ stuff is sort of sensationalized. We spent more money at GameStop in the US promoting Left For Dead than we did at any other chain. We sold more copies of Left 4 Dead at Gamestop than we did at any other chain.

“[Steam is] about making the games better. It’s currently a great marketing and promotions channel, and yeah we sell games over it and that’s great, but whether people buy games at GameStop, or GAME UK, or on Steam, we get paid. So for us, whichever cash register you want to pay at, that’s fine.”

More through the link.