Monthly Archives: August 2009

If you’ve yet to get involved with Frozenbyte’s Trine, a week-log reduction for the lovely platformer on Steam may be just enough to tip you over the edge.

It’s down from £20 to £15. It’s pretty enough to warrant it.

The full schedule for PAX 2009′s been announced – get the full thing here.

If reading’s a chore, there’s a visual representation of it here. It still requires some reading, but it’s less taxing.

PAX takes place is Seattle on September 4-6.

THQ’s just confirmed the PC, PSP and DS versions of Cyanide’s Bloodbowl for a September 18 launch in the UK.

It’s coming out on Xbox 360 at a “later date,” said the publisher.

What’s this, then? Lionhead just tweeted a new splash page for its website, which features an image of Che Guevara and the quote, “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”

“We just fancied putting it up there,” a rep on the phone just told us before clamming up so hard the universe nearly exploded.

Thumbs up and thumbs down symbols sit below the image. Click one. Hit the up thumb and you go through to a page named “followers”. Go for down and you land on “subjects”.

This may or may not be related to the Peter Molyneux announcement at GamesCom next week. Call us bluff old traditionalists, but we’re going for “may”.

Future has confirmed to VG247 that longstanding UK PlayStation mag PSW has closed.

It had a final ABC of 24,118.

The publisher has redeployed one member of the team within the business and is currently in consultation with the magazine’s other four team members.

“It’s always incredibly sad when we close a title as established as PSW, but the decision was taken in response to decreasing demand,” said Future games boss James Binns.

“By focusing our efforts on Official PlayStation Magazine and a single independent PlayStation title in PSM3, we can strengthen our position in delivering the number one and number two print titles in the sector.

“We continue to invest in our traditional print brands, but games is a rapidly changing sector, so our portfolio needs to constantly evolve to meet the needs of consumers in a vibrant and diverse market.”

The publication was launched by Computec in 2000, and was later bought by Future in 2003 along with Computec UK’s other games titles, such as Xbox World.

Future said yesterday that it is declining to publish six monthly ABC figures this year.

VG247′s been put up the three Games Media Awards this year, as reported by MCV.

We’re in the running for Best Games Website, Specialist Writer (Web) and Games Blog.

Apparently “Future Publishing, Eurogamer, VG247, Imagine and Videogamer” got the most nominations this year.

Sincere thanks to all that voted for us. Maybe we’ll actually fucking win one this time.

Get the full list of nominees through the link. The awards take place in London on October 15.

Think Before You Speak has used the image of a gamer as part of its campaign to stop people using the word “gay” in a derogatory sense.

Mr Gamer appears on a poster bearing the slogan, “That’s so gamer guy who has more videogames than friends.”

Hit the link for more details. Via GamesPolitics and Kotaku.

Blimey. Codemasters has released the minimum and recommended system specs for Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, and you’d better hope your PC’s up to snuff.

Minimum requirement

Operating system: Windows XP SP2 or later
GPU: Shader 3.0 (GeForce 8800 GT / 512 MB VRAM or higher), DirectX 9.0c
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
Memory: 2 GB
Hard disk: 8 GB
CPU: Quad Core CPU
DVD drive: Dual Layer DVD-ROM

It’s out this autumn for PC, 360 and PS3.

Welsh developer Arberth Studios is asking for help to translate Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches into Welsh as it’s not justifiable to spend £16,500 on doing it commercially.

“If we did find people to translate it perhaps we could give them something if we made something out of the sales,” said the firm’s Noel Bruton.

“Although the company is based in Wales, all three members are England born and raised and what little Welsh we have is not up to the subtleties of the 30,000 or so words contained in the Rhiannon materials.”

The game’s based on The Mabinogion, a standard Welsh folk text.

More on the BBC. Get to it, Welsh people. Cymru am byth, and all that.

BioShock 2 studio 2K Marin is already hard at work on a new game, 2K president Christoph Hartmann has told 1UP.

“I know they’re working already… We already have plans, and have worked far beyond the conceptual stage for a follow-up project after BioShock 2,” said Hartmann when asked if 2K Marin was going to end up as ‘the BioShock studio.’

“What that is, I can’t announce; I can’t tell you obviously. But so far, they’ve completely exceeded my expectations.”

BioShock 2 is still in development. The game was pushed into the first half of 2010 in July, back from a November release.

There’s a full interview through there.

The PSN update’s been announced on the EU PS Blog. There’s a Call of Juarez demo there. Blitz puzzler Droplitz and MvC2 are the only full games.

There’s also a metric fuckload of Madden DLC, oddly. Want to spend £1.19 on Expert Medical Staff? Today’s your lucky day, bub.

Hit the link.

Update: Someone done a booboo. As pointed out in this BH tweet, “We were misquoted in the @IGNcom report yesterday. The average Heroes BUYER spends $20, not the average PLAYER. Not all players spend money.” Thanks, f1r3storm.

Original article:

According to this IGN piece, Battlefield Heroes now has more than 1.5 million players.

Great stuff. The bit EA’s interested in, however, is the fact that, on average, each player has now spent $20 on microtransactions.

Using out amazing Ubiquity calculator, we see that BH players have already spent $30 million on clothes and weapons.

Which is completely bonkers. Looks like Dave Perry was right. Hit the link for more stats.

Will we get a single-player demo for Uncharted 2? In a word, no.

“It’s always tough to do a single-player demo,” creative director Amy Hennig told 1UP. “You can always argue whether it benefits you or not in the long run, because so much of it depends on you understanding where you are in the narrative, and then appreciating what’s going on in the single-player demo.”

Naughty Dog president Evan Wells added: “Not to mention that it’s a 12-15 hour experience and you have to somehow collapse that into 15 minutes. I mean, we have something like hundreds of moves to train you over several hours, and if you just drop somebody into the fire…”

Tough luck, single-player demo fans. The game’s out in October.

Thanks, Kotaku.

We’ve received the first image of the Quakecon stage as it’s being set up, and it looks as though we may be getting a look at something DOOM-related tonight.

The DOOM logo’s on the banners at the side of the main stage for today’s event, as are Brink, Fallout 3, Rage, Wolfenstein, QuakeLive and Rage.

Looks like Quakecon isn’t so much about Quake any more.

We’ll be liveblogging both the main conference and the John Carmack presser this evening, kicking off at 3.30pm Texas time.

Sega President and COO Mike Hayes has said that the company will back more hardcore games, despite the lackluster sales of Platinum’s MadWorld.

Speaking with Wired, Hayes stated that Sega is also still researching why it flopped at retail.

“It’s difficult because it was a critically acclaimed title; it was extreme but good,” he said. “The thing that we’re saying is, Sega would be extremely arrogant to have a title that didn’t do as well as we thought on a platform and then say, “Those kind of games don’t sell on that platform.” I think if you take our slew of more mature games — House of the Dead Overkill did really well in Europe, and for some reason even though it’s a big (intellectual property) it did less well in North America.

“So that’s kind of like a win and a miss that’s kind of come out neutral.

“MadWorld sales were very disappointing, but was that to do with the platform? Was it that people didn’t like the art style? Or that people didn’t like the way the game played through? It could be many things, which we’re obviously researching.

“What we can say is that we’ll still do mature games for the Wii market because with an install base of some 34 million in Europe and America.

“So I think the sheer scale of the Wii allows a shooter, or a mature game, to be a niche but a successful niche. And because the development costs can be less on Wii, that means you can sell less to be successful…. We can take more risks on the Wii.”

Loads more through the link.

Thanks, GoNintendo.

Later this week, Sony will make enhancements to the way Trophies can be viewed online.

A walk through video is posted after the break.

Here’s what you’ll be able to do:

• View detailed info on your trophies on PlayStation.com
• Compare your trophies with multiple friends and other PSN ID’s
• Compare details on trophies within each game
• Track your progress to the next level against friends
• See what trophies you have and what you still need to unlock for each game
• Use the sorting features to plan your game domination

Additionally, the portable ID has been enhanced with trophy data so you can take your ID to official game sites, social networks and third party web areas which will link it directly to your public Trophy page on the US PS site.

More over on the US PS Blog.

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TimeGate Studios has announced that Section 8 is now in Open Beta for North America, Europe, and Australia.

You can download the Beta through File Planet, which includes the online multiplayer mode with two maps from the final game, as well as a variety of vehicles, weapons, deployables, missions, and equipment.

Instructions on to prepare for the download can be found here.

PC requirements include:

• OS: Windows Vista SP1 / Windows XP SP3
• Processor: Pentium 4 3Ghz or higher
• RAM: 1GB XP, 2GB Vista
• Memory: 6 GB free hard drive space
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7800, ATI X1800 or better with DirectX 9c, Shader 3.0, 256 MB

Game’s out for PC and Xbox 360 this fall.

Activision has announced that M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” will be included in DJ Hero courtesy of The Scratch Perverts, which has mixed Eric B. and Rakim’s “Eric B. is President” with it.

There’ a video of it posted below the fold and there’s a list of tracks confirmed for the game over on GoNintendo.

Also revealed was DJ Yoda, who will contribute two tracks to the game.

Game’s out in October and more videos can be watched over on Joystiq.

Giggity.

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Folks who download songs for SingStar love Kelly Clarkson, apparently.

Her “Because of You” was the number one download for the month of July, with P!nk, Lily Allen, and a double whammy from Evanescence rounding out the top five.

Girl Power is great and all, but what’s up with number eight Europe?

Top 10 are posted below, with the rest after the break.

SingStar Top 20 Downloads – July

1. Because Of You – Kelly Clarkson
2. So What – P!nk
3. Not Fair – Lily Allen
4. My Immortal – Evanescence
5. Bring Me To Life – Evanescence
6. It’s A Sin – Pet Shop Boys
7. The Offspring – Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)
8. Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of…) – Lou Bega
9. Roxette Ballads
10. Would I Lie To You – Charles and Eddie

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The Behemoth has tweeted that a new development video for Game no. 3 has been released.

We have posted it after the beak.

So far, it’s still unnamed so “Game #3″ will have to suffice for now.

Looks like a Behemoth game to be sure.

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