Monthly Archives: September 2009

Forza dev Turn 10′s poo-pooed the notion that the third in its racer series has taken 360 to its limit.

“Have we maxed out the 360? Of course not,” said Forza 3 director Dan Greenawalt, speaking to VG last week.

“It’s a really powerful system.”

Greenwalt added: “When it comes to hardware you always use 100 percent. Even to make a little arcade game, you’d use 100 percent of the hardware.

“But when you’re first party, and when you’ve got a really clever development staff that’s world class, hired from all over the industry, then you learn tricks. It’s like Tetris.”

Just imagine what Forza 4′s going to look like. More through there.

Realtime Worlds studio boss Colin Macdonald has admitted that Irish tax breaks could see the Scottish studio upping sticks and going green.

The Irish government may be about to specifically target the Scottish games sector by offering developers a five-year tax holiday in return for hopping over the water.

“If the package on offer in Ireland was attractive we’d have to give it serious consideration,” said Macdonald.

“Dundee is a great place to be based, one of the main hubs for ­computer games in Britain, but at the end of the day we’ve got to look after our bottom line.”

More on Herald Scotland.

LA Noire isn’t just in development. It’s in splendid development, if this Rockstar fan Q&A‘s to be believed, and we’re going to find out just what the hell’s going on with the title in the not-too-distant future.

“While we have yet to announced a definitive release date, L.A. Noire is coming along quite splendidly and we’re going to have details to share with you all very soon,” said a rep.

We know the 40s-style action game’s still in development. Rockstar keeps saying so. Take-Two CEO Ben Feder said at the beginning of this September that the game is “pretty exciting and innovative”.

And still under wraps. Not long to go.

What did Counter-Strike creator, Minh Le, do next? He decided to make a game called Tactical Intervention, according to this IGN piece.

Minh moved to South Korea in April 2008 after Counter-Strike 2 was “shelved,” and was backed by a businessman to make the new title. The first shots are through the link.

It looks like super-speed CS with hostages.

“I wanted to make TI faster so people aren’t waiting around as much between rounds,” said Minh.

“The average round should be two minutes, maybe less, so people aren’t waiting around as much.”

Apparently Tactical Intervention will be going into beta “soon” and is likely to be released by the end of this year.

IGN’s posted up five movies of Wii Fit Plus, showing bike-riding, “flapping” and riding around on a Segway.

Looks great. Here’s a thing, though. Get a bike, leave the house and ride it somewhere. Who knows? You may see something inspiring and unrelated to the inside of your house, thus reinvigorating your ever-dwindling lust for life.

It’s out on October 4.

You may well have been swamped with Twitter updates from journalists playing Uncharted 2 pre-release. You may have found it annoying to receive a tweet every time people finish a chapter. Naughty Dog clearly think so too: it’s canned the feature.

Said dev boss Evan Wells on the PS Blog:

We’ve seen some concern about the frequency of updates for those choosing to use UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves‘ Twitter support. Some reviewers have had early access to the game and selected the option to update their Twitter accounts as they completed each chapter of the game. This has resulted in some Twitter feeds being updated multiple times an hour. We obviously want to provide the best experience for everybody, so for the time being we’ve disabled Twitter updates on chapter completions. The option will still exist in the menus when the game ships on 10/13, but if activated, it will do nothing.

The feature’s going to be reinstalled at a later date with frequency limits. We’re saying nothing. Full thing through the link.

GameSpot‘s got the full scoop on Super Street Fighter IV, which came straight from the mouth of producer Yoshinori Ono himself.

According to the report, the game will be a stand-alone, disc-based affair – as opposed to DLC. If you think Capcom’s looking to bleed your wallet dry in exchange for very little of its own blood, sweat, and tears, though, fear not; the game won’t be selling for full-price.

In terms of standout upgrades, SSFIV will include eight new playable characters, including T. Hawk, Dee Jay, and series first-timer Juri. Other than that, the game is bringing in a host of tweaks and upgrades based on community feedback.

It’s out on PS3 and Xbox 360 next spring. Tons more through the link.

Update: The first teaser trailer’s below.

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Crysis: LIVE! is either going to be really awesome or incredibly stupid – and we think everyone will get a kick out of watching it either way.

It’ll work like this: Crytek and GameCity Squared (“the World’s best loved videogame festival!”) are converting a large portion of Nottingham’s Market Square into a real-life Crysis level. Basically, it’ll be the world’s coolest playground.

Once there, you’ll strap into an actual nano suit and – we can’t emphasize this enough – gain the ability to TURN INVISIBLE.

We don’t care if it turns out to be some crappy parlor trick. We want to believe.

There’s more over at GameCity’s website.

Last week’s TGS brought word of a PS3 motion-doohickey-specific version of Resident Evil 5, which – for obvious reasons – people figured was taking up residence only in Sony Land. However, if a recent Degenki Online report (via IGN) is to be believed, the Xbox 360 will also be receiving a slice of the motion-enabled slaughter.  Without the motion control.

Resident Evil 5: Alternative Edition, as it’s known, will also include a bonus mission set within the mansion from the original Resident Evil. According to Degenki, this mission will leap the fence into Xbox territory via a “different format.” DLC? Probably.

More through the link.

There’s a video after the break about Dragon Age’s music. That’s it. Thanks BigDownload for it.

Word to the wise. Apparently Dragon Age is amazingly good. Not our words. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you.

It’s out for PC, PS3 and 360 in November.

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NCsoft said today that its opened two new Aion servers for Europe.

French-speaking players can make their new feathery home on the Deltras server. English speakers among you can plump for Kahrun.

On Friday, NCsoft announced that a new West coast US server, Fregion, was added, and an East coast server will follow shortly.

There’s more on Incgamers.

PixelJunk Monsters will release for PSP this Thursday, Sony’s confirmed.

The Q Games tower defence effort features a new island, a new trap tower, new enemies and online play.

Watch dev boss Dylan Cuthbert talk it up after the break.

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Microsoft’s said it’s currently investigating thin reports of disc-read errors related to Halo 3: ODST.

“We are aware of a very small number of people who are reporting they can’t play the game,” the platform holder told Eurogamer.

“We are looking into it, but at this point it doesn’t appear to be a widespread issue.”

Multiple users piped up about Campaign and Firefight errors following the game’s release last week.

Someone filmed a trailer for the Director’s Cut of Resident Evil 5 at TGS last week. Then they put it on the internet. Then we put it below the break.

It shows a house. And some tension. And some guns. Play through it again? You will.

Look and see.

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Gamersyde has for your viewing pleasure nearly 15 minutes worth of footage of the TGS Final Fantasy XIII demo.

Seven minutes for Lightning, seven minutes for Snow. They’re both amazing looking.

Go find them through their respective names.

The TGS trailer was release this morning as well. Stunning is what we call it. You can find it here.

Kotaku‘s reporting that 200-300 jobs are going at Square Enix in Japan.

Most likely this will be a corporate shuffle after the merger with Eidos earlier this year. It is possible jobs could also go at developer Taito, which falls under Square jurisdiction.

More info through the link. We”ll email Square about this now.

IGN’s posted up photos from a tour of Gran Turismo developer Polyphony Digital, showing TVs, helmets, a pale corridor and much more besides.

Do you dream of standing in this building? This is sort of like it. Although not at all. But still.

Bungie writer Joseph Staten has said to OXM (via CVG) that Halo 3: ODST has connections to the upcoming Halo: Reach.

“The Halo Universe has always had these interconnections but when we made ODST we had the luxury of knowing the Halo game we were going to make next. So it made a lot of sense to us to put those kind of connections in,” said Staten.

He also admitted that although ODST character Buck is a vet of the events on Reach, he isn’t sure if he will appear in the next Halo title.

“Buck has very specific lines about what he witnessed on planet Reach and we absolutely wanted to telegraph some of that stuff. Whether or not he’s going to show up in Halo Reach we’re not talking about / have no idea.”

More through the link.

THQ’s put out the first teaser movie for Dawn of War II expansion Chaos Rising. Get it after the break.

The add-on slots the Chaos Space Marines into the RTS as a new playable race.

The update also includes new single-player and co-op campaigns, a level cap increase from 20 to 30 and new gear.

No date just yet, however.

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iPhone tower defence juggernaut Fieldrunners will release as a PSPgo Mini this week, it’s just been confirmed on the Euro PS Blog.

The PSP version includes new maps, new towers, new music and “enhanced graphics,” according to that post.

Can’t say fairer than that. Hit the link for more. Movie after the break.

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