Monthly Archives: October 2009

A promotion advertising Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers in Japan will boast a Bon Jovi song as the background music.

Apparently, Square Enix has decided to use the song “We Weren’t Born to Follow” for use in the game’s commercials.

The title hits Japan on November 12 with the Bon Jovi commercials airing later this month.

Don’t worry folks, the commercials are for Japan only.

Via IGN.

Majesco has announced that A Boy and His Blob has been released for Wii in the US.

It’s scheduled for a November 6 release in the UK according to Play.

The game features hand-drawn and painted animation to keep you enchanted as you solve puzzles, defeat monsters, and feed your blob companion gourmet jelly beans which force the poor fella to turn into ladders and other handy items.

It’s rather lovely looking.

Via Press Release.

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A host of THQ titles are available at special prices this week on Steam.

For the first day, which was yesterday, all games in the Titan Quest series were available at 50 percent off the regular price.

Each day there will be a new deal, and as of yet the site has not revealed today’s deal.

So, check back each day for a new one.

Also, the THQ Collector Pack which feature titles from the Company of Heroes, Titan Quest, and Warhamner 40,000: Dawn of War series is available for 10 percent off its regular price for the duration of the sale.

Queen guitarist Brian May has said that he is pretty much delighted to be a playable character in LEGO Rock Band, calling it “the ultimate accolade, to be portrayed in Lego. My dreams are all fulfilled now.”

Good to know he has outed that bit, especially to the BBC.

While speaking with the news outlet, he also dropped that there was talk “going on behind the scenes” about a dedicated Queen Rock Band title.

“Yes we’re into it, I think it may happen,” he said.

Neato. More through the link.

A promo trailer showing off the preorder bonus for The Sabotuer has popped up over on D’toid.

It’s a Nazi dagger, and you can only get it through GameStop.

Here’s the info:

“Reserve your copy of The Saboteur today and make your enemies die at the blade of their own steel with an exclusive Nazi knife, stolen from your enemies. This in-game weapon gives you the ultimate revenge with a silent and swift execution maneuver. ”

It’s out on the PS3, PC and 360 on December 4 in Europe and December 8 in the US.

EA’s put out a behind the scenes video of the creation of the Crawler unit in Command & Conquer 4, showing the concept, chats with the artists and animators, and so on. It’s after the break, via CVG.

PCGames.de put up some new shots of this yesterday. Looking good.

It’s out next year.

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Grand Theft Auto IV is now available for download on 360, as you can see here.

The Games on Demand version of Rockstar’s opus will set you back a mere £20 and 7Gb. Bargain.

If you don’t own it already, now there’s no excuse. Get to it.

Blizzard said today that all existing World of Warcraft accounts will be merged into the new Battle.net by November 11.

Beyond that date, all WoW players will need to log in to the game using a Battle.net username and password. Anyone who wishes to create a new World of Warcraft account will need to start with a Battle.net account from then on.

Serious business. Hit the first link for more.

According to various reports, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories will release in February.

This is the Climax “re-imagining” of the original game for Wii, PSP and PS2.

And there we are.

Gamikaze’s posted up some new Dark Void shots.

It’s all looking like good news for the third-person, “I like adventures, me,” crowd. And the game can help you win a Tesla, in case you missed that this morning.

It’s out next year. Thanks, TomisH.

After the break. It’s a guy drawing Mickey facing off against an enemy, speeded up over three minutes.

There’s no date on the Wii exclusive as yet, but there’s a press conference for the game in London later this month, so we should get more then.

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GAME’s grabbed the exclusive on Dragon Age’s Collector’s Edition in the UK.

Both the PS3 and 360 versions of BioWare’s super-box cost £49.99. It costs £39.99 on PC.

What you get:

• Plastic Collectors Box
• Bonus DVD with a ‘Making of’ documentary, Soundtrack, Trailers, Wallpaper, Concept Art Video and Strategy tips
• 3 pieces of exclusive in-game content – Bergens Honour, Grimoire of the Frozen Wastes and Final Reason – PLUS Memory Band
• Unlockable ME2 in-game item: Original purchasers of DAO will receive the Blood Dragon Armour which will be usable in both DAO and ME2
• The Stone Prisoner unlockable bonus quest and unlockable character, Shale

“Plastic Collectors Box,” eh? Sold.

It’s out on November 5 for 360, November 6 for PC and November 30 for PS3.

After the first IGN-exclusive Brutal Legend reviews yesterday, EG’s gone live with an 8/10.

Snip:

It’s probably Brutal Legend’s characters that win out. Since the days when he provided dialogue options for Guybrush Threepwood, Schafer’s secret skill has been to people his games with lovable oddballs who quickly start to feel like friends, creating bonds strong enough to ensure you forgive some of the ropier moments. In this case, Schafer, Double Fine, and Black haven’t just created a story about roadies: they’ve become them, scuttling about energetically, heads down and minds focused, as they pull a handful of simple props together in order to put on an amazing show.

You can get it in the US now, and Play appears to be selling it in the UK, despite the fact it’s not supposed to come out until Friday over here.

Tripwire boss John Gibson has claimed that Valve is “absolutely not” exploiting independent developers, countering comments to the contrary made by Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford last week.

“Is Valve exploiting independent developers? In short: absolutely not,” said Gibson, writing on Gamasutra.

“Without pulling any punches, I can say with certainty that if it weren’t for Steam, there would be no Tripwire Interactive right now.”

Pitchford described Steam as a “money grab” last week, saying, “Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair.”

Gibson explained that Steam gave Tripwire a route to market when disc-based pubs were offering unworkable deals.

“In the early days, when we were shopping our first game Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 around to traditional brick-and-mortar publishers, we were shocked at how terrible their proposals were,” he said.

“We were getting pitched offers like, ‘We’ll give you a 15 percent royalty rate, take the IP rights to your game, and slap a $1.5 million administrative fee on top of your recoupment costs.’ And deals like this were being offered for a game we funded ourselves!

“With deals like those, we were wondering how any third-party developer could be successful in the game industry. Under the terms of that deal, we would have needed to sell hundreds of thousands of units before we would have seen one cent of royalties. Enter Steam.”

Read it all. Interesting stuff.

Gamestop’s posted up a list of every store in the US opening for the launch of Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend tonight – see it here.

Hit this for more details on the two games’ releases. Now go and buy them both.

It’s passed the Witching Hour all over America, and both Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Brutal Legend are now on sale Stateside.

Naughty Dog boss Evan Wells is pumped enough to be twitpiccing shots of a midnight launch queue in Culver City, while Mr Schafer just dropped word that he’s on his way to his local Gamestop.

The games are two of the most highly anticipated this holiday season, and reviews show why – Uncharted 2 is still the highest-rated PS3 exclusive ever. Brutal Legend’s first scores hit yesterday, but that chances of this not being worth your money are a tad remote.

Buy both. Go nuts. But whatever you go, buy both.

Uncharted 2 releases in mainland Europe tomorrow and the UK this Friday. Brutal Legend is available now in the UK.

IGN’s posted a couple of gameplay movies from Namco RPG Magna Carta 2: get them both after the break.

Looks heavy to us. Lots of talking. And Calestine has gigantic tits and everything’s “over her head”.

See for yourself. This is actually out in Europe this Friday, 360-only.

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Remember all the hoohah about the cost of ESRB ratings contributing to the consumer charge for PSP Minis? It’s bollocks, according to the ratings body.

“The ESRB has a reduced fee of $800 for games that have development costs under $250,000,” said ESRB spokesman Eliot Mizrachi, speaking to Kotaku.

Obviously this “would likely apply to virtually all PSP Minis,” he added.

This doesn’t quite tally with comments last week from Fieldrunners developer Sergei Gourski, who said that, “The costs of ratings such us ESRB is significantly more then we had realized”.

Maybe Fieldrunners cost more than $250,000 to make, or something. God knows. Hit the links.

Um. Wow. Capcom’s giving away an actual Tesla as a Dark Void prize. See here. And actual one; not a fake one.

All you have to do is fill in your details and press submit, from the look of it. And be American, unfortunately.

The incredibly vague tie between the car and the game is that the game’s protagonist uses a tesla jetpack.

Any excuse. Enter. You could win an electric car worth $109,000 that does 0-60 in just under four seconds.

Shack’s posted some new Gay Tony screens – get them here.

There’s one of an APC fighting a cop car there, which is always nice. The second and final episode of 360′s GTA IV DLC hits at the end of this month.