Monthly Archives: November 2009

Hang on! Don’t go running yet, the LHC hasn’t gone off yet!

We mean in Mass Effect 2. The latest short video, being promoted by GameStop, shows a new weapon for the game, opening black holes that swallows up enemies.

Watch it over at Eurogamer.de.

The game is out in January. Let’s hope that big collider under Zurich doesn’t go off before then.

Speaking in the Christmas issue of Edge, Shigeru Miyamoto has said that if he was to apply for a job today at Nintendo, he wouldn’t be able to get it because competition to get a job at the company has become “fierce”.

“Nintendo has become one of those companies that graduates from colleges and good universities really want to work for,” revealed Miyamoto.

“Because of that, the competition’s really become so fierce for positions. And that means that a lot of the recent recruits for Nintendo have tended to have the higher degree from the prestigious colleges and universities and whatnot.

“I often say to [Satoru] Iwata: ‘If I was applying for a job here today, I, with my actual college degree, would probably not have been employed by Nintendo!”

Just imagine, a world without Miyamoto and Mario…

Thanks, EG.

Modern Warfare 2, unsurprisingly, still holds onto No. 1 in the UK charts this week, despite a massive 86% sales drop from it’s launch week a fortnight ago.

Assassin’s Creed II appears in at two and New Super Mario Bros for the Wii holds onto three, with Left 4 Dead 2 in at seven.

Find the full top ten below. Last week’s data, including MW2 selling 1.7 million, is here.

Rockstar’s confirmed that a new trailer of Red Dead Redemption will be coming next Tuesday.

It’s titled “My Name is John Marston”.

Awesome. The game is out for the PS3 and 360 in the first half of next year.

Thanks, SlayerGT.

In a recent report just released, via the BBC, two human rights organisations has accused videogames of letting you commit “violations of international law.

The groups Trial and Pro Juventute carried out the study, and played games like Call of Duty 4, 24: The Game, Far Cry 2 and Metal Gear Solid, to name a few.

The list of games were played to know if “whether certain scenes and acts committed by players would constitute violations of international law if they were real, rather than virtual.”

However, Rock Paper Shotgun writer John Walker has come out and defend the role videogames have, citing the airport level in Modern Warfare 2 as an example of the mature content in gaming.

“For all those who mowed down citizens in Modern Warfare 2′s controversial airport level, I have the sneaking suspicion that not a great deal of them think this is lawful, nor appropriate, behaviour.”

“Whether or not the rules of war are included in the game should be based entirely on whether that improves the experience for the player,” said Jim Rossignol of RPS.

Find more through the link.

Thanks, freedoms_stain.

Oyi oyi doggy, what do we have here?

Car company Tesla seems to have outed Project Gotham Racing 5 in a recent blog on their website.

A team from Microsoft Game Studios showed up to record sounds from the Tesla Roadster, with a team of devs from PGR there to do the work.

“A team of sound engineers from Microsoft Game Studios (some working on Forza, some on Project Gotham Racing) asked if I was willing to take my Roadster to a track so they could record a variety of sounds,” was what a Tesla exec said on the blog.

Go wild kiddies. We’ll leave an email with Microsoft about this.

Microsoft has confirmed that it’ll be revealing more details of Project Natal at it’s Gamefest event in February.

It’ll have sessions based specifically on the camera: one on design and one on the technical side of things.

They are aimed at giving developers a helping hand with “gesture recognition, avatar retargeting, speech recognition, advanced raw stream processing, handling different player environments” and more.

The event takes place proper between February 10 and February 11 in Seattle, Washington.

Thanks, GI.

Nintendo has confirmed that sales for the Wii has jumped by 60% for Q4, also stating that it was the best-selling home console of last week.

The company also said it was pleased with how the black Wii, which was released two weeks ago, was performing at retail, with sales doubling week-on-week.

“Of course it would be wrong to attribute all of this to Black Wii as we’re all starting to see a natural peak season uplift on all hardware,” said Nintendo’s Rob Lowe.

“But we have been really pleased with Wii’s performance over the last couple of weeks and the new Black Wii has certainly contributed to that. In fact Black hardware sales have doubled week-on-week.”

Find more info over at MCV.

Vectory-neon PSN retro shooter Gravity Crash is promising a terrific bang for very little buck tomorrow: the game’s now confirmed to cost a mere $10/€8/£6.29.

What do you get for your money? This:

• 35 Single player levels, including hidden and boss levels
• 12 Multiplayer levels
• 3 Multiplayer modes
• Different player ships
• Special weapons
• Weapon power-ups
• 20 Trophies
• Leaderboards
• Over 200 editor items

At that price, you’d be a bit silly not to buy it, frankly. Get some exclusive screens after the break.

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You honestly couldn’t make this up.

The Times has up the story of Will, who lined up outside a HMV for a midnight launch of Modern Warfare 2 two weeks ago.

But here is the kicker, which makes him different from everyone else – he is a judge. The night after the launch, he feigned sickness to get off and play the game all day. Because of that, it held up a pending trial.

“[It was] like Charlie waiting outside the chocolate factory,” said Will, speaking out on the launch.

Incredible stuff. Incredible. Find more tales through the link.

The Wii has finally got it’s video download service in Japan up an running.

It’s rental only and is payable byWii Points, although prices and viewing periods do vary on what type of content there is.

Partners involved for the service, known as Theater no Ma, include Disney, Warner and Pokemon.

Thanks, Andriasang.

Hey Radiohead, want to see what a DSi LL looks like against a PSP-3000? Wonder no more.

Game-Watch has up some comparison shots of the two together. Find them here.

In case you didn’t see earlier, the DSi LL launched earlier this weekend in Japan.

Ruffian has detailed to VG247 the first pieces of info of the underground element of Crackdown 2 at a hands-on in Dundee last month.

Creative director Billy Thomson told us that there would be nine subterranean levels in the sequel.

“If you take one of the locations for a gang boss in the first game, most of them are… let me think of one location that’d be a good size. The Refinery, probably,” said Thomson.

“A little bit smaller than the Refinery. And there’s, like, nine of them. It’s a big bit of gameplay.”

Microsoft refused to go into details though on specific kits for the underground segments.

No date yet, we’re afraid.

Catch our full interview with Thomson and James Cope of Ruffian here and here.

Speaking in an interview with VG247, Ruffian creative director Billy Thomson has said the play location will be “altered” for Crackdown 3.

What in the way now?

“When we go to Crackdown 3 things’ll alter again. But yeah, for Crackdown 2 it made more sense to stick in the same city, because it is pushing on from the idea of the Freak fires and how they’ve affected the city,” said Thomson.

“It’s not a case of doing it because it’s quicker. If anything it’s taken just as long to re-do what’s already there, because we’ve got to make sure we don’t break what we spent so much time getting right in the first game.”

There’s no date on Crackdown 2 as yet. Or Crackdown 3, for that matter.

Find our full interview with Billy Thomson and Ruffian’s producer James Cope here and here.

Crackdown 2 will run at 30fps when it releases next year. That is according to Ruffian’s creative director Billy Thomson, who revealed the news to VG247 in an interview at a hands-on for the game last month.

He reveals that they will keep adding stuff to the game until they go above it, stating they need to keep the framerate “constant”.

“We will just keep hitting it until we hit 30. Because it does need to be a constant 30. As soon as we go above that, we need to stop.”

No exact date yet. Needless to say, it’s a must-buy.

Find our full interview with Thomson and producer James Cope here and here. Find some new shots here.

Microsoft’s released a few new Crackdown 2 screens, as you’ll see after the break. Be sure to check out our interview with Ruffian creative director Billy Thomson and producer James cope here and here.

There’s still no release date.

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The second part of our Crackdown 2 interview with Ruffian creative director Billy Thomson and producer James Cope is after the break. Get the first part here.

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Xbox 360 has several legendary exclusives, but Crackdown is the most enigmatic. Relaying a comedic, near-future dystopia through mob boss murder and an open, island city, the RealTime Worlds title was, for many, the first true HD 360 experience. Assuming the role of an Agent, the player’s task was simple: reclaim the streets while avoiding civilian-vapourisation. Pacific City’s sandbox, drop-in co-op, physics-based action and the ludicrous, all-American VO secured Crackdown a rightful place in the hardcore’s heart.

A second game was not inevitable. Microsoft got cold feet after the original “only” sold 1.5 million, and RealTime Worlds moved onto APB. Braying fans got their wish, though, when staffers split away from RTW to form Ruffian in December 2008 and started work on what was announced at E3 2009 as a full sequel. The wrangling’s well-documented. The game’s more important.

We were lucky enough to visit Ruffian in Dundee last month. The two builds we saw showed enough to confirm that Pacific City’s undergone some huge changes. While the sequel’s set on the same map, we’re now in a post-apocalyptic setting. The Agency gained control at the end of the original, then quickly lost it. A civilian splinter group called the Cell, effectively a terrorist organisation, is calling the shots. The Agency is playing a weak third in the power stakes to the Cell and the Freaks, the mutants that appear near the end of Crackdown.

We’ll wrap up all the detail in a feature tomorrow. In short, it feels like Mad Max on brick-dust smack; it’s got four-way co-op for the entire campaign; nine huge, completely new, underground areas with an “underworld population”; co-op vehicles; new types of orbs; a new hand-to-hand fighting system; fully-featured multiplayer, including modes like Rocket Tag; it’ll be locked at 30fps; Skills are now limited to five levels; and nope, there’s no release date.

Check back in the morning for the preview and play impressions. For now, though, hit the link for our massive interview with Ruffian’s creative director, Billy Thomson, and the game’s producer, James Cope. We’ve put this up in two parts: get the second bit here. There are new screens here.

Interview by Patrick Garratt.

More »

Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma has said in an interview that he wants to give Zelda fans a “fresh surprise” in the new game in the series for the Wii, but only if they don’t follow the “same structure again and again.”

“It is something we used to talk about with Mr Miyamoto, and he and I agree that if we are following the same structure again and again, we might not be able to give long time Zelda fans a fresh surprise,” said Aonuma.

“So we have been trying something new in terms of the structure of the Wii version of the new Zelda game this time. I am really hopeful that people will be surprised with the changes we have implemented for this Wii version.”

We don’t know anything about the game other then this, this and the fact it’s being aimed for a E3 2010 reveal.

Thanks, PALGN.

A recent ESRB listing has outed a 2D fighter from WET developers A2M, known as Revenge of the Wounded Dragon and for PS3.

Here is a snippet from the rating:

“This is a 2D fighting game in which players assume the roles of two brothers attempting to avenge their grandfather’s death and rescue their sister from the local mafia boss. Players frequently punch, kick, and throw enemies as they “side-scroll” (i.e., walk) forward through the platform city environments; they can also use bottles, bats, knives, Molotov cocktails, pistols, shotguns, and uzi submachine guns to kill the henchmen.”

Lovely.

From TSA.