Monthly Archives: November 2009

God bless you CVs.

A CV for former Silicon Knights designer Zhang Shao-yong has revealed that the studio is woking on a title known as The Box for the 360 and PS3.

Yong was special effects producer at the studio, working on “material performance of explosions, smoke, water, fire, weather” and more on The Box, as well as Too Human.

Is this the new IP the studio is working on with Sega? Only time will tell.

Thanks, CVG.

Goooooooooooood mornnnnnnning, VietnamG247

In the news today, the sky is blue, grass is green and Steam has more games discounted in their five day 24 hour sale!

EVE Online: Apocrypha is down to under £4, Lucidity is only under £2 and PoP is a tenner. There are more games which get the cut, which is why you can see them below.

• EVE Online: Apocrypha – £3.74
• Battlefield 2: Complete Collection – £7.49
• Lucidity – £1.74
• Trackmania United Forever – £9.99
• Prince of Persia – £9.99
• World of Goo – £4.24
• Guild Wars Trillogy – £14.99

Go take a look. The deals for THQ and Lucasarts are still going if you’re interested.

Thanks, Mike.

Chalk up as a rumour for now.

Baxy-Z are reporting that music service Spotify could be seeing a release for the consoles.

An “insider” told the site that it is working on bringing the service to “next-gen consoles”, which obviously means PS3, 360 and Wii.

“We’ve been working on it for some time now and we can’t wait to reveal it to you guys!,” said the insider.

Again, take with a pinch of salt.

The US PS Blog has live the new TV commercial for the latest piece of “It Only Does Everything” campaign for the PS3.

The campaign outlines a deal which sees you get a PS3 with a Sony Bravia, a free Blu-ray and game, with savings up to $1100 from Busy Buy.

Oh, and two grown men saying “boom.”

Nice to hear on a Monday morning. Watch the ad after the break.

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Its been revealed that BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger will get a PC release next year in France, as well as an already announced PS3/360 European release.

So far it seems only France is mentioned, not Europe as a whole.

It seems that for any PC gamers looking for a fighter since SFIV may have another reason to hate the French. The first obviously was Thierry Henry.

Find more over at D’Toid.

All you LBP lovers are in luck: Leerdammer is live.

The codenamed update, confirmed for a release on Friday, finally sees the release of the Online Create mode.

“LittleBigPlanet’s huge new update 1.21, aka Leerdammer… is now LIVE! Right now! GET,” was what Mm said when the studio broke the news on Twitter.

Download is over 50Mb in size. Go get. We’ll wait.

Joystiq‘s posted a new trailer of Avatar’s multiplayer mode, and it’s quite a sight. Each of the game’s areas has the visible light spectrum working overtime, resulting in a highly attractive color palette.

And then it all goes boom. When pitted against a race of ten foot-tall, teleporting blue creatures that are essentially Nightcrawler from X-Men, humanity lets loose with its explosives supply. Or at least, that’s what this trailer seems to suggest.

See the full thing after the break.

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Colour us interested.

If a survey picked up by D’Toid seems to indicate what it looks it could, you could be attending E3 next year from Live!

The service, which would be free, would see an Avatar go about a virtual showfloor with booths from all of the major publishers, with the possibillty of videos, trailers and even demos and betas being available, if possible.

The all important press conference would also be streamable and live.

GamesCom, BlizzCon and more gaming conventions are being looked at, as well as E3. It would certainly beat the stress of the real thing anyways.

Find more through the link.

A couple weeks ago, hackers started fiddling around with a gaping hole in Modern Warfare 2′s command console, and – shockingly enough – instead of immediately alerting Infinity Ward to this exploit’s existence in an effort to preserve the subtle balance of their favorite game, people started cheating. Now, though, Infinity Ward’s flushing the scum.

“In fact, the Steam ban hammer is coming down on about 2,500 confirmed #MW2 cheaters on PC today,” Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling recently tweeted.

And then the camera pulled back, as the screen slowly faded to black. Two large words appeared in the center of the screen. “The End,” they read, while you slumped back in your seat, your nervously clenched fists finally unfurling.

But, just as the satisfied, relaxed calm of a cheater-free world began to settle in your heart and solidify in your mind, the words suddenly changed. “The End… ?”

Then, without warning, the camera panned in close to a gravestone marked “Joe ‘Overwrought Metaphor for MW2 Cheaters’ Smith.” AND OMIGOD IT’S A HAND COMING OUT OF THE GRAVE. Dun-dun-dun!

Thanks, Big Download.

Square’s been showing the first TV commercials for Final Fantasy XIII before it’s Japanese release in a couple of weeks on December 17.

The first one only mostly shows stuff from the recent trailer last week, while the second ad shows a teacher telling his class he will be taking a period of absence. Why? To play the game he has been waiting to play three years for.

Classic.

Find them after the jump. Thanks, FF-XIII.net.

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Like Killer 7 and No More Heroes before it, No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle’s got “Suda51″ written all over it. Translation: It’s weird. Grown-up weird. Phallic imagery everywhere weird. And you know what that means. Yep! A very entertaining ESRB write-up. Here’s a snippet:

“Two women (clad in bikinis) get suspended in mid-air, get caught between the flashing lights, lasers, and frenetic sword swipes of an assassins’ duel—the women’s heads slide across the floor once the men stop fighting.”

The listing also reveals the return of Bizarre Jelly, a fake anime that was featured in the first game. Even the show’s opening’s quick “one-to-two seconds” of bare buttock were unable to escape the ESRB’s watchful eye.

We’ve posted the full listing after the break in order to avoid unnecessary spoilage. So have at it. Take a glimpse inside Suda51′s loony bin-ripe mind for solid proof that he’s still got “it.” By which we mean his game design chops. As for the other “it” – you know, his sanity – we’re pretty sure he lost it a long, long time ago.

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EA’s announced a brand new pack of DLC for Fight Night Round 4, known as the “Rivalries” pack, will release this week.

The pack will contain two new gameplay modes and three new fighters, including Evander Holyfield and Bernard Hopkins.

It releases this Thursday, but we don’t know anything on pricing yet.

Find the trailer for the DLC after the break, thanks to Joystiq, who also have the first screens over there.

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Look, its new shots of Final Fantasy XIII.

Famitsu has 15 new shots of the game, taken from last weeks issue of the magazine. It even has Cactuars! Hurrah!

Find them through the link. It is out in a few short weeks in Japan.

Robin Williams has told folks in the past that his daughter was named after The Legend of Zelda, but to our knowledge this is the first time he has mentioned that he plays online.

He mentioned it while as a guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Yeah. Fallon.

We know this is not technically news, but it’s Saturday which is normally slow anyway and it’s a holiday weekend in the states so it’s worse than usual.

Anyway, it’s posted below the break from YouTube. There’s a better video of it on Hulu (via GoNintendo), but we’ve heard folks outside the US can’t view those videos.

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North Carolina State University has received a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to recreate and map crime scenes using the Unity game engine.

Called the IC-CRIME platform, it allows investigators to reproduce the scenes in 3D and 2D, giving investigators the tools needed to share scientific information and investigative techniques as well as reducing travel budgets.

While the tech will not be ready or widely available for a few years, forensic scientists are confident in the platform’s future.

Bones does not seem so far-fetched after reading this, now. OK, maybe still a bit.

Via Joystiq, Reuters.

Looks like the BBC iPlayer has been postponed indefinitely on Xbox Live due to a stalemate on a service agreement.

See, the BBC wants it to be free, Microsoft charges for services. Never the twain shall meet, apparently.

“Microsoft only wants to offer its users access to platforms it can charge for as this is the model it is pursuing,” explained a BBC source to Telegraph UK. “It wants to ensure that only those paying for Xbox Live Gold accounts can access its additional content services and even then there is usually a charge on top to get access to those. For example, to access the Sky Player on Xbox, you have to pay for a Gold subscription as well as a Sky subscription.

“This does not fit with the BBC’s model and Microsoft will not budge at the moment. It is really frustrating for those involved on the BBC side who want to make sure iPlayer is rolled out on as many popular entertainment platforms as possible.

The BBC cannot charge the British public for access to the iPlayer as it is already included in the licence fee

Currently, PS3 and Wii offer free access to the BBC iPlayer.

More through the link.

Looks as though one million people have created profiles for Last.fm on XBL, and streamed over 120 million minutes of music.

Last count it was at around half a million profiles, but apparently that number has soared since Tuesday, when Microsoft made the announcement.

Zune is doing well too, with 1.7 million users trying it out in the first week, according to GameInformer.

Earlier in the week, we told you that 2 million Facebook users had signed into the service using XBL, but we’re sure by next week those numbers will be even bigger, what with the holiday and all.

More through the link.

Eurogamer got the chance of a lifetime, of sorts, when elusive and enigmatic Street Fighter champ Daigo Umehara agreed to an interview.

Turns out, he is very philosophical about his success, and extremely confident in his abilities. It also appears that competitions are not too fun for him anymore, since no one appears to be challenging enough. Poor fella.

“Right now, there’s nobody younger than me that I feel threatened by,”said Umehara. “I haven’t met anyone that I felt possesses the skill to surpass me in the future. I’m not over-evaluating myself. I can analytically see their weakness, their ineptitudes.

“When I look at a younger player, I can spot his weakness, like ‘his such-and-such is disadvantageous for fighting gameplay’. Everyone I’ve ever played has some fatal flaw. But you know, personally I enjoy being a challenger more than a titleholder.

“I definitely would welcome a supreme character’s arrival. When he appears, gaming for me will become fun again.”

The full interview is through the link, and it is a very good read.

Just a friendly reminder that Bethesa’s Rogue Warrior has shipped, and is now available for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Described as a “character-driven first-person shooter featuring real-life American Navy Seal Richard “Demo Dick” Marcinko”, it “offers an action-packed single-player campaign as well as intense multiplayer combat.”

Remember, Mickey Rourke voices the lead.

More information is below, courtesy of Gameinforwire.

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A promo trailer for Gordon Chan’s King of Fighters flick has popped up, and it’s below the break.

It’s out sometime next year, and you can find out more over on IMDB and Kotaku.

That’s really all we have to say about it, really.

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