Monthly Archives: November 2009

Not enough with turntables, guitars and a full band experience, Activision has filed for a trademark known as “Drum Hero”.

It was filed during Halloween weekend for use in videogames.

It had to happen, innit.

From PSLS, via Kotaku.

Activision confirmed in it’s Q3 financial results last week that we will see new Guitar Hero and Call of Duty games next year.

We have a winner for the “no shit sherlock” tag.

The COD game will assumingly be under Treyarch, with possible plans to head to Vietnam in the next game. As for Guitar Hero 6, your guess is as good as ours.

The publisher also announced new Spiderman and Shrek games to be released next year.

Thanks, Kotaku.

ShockTillYouDrop (via Kotaku) has the first on set pictures of the cast of the upcoming Resident Evil movie Afterlife.

They show Milla Jovovich, Heroes’ Ali Larter and Prison Break’s Wentworth Miller, as well as Spencer Locke.

Lovely. Movie is set for a 2010 release.

GameStop US has confirmed to Kotaku that some of it’s stores in the US has knowingly broken the release date of Modern Warfare 2. GameStop corp were the ones who signed off on the decision.

Speaking to the site, GameStop’s Chris Olivera said that it was in regions where the game had already broken the street date with other retailers.

“This past weekend, GameStop made the decision to break street date and sell reserved copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in select markets where other retailers had broken street date. Our decision followed many conversations with Activision and was an effort to protect our customer base.”

Activision said in response that they hadn’t given GameStop permission to jump the gun on the early release.

“Activision has not given any retailer permission to sell Modern Warfare 2 prior to the Nov. 10 street date.  The company fully supports the Nov.10 street date,” said a rep from the publisher

It’s out on PS3, 360 and PC from November 10. Oh, what do you know? It’s tonight.

New scans of Final Fantasy XIII appeared over the weekend, which look really awesome. Find them over at SCRAWL.

But there was a big revelation at the end of the Shonen Jump scans, when it was revealed that codes for the online beta of Final Fantasy XIV will come with FFXIII in Japan.

It’s unknown if this will be in limited quantities, or what platform it’ll be on, but we assume it’ll be on PC. Director Hiromichi Tanaka previously said the beta would be Windows only.

Expect more info in Famitsu this week. 2010 is when it’s out for the PlayStation 3 and PC.

That’s a nice copy of Modern Warfare 2 for the PC you’ve got there. Bet you thought you were dreaming when you saw it perched on some clueless retailer’s shelf. Now, though, it’s time for a particularly rude wakeup call. See, the game won’t work until Tuesday.

“If you bought a retail copy on PC, you can play it on 11.10.09,” Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling tweeted.

Since the game uses Steamworks, it’ll stay locked-up tight on Steam until Tuesday.

And you thought the wait was bad before. Now you can touch the game, peruse its manual, or even use its disc as a really snazzy looking frisbee. But you can’t play it. Bummer.

Thanks, Big Download.

The first trailer of EA Sports’ MMA game debuted last night’s Strikeforce fight card, and the game seems to be shaping up pretty well.

The trailer depicts two men pummeling each other into tomato paste, which is really all you ask for. Aside from world peace. But somehow, we think these two men are all right with a little violence here and there.

Check out the full trailer after the break.

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A post on the official Final Fantasy XIII website has had a challenge for intrepid fans to solve, and solve it they did.

“Solve this anagram to find out what lies ahead: A Henchmen Inventor Tent Unto. Check back Monday for the answer!” read the site.

Milliseconds later, a few members of FinalFantasyXIII.net‘s forums put their heads together and overcame Square Enix’s brain teaser. “Announcement Nov Thirteenth” was their verdict.

*cough*Release date*cough*

Please?

Not much this week regarding MMOs that we didn’t already cover with separate posts already, but there’s still some stuff passed the break.

Here’s just some of what we have for you this week:

Mythic has detailed City siege changes for Warhammer, shots of the Ascension expansion for Perfect World’s Jade Dynasty popped up, Star Trek Online player progression was discuseed, and the open Beta for Alganon starts next Wednesday.

Find out about all of that and more below.

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Loads of stuff this week in news for indie and other games of interest.

REO Speedwagon’s music has been used for a new game, Dark Salvation has a demo, PC specs for RTS game XIII Century: Death or Glory were released, and you can also find out how to scare the crap out of your pals using your Xbox 360. Good times.

It’s all through the break in a lovely wall of text.

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Avatar: The Game has a new video, and it’s over on D’toid.

Game’s out December 1 PS3 and Xbox 360.

Movie’s out December 18.

Ubisoft has released the sixth developer diary for Assassin’s Creed II.

In it, scriptwriter Jefferey Yohalem and art director Laura De Young talk about the Animus and how in the sequel you can access its database when standing in front of certain buildings and people, or even while involved in certain gameplay event.

This gives you in-depth background information on whatever is it that you are doing at the moment.

Sounding better and better everyday. Day one for us.

It’s posted below the break, courtesy of IGN.

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Shattered Horizon was released on Steam this week, and it is full of zero gravity gameplay and “silent running.”

What silent running does is allows you to turn audio cues off, providing “a stealth advantage while sacrificing radar, HUD, and maneuverability.”

Unfortunately, the $19.99 title may put some off because it requires DirectX 10, a DirectX 10 compatible video card, and Windows Vista or Windows 7 with no support for Windows XP or DirectX 9.

Time to update if so.

There’s a video of it over on D’toid.

Demon’s Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki has told Game Informer that the game’s difficulty was designed so that players would feel “a sense of accomplishment” regarding the collection of souls.

“If the Souls could be recovered anytime, there would be no suspense or sense of accomplishment,” he said. “[We want players to feel] like, ‘I can’t die until I get all those souls back,’ or ‘I did it! I made it to my bloodstain!’”

For those of you who have yet to play it, souls gained through fallen enemies are lost once you die. You only regain them if you make it back to your “bloodstain” on the ground without dying on the way – because there can only be one bloodstain at a time.

Mind you, you have to fight everything again, so if you do make it back you the souls you had when you met your demise for the 800th time will be there waiting, which means double the souls in a sense.

The game is difficult, no doubt about it. Currently, the game is being played in the next room and we hear very loud obscenities coming from it as we type.

Via Joystiq.

SEGA’s announced that its giving away 40,000 Bayonetta demo keys to Xbox 360 users.

In order to be eligible, you must sign up for a SEGA Pass and enter the contest through here.

Registration runs from November 9 to 13 with winners being notified on November 16.

Go try your luck.

Just in case you didn’t know already, LittleBigPlanet is one year old.

To celebrate, Media Molecule will be releasing new content over the next few weeks.

The first bit was released for free this week with two free costumes – one being the birthday Sackboy and the other being the return of the spacesuit costume.

Also, if you purchase LittleBigPlanet (PSP) through PSN from November 17 – Decemeber 3, you’ll get the six Sackboy costumes from Uncharted 2, Killzone 2 and MotorStorm – just in case you didn’t know that bit already, too.

There’s more over on the US PS Blog along with the 40th episode of LittleBigPodcast.

There’s a patch available for Torchlight over on BigDowload. We’re sure it’s also available at whatever file site you prefer.

It’s only for the version purchased directly from Runic Games, if you got it elsewhere, check with that outlet for it. Bad news about it, is that you will have to uninstall the game before you patch it, so be sure to backup your saved games in another spot before you do.

Also, due to a developmental issue, the game will still show v1.11 on the title screen although it updates Torchlight to v1.12.

Interested in hearing more about the game? Then head on over to the Columbus Dispatch were the weekly show chats a bit with Runic Games CEO Max Schaefer and the development team.

You may have heard of Schaefer before. He was previously VP at Blizzard North and a director at Blizzard before co-founding Flagship Studios. He also contributed to art design on Diablo and was the eventual project, design and environment art director on Diablo II.

Just in case you never heard of Blizzard or Flagship before.

The cast of characters for LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues has been revealed.

There’s folks (and things) from all the Indy flicks. Yes, ALL the Indy flicks.

Here’s the full list, courtesy of VideogamesBlogger. Wonder if we can drive Short Round off a cliff this time around?

Game’s out November 17 for DS, PC, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, and Xbox 360.

• Cairo Digger
• Crystal Skull (Object)
• Enemy Mechanic
• Indiana Jones
• Lao Che
• Major Arnold Toht
• Marion Ravenwood
• Mola Ram
• Mutt
• Native
• Professor Henry Jones Senior
• Rene Belloq
• Short Round
• Spalko
• Willie Scott

During his interview with GTTV, Reggie Fils-Aime was not very reassuring when it came to the next Zelda game for Wii.

As a matter of fact, we’re gonna have to wait a while, like we figured.

“We haven’t committed to Zelda in 2010″ he told Geoff Keighley.

OK then. Maybe in 2020 we’ll get it. No matter, as long as it’s properly good and well done.

We saw this bit yesterday during the GTTV bit, but figured you had heard enough from Reggie for the day.

More through the video.

NCSoft has revealed during its financial report for Q3 of its fiscal year that Aion has sold more than 500,000 units in North America and 470,000 in Europe.

The Korean publisher’s financials are up 112 percent to KRW166 billion ($142 million) with net income for the July-September period at KRW46.9 billion ($40 million), which is a 836 percent year-over-year increase, with Aion contributing to 52 percent of those figures.

MMOs Lineage contributed 16 percent, City of Heroes/Villains 4 percent and Guild Wars 3 percent.

Revenues from Korea accounted for 48 percent with North America, Japan, Europe, and Taiwan following in that order.

Via IGN.