Author Archives: Mike

Microsoft, Bungie and 343 Industries have bent over backwards to assure fans the studio handover won’t change anything for Halo 4. Mike Bowden dares to doubt.

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A cheap and cheerful downloadable title has done more to sell Mike Bowden on the future of Microsoft’s motion control than all the auto showrooms and tactical commands in the world.

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Next time you ready a whinge about our mutual hobby, spare a thought for gamers outside Japan, the UK and US – like Mike Bowden, whose lament for our Danish brethren is echoed across Europe.

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Mike Bowden has fallen out of love with games: he’s bored of learning maps and button routines, and he has a life. Is core gaming refusing to evolve? Has the time-pressed family man been alienated for good?

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Croteam boss Roman Ribaric won’t be drawn on any specifics about Serious Sam 3 as it’s “too early.” However, he will say that the cartoony look of old has been dropped.

“”I can’t yet reveal any new features on Serious Sam 3, as it’s still too early,” Ribaric told Eurogamer.

“However, I believe Serious Sam fans would want to hear the following two things. First, Serious Sam 3 will play like the original Serious Sam. And second, we’ll leave the cartoony look behind.

“As for standing up to other games: simply, if it’s good to play, it’s good to play,” He went on.

“Serious Sam games belong to their own unique fast-paced FPS genre and should best be compared to previous Serious Sam games.”

Serious Sam 3 has no date or platforms as yet.

Ex-president of Blizzard North, David Brevik, will head up Gargantuan Games – part of Gazillion Entertainment – and his first job will be to oversee the development of the Marvel Universe MMO.

Blizzard North is best known for the first two games in the revered Diablo series.

BigDownload also points out that Brevik will be attending this week’s ComicCon and will be in an MMO panel on Thursday.

Bit more through the link.

id Software’s John Carmack has been discussing multiplatform trade-off’s with GameInformer and has said that putting RAGE on 3 DVD’s on Xbox 360 is a problem as the nature of the game won’t really allow for it.

“We would love to set the thing up where it filled one Blu-ray disc versus three DVDs, which is about the right mix, but the game just…we can’t cut it into a third like that,” he said

“We can cut it into two pieces. We’ve got two large wastelands on there. We just couldn’t make an arbitary cut.”

However, Carmack forsees no problem with Doom 4 being multi disk.

“Doom 4 is being set up so that it’s almost certainly going to be cut up to 3 DVDs versus one Blu-ray. At least they’ve got the ability because of the way it’s structured.” concluded Carmack.

Carmack also compared development on the two consoles:

“There’s a little bit more theoretical raw performance on the PS3, so we’ve got a little bit more headroom.

“The 360 was easier to certainly to get to where we are now. More sweat equity had to be put into the PS3.”

Cryptic has put out ten, brand spanking new screenshots of Champions Online and Massively took up the mantle and hosted them.

The superhero MMO is shaping up very nicely indeed, we reckon.

Shame there’s no date yet.

EA has revealed that Pandemic Studio’s The Saboteur will be released on December 8 in the US and December 4th in Europe. (thanks, Blerk)

The press release also points out that if you’re at ComicCon (we’re not…gutted) then you’ll be able to experience it for the first time, or something.

So. December 8th (and 4th!): 360, PS3 and PC. Got that?

Full PR after the break.

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Activision has just revealed 15 new tracks that will be on The Beatles: Rock Band disc when the game is release 9th September.

The tracks also include the venues in which the songs where played.

Here they are:

• Twist And Shout / Cavern Club
• Do You Want To Know A Secret / Cavern Club
• Can’t Buy Me Love / Ed Sullivan Theater
• I Wanna Be Your Man / Ed Sullivan Theater
• Eight Days A Week / Shea Stadium
• Paperback Writer / Budokan
• And Your Bird Can Sing / Budokan
• Yellow Submarine / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band* / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• With a Little Help from My Friends* / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• Revolution / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• Birthday / Abbey Road Dreamscape
• Dig A Pony / Rooftop Concert
• I’ve Got A Feeling / Rooftop Concert

A brand new Beatles Rock Band video was also released earlier today, did you watch it?

Epic boss Mark Rein sat down with VG247 at Develop in Brighton, England last week to chat about the firm’s Unreal Engine. Rein revealed that the engine behind APB (and many others) is due for an update and the new features “will blow people away.”

“It’s a very mature engine and we’re adding great new features every year,” said Rein.

“I just saw some incredible new stuff that we’re either later this year or next year for new engine features and I think they’re really going to blow people away.”

Rein said earlier that if they a had an engine incremental numeration system, “we’d be at about 3.8 right now.”

Get all our Develop coverage here.

After the break you can see 22 minutes of Brütal Legend gameplay accompanied by the man of the moment, Mr. Tim Schafer.

Along side Tim are a couple of his Double Fine Studios colleagues, and they’re all chatting about how you control your moshing squad.

Oh, and as Destructoid points out: “there’s Ozzy fucking Osbourne, too.”

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CVG‘s hosting some footage of the new Red Faction: Guerilla DLC called Demons and Badlands.

The pack will take place on Mars in an area outside of the original game-world and is out for PS3/360 on August 13.

Click to watch.

The Major’s updated to reveal that the Halo Wars Historical Battle Map Pack is now available for download.

The blurb:

Expand your Halo Wars experience with the Historical Battle Map Pack Add-on. These four new maps highlight key turning points in the epic war between the UNSC and Covenant forces. The maps include: Blood River – battle a single opponent over a treacherous natural chokepoint; Barrens – engage your enemy in the midst of the Flood; Memorial Basin – two vs. two team play in one of the bloodiest battles in Halo history; and Glacial Ravine — three vs. three action as you fight to control a narrow corridor flanked by energy walls.

It’s 800 MS Points. Go get it.

Update: CVG‘s also got some screenshots. Head on over there and check them out.

SCEE’s vice president of research and development, Paul Holman, has said that he believes that Sony’s motion control peripheral is a “couple of generations” ahead of of the current competition.

“Oh, totally. It’s another generation forward, or even a couple of generations,” said Holman to EG when asked how Sony’s motion tech stood up against the Wii-mote.

“I know in certain games or applications which are out there, people had to sort of fluff it to make it real for consumers. But this stuff is super-accurate and the impact of that is incredible.

“I think you have to play with it to realise what it will do to games.”

Holman goes on to say that the 2010 release date was given to let consumers know that “it’s real, how it’s real.

“Game developers want to know, if they’re working on a title for next year, whether they should consider it or not.

“We have to send some sort of message,” explain Holman. “At the end of the day, we know the track we’re taking for our technology, we know when we’re going to manufacture, but we have to make sure there’s a good catalogue of games to back it up.”

Full interview through the link.

CVG has the first three images of the third Call of Duty: World at War map pack to be released next month.

If you missed it earlier, Activision just announced that you lot downloaded map packs one and two 4 million times. You total nutters.

Anyway, have look at the new one, innit.

CVG has some very colourful exclusive screenshots of TecmoKoei’s Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 that feature the first look at co-op play.

Not very much is known about the co-op (exclusive to the PS3′s Sigma) side of things, but hopefully we’ll know more soon.

Check them out.

After Activision bumped up the RRP for Modern Warfare 2 last week from £49.99 to £54.99, Eurogamer has asked other publishers if they are likely to follow suit.

Although Ubisoft and THQ delined to comment, EA did have this to say: “There has been no change in our trade pricing policy and no change in RRP.”

So, just Activision feeling the pinch, then? Time will tell.

The official Battlefield 1943 twitter page has updated to reveal that you can use the semi-auto rifle, sniper rifle, or SMG from Battlefield 1943 in the forthcoming Battlefield Bad Company 2.

If you don’t believe us, check here. It says:

“Think you’re a Bad Ass with BF1943 weapons? What if I said you’ll be able to use your Semi-Auto Rifle, Sniper Rifle, or SMG in BFBC2!”

See? We weren’t lying.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is out for PC and high def console in Q1 2010.

Oh dear. Siliconera has a pic of the exclusive Resident Evil 5 costumes that come with the PC version of the game in September, and protagonist Chris Redfield’s cozzy (above)…well…looks a little bit silly.

Sheva, on the other hand, is wearing a charming little secretary’s outfit that’s simply too tight for her. Shame.

Click through the link for more.