Archive for February, 2009:
The Lost & Damned Set Xbox Live Record
Anything related to GTA seems to bring in sacks full of money to Rockstar Games. So, it isn’t too surprising to know that the recently released GTA 4 expansion The Lost & Damned set a one-day Xbox Live revenue record, according to Microsoft.
While no sales figures were given, it can be expected that it sold at least a couple hundred thousand units. But then again, even if it sold only a few, its $20 price tag would still ensure the record.
The expansion went live last week on February 17 and adds about ten hours of story-based gameplay. It introduces a completely new character and adds/enhances multiplayer.
Watchmen Game Priced
The first episode of downloadable beat ‘em up companion to the upcoming Watchmen movie will cost $20 when it hits PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 next week.
Developed by Deadline Games, Watchmen: The End is Nigh will allow two players to take control of Rorschach and Nite Owl in a flashback to the superhero duo’s early crime fighting days. It is based on a 1987 pen and paper RPG that was co-written by series creator Alan Moore.
The End is Nigh can be grabbed starting Wednesday, March 4. The PC version of the game can be bought on Steam and Direct2Drive.
Tabula Rasa Apocalypse Planned
Richard Garriott’s failed project will be shutting down for good tomorrow, but unlike other MMOs, Tabula Rasa won’t go down without a fight. With the end near, a news post on the game’s website details a powerful alien race called the Neph, which along with the evil Bane have discovered wormhole technology, ensuring “wave after wave of Bane troops without rest or respite.”
What this means is that there will be an epic battle for those who have stayed with the game till its demise later today. Below is the post, and if you have an account with the game – have fun while it lasts.
We request that all military personnel begin fortifying defenses at every AFS base in preparation for a massive Bane assault. If enemy troop movements are as large as we fear, and the Neph are truly prepared to lead all out war against us, this may be our last stand. Penumbra has been informed of the situation and is standing by on the use of their last resort weapon. We cannot afford to be complacent or uncertain, but if it is truly our destiny to be destroyed, we are taking them all with us.
No Doubt’s Missing Song on Top of Stevie Ray DLC in Rock Band Next Week
Harmonix has revealed that Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s “Texas Flood” album isn’t the only Rock Band downloadable content coming next week – we will also be treated to “New” by No Doubt.
The song was one of the two tracks missing from the band’s compilation album “The Singles 1992-2003″ that was released for Rock Band. It will sell for 160 Microsoft points ($2).
As a reminder, the “Texas Flood” album will cost 1280 Microsoft points ($16); individual tracks can be bought for 160 Microsoft points ($2).
The DLC will be available on Xbox Live starting March 3; PS3 users will have to wait two more days.
Street Fighter 4 PC Due This Summer
Gamers have been kicking and having an all around good time with the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Street Fighter IV, while a select few have been sitting around grumpily waiting for the PC version of the game. They now have a timeframe to wait to: this summer.
"Let’s say summer," stated Capcom business development VP Christian Svensson when asked about the PC release. He noted that the recent arcade sticks and pads produced by Mad Catz are compatible on PC; Capcom is also discussing a PC specific gamepad bundle.
Svensson seemed very happy with the console versions of the game, which he noted are “exceeding forecasts” and “on track to do some pretty amazing things.”
Daily Battle – 2/27/09
BioShock Game Review – A Real Shock All Around
Bunny Invasion 2 Review – Surprisingly Addictive Bunny Blasting Mayhem
Japan Outlaws R4 Cartridge
Microsoft Responds To Banning Controversy
Onion Says Violent Video Games Important Training Tools For Apocalypse
LittleBigPlanet PSP to Retain User-creation
Dawn of Discovery Coming This Summer
de Blob Sells 700,000 on Wii
Stevie Ray Vaughan Album on Rock Band Next Week
Ninja Blade Gets NA Release Date, Downloadable Demo Coming
Sam & Max seasons to hit Xbox Live Arcade
Nintendo’s second quarter release schedule
Free Realms enters closed beta
Wii Dead Space to use MotionPlus
Playstation DualShock Vortex controller
Blue Dragon Video Game – Fun For The Old-School RPG Fan
Crop Circles Game Review -More Of The Same, But Fairly Well Done+
Bubble Quod Review – Bursting Bubbles Never So Fun
Mass Effect Game Review – Like A Bathrobe, Familiar But Pleasant
Capcom Almost Gets Gigantic Investment
Prince of Persia DLC Delayed
New Wii Controller Announced
First Sins of a Solar Empire Expansion Launcheda
Midnight Club DLC Out on March 10
Grand Slam Tennis, Tiger Woods Suport Wii MotionPlus
Quick Picks
Light Vehicle Retail Sales Down by 38%
Max Payne Movie Review – All The Payne’s On The Audience
Fcc Hot Shots
People 150 Scooter from Kymco
Sony Unveils New SAIBASHOTTO W Series Digital Cameras
Nokia N85 gets cloned and renamed to NOKLAN85-1
GTA Staying with PSP
Contrary to speculations that Grant Theft Auto may be jumping to the Nintendo DS side, Sony has made it clear that is has no plans to remove the popular franchise from their sleek portable unit.
According to what SCEA head of PSP marketing John Koller told MTV Multiplayer, GTA is “a tremendous franchise for PlayStation in general,” which means PSP owners will once again see a handheld installment on the PSP in the near future.
“No one should sleep on that franchise. That’s a tremendous franchise for PlayStation in general. We’ve had two that are the top two sellers on PSP right now. So, there’s definitely continued conversations with ['GTA' development studio] Rockstar on all their brands. That’s nothing that’s left the PlayStation family.”
All of these rumors started to come about when Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was ready to go for the Nintendo DS. But then again, it only makes sense to bring one of the most popular video game franchises in history to as many different platforms as humanly possible, and of course, that does include the PlayStation brand.
(Source) PSXtreme
BioShock Game Review – A Real Shock All Around
It’s another rarity for you this time around, folks–one of those handful of FPS shooters that didn’t leave me wanting to give back my lunch. It’s BioShock, and it’s probably never been so relevant.
Positing an underwater city by the name of Rapture, a place where artists and scientists and industrialists can pursue their craft without fear of reprisal or societal backlash, in full accord with the principles of Ayn Rand’s objectivism movement.
You’ll have to go through Rapture and discover that maybe, just maybe, a little societal reprisal might not have been such a bad thing, in retrospect. Especially when you consider just what they were up to down there in Rapture—they’ve developed weapons out of spare parts. They’ve also been doing genetic research down there, leading to a line of personal genetic abilities called Plasmids. And they sell them in VENDING MACHINES. Anyone with a few bucks can basically buy a syringe full of genetically-altering whatnot, shoot themselves up, and be a pyrokinetic. You literally have the ability to turn your forearms into hives for a race of killer bees, which you can telepathically order to attack targets on sight.
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Bunny Invasion 2 Review – Surprisingly Addictive Bunny Blasting Mayhem
Bunny Invasion 2, one of the latest games on Kongregate Games, is downright unsettling for all manner of reasons. The largest of these is that you’ll spend a whole lot of time shooting homicidal bunny rabbits who want nothing so much as to tear down your favorite pub and kill everyone inside. Thus, it’s not exactly a surprise that you’ll head to the roof of said pub with a variety of increasingly destructive weapons.
Sure, it sounds like the kind of thing PETA would be up in arms over, but these bunnies are actually trying to kill you. Thus, it almost feels good to blast their fuzzy little behinds back to whatever hell spawned them. In fact, there’s one great wave–and there’s better than fifty of them total–in which you can get a fully-powered-up minigun and take on a legion of small bunny troops, such that you’re fighting an avalanche with fire hoses. It can be done, but only if you have all the water in the world.
So just to sum up, I really liked this game. It’s easy to pick up and play, and has plenty of humor and excitement for anyone willing to play it through to the end. The addition of an achievements menu adds an extra note of replay value that’s much appreciated. Bunny Invasion 2 is a fight worth fighting.
Japan Outlaws R4 Cartridge
One of the biggest concerns Nintendo has is with piracy. They’re always pushing to crack down on those selling fake DSes and pirated cartridges. Unfortunately for the company there are much more easily accessed, technological means for accessing games for free. One method was the R4 cartridge, essentially an adapter to allow DS owners to upload files onto a micro SD card. There are some legitimate uses for the technology: one can download home brewed software that turns the DS into an eBook reader by uploading PDF files; putting music or video files on the card also allows you to use the handheld as a portable media player.
Unfortunately any technological item that has both a legitimate and illegitimate use is much more likely to be used for the latter. As you can imagine, Nintendo doesn’t like this device and now they’ve succeeded in doing something about it. The gaming company must have some excellent lobbyists, because the Japanese government has just banned sales of the R4 cartridge.
Microsoft Responds To Banning Controversy
The gay community has been up in arms after a female gamer who identified herself as a lesbian in her online profile was harassed by other gamers and then banned from the service by Microsoft until she changed her gamer tag. Yesterday Microsoft had refused to comment on this issue, but apparently now they’re ready.
Microsoft has announced that the ban had nothing to do with the fact that she was a lesbian, but was only because of the sexual content in the gamertag. Microsoft is pointing out that in the user agreement is says that gamers cannot “create a gamertag or use text in other profile fields that include comments that look, sound like, stand for, hint at, abbreviate, or insinuate content of a potentially sexual nature.”
Onion Says Violent Video Games Important Training Tools For Apocalypse
With a global financial crisis destabilizing governments and the world as a whole and a sizable nuclear arsenal still in existence in many nations, the threat of an apocalyptic war has never been more looming. All it would take is some recently struggling country to supply a fundamentalist group with a warhead, or the fissionable materials required to make one and boom, we’re launched into universal devastation. While economists and politicians alike are discussing stimulus packages and how to best implement them, the Onion is discussing something far more important.
They’ve raised a question that, although bleak, is a necessary one to ask: are violent video games truly preparing our children for the collapse of civilization? A panel of experts have assembled to discuss the topic and as one might expect, dissenting opinions are being expressed. Some maintain that the industry is preparing our youth quite well for scavenging through the rubble-strewn wreckage of cities for weapons and ammunition as well as how to use health packs to heal zombie bites. Others point out that games like Fallout 3 have informed their children of the importance of effective weapon choices, teaching them that it’s easier to kill a cyborg with a well-placed grenade than a flurry of assault rifle fire.
Dissenters point out that it’d be far more important to teach them other skills including how to construct shelters out of burned out shells of automobiles as well as insisting that children need to have a more realistic look at how difficult it is to fight giant mutant irradiated insects.
LittleBigPlanet PSP to Retain User-creation
The PS3 is home to one of the funnest games to come out in recent times – LittleBigPlanet – so I was kind of surprised when Sony announced that the cooperative platformer is coming to the PSP. How will they transfer the user-creation and social aspects of the game to the small screen? That’s one question everyone has on their minds right now.
Keeping that in mind, developer Media Molecule has revealed that it plans on keeping the game’s concept of user-created content as a central feature in the PSP version.
"There is a whole play, create, share component to the game, just like the PS3," said Sony director of hardware marketing John Koller. "They are still working on that, so there’s not a whole lot to talk about yet."
Koller added that they are looking to implement some sort of PSP/PS3 integration, though nothing is set in stone as of yet.
Dawn of Discovery Coming This Summer
Ubisoft today announced Dawn of Discovery for PC, Wii and Nintendo DS, the North American title of city-building sequel Anno 1404.
The game will continue the series’ focus on historical urban planning and settlement management. However, unlike previous games in the franchise, Dawn of Discovery does not seem to feature combat.
Making it friendly to the consoles, the Wii and DS versions will feature support for motion and stylus controls; the Wii version will also feature a co-op mode.
The title is due out this summer on the aforementioned platforms.