Archive for March 10th, 2010

The “Rock Band” series is good enough for Lady Gaga, and it looks like EA like it too. Confirming that “Rock Band 3″ will be out for the holidays, Harmonix added that EA will distribute the release, thus ending speculation that the title might go elsewhere.

“Harmonix is developing ‘Rock Band 3′ for worldwide release this holiday season,” Harmonix announced on the official “Rock Band” Facebook page. “The game, which will be published by MTV Games and distributed by Electronic Arts, will innovate and revolutionise the music genre once again, just as Harmonix did with the original ‘Rock Band,’ ‘Rock Band 2′ and ‘The Beatles: Rock Band.’”

That means by the end of the year we’ll know if The Who, Green Day, Lady Gaga or any other acts getting in on music gaming lately will show up as well. We’ll also need to track down Snooki to see if her “Rock Band” skills survive the sequel transition.

2010 is bound to be a year of big peripheral additions between the PS3 motion controller and Project Natal, so keep your eyes out for whatever Harmonix has cooked up. The next “Guitar Hero” game will reportedly integrate Natal controls, so “Rock Band” will want to break out some new moves if they want to grab the spotlight.

What songs do you want to play in “Rock Band 3″? Are you surprised to see EA distributing again? Share your expectations in the comment section below.

OnLive is a gaming service which promises to deliver high quality, graphics-intensive PC games straight to your crappy netbook, allowing them to run smoothly and at high resolution. The way it’s been demonstrated to me is that you’re basically networked into a powerful server cluster which handles all the intensive hardware grinding, and then it spits the data back at you in what amounts to a movie file, based on your actions. It’s a little complicated, but the short story is: Your crappy PC will run “Crysis” without a problem. In theory.

Every time I’ve seen OnLive demonstrated, it’s been in a managed conference hall. Until I’m actually able to try it out on my painfully lacking work PC, I’m not fully convinced.

Well, the question of viability will be answered this June, as OnLive is finally launching after a prolonged beta. Users will be able to connect to the service and access games for a $15 per month subscription fee.

Until I try it out in legit conditions, I’m going to withhold judgment. That said, the prospect of running the world’s prettiest PC games on something as powerful as my iPhone is just too good to ignore. Definitely check back in as the June date nears, as I’m sure we’ll be able to mess around with the service pre-launch.

UPDATE: I just received a press release with “Stimulus Package” used front and center and word that Xbox Live Silver members “who have not yet experienced the exciting adrenaline rush of ‘Modern Warfare 2′ will be able to try it with a Multiplayer Unlock event” from March 12th through March 15th.

Infinity Ward may not use the term “Stimulus Package” on their new website promoting “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” DLC, but the map packs will be marketed with a new word they’ve coined — “mapathy” — which is a condition they hope to cure by March 30th when the content launches.

The new affliction refers to “a state of indifference to the same old maps one has been playing for the last several months,” according to Mapathy.com. Infinity Ward and all of its cohorts’ logos are clearly visible at the bottom, along with a copyright notice, so it seems safe to assume this is where breaking info about new “MW2″ maps will show up by the end of the month.

Symptoms include no longer deriving “pleasure from blowing up people hiding in the cockpit or on top of the crane,” and the game’s makers believe about 20 million people could be at risk. That would be a lot of map pack downloads if they’re right.

I haven’t been feeling any mapathy personally during my “MW2″ sessions of late — just day care delusions from the hyper-active racist 12-year-olds that manage to find the same servers I do and brief flashes of spawn-jà vu from the campers who take me out several times in a row after I’ve rematerialized in a recurring location.

Is March 30th going to be soon enough for you? Are you looking forward to the new “MW2″ map packs? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Despite an excellent soundtrack, critical acclaim and unrivaled star support, “DJ Hero” didn’t exactly blow up last year. But Activision is sticking with it, as promised. A new track pack for the game is coming this month and it features none other than Jay-Z and Eminem, two people you may have heard of.

The track pack will sell for $8 and will offer the following tunes:

* “Shake That” by Eminem mixed with “Show Me What You Got” by Jay-Z
* “Without Me” by Eminem mixed with “Encore” by Jay-Z
* “Can I Get A…” by Jay-Z mixed with “Lose Yourself” by Eminem

The pack is launching on the 360 on March 18th, with the PSN version coming on March 25th. Users must buy the entire pack on those platforms (rather than purchasing them individually), but if you buy the tracks on Wii (available on March 25th), you can purchase them as singles for $3 each.

The final roster of “Super Street Fighter 4‘ characters appears to be set in stone now with the Turkish Yagli Gures wrestler Hakan now verified by Capcom and available to watch in trailers. The big guy joins Juri as the title’s second new entrant for the series, and he will be the first of his colleagues to power up by dousing himself in oil.

Hakan is the CEO of a cooking oil company, according to a Famitsu article translated by Andriasang. Like the Mexican wrestler El Fuerte, he enters the tournament as a means to roam the world looking for new recipes, but he should bring some innovation to past burly-man templates by introducing some speedy sliding moves made possible by his oil.

He’s intended for “mid to high level players,” the series’ producer Yoshinori Ono said, as opposed to Juri, who was created for beginners. I’m all for this, as learning how to use Abel, Rose and El Fuerte properly completely hooked me in “SF4.” Throwing in a character built from scratch who brings some personality and unique movement to “SSF4″ may just put it over the line into the first-week buy category for me.

What are your first impressions of Hakan? Do you think he’ll make a difference as you decide whether or not to buy “Super Street Fighter 4″? Share your reactions in the comment section below.

With 5 million “Final Fantasy XIII” units shipping between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the decision to take the game to both platforms looks like a good call on Square Enix’s part. Their surprise move to give the 360 a try might not have occurred, however, if Microsoft hadn’t reached out first and asked them to consider a second console.

“The Xbox team has been asking us to have a ['Final Fantasy'] game developed on our platform,” Square Enix president and CEO Yoichi Wada told Siliconera. “Also, the Xbox 360 console is available in many homes in US and European markets so that was not really a hard decision to make.”

That global 5 million mark that Square Enix is reporting would bring the total number of shipped “Final Fantasy” game units to 96 million, according to GamesIndustry.biz. An October 2007 report from Square Enix listed the number of PS2-only “Final Fantasy XII” units shipped at 5.2 million, so they’re not far from eclipsing that success.

I haven’t seen the breakdown yet between PS3 and 360 copies of “FFXIII” shipped yet, but it will be interesting to see how those numbers compare to the numbers of in-home consoles Sony and Microsoft have.

Do plan on picking up “Final Fantasy XIII”? Do you want to play it on the PS3 or 360? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

The last “Puzzle Quest” installment, “Galactrix,” was a bit of a let down. Instead of sticking to the roots of the franchise, the developers tried to layer on too much complexity to the basic gameplay, resulting in an intensely difficult, often frustrating experience. The complaints were heard, though, and “Puzzle Quest 2″ is definitely a return to form.

Fantasy With Focus
“Puzzle Quest 2″ ditches the sci-fi theme, returning to fantasy-based tropes like orcs, elves and magic. You’ll be able to pick from four unique character classes, ranging from a barbarian to a sorcerer, as they attempt to save the world from another undescribable evil.

The developers have shifted the focus of the game, though. Instead of a world map where you march your character’s icon around like a piece on a game board, you’ll actually be zoomed in much closer. All of the game’s action takes place in and around a castle, and you’ll be moving your character through rooms, dungeons and towns. The point of view is very reminiscent to “Diablo,” and it gives the journey a much more personal, understandable feel than the top-level, abstract view of the first game.

Gameplay Changes
There have also been a few tweaks to the gameplay, most notably the removal of gold and experience gems from the game board. In their place are action gems, which look like metal gauntlets. Matching three action gems will earn you action points, which let you use equipment.

So, for example, you may have a broadsword equipped which requires 10 action points to perform a swipe. Once you earn those points you can deal the damage at any time. It works for shields, as well. The idea was to make equipment in the game a more meaningful experience by letting you control it directly (instead of it just providing passive boosts).

Other than those tweaks, this is “Puzzle Quest,” just as you remember it. The developers are definitely trying to make a more approachable game, being very careful about how many complex systems they’re implementing. That said, you can still expect a 30 to 40 hour adventure, depending on your willingness to explore and complete side quests.

Currently “Puzzle Quest 2″ is planned for a spring release on 360 and Nintendo DS, but more platforms are likely after those two are out the door.

With “God of War 3″ in the can, the developers at Sony’s Santa Monica Studio can finally rest easy…for about a week. There’s no extended rest for those talented folks, though, as they’ve already got two projects in the hopper, with pre-production kicking off right as their biggest game ever wraps up.

Check out our interview with John Hight, the director of product development at the studio, in which he discusses starting work on two new projects, one “short-term,” and one “long-term.” Kratos never sleeps, why should they?

With a name like “Blade Kitten” there damn well be a cat with a sword somewhere in this game. Worry not, there is! Developed by Krome Studios, “Blade Kitten” is a side-scrolling, platforming action game which stars a feline bounty hunter with a grudge and a hunger for cold, hard cash.

“Blade Kitten” is by no means a serious, thought-provoking treatise on social wrongs. No, you’re running around, slicing robot soldiers, climbing up walls and collecting money. And that’s where the charm of “Blade Kitten” can be found: Running around, doing seemingly basic actions, is a heck of a lot of fun.

While “Blade Kitten” features maps that have a specific beginning and end, there’s a whole lot of variety in between. The game encourages you to explore, take alternate paths and find hidden switches to uncover caches of moolah. Exploration is easy as you can climb on just about every wall and ceiling, and for those you can’t, you can always wall-jump to victory. Using combinations of jumps, wall-runs and slides will allow you to access locations that you would, at first glance, assume are inaccessible.

Finding these locations usually means you can find some hefty cash bounties, which can be used to upgrade your blade, unlock costumes or increase your stats.

On top of the emphasis on exploration, there’s a tongue-in-cheek tone to the game which utilizes a playful anime style with a clever, snarky script. It makes for a heroine who is, within moments, likeable and relatable…despite the cat ears.

“Blade Kitten” is planned as a downloadable release. The game will launch sometime this spring in two episodes, with the first episode offering a slightly larger chunk to get folks addicted to the franchise. Definitely watch for it.

The last few “Transformers” games were forgettable, and that’s putting it kindly. True, they were based on movies, and that’s a tough hill to climb, but they still never really stood out as exemplary pieces of software in any major way. It was with that in mind that I went in to see “Transformers: War for Cybertron.” My expectations were not very high. Thankfully my first glimpse at the game met and exceeded those expectations (though, admittedly, that’s not much of a triumph).

With a new developer (High Moon Studios) and a new engine (Unreal), “Transformers: War for Cybertron” is another beast entirely. It’s an action game starring robots that turn into vehicles, but there’s a lot more to cover beyond that basic facade.

The Story
“War for Cybertron” has no association with the recent movies in any way. In fact, it tells a story that’s not really been told at length in any Transformers medium. It’s the story of how the Autobots and Decepticons went their seperate ways on the planet Cybertron. It’s this rift that kicks off a civil war which will eventually tear the planet apart, requiring the Autobots to seek refuge elsewhere (Read: Earth…which is not in this game at all, since it wraps up as the Autobots are leaving).

The story is broken up into two campaigns, but unlike the Decepticon and Autobot campaigns of the last game, these campaigns don’t occur at the same time. Instead the Decepticon campaign takes place first, with the Autobots coming in at the end to try and stop their nefarious plan. You can play them in any order, but if you’re looking to be consistent with the timeline, it’s Decepticon, followed by Autobot.

Familiar Faces In Important Moments
Since “War for Cybertron” takes place before the events of the classic cartoon series, the developers were able to get creative with the scenes they were portraying. Hasbro was more than willing to help them along, and was surprisingly open about what they would let them do.

For example, there are two pivotal moments that take place in the game. The first is when Optimus (who is pre-Prime) meets Bumblebee for the first time. This had never been shown before and it’s a cool glimpse into the start of their relationship, as they meet in a time of great peril, in the midst of an all-out battle.

Another example is the introduction of Starscream who, at the start of the game, is unaffiliated. It’s after playing as Megatron that you’re able to convince Starscream to join your side, a major win for the Decepticons.

Roll Out
The gameplay in “War for Cybertron” is very run-and-gun, 3rd person shooter fare. There’s no cover, but that doesn’t really matter when you can transform into a car at any time. The vehicle controls have been greatly improved over the last few games, letting you hover, “Back to the Future 2″-style, before putting your wheels down and zooming forward. The same controls work for jets, tanks and any other vehicles you’ll be transforming into.

Visuals
Cybertron is in the midst of a giant war, and the visions of all-out combat plaguing this metallic civilization are incredibly powerful. The robots, too, are powerful. The developers tried to capture the feel of Gen 1 while making it slightly more modern. The effort shows, as characters appear as you might expect, but with a new twist to keep them fresh.

My first look at “Transformers: War for Cybertron” was promising to say the least. I wasn’t able to go hands-on with the title, so it’s too early to say whether this will really beat out the last few “Transformers” games, but it’s definitely on the right track for release later this year.