Dead Space 2 Demo December 21st December 8, 2010
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The original Dead Space was another one of the sleeper hits of EA’s 2008, alongside their other new property Mirror’s Edge. It was next-generation scary. It spit in the face of previous space themed horror games. You were an engineer operating alone, you weren’t a space marine. Headshots were useless, the monsters had to be dismembered to be killed. The graphics were beautiful and horrifying at the same time.
EA is giving an early Christmas present to gamers who own Xbox 360s and PS3s. A demo of the game, which promises to include the Chruch of Unitology level demoed at E3 this year, has been announced to arrive before Christmas, five weeks before the release of the full version of the game.
Dead Space 2’s demo will be released for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on December 21st in the US and December 22nd in Europe through Xbox Live Marketplace or Playstation Network Store.
Dead Space 2 will be released Jan 25th, 2011 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. A Collector’s Edition is coming for the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Playstation Rewards Listed December 7, 2010
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Sony has e-mailed their initial Playstation Rewards users the first list of activities to advance themselves in the program.
Some of the activies on the list include downloading an episode of Pulse in HD, Rent or buy a movie on Playstation Store, Visit the Central Plaza in Playstation Home.
However, another new activity, use of a Playstation Move game, was posted but which games were supported were not listed in the FAQ yet.
Playstation 3 Firmware 3.55 Released December 7, 2010
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A required update for the Playstation 3 (PS3) has been released to the console for download using the Playstation’s Software Update feature. Firmware version 3.55 is required for use of the Playstation Network.
No features were detailed in the release notes, however this is expected to break Playstations which have been homebrew modified.
You Will Be Missed (Part 2) December 3, 2010
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I’ve been following gaming news for over ten years and I’ve been involved in the industry for over eight years as a staff writer on various sites. I understand that not all companies last forever, but there comes a time when you are so caught up in the activities of an organization that when it shuts down, a part of you goes with it. It’s happened to me more times than I can remember, but here’s a list of companies from my experiences that are no longer with us. They’ve either been shut down, gone bankrupt, or were taken over so badly that they are no longer the same company I loved. It is a sad story to see such great potential end abruptly but like life we have to move on, but we will never forget.
Troika Games – I’ll be perfectly honest, the only game I played by these guys was Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines even though I know they released two others. This company had a bad reputation for releasing fantastic games that were held back by bugs that could’ve been polished out with more time. VTM:B is a game I play EVERY summer since release. I used to live in California, not too far from LA, and this is one of the few games I played that truly captured the full LA to Santa Monica experience. I also keep the Deb of Night radio show on my iPhone to listen to whenever it’s late and I’m in need of some nostalgia. There was so much promise, and it just begged for a sequel.
PBC-Productions: This isn’t so much a game making company as an independant filmmaking company. These were the producers of the web series “Captain S” and “Little Miss Gamer”. After Captain S announced production was going to stop of their highly anticipated second season in May 2009, a website that previously had promises of a new high quality video every week slowly started to lose speed. The last video released by these guys was in April. As far as I know, most of the development team members, while they still frequent their message boards, have full-time jobs that prohibit working on more projects. While there has not been an official announcement of shut down by these guys, there hasn’t been a Little Miss Gamer episode since March. What makes it really disappointing is I was a huge fan of the Captain S series after he and the Angry Video Game Nerd saved Christmas a few years ago. I have a Captain S Season 1 DVD proudly displaying in my bookcase. We sure could use him now.
G4: Do I really need to devote another site article to how great this station once was? Yes, the station was once so great that it deserves another mention, but it was all lost after the Tech TV merger.
Ion Storm Dallas: This one really hurts to talk about. The company had so much promise when they formed. They had John Romero, at the time one of the best game developers in the world, and the kind of attitude any game development team should have. Deathmatch would not be something done after hours, it would be part of the business. Design would be law. They also had support of people like Tom Hall, who would be having his own crazy game designs made again. It made Stevie Case the first mainstream gaming sex symbol. This company became everyone’s news. They dominated the headlines of gaming news sites for three years. People leaving, leadership problems, e-mails leaking became common knowledge. They were featured prominently in Masters of Doom by David Kushner. The problem mostly stemmed from the fact that these were the guys who made Daikatana, a game so universally hated by people who never even played it, they could never recover from it. I’ll tell you though, that game was indeed playable after patch 1.2 came and I did make it through the entire game. Anachronox, which was a game I was fortunate enough to be a part of a planet site devoted to it, was the last game released by the company before its disassembly. To wrap it all up, an elegy was written on Salon.com for the company, the cornerstone of a whole journey that defined an entire generation of gaming.
Ritual: Two words, episodic gaming. That’s what killed Ritual. They were one of the best companies I knew that would release games so well polished, a simple shooter could become Game of the Year. This was the company that made SiN. They were also responsible for Star Trek: Elite Force 2, and the Counter Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes. Never played any of those games? I’m very sorry. One of their head honchos was a man who literally went by the name LEVELORD! Then they developed the SiN Episodes. Their plan was quite sound. Develop a shorter game and release it at a lower price. Take the money you get from sales of that game and use it to fund later games. People are going to want to keep buying episodes to see how the story ends. Well, unfortunately the plan was sound, but the price wasn’t. They produced the first episode of the series and released it with a budget price in mind, and no price option for purchasing later episodes up front. They made enough to fund development of the first episode, but there wasn’t enough to fund any later ones. The company was bought by Mumbo Jumbo who pretty much completely absorbed them. Since then nobody really talks about the company anymore and it’s a shame, I really wanted to know how the episodes were going to end.
You Will Be Missed (Part 1) December 3, 2010
Posted by Maniac in Editorials, You Will Be Missed.3 comments
I’ve been following gaming news for over ten years and I’ve been involved in the industry for over eight years as a staff writer on various sites. I understand that not all companies last forever, but there comes a time when you are so caught up in the activities of an organization that when it shuts down, a part of you goes with it. It’s happened to me more times than I can remember, but here’s a list of companies from my experiences that are no longer with us. They’ve either been shut down, gone bankrupt, or were taken over so badly that they are no longer the same company I loved. It is a sad story to see such great potential end abruptly, but like life we have to move on, but we will never forget.
Substance TV: Ditto. I have since watched a documentary about the downfall of GoD after writing that article, it seems that the financiers were slowly bleeding power from the people of the company that were actually good at running it, like Mike Wilson. The money they got from being forced to sell what could’ve made them billions went into a pretty well produced DVD magazine that nobody bought on a regular basis. The official website blamed the post 9/11 recession as the problem with sales of a regular DVD magazine, but really I think it was just that they were too far ahead of the curve that people weren’t yet ready for it.
GameSpy: Already talked about those guys. I know the main website still exists and delivers new content but trust me, like Rome, the empire has long since fallen. For E3 2003 I had a t-Shirt sent to me by them to wear to show my allegiance on the show floor. The shirt was comprised of the Spy logo in gray and greens. The secret was that all the coloring on the shirt was actually made up of all of the individual websites that ran under their banner. The lettering on the shirt was in small print. They actually had enough websites to fill the front of a freaking t-shirt. That all ended after 2005 with the IGN merger.
Barry Smith’s InkTank: Barry Smith gained popularity around 2000 when his web comic “Angst Technology” premiered on GameSpy. The comic was about a typical game development studio and all of the colorful characters that work there. After several succesful years of drawing, new pages slowly lost steam and Barry shut down production of the webcomic in 2005, after having previously resorted to posting a new comic every month (when it used to be posted every day.) He turned the site into a random blog not too long after that and brought his comic archives online with it. Three years later, in 2008, Barry brought his full website back and started cartooning again. Within no time he was even bringing Angst Tech characters back into his new comic. But some time ago (within the past few months) Barry stopped posting new strips on the site, and a few weeks after that, the site went down completely. I have no idea what happened to cause the site to shut down, or why Barry hasn’t written an explanation as to why the site is offline and when/if it will return. I just want him to know (if he ever reads this) that the Angst Tech arc where the team crunched for a beta release, pitched tents, ended up on milk cartons, and overclocked their central nervous systems defined one of my summers.
Majesco – In 2004 a new publisher came to compete with the big boys and they had some pretty quirky games to show. Advent Rising, Bloodrayne, Infected (my favorite PSP Game), and everyone’s favorite multiplatform game, Psychonauts were all coming from this publisher. The problem was that while some of the games were fantastic and reviewed very highly (Psychonauts and Infected), the company threw its marketing weight behind what they thought would sell (Advent Rising and Bloodrayne). While Psychonauts got several Game of the Year awards, it just didn’t sell many copies. When the numbers came in at the end of 2005, the company decided to no longer develop AAA platform titles, and instead stick to developing only value software. That pretty much ended support for most of those games, and killed the chances of any of them seeing a sequel. That said, they did see fit to take those classic games and put them on every digital distribution channel they can, although I’m surprised Infected is not on the Playstation Store as a download for the PSP Go yet. Missed out on any of these games? Fear not, Psychonauts is still selling on the Xbox Live Marketplace and Steam.
I realize now that the list is far too long to fit in just one article. Tune in next time for the second part.
A Wind of Changes Coming December 2, 2010
Posted by Maniac in Site News.add a comment
After the influx of readers I got this past week, a lot of comments that I got back from many of the readers addressed a similar concern. That is, the lack of professionalism in this site. Now, when I started this site back in March of this year, professionalism wasn’t as much of a concern for me as other concerns. My attitude towards that had to do with the fact I don’t write for a larger website, and I was perfectly happy keeping the persona of an outsider. This site is my own, I operate it by myself for no pay, no perks, and no appreciation.
However, I believed once I started to get more regular readers and possibly some developer support I would have to step up and make this site more professional in order to be taken seriously by my fellow gaming journalists. This would espessially be important if I wanted to use this site as credentials for wider distribution, E3, or a journalist position in a larger site.
Starting Monday the site is going to recieve a content makeover. This will include updates for the “about me” section, the site mission statement (you can see it on the sidebar) and how I carry myself from now on. Rest assured my currently existing editorials will remain the same and you can still expect a regular stream of news, videos and editorials.
Rock Band Reloaded Launched on iPhone December 2, 2010
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A sequel to Rock Band has been released for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. It is called Rock Band Reloaded. The major addition to Reloaded over the original Rock Band iPhone game has to be full support for vocals over microphone, a feature that was suprisingly not in the first Rock Band iPhone game. The game also features 2-player Co-Op on one iPad.
Track list is as follows:
- 3 Doors Down “Kryptonite”
- Alice in Chains “Your Decision”
- Beastie Boys “So What’Cha Want”
- Billy Idol “White Wedding”
- Drowning Pool “Bodies”
- Duran Duran “Hungry Like the Wolf”
- Evenescence “Call Me When You’re Sober”
- Megadeth “Peace Sells”
- NIN “The Perfect Drug”
- Nirvana “In Bloom”
- No Doubt “Hella Good”
- Pat Benatar “Heartbreaker”
- Seether “Remedy”
- Steve Miller Band “Rockn’ Me”
- Vampire Weekend “A-Punk”
There are also extra tracks that can be downloaded through the Rock Band in-game store. Some of the track packs are free.
Rock Band Reloaded is $4.99 US and you can buy it on the Apple App Store.
New Ghostbusters Game Announced December 2, 2010
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A sequel to last year’s summer release, Ghostbusters: The Video Game, has been announced. It is titled Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime and it will be for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.
What’s special about this game is that it is going to support four player cooperative play through local or online multiplayer. The whole concept of Ghostbusters always revolved around the team. In fact one of the rules of being a ghostbuster (as said by Egon in the first episode of Extreme Ghostbusters) is “Never go it alone.”
That said, the game will likely not have any of the likenesses of the Ghostbusters cast. Bill, Dan, Harold and Ernie are not scheduled to appear. The game is going to revolve around the Rookie, who at the end of the first game got the rights to his own franchise in another city. This is probably why the original four aren’t going to appear in the game, as they’re probably too busy in New York to help out. Here’s to hoping he starts a franchise in Denver!
Oh and there will be bosses. BIG bosses.
Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime is coming multiplatform Spring 2011.
The Heyday of this Generation is Here December 1, 2010
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The prices are cheap. There are major releases on all sides, and the consoles are now best they have ever been. If you’ve been waiting for the right time to get into the console war, now is it.
The last time I’ve felt this way about a console generation was 2004, in the era of the PS2, GameCube and Xbox. The prices for each unit ranged from one-hundred to two-hundred dollars. The best games for each console had been released. Just to name a few examples, Halo 2 was out for the Xbox, Metal Gear Solid 3 was out for the Playstation 2, and Metroid Prime was out for the GameCube. New games were coming out so frequently that prices were dropping on them almost immediately in order for the games to compete with each other. A collector’s edition of Doom 3 Xbox quickly dropped to $19.99.
The problem was that all the consoles were around year away from being replaced. Xbox 360 launched in 2005, the PS3 and Wii would release a year later in 2006. There wasn’t too much time for the console gamers to enjoy their financial stability. New consoles would be very expensive and the games would stay at their $60 premium for a very long time.
This November, I’ve noticed we may be headed back to those glory days in this current console generation. The consoles are not only the cheapest they have ever been ranging from three-hundred to two-hundred dollars in price, but they’re now bundled with the best features the earlier releases of the consoles didn’t. The Wii is now bundled with two of the best games on the system (opposed to one) and now includes the motion-plus technology made popular last year as standard. The PS3 is now smaller and boasts the largest hard drive it’s ever had. The Xbox 360 now is slimmer, has built-in WiFi support, and a native HDMI connection (but Hard Drive is still optional).
The games are now also more affordable. Enslaved, which was a pretty well-received game when it launched in October, dropped in price from the $60US release price to the more affordable $40 within a month. In fact, I was still able to get the pre-order DLC with it! All Kinect launch games are priced at $50US, ten dollars less than a traditional controller game. You’d think that these games would cost more at launch than their controller counterparts do, given how new the Kinect is!
Speaking of the Kinect, there’s the fact that the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 now have been upgraded to support their own motion control systems. While they are both quite expensive individually, the option to buy them bundled with a brand new console will save new adopters some cash, especially those buying an Xbox 360 Kinect bundle.
The plus side is, there are no successors for the major consoles in sight! The only rumors musing around is perhaps an HD version of the Wii. That has been debunked by Nintendo on several occasions, but even if it was true, it would not be considered a new console, as Wii games would continue to be playable on current units.
So if you’re on the fence about and really want to give your HDTV the chance to show you its full potential, consider giving console gaming a chance! And for people who currently own consoles, welcome to the best time to have one, as there are a ton of great games to play on all three platforms already in stores, and they’re only going to get cheaper!
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