The Darkness II Announced February 8, 2011

If there was one game that defined my Summer 2007 it was The Darkness.  Here was a highly polished game which came out of nowhere released during a time which usually was devoid of major game releases (games usually either came out in March or November, and they only come out in March because they miss November) and just blew myself and everyone else away.  Here was a little known comic franchise brought to life in a realistic setting.  The game was highly polished and had a great script I enjoyed tremendously.  It was developed by Starbreeze, who made the famous Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay game.  In the same summer I first bought a PS3, I must’ve played this game as late as I possibly could every weekend to try to get as far as I could in it before I’d have to go back to work.

2K Games has officially announced today that The Darkness II is coming out this Fall.  It’s being developed by Digital Extremes and promises to pick up exactly where the first game left off.  The main character of the first game and the comic, Jackie, is now the boss of his mafia family, and he has to deal with running his mob, as well as the curse it is to wield The Darkness, a supernatural force he recieved on his 21st birthday which gives him incredible power.

The Darkness II will come out for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 Fall 2011.

UPDATE:  There was an announcement today that The Darkness II will use cel-shaded graphics in order to mirror the look of the original graphic novels.  I don’t know how I feel about this.  The first game was able to have an emotional impact on me due to its realism.  The fact that they were keeping this supernatural force grounded in a realistic setting with a recognisable look made it all the more interesting for me.  However, I really did like the graphics shown in the initial screenshot, and couldn’t actually tell at the time it was in fact cel-shaded.

Reflections on Hellgate London February 8, 2011

Gamasutra has a facinating inteview up with former Flagship and Blizzard developer Bill Roper on Flagship Studio’s only release, Hellgate: London.

Hellgate: London had a ton of promise.  The company was formed of former Blizzard developers who worked on Diablo, a staple of PC gaming.  It was one of the first PC-Exclusive titles to embrace the early Games for Windows Inititive and offer DirectX 10.0 support in an industry where consumers were just refusing to upgrade from Windows XP.  It had a full Single Player campaign, and a full MMORPG component that would have support for both paid and free subscribers.  Within months of release, the single game release had spawned at least three books and a manga, and a main character was given a nude spread in magazines.  The game’s collectors edition DVD had one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen detailing the start of a Triple-A company working together in a guy’s house!

But the game was simply not sustainable.  By many accounts the game was rushed to release and came out at a timeframe that was flooded by a lot of ambitious new projects and major sequel releases.  The game could not bring in the players it needed to be sustainable and it shut down.

Bill Roper talks about all this in the first part of an interview with Gamasutra.  It’s a facinating read, espessially for those interested in the financing and investments that make games possible, and what it takes to make a big game a success.

First Look at Dead Space 2 DLC, Severed February 7, 2011

EA has announced they posted the first images of the first DLC Single Player Expansion for Dead Space 2 on the Dead Space Twitter Feed.  Dead Space 2 Severed promises to continue the story of the characters introduced in the Wii/PS3 rail shooter Dead Space Extraction including Lexine Murdock and Gabe Weller.

You can check out the first images on their Facebook Page.  No release date was posted for the expansion, but it’s coming to PS3 and Xbox 360.

Major Duke Nukem Forever News Coming February 7, 2011

2k Games has officially started talking about the Duke Nukem Forever Vegas Event, affectionately dubbed “Duke Nukem’s Titty City”.

The final touches of the event are going up as I type this and it is expected to begin noon tomorrow for all those lucky folks who were fortunate enough to not only get invites, but can get themselves to Vegas.

Playable versions of the game will be made available during the event, along with plenty of entertainment in the form of gambling, drinks, and *ahem*….well there’s stripper poles, whatever those go with.  The people who are attending will also not be bound to complete silence.  They will be able to start writing up previews of the event starting on Wednesday the 9th, and the video embargo will lift on Friday the 11th.  Some of the pre-selected individuals who were given advance notice of the event have confirmed they are already in possession of new content which they fully intend to make available when they are allowed to.  2K Games will also be posting up pictures and other content on their twitter feed.

Duke Nukem Forever will release May 3rd, 2011 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

UPDATE:  It looks like the pictures are already coming out of the event.  The video embargo looks to fall on the same day (Friday) GameTrailers.com promises to have an exclusive episode of the GTTV.com show devoted to Duke Nukem Forever.  That episode is expected to air Friday at 1 AM on the Spike TV cable channel (check your cable provider for exact listings).

Duke Nukem Throwing a Vegas Party, You’re Invited! February 4, 2011

Gearbox Software, the developers working on releasing the highly anticipated Duke Nukem Forever, is throwing a party in Las Vegas, NV on February 7th, 2011 and we’re all invited!

To attend, you have to drop a line on the official Duke Nukem Forever message boards before the end of Feb 4th (today), and happen to be in Las Vegas at the time of the event.  Attendees are going to be hand picked and only people with invitations will be allowed in.  You ALSO must be over 21 to attend.  This is Vegas we’re talking about of course.

Duke Nukem Forever is planned to be done on May 3rd, 2011 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

UPDATE:  The 4th is over and the page has been taken down.  Hope all of you who could register got in.

inFamous 2 Video Collection February 3, 2011

Right now Sony is having a major press showing of a lot of their highly anticipated titles that are going to be releasing over the next year.  Tons of videos and screenshots are expected to be coming for all the highly anticipated titles.

While looking for the new trailer for inFamous 2 from the event, I came across some very good videos released officially by Sony but for some odd reason kept under the radar.

The first is what looks to be the opening cinematic trailer for the game.  inFamous used 2D graphic-novel style cutscenes to tell its story and it looks like they will be continuing this tradition with the new game.  This trailer really sets the stage for how the game will play out.  I have no idea if this is going to be the Opening Cutscene for the game, but it sure looks like if it was, it would be a good one.

The second video is a making of video, made by the same guys who made the excellent Uncharted 3 behind the scenes documentary.  This details the lead up to their reveal at Comic-Con, the modern (which the devs called 2nd Generation) Comic influences on the game and like the Uncharted 3 documentary goes into the emotional turmoil and stress behind game development.

Infamous 2 is a Playstation 3 Exclusive and is coming this year.

Resistance 3 Gameplay Trailer February 2, 2011

The Resistance series for the PS3 is not unlike the Halo series has been for the Xbox.  Resistance: Fall of Man launched with the PS3 and was it’s killer app.  Resistance: Fall of Man was in many ways a unique shooter.  Resistance 2, while it was a great game, cut out a lot of what made the first game so unique.  They removed the History Channel-style narrated cutscenes and replaced them with traditional cutscenes.  They removed the full weapon inventory and reduced the amount of weapons you could carry to two, limiting your options from segment to segment.

There have been two trailers for Resistance 3, one was entirely live action, and one was mostly live action.  Gameplay was shown in the second trailer, but you really couldn’t make out what the gameplay was going to be like, or if it was going to be more like Resistance 1 or 2.

Today, this was released, and with it, a lot of questions are answered.

Resistance 3 is a Playstation 3 exclusive game coming September 6th, 2011.

Who Preserves our Game History? February 1, 2011

Gamasutra has a fascinating article on their website this week which details the many triumphs and failures of preserving the legacy of all of our games.

It is wonderful that so many classic games are being re-released so that new people can enjoy them, and so the original players can now play them on a newer modern medium without having to resort to emulation or jumping through technical hurdles to get running again.  The problem has been that in the golden age of arcade gaming, companies like Atari did not deem it important to preserve these essential game assets, like a game’s Source Code, and would simply sell them as part of whatever office furniture they happen to be kept in.  Furthermore, tons of games have original source codes that are either completely lost or no longer accessible, and in a lot of cases the mediums to preserve them are breaking down or themselves becoming obsolete.

This article details a lot of specific stories told by the publishers and developers themselves on how hard it’s been to keep track of these essential gaming archives, and some of the lucky breaks a lot of games have gotten to find their way back into preservation.

UPDATE:  Part 2 of the series is now online.

Earthbound: A History January 28, 2011

The guys over at Clan of the Gray Wolf have done something incredibly impressive.  They have made the definitive documentary on the history of EarthBound (Mother).

EarthBound (Mother 2) is one of the most classic JRPGs of the SNES era, which included such classics as Crono Trigger and Final Fantasy III(VI).  However, EarthBound really succeeded in breaking all the rules of the traditional RPG, by deciding to set it in a modern setting and exchanging magic spells with sci-fi PSY(onic) powers.  They also revolutionized turn-based RPG battle mechanics by taking away random encounters and having your position near visible enemies affect who gets the first attack.

I remember watching a good friend of mine demo it for me on his SNES back in 1995 and was really impressed by it.  Like many who missed out on earlier Nintendo consoles, I’ve been waiting for a lot of the best games on the platforms (like this one) to be made available on the Wii Virtual Console, but alas that has not yet happened.

So how did this quirky game that stands the test of time happen, and why is it that it’s sequels and prequels have never left Japan?  Roo from Clan of the Gray Wolf presents the most detailed game history I have ever seen on a series and tries to answer some of these questions, as well as ask a few more of his own.

Here’s to hoping that Earthbound does see a release in the US Virtual Console, and Nintendo decides to wise up and release its sequels officially in the US in some form.

Sony Has Announced their Next Handheld January 27, 2011

Rumors have abounded for the past year that Sony was secretly working on their successor to the Playstation Portable.  The rumors ranged from the possiblity of a Playstation Phone or a PSP2, even a PSP Go successor which would be download only was a possiblity.

Well, in a press event, Sony has finally come clean with what they’re working on, and it is indeed a new handheld.  Armed with a powerful mobile CPU, an OLED screen which is larger than the current PSP’s, and a fantastic library of well known Playstation franchise games, this is one heck of a next generation handheld.

This new handheld is pulling out all the stops in providing everything gamers have requested since the release of the original Playstation Portable.  There will be a built in SIXAXIS control which will provide tilt-sensor options, two analog sticks, GPS, 3G data access, and touch pads.  WiFi support of course will return.

The UMD drive is gone.  New games will ship on a new flash memory format cards.  This new flash memory will have write access for savegames and DLC, and this promises to have faster read times than UMD did. 

You will be able to transfer your downloaded content from your old PSP to the new handheld.

The unit is currently unnamed, but it is not currently being called a Playstation Phone or PSP2.  Currently the codename is NGP for Next Generation Portable, pretty generic name.  It has a ship date of Holiday 2011.