Need For Speed Undercover is like a greatest hits album from a band you used to love. They put together all the stuff you remember listening to for hours, and they meld it with the best of the newer stuff that originally turned you off but finally starts to grow on you — you know what I mean. Need For Speed Undercover has the customization of Underground, the gameplay of Most Wanted, and that traditional Need For Speed middle ground that combines simulation and exaggerated physics.

“You’re not good. And you’re not bad.” That simple, even sublime phrase, one that you’ll see over and over (and over and over and over) during loading screens, is really telling of what you’ll come to see during your stay.

On paper, Undercover is the perfect Need For Speed. It has best ideas from the last decade of Need For Speeds with a few sprinkles of bonus fun mixed in. Gear heads from all schools of thought should be pleased with the eclectic selection from American muscle, European sports cars, and Japanese tuners.

The premise of Undercover, conveniently enough, has you placed as an undercover police unit who’s tasked with infiltrating an underground racing scene that’s gotten out of control, ultimately taking them down from the inside. That’s right, this is The Fast and The Furious: The Unofficial Game, except worse because of the distinct lack of Vin Diesel. And we all remember how many Oscar’s The Fast and The Furious was handed…

Undercover features some nice-looking… cars.

The narrative itself progresses through Command & Conquer-like FMV sequences, which I would actually be alright with considering how much I love the live-action acting in C&C, but Undercover is missing that self-aware, playful nature that makes the former’s scenes enjoyable. The necessity of a story in this game is almost like the necessity BioShock had for a multiplayer component (i.e. none).

Undercover has a nice selection of tried and true race modes — Circuit, Sprint, and Highway Battle should be familiar to NFS vets — while some of the more interesting modes include the Criminal Scramble, in which you are a cop and are tasked with chasing down and popping a cap in some fools’ asses who’ve been up to no good. Also worth mentioning is the Cops and Robbers online multiplayer mode that puts players back in the glory days of the ubiquitous playground game, well, Cops and Robbers.

Interestingly enough, EA has also added and RPG-lite element to Undercover. After meeting certain requirements in a race a players car will gradually grow and essentially “level up” just as you would in any RPG, it’s a nice little hook, but not nice or deep enough to do anything besides extrapolate what else they could’ve done with it.

Design-wise there are only two major flaws in Undercover, the first being a general decision that I despise and is becoming much more of regularity as time goes on: purchasing in-game content with your own real-world money. Whenever you go to upgrade your car, just before you make your decision you’re presented with 3 options: to pay with the in-game currency (cash), Microsoft Points or Playstation Dollars, or to Cancel. I generally love the new possibilities that the online marketplace presents, but some of them, like this particular one, make me wonder if the pros truly outweigh he cons. Jesus…

The second design decision that peeved me was that the open-world nature of Undercover is effectively nulled by the in-game GPS that always has you a button away from your next race. One could argue that you don’t have to press the button, but the freaking message is large, distracting, and stays on-screen pretty much indefinitely.

Although Undercover is conceptually superior to, well, almost every other racing game (omitting the aforementioned Need For Speed games), it’s technically flawed to the point of near unbearableness. Loading screens are almost everywhere and are as prolonged as that colorful stuff that cute magician keeps pulling out of his bottomless top hat. And you’d think with the frequency and length of loads things would actually, you know, be loaded. Texture pop-in, while not excessive, is not an especially rare sight either.

What is excessive and downright atrocious is the amount of frame drops, and they’re not minor frame drops either, no no. There were instances where it was just my car driving through a tunnel and the game decided to just out and out stop for 5 seconds, then catch up with itself with my car 200 feet ahead of where it was beforehand. Now imagine how bad it chugged when I was actually in middle of a race… with other cars. It makes me wonder why EA didn’t utilize the engine Criterion built to power Burnout Paradise since it’s also an open-world game that beats out Undercover’s technical prowess in every way — and looks better doing it.

I tried my best to have fun with Undercover, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t try to look past the myriad of technical issues that plagued every turn, but they’re so prominent that three untrained eyes who haven’t a clue as to what a ‘frame per second’ is, asked “Why does it keep starting and stopping?” It practically jumps out and yells “I’m going to make it as easy as I can for you to hate me!”

Undercover is a fundamentally flawed game that only becomes that much more frustrating when you see all of the unrealized potential that’s layered throughout. It’s not really a bad game, it’s just not as good as it should have been.

The original announcement trailer for Halo 3: Recon left a lot of unanswered questions and, even worse, projected the release to be a full year away. Thankfully, Game Informer has pulled through and gained exclusivity for the first bit of concrete details about Bungie’s next project.

The December 2008 issue will have 10 pages’ worth of Recon information and screenshots. Subscribers will also be able to visit the Game Informer website on November 17 for an undisclosed amount of additional information.

Odd that they’d go to GI as opposed to EGM, who they’ve gone to for both Halo 2 and Halo 3 exclusives in the past. Here’s hoping that we finally get some concrete information as to exactly how Recon will differ from the traditional Halo experience.

Source: Game Informer

It seems right that Sony would give Capcom a dedicated storefront on their network. After all, Capcom has been doing the most creative things with the downloadable market with ventures like Bionic Commando Rearmed and Mega Man 9. And Sony has been the most expiremental with downloadable distribution by virtue of having PSN play home to WipEout HD, Burnout Paradise, and more.

The marriage will be official come November 13, 2008.

All of Capcom’s released downloadable titles will be found in one compact convenient space. If you haven’t supported Capcom’s download titles, it’s not only in your best interest to do so, but the industry’s too. Is single-handedly dooming Capcom a burden you’re willing to handle?

Okay, so maybe that was a bit faux-dramatic but seriously, buy some stuff. Jerk.

Okay, so my overzealous pursuit for clever headlines may cause more damage than usual this time. Sue me. Although Ubisoft did actually publish No More Heroes, they’ve recently announced that they’ll be dropping the game Heroes based on the TV series.

Jaime Cottini, Ubisoft’s PR director said, “The rights to the ‘Heroes’ video game have reverted back to NBC Universal. Ubisoft will no longer produce a video game based on the TV series.”

Pretty standard statement, but official, if nothing else.

Currently in its third season, Heroes has seen a sharp decline in love from both fans and critics alike since its first season where it was a critically acclaimed breakout hit. Then again, this may prove to be a blessing rather than a curse, seeing as how unbelievably atrocious Lost: Via Domus was. I’d really love those 8 hours of my life back, assholes.

Source: MTV Multiplayer

Exactly one week ago a demo of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts was released on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Soon after there was a rash of SDTV owners complaining about unclear, and even downright unreadable, text. Initially Rare said that they were looking for ways to combat the issue, but their community manager, George Kellion, reveals that chances of a fix are slim to none. For his full quotation, hit the jump.

Unfortunately, this is an issue that doesn’t look like it will get changed. I don’t want to bore you with the technical side of things (I really don’t understand it all myself), but the long and the short of it is that the text you see in the demo will be the same as that which you find in the retail version of the game.

I’m sorry that we weren’t able to address this issue as nothing would please us more than turning all your complaints into gleeful responses, but it’s simply something that’s too expensive in terms of time, resources and money to alter.

Please don’t kill me. This *doesn’t* mean we don’t care about or respect the community. This *does* mean that, when all’s said and done, we’re only human.

It’s ironic that a product that’s bing heavily pushed towards the casual consumer is, in a sense, unplayable by a large portion of that demographic. Although HDTV adoption is increasing,  it’s still nowhere near where it needs to be for this to be a non-issue. This doesn’t bode well for Banjo’s latest outing, which begins on November 11, 2008.

Source: CVG via Shacknews

I guess it just depends on whether you’re a pessimist or an optimistic pessimist. Speaking with CVG, Microsoft’s Jerry Johnson said “Half the things we wanted to do [in NXE] we cut out of the service.” Although consumers may not have to wait an exorbitant amount of time to see them come to fruition.

“There’s still a lot of stuff we want to do,” Johnson added. He then went on to explain that the new dashboard overhaul is built in such a way that allows for Microsoft to be able to add new functionality available almost instantaneously (the way he words it makes it seem optional, though), instead of the old Spring/Fall schedule. Johnson said ““There’s a Photo Party app that will be part of the platform, the way it will be distributed is all of a sudden you’ll see a slot on the dashboard and if you don’t have it you click on it and it’s going to download from the service onto your application part of the dashboard. Those are the type of things we’re going to start doing.”

The way he words it almost makes it sound similar to the  Wii Channels’ set-ups. Which in addition to avatars, are a proven way to bring the casual crowd in, arguably the main focus of this “New Xbox Experience.”

Johnson also confirmed that Xbox Live Primetime, their advent into server-based interactive game shows, will launch sometime in Spring 2009.

NXE itself will be available on Xbox Live November 19th, 2008.

Source: CVG

The creative force behind the, how can I put this nicely — uhh, the clusterfuck that is Hellgate: London, Bill Roper, has joined Cryptic Studios as a Design Director for their upcoming superhero MMO, Champions Online. Following the unfortunate downward spiral of his development shop, Flagship Studios, he needed somewhere to go and Cryptic Studios’ CEO, John Needham embraced him with open arms:

“Bill brings a ton of creative energy to the Cryptic office and we’re thrilled to have him join our team,”.

To his credit, Roper has also worked on a fair share of what are widely accepted successes. Most notably his work on Blizzard’s Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo games that have been loved by many and hated by masochists. What remains to be seen is which Bill Roper Cryptic Studios has inherited — the Blizzard or Flagship-era.

Either way, I wish him the best at his new position and look forward to his work. If you’re really interested as to how his influence will affect Champions’ development, you should see about being a part of this Closed Beta I keep hearing about.

Source: 1UP

YouTube user “TheRealPfhreak” has a girlfriend he loves with all his heart. Naturally, he decided he wanted to make her a keeper. When he decided he’d like to seal the deal, his girlfriend was in the process of a good ol’  Chrono Trigger playthrough. It all made sense. In an effort to create a unique proposal, he decided to meld his innate nerdery with what he’s learned from his Computer Science degree.In proposing to her through a SNES rom hack, he had three main goals:

First. Keep the area in the context of the original game, the proposal should be a surprise.

Second. Get it done quick! I had the ring, I had the Father’s blessing, and you can’t sit on either of those for too long. You’ll notice some of the NPC collision information is missing (the cat runs through a lot of weird places) and I didn’t have time to properly debug every tile.

Third. Place memories that might be poignant enough to remind her of our relationship, while not inadvertently giving away that this was somehow hacked.(See goal #1.)

According to TheRealPfhreak, his girlfriend was amazed by the amount of coincidences throughout the level. Every character was either him or her at one point or another in their relationship. Apparently, she fell for it, hard. Hard enough to say “yes!” After seeing her name on the screen, she glanced over and saw him bent down on one knee holding a ring. She exclaimed, “You are such a huge nerd! I love this!” and nodded. Another happy ending.

Way to go, dude! Best wishes Mr. & Mrs. RealPfhreak!

From the dark recesses of my mailbox surfaced a copy of the recently released EA game, Dead Space. Readily equipped with poo-retardant pants, I prepared myself to be survivally-horrified. Read on to find out just how many turds I dropped.

After logging a multitude of hours on the dimly lit space vessel as the game’s lead character, Isaac Clarke, I was repeatedly reminded of similar survival horror titles that preceded it.

Dead Space somewhat unabashedly borrows from previous games that have already been successful, tossing aside the need to build something new. While it does have a bit of innovation thrown in there, Dead Space isn’t really treading much new ground. How this makes you feel about the game is entirely dependent upon how you feel about previous survival-horror games.

After a mere five minutes in, I couldn’t stop calling Dead Space “Resident Evil 4: Space”. It has all the trappings of Resident Evil 4: over-the-shoulder camera, controls, scarce supplies, and zombie-esque beings to shoot. After a while, “Resident Evil 4: Space” became “BioShock Presents: Resident Evil 4: Space”.

After realizing that I was going to be stuck in an alien-infested, self-contained spaceship for quite a bit of time to come, my mind instantly thought back to BioShock’s underwater failed utopia, Rapture. I was further reminded of Rapture when I happened upon my first audio log detailing a situation that had played out sometime before or during the alien-zombie takeover.

Getting information about the world across is something Dead Space excels at — there were very few instances that took control away from the player. In addition to audio/video/text logs, the main way Dead Space informs the player is through interactivity. Interactions that don’t involve literally tearing opponents apart limb from limb are those that involve the crew that boarded the ship with you. Your communications with them make one thing clear: they’re trying just as hard as you to get off the damn ship safely.

The things that Dead Space does that aren’t by-the-book copied formulas are the only things that help rescue the game from a mediocre score. Six hours in, I was ready for it to be over, and my interest in the narrative began to wane — it’s not exactly a work of literary genius.

Dead Space starts with protagonist Isaac Clarke and company approaching the Ishimura (which I eventually lovingly dubbed “Hell Ship”). Upon arrival everyone realizes all is not well, and off you go to shoot your way to potential safety with Dead Space’s combat system, titled “Strategic Dismemberment.”

“Strategic Dismemberment” is what picked up the slack and acted as motivation for me to keep on keepin’ on. You’ll learn very early on that neither body blows nor even headshots will get you through even the earliest waves of baddies. The point of Strategic Dismemberment is to pick off opponents’ limbs by using whatever means you have available to yourself, many of which match up with the world you’re inhibiting.

Complementing strategy with superb control is always a plus, and Dead Space has some pretty sweet controls. This can only be describable as the perfect middle ground between Resident Evil 4 and Gears of War, and I suspect it’s a nice preview as to what we’ll get when Resident Evil 5 releases, but I digress.

Dead Space goes to great lengths to make sure you stay immersed, extending from integrating the entirety of the interface naturally (for example: the inventory, although no different from any other standard interface, is displayed as a projection from Isaac’s suit) all the way to providing back-stories for weapons so they’d integrate cohesively with the world.

Before I continue, I have a confession to make: I’m a total pansy and am easily coaxed into a fit of paranoia-induced fear. That said, having been posed as a survival-horror game, Dead Space failed to make me scream like my inner-schoolgirl knows I should. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve either finally become a man, or Dead Space isn’t very frightening.

As much as I’d like to lean towards the former, I’m afraid it’s the latter. The only thing that almost brought me into a state of fright was its sound design. I’m not exactly rocking a 5.1 state-of-the-art Dolby Digital system in my Batcave of Nerdery, but I still feel Dead Space’s sound design, and the utilization of said sound design deserves special mention.

Although Dead Space is most analogous to the friend you’ve nicknamed “Mooch” because he/she takes your clothes without intent of return, you just can’t help but love him/her. Like Mooch, Dead Space’s high points far outshine it’s minuscule flaws, of which there are relatively few.

As stated before, Dead Space relies on tried-and-true formulas, but it manages to foster them into something even more awesome, and then finally polishes the crap out of them. The end result, while not truly innovative, makes for one hell of a ride, though it remains disappointingly not very frightening for a survival-horror title.

Fall is fast approaching, and your bank balance will soon be dropping faster than the leaves on the tree outside your window. Naturally, you may not be able to decide for yourself which of the plethora of games to splurge your life’s savings on, and that’s where I come in.

Think of me as your personal assistant — ready to passively (and aggressively) project my thoughts and opinions onto you. Thank me later.

Dead Space (Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, Xbox 360) 10/14 – It’s the future. We’ve made significant progressions in the space program. You’re Isaac Clarke, a space engineer, who’s answered a distress call from a ship that is, as far as he knows, only suffering from minor mechanical issue. Since we need antagonists to kill, the ship has been overrun by Necromorphs, a hostile polymorphic alien species dependant on necrotic flesh.

As lame as that sounds, all it does is confirm my suspicions that it is execution rather than conception that makes something intriguing.

EA Redwood has taken what I perceive and now know as the “Resident Evil 4 effect”: over-the-shoulder camera, controls that don’t make you want to burn a puppy, and something freak you out when you turn the corner. Comparisons to other great games continue; much like BioShock’s Rapture, a large portion, if not all, of Dead Space will be taking place in a self-contained location. What BioShock did right was make locations distinct enough to create a feeling of progression and keep things fresh with distinct differentiations in aesthetics.

Gameplay mechanics appear solid enough, and rightfully so, since they’re borrowing from the best. And let me be clear, that’s not a knock against it, I like that it borrows from games that I already know I love. Provided that they nail the gameplay, atmosphere has to be top notch, especially since they’re in the survival-horror genre, a genre that lives and dies by its ability to give you the screaming heebie-jeebies.

LittleBigPlanet (Playstation 3) 10/21 – “Play. Create. Share.” is the mantra that Media Molecule, developers of LittleBigPlanet, has lived by since they announced the title two years ago.

LBP is a 2D side-scrolling platformer that combines the Super Mario Bros paradigm of simply getting from one end of the screen to another and takes it to the next level with real-to-life physics calculations. Thow in an endearing star like Sackboy, and a pre-bundled level creator expansive enough to recreate just about anything your mind can think up, and you may begin to understand why people are clammering to reserve their copy.

If creating isn’t really your thing, you can expect a fully featured online catalog of levels created by others. Assuming that its release is met by a highly motivated and creative community focused on providing a constant stream of mind-blowing content, LBP will be surefire success.

Fable 2 (Xbox 360) 10/21 - Over promising and under delivering has very much been the theme of Peter Molyneux, the design mastermind behind Fable. I haven’t followed his hyperbolic propagand much throughout Fable II’s development, but I’m sure he’s spewed his fair share of it. The one thing I did hear is about the Han Solo factor.

The factor that has a player not being equally generous and forthcoming to everyone met, but a greedy, look-out-for-self, inward thinker that’s not exactly pure evil:

“With Han Solo, how good is good? Can you get as good as Luke Skywalker? Even he wasn’t truly good.” Molyneux said. Speaking with MTV Multiplayer blog.

He then went on t o hypothesize a potential situation in Fable II:

“If you saw a family there and had to kill these bandits to save the family, you’d kill the bandits to save the family. If I said to you, ‘okay, to save this family, you give up half your gold.’ Would you give up half your gold to save the family? Maybe you would, don’t know. The most interesting one is if I said ‘to save that family, you must be horribly, grotesquely scarred and there’s no way of ever removing the scar or the aging.’ What we found is that far, far fewer people were willing to sacrifice that.”

Would you sacrifice superficial features in a game to accomplish your good deed for the day? What about in the meatspace; fight or flight? Could an in-game situation make you stop for a second to contemplate the repercussions of your actions? Would you second guess your decision making? That seems to be the goal they are striving for here.

Fallout 3 (Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, Xbox 360) 10/28 – Post-apocalyptic wastelands haven’t been done right since 1998, or so they say. Having only become a PC gamer recently, I missed out on both Fallout’s, and I’ve neglected to watch any of the Mad Max movies. As such, I’ve never been set in a Mad Max-esque setting – and I’m not quite sure what to expect. In other words, I have little insight into this cultural phenomenon.

I know about the barren stretches of land, the different factions, your dog, the vaults, the open-ended consequence-filled nature of the world, the VAT combat system and the Pip-Boy. All that knowledge taking up real-estate in my head, but even so, I can’t begin to understand the hype machine surrounding this games pending release. Despite my not having any comprehension as to how the game will actually “work”, it’s piqued enough of my interest that I will definitely be playing it on day one.

Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360) 11/4 - “Bigger, better, and more badass.” Was the phrase Lead Designer Cliff Bleszenski chose to introduce the world to Gears of War 2, although it was scrapped shortly thereafter. Setting aside the idiotic catch phrase, my initial fears were that little to no advancement had happened in the two year gap between the first and the second Gears of War’s.

Epic could’ve released what would ostensibly be the original Gears with a new single-player campaign and, by and large, be met with success, both critically and commercially. Marginally upgraded graphics, new enemy types, and new weapons would have likely been sold as more than enough reason to come back for round two.

Thankfully though, they didn’t phone Gears of War 2 in. A new campaign, 5 player co-op, and what seems like a vastly improved multiplayer mode have me at attention and ready for battle. The 5 player co-op has a bit of a twist, as it pits you and your friends in something more analogous to Geometry Wars: Waves. You fight through waves of Locusts with each subsequent wave being more difficult than the previous. It’s chances of being Game of the Forever are slim to none, but what it does have is a great foundation to work from, if taken in the right directions it will prove to be a success in most aspects.

Resistance 2 (Playstation 3) 11/7 – Ever since its announcement, you’ve heard about Resistance 2 and it’s scale. In fact, Insomniac Games made sure that one was never mentioned without the other. A prime example being the skyscraping 300 ft. tall Leviathan shown off at the Sony E3 Press Conference months ago. It ravaged through a 1950’s war-torn Chicago and smashed buildings with little remorse.

For those that missed the original, it’s an alternate historical take on World War II, where instead of the war progressing as it should with the Allies vs. Axis, it’s become Humans on Chimeras, a mysterious alien species life form that’s decided to invade Earth.

The first takes places through European cities. With the second, the war comes stateside and it’s up to hero of the European invasion, Nathan Hale, to play his part. Apart from repeating the word “scale” until it ceases to have meaning, they’ve also been playing the numbers game like it’s nobody’s business, unleashing an 8 player class-based co-op campaign, and 64 player squad-based competitive multiplayer.

In addition to the numbers game, they’ve also been building a new website behind-the-scenes. One that’s meant to foster a community. MyResistance.net is slated to be to Resistance 2, as Bungie.net is to Halo 3. Those are big shoes to fill, but Insomniac readily boasts the “scale” to do it.

Mirror’s Edge (Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, Xbox 360) 11/11 - We got our first taste of the evolved paradigm of platforming courtesy of last year’s release of Assassin’s Creed. The craze is called Parkour, which is a French developed sport involving running, jumping, and otherwise traversing urban areas with complete grace and shocking fluidity. When directly translated from French to English it means “The art of movement”. The definition and translation of Parkour is easily transferable and a perfectly acceptable for Mirror’s Edge, as it takes Parkour, and translates it into a first-person action game.

Mirror’s Edge takes place in a not-so-distant dystopian future, run by a totalitarian government. I don’t know how much you know about totalitarian governments with Orwellian traits, but they like to control things, and one of their favorite things to control is information. That’s where the “Runners” come in. They take information in various forms and get it from point A to point B.

You play Faith, an extremely agile and graceful runner. As such, she can move through her environment with relative ease and fluidity. Much of Mirror’s Edge involves forward movement, you can expect to, more often than not, be in situations where you’re being shot at, chased, or otherwise incentivized to — you guessed it, move forward.

The only downfall I can think of is the game’s lack of interaction with civilians in the dystopian city. There’s just a picture perfect scene in my mind’s eye, where Faith is going from a rooftop, through a door, down a stairwell, and finally arriving in an office, ultimately interrupting a regular work-day, turning workers into obstacles that become part of the stage.

Those are the games that will keep your wallet (or purse, if you’re into that sort of thing) lighter than it has been all year.

Make sure you come back within the next few days, as I’ll be pushing the games of Fall that may slip under your radar, but shouldn’t. Save your pocket change — you’re going to need it.

I’m not the creative type. LittleBigPlanet should have no appeal to me, but for some reason I’m consistently drawn to it.

After dwelling on this notion for hours (literally) I decided it’s the game’s combination of approachability (in both visuals and gameplay), and the platform it creates.

Media Molecule presents users with a tool set expansive enough to recreate Shadow of the Colossus in a condensed form, and in this specific case, revive the emotion previously evoked by the original.

The following LBP level, designed by PSN user Kirathian, recreates the theme song from Final Fantasy X, “To Zanarkand.” Yes, you heard me correctly — he recreates the song using the LBP level editor.

Hit the jump for the utterly awesome video filled with awesome.

Keep in mind that what you just saw was created with a beta version of the game, which is said to contain roughly half of the items that will be available in the full retail release of LittleBigPlanet just two weeks away.

Source: 1UP

Fable 2 is done. No, really, it’s for real this time. As we speak, it’s already being pressed to discs, manufactured, and otherwise tarted up for it’s release on October 21, 2008 for North America and Asia, and October 24, 2008 for Europe. But that’s not the story, the real story is you see that package of awesome above?

Do you have any irrational impulse to own it? Have you even already gone as far as pre-ordering it? Tough. Because you see all that? Almost all of it’s gone. But not all is lost, the price has been dropped from a $79.99 to a more conventional $69.99 (both figures are in USD, so convert accordingly).

This looks like a glass half-empty or half-full situation. On one hand, you’re losing some arguably rad content, but on the other, you’re saving some arguably sweet $10.00 — just think how many dollar menu burgers you’ll be able to get with those!

The original Fable 2 Collectors Edition was originally set to include:

Bonus DVD – Includes new ‘Making-of Feature’ with Peter Molyneux and the team at Lionhead Studios and concept art viewer

Bonus In-Game Content (Requires LIVE account) – Includes “The Hall of the Dead” Dungeon, “The Wreckager” Legendary Cutlass Weapon and Otherworldly Bonus

Collectible Hobbe figure with accessories – From the Qee Collection comes this one-of-a-kind Hobbe figure. Nasty, brutish, and short, he roams the countryside, preying on travelers and spiriting away the children of the unwary.

48-hour Xbox LIVE Gold Trial Card – With Xbox LIVE Gold, players can show off their individual hero by inviting friends into their unique version of Albion or they can visit their friends’ Albion, and earn additional gold, experience and renown to take back into their own.

Five printed Fate Cards – These five beautiful cards foretell the Hero’s great destiny to journey across all of Albion, encountering deadly enemies and enigmatic allies. The path leads to a choice that will change the world forever.

But for paying less, you’ll also get less. This is the revised, price-reduced Fable II Collectors Edition:

Fable II game disc

Bonus DVD with new ‘Making-of’ Feature

Bonus in-game content (requires Xbox LIVE®)

• ‘The Hall of the Dead’ Dungeon
• ‘The Wreckager’ Legendary Cutlass Weapon
• Spartan armor and energy sword

Basically, you’re losing the premium box, printed cards, and statue. Although, Sam, Lionhead’s Community Manager, has mentioned that the box art will be the same as the one seen above, and that they’re going to release the cards in PDF format for fans to print and enjoy.

Source: Lionhead Studios

After a month of hard work behind-the-scenes we’re proud to present you the inaugural episode of the Ripcast, this is the start of a very wild ride.

Join John Kershaw, Roly Reyes, Beau Rosser, and Jonathan Zungre as they tell you about their Playlist’s for the week, which include: Crysis: Warhead, Mercenaries 2, Pure, Rock Band (both of them, Rock Bands?), Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Followed by philosophical waxing with Soulja Boy about the merits of Braid, Mass Effect and BioShock films, Spawnpoint Studios job listings, and the mish-mash of Halo games that may or may not be in development.

Due to technical difficulties, this was posted a little late, looking forward you should expect them earlier in the week provided there are no screwups. We’re still working on the logistics of everything, and I’ll keep you posted when I’ve wrangled this group of assholes into a steady schedule.

All music has been provided by the unbearably awesome Anamanaguchi. Have their babies. Seriously. Hit the jump for Episode 1.

Ever since I started playing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning with the intent of reviewing it in mind, I struggled with how I’d tackle it, since MMOs (as well as episodic games) are far different beasts than your average gaming fare.

This is largely because they’re the very definition of moving targets-– constantly evolving and morphing to correct missteps as best as they can. Take a gander at any review from World of Warcraft at release, and tell me how applicable it is for the World of Warcraft that we have now.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning owes a lot to World of Warcraft. To be the facetious, sadistic human being I am, I’ve been likening it to World of Warcraft 2.0. When questioning WAR’s populace about how they felt it stacked up to the behemoth that is WoW, the most coherent response I got was, “[World of Warcraft] felt like a job, this game blows it away in every aspect.”

When I asked the counterpart of that question in the counterpart game, I was met with an equal amount of coherence.

Warhammer Online owes a lot to what Blizzard has built up in the past 4 years, and bears a striking resemblance to World of Warcaft, but is that really a bad thing? The formula has already beckoned 13 million players in, and many of the ones I personally know don’t partake in any other sort of videogaming.

Having spent quite a bit of time with both, I think WAR may be the first to actually give WoW a run for its money, in terms of quality, if nothing else. Blizzard has done great things for PvE (Player versus Environment) combat– creating unique, intense encounters that seem almost insurmountable without a helping hand.

What few dungeon instances there are in WAR, cannot hold a candle the downright science and clockwork that Blizzard has gotten to through years of practice. Thankfully, PvE wasn’t EA Mythic’s ultimate focus all along: PvP (Player versus Player) combat.

Throughout WAR’s development we were told we’d experience a world with a constant full-scale war. Coining the term RvR (Realm versus Realm) combat back in the days of Dark Age of Camelot (EA Mythic’s previous MMORPG), the idea of RvR is that you and your faction will be deadlocked in battle with a common enemy.

These battles take place virtually everywhere in the overworld, in objective-driven battlefields, point-based scenarios, and campaigns, which are generally large-scale battles that involve attempting to capture an opponent’s capital city.

Smartly, there are checks and balances in place so that a high-level, fully decked out sadistic dude won’t ruin your play session. A good example is that the very same high-level player will be polymorphed into a chicken after stepping into a zone predetermined to be too low for him to walk through with evil intent.

At the same time, it’s a game that centralizes on PvP, and you should expect to have a play session or two where you’ll be trying to fend off a cretin who’s made it his goal for the next hour or so to make your in-game life hell.

With a level cap of 40, Warhammer Online has two factions with three races in each, with a multitude of classes within each representing a different archetype. Archetypes are one of two DPS (Damage Per Second) classes, Healer, or a Tank (a player that’s meant to be in the thick of it). For the uninitiated and utterly lost, this may be a little tough to follow. For convenience I made a table to make it a bit more understandable:

An innovation in WAR that I really fell in love with was the Tome of Knowledge. It serves as an encyclopedia about the Warhammer universe and your adventures in it. In addition, it also serves as a repository of information of your specific individual progress in-game, including things you’ve met, seen, discovered, killed, overcame, and achieved. That in conjunction with a mini-map that did an almost inconceivable amount of keeping me on track kept me from having to constantly Alt+Tab out of game to look something up on a wiki.

That wouldn’t have been too fun of an experience anyhow, considering how taxing WAR is on my 8800GTS-powered computer. It’s not taxing without good reason, though– with settings cranked to the max, I found WAR to be aesthetically and technically more pleasing to the eye than many other games that have thousands in-game at any point of the day.

Although it’s impossible to tell what the future will hold for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning without my handy-dandy crystal ball, if its evolution from Beta until retail release is any indication, it’ll be around for a long time to come. If it’s not in direct competition with World of Warcraft, I feel it’ll definitely be mentioned in the same breath.

You know, I think I was wrong about you, Soulja Boy. When I first heard your music, I thought you were a talentless punk who got rich from a dance that my two year old cousin could perfect. But, now I see the real you. You’re a thoughtful gamer who’s passionate about the medium. I now know that you can, at a moment’s notice, coherently gather your thoughts to defend it. Why didn’t you tell me you loved Braid, and gaming, so much?

I’m so sorry I didn’t notice before. I’ve noticed you playing Halo 3 with Jonathan Blow lately, and now it pains me, physically, to sign into Xbox Live. I want you back. I was careless and I feel downright terrible. I think we can give this another shot. Forgive me?

Source: YouTube

I may be reaching a bit, but I think this Fall may be the battle of the genres. Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2 are heading for a shooter showdown, while Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and World of Warcraft will fight for the MMORPG of the year mantle. The Wrath of the Lich King expansion will be released on 11/13/08, just about two months after Warhammer.

Having spent lots of time with both World of Warcraft pre-Wrath and Warhammer Online, I’ve come to the conclusion that although they’re in the same genre and doing some of the same things, they appeal to different people. WAR is for the PvP player, the guy (or girl) that’s all about going in and outsmarting another person over and over again to ultimately take them down. WoW is more for the player that enjoys the comradery of achieving some seemingly insurmountable task with a group of people you’ve bonded with throughout the hundreds of hours played so far.

I look forward to seeing some sort of breakdown in numbers about the status of World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online in a post-Wrath-release world in November, and whether or not these games hold up past their initial launch.

In an age where we’re being nickled-and-dimed for content that should’ve been on the disc to begin with, Criterion and EA are going above and beyond the call of duty to keep supporting Burnout: Paradise. They’re distributing DLC to the widest possible audience by making it available for the unbeatable price of free. On September 18th, these kind souls are adding motorcycles into the mix.

In addition to the motorcycle implementation, there will be 70 bike-exclusive events to complement the already 350 events available. Half of these will be time constrained and half aren’t.

If you haven’t gotten around to playing Burnout: Paradise and have a passing interest in cars, it’s definitely worth the budget price of $29.99. And if you’re too fat, lazy, and/or self-loathing, you can wait until fall, where it’ll be available on the Playstation Store for that very same price.

Source: EA

And here I thought the best of what I was going to get from PAX had passed. Ken Levine, the man largely credited for the success of last year’s BioShock hosted a panel about adolescent nerdery, Hollywood screenwriting exploits, and finding himself as a game designer.

Definitely my favorite panel of them all, and it’s not entirely because of my irrational love for the mind of Ken Levine. Having been born in an entirely different generation than Ken, I can still relate to many of his stories. Specifically the whole piece about growing up a total nerd and striving to find a tribe of like-minded individuals.

Source: GameVideos

We now have confirmation: October 23rd, 2008 is the date you’ll find all platform releases of Far Cry 2 on your local game retailer’s shelf.

Initially brushing it off as an Activision-like cash in sequel to an established franchise, I didn’t see much reason to follow Far Cry 2’s development. But, having just seen a few gameplay videos, I’m convinced. They actually dug down, and if nothing else, put their best foot forward and attempted to do something new with an established name.

Source: Far Cry Dev Blog

Classic PC games on the cheap? If you deem that statement worth your while, it would be prudent of you to take a look at GOG.com (Good Old Games). What started as a side-project from the guys that made PC RPG, The Witcher, managed to take it as far as making it an entity of its own. Although not yet live, we do know that Codemasters and Interplay are in with GOG.com as well as the existence of an early access beta.

I want to liken it to Gametap, with some very important differences. Firstly, no exclusive content or at least none that’s been announced or hinted at, thus far. It’s not on a subscription model; you pay for games, you keep them, and are free to download and re-download as much as you see fit. And most importantly: all games have had their insides turned out in hopes of creating the maximum amount of compatibility between both Windows XP and Vista.

If you yearn for the olden days of PC gaming, this looks to be one of the best ways of going about it. If interested, there’s an early access beta go to GOG.com and sign up prior to September 7, 2008 before 12:00am (EDT, convert time zone accordingly.)

Source: GOG.com

Unlike John Kershaw and Wade Larson, most of us did not have the good fortune of attending this year’s PAX. Luckily, the collective internet is there for us. 1UP, Giant Bomb and Wired’s Game|Life blog all posted their panels online for your PAX-less viewing pleasure.

1UP’s flagship podcast 1UP Yours held a live podcast of all the usual suspects: Garnett Lee, Shane Bettenhausen, and John Davison, as well as a smorgasbord of guests from a bevy of different outlets. The show was released to listeners, but to put it nicely, the audio was jacked. Thankfully, it’s much clearer in the video release:

Giant Bomb’s panel was more of a reunion of former Gamespotters in good spirits covering a variety of topics in a hilarious fashion, including a certain video that I am particularly fond of. We’ll embed the first of this three-part series, and for the other two be sure to visit Giant Bomb, and add to their wikis while you’re at it.

And finally, Chris Kohler of Wired’s Game|Life blog has posted the first 40 minutes of the “Game Criticism and Old Game Journalism” panel he hosted at PAX. Flanking Kohler was Gus Mastrapa, Karen Chu, and Patrick Klepek. Unfortunately, only the first 40 minutes of the panel were recorded as Kohler was doing the recording himself with his personal recorder. On the bright side, it caught the entirety of the core discussion and cut out just before Q&A. Those 40 minutes are now available in mp3 format.

Maybe those of us who missed this year’s PAX will finally be able to make it in 2010, when it hits Boston. If we missed any, please point them out, I’m sure we’d like to listen to them as much as you would.

Source: 1UP/Gamevideos, Giant Bomb, Game|Life Blog

IGN randomly decided to release the very first (as far as I know) real-time, in-game screenshots of the FF XIII series. I must say, they look stunning. Not Heavy Rain stunning, but not especially far off.

Things to pay attention to, in addition to the immaculately detailed player models, are the architecture and set pieces. Screenshots for Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and Final Fantasy Agito XIII can all be found after the jump.

First up, Final Fantasy XIII:

And next, the first in-game screens of Agito and Versus:

I’m giddy with anticipation. I can hardly wait for 2009, when the first Final Fantasy XIII game will hit store shelves.

In honor of the recent release of Silicon Knights’ Too Human, MTV Multiplayer’s Stephen Totilo thought it’d be a good idea to interview some of the people behind the game. Most, including myself, would assuredly include the outspoken, and often controversial, Denis Dyack amongst the interviewees. Totilo specifically requested that Dyack not be among those to be interviewed. As a tease for the full interviews that will follow, Totilo asked Too Human’s Art Director, Director of Design, and Audio Director how they felt about their boss, President and Co-founder of Silicon Knights, Denis Dyack.
Carman Dix, Art Director, responded with:

“Underneath, Denis is still that boy that genuinely loves video games with a passion.”

Henry Sterchi, Director of Design, had this to say about Dyack:

“Denis is sincerely passionate about the quality of everything Silicon Knights does, and with that passion comes some of his outspokenness and desire to interact with the community. One of my favorite Denis stories is when we met to discuss Eternal Darkness when I was working at Nintendo. A few of us got together, went out for dinner, and then ended up at an arcade just playing games for hours while we talked about ideas. It was incredibly refreshing and exciting to see all of the passion he had about making games and still act like a gamer and have fun.”

And finally Steve Henifin, Audio Director, continued the praise by saying:

“One of the things I like about Denis is that he is a tenacious person and he takes risks. I respect him for that, because I’m the same way. I never give up, and if you don’t take risks you are never going to know your potential. I know that if it were not for Denis we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, because SK wouldn’t exist.”

As expected and rightfully so, they all have positive spin, either because they genuinely like the guy, or they genuinely like their jobs. Whichever way, it was a stroke of brilliance from Totilo. Giving the spotlight to those that don’t often receive it, as well as keep the spotlight away from those that, in my opinion, have had the spotlight a little too often.
Regardless of how I feel about Denis Dyack’s philosophies and how he approaches certain situations, I will give credit where credit is due. He’s kept Silicon Knights running for over a decade, so he must be doing something right.
Source: MTV Multiplayer

“Holy fiddlesticks!” Bionic Commando: Rearmed’s Producer, Ben Judd, proclaimed in response to the game’s fairly impressive sales numbers. Capcom must be just as impressed as he is, considering that a lot of the top people at Capcom projected this to be a money losing venture.

In the first week, across all 3 platforms, Bionic Commando: Rearmed has sold 130,000 units. That may not seem like much, but for a solely digital distributed title, this is an incredible number. Judd confirms,

“Yeah, that’s um, high. The highest we’ve ever scored on a digital title.”

This bodes incredibly well for the current-gen Bionic Commando which, as of now, is still “TBA” in terms of a release date.

From the moment I first heard Judd express his vision, which I found to be in line with mine as a core gamer, I’ve been interested in following him as a developer. He further confirmed that he “gets it” in his latest blog post:

“And while, it’s great to have my first title be not only a critically acclaimed one but also a financial success, there is a bigger picture at play here that we need to look at. Consumers voted with their dollars. They basically have sent the message loud and clear:

We are tired of meta-emulated crap.
We want the titles of yesteryear to be paid the proper respect.
We want them done right.”
And if the price is right, we’ll buy.”

Continuing, “Basically, we have set a standard in digital gaming. The bar has been raised and you have let developers around the world know that if they invest the time, money, and heart into making (and remaking) some great games, you will support that initiative.”

On behalf of myself and my very distant future children, I would like to wish Ben the best of luck in his future endeavors, as I feel they will benefit the gaming population for years to come.

Source: BC Weekly Field Report

This just in: In some epiphany of clarity (and insanity, surely) EA/FilePlanet have decided that they’d like more people in on the Red Alert 3 beta. If you’re a long-time fan of Command and Conquer or just someone who has a minute interest in real-time strategy games, go for it — you have nothing to lose. But hurry! It looks like it’s on a first come, first serve basis. All you have to do is click here and sign up for a free FilePlanet account and you’ll have your key (maybe). The only downside is that you have to wait in the atrocious download queue… and that supplies are limited and possibly already gone. Good luck!

For those of you who aren’t really into the whole Hip-Hop scene, it wasn’t long ago that rappers Ice-T and Soulja Boy had a series of back-and-forth trash talking sessions about the state of hip-hop using YoutTube as their platform of choice.

Why am I telling you this? Because that backstory is necessary to understand the parody of the Giant Bomb video retort done in response to Kevin Pereira’s Too Human defense force video blog.

Just for clarity, this video is clearly in jest, and Jeff himself (the frontman in the video with the kickin’ white shades) states: “For the record, Kevin’s rad, and I will fight anyone who claims otherwise.”

Source: Giant Bomb

October 21st will be the day BioShock for Playstation 3 and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (Nintendo DS) will be up for sale in North America; other countries, not so much. Thankfully, the wait they’ll have to endure will only be three and two days, respectively.

That leaves international launches for BioShock on October 24th and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia on October 23rd. Oddly enough, 2K has not announced any plans to launch BioShock in Japan, and conversely Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia has yet to announce a date for the inevitable European release.

When speaking to Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft, Ben Judd, Capcom’s Producer of all things Bionic Commando, claimed that:

“We still have a fucking ace up our sleeve. It’s an ace, a fucking ace… At TGS (Tokyo Game Show), the Capcom booth stage is going to make people’s balls pucker up. It’s going to be big. ”

When pressed further, Judd refused to reveal any additional info, but on the subject of more prudent matters, Judd added that Bionic Commando: Rearmed is doing well and expects Bionic Commando 3D to do exponentially better:

“Store retail games always do better than downloadable games,”

Ultimately, I’m not quite sure whether or not I should be excited about any of this. I mean, as far as I’m aware, my testicles have not  puckered. In addition, it doesn’t sound like the most pleasant of experiences. On the other hand, it must be awesome to cause bodily malfunction in the manner Judd implies.

Freudian slip? Maybe. He did say “ace” a few times. Could this have something to do with the Ace Attorney series? In all honesty, the only titles Capcom could announce that have any chance of puckering my balls would be Marvel vs Capcom 3 or Capcom vs SNK 3 in the style of Street Fighter IV.

So while I fear for my balls, I’m issuing a challenge to Capcom — bring it!!

Source: Kotaku

Haven’t bought Burnout: Paradise yet? Have a Playstation 3, an internet connection, and $29.99 you’re willing to part with? Try to hold on to them until a to-be-determined date in the Fall, when Burnout: Paradise in its entirety will be available for download.

And when we say in its entirety, we mean it. It’s reportedly going to come with all the updates pre-loaded. Those of us who’ve owned Playstation 3 for a length of time are aware of how painfully annoying update after update can be, even if they do add significant features.

For those of you who don’t mind running out to your local brick-and-mortar, you can buy a regular old boxed version of Burnout: Paradise for the same price of $29.99. You should probably also be aware of the sweet updates Criterion is planning, like trophy support and the inclusion of motorcycles and planes. Yeah, that’s right, friggin’ planes in Burnout, eventually!

You can also read the changelog of their latest update, Cagney, available here.

“Release early and often” is the established mantra the Valve team has set and continues to perpetuate as they update Team Fortress 2 with maps, modes, achievements, and weapon add-ons. This time? The Heavy.

Perhaps, “A Gatling Gun of Updates” would have been a more appropriate headline, since you can pretty much stuff a Gatling gun full of special update ammo into this particular iteration. The contents of the update will be spread throughout the rest of the week, taking a not very appreciated break for the weekend, and continuing on until next Tuesday.

Today, they released community map, cp_steel. As implied, the community map is generated by userbase, in this case, Jamie “Fishbus” Manson. Steel is described as “a complex Attack/Defense control point map” by the creators themselves. This will be followed by a new map for Payload mode, 5 maps for a new, yet to be named or detailed mode, and a ‘Meet the Team’ video, likely in the style of the previously released ‘Meet the (Insert class name here)’. Then comes the Heavy Class updates, following the format of previous class updates: 3 new weapons and 35 new achievements revolving around the Heavy.

I know that’s a lot to take in, guys, but it’s better to have information overload than lack of updates altogether. What’s more, it’s all free. It makes me almost gag at the mere sight of the Horse Armor pack for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or even worse, paying for DLC that’s already on the disk (I’m looking at you Namco). But that’s another rant for another day.

Their “early and often” philosophy may, of course, not be as clear as day when you take into account the failed Half-Life 2 Episodes. To be specific, this is a failure in timeliness of the releases, not the quality of said releases. Left 4 Dead as well suffers from this, since it was originally announced in 2006 and still remains unreleased. But, such is the life of Valve, making great games and taking their sweet ass time with it.

Source: Valve