Ever watch an And1 basketball game with a silly yet annoying announcer? Midway Games is changing that up and allowing music icon Chuck D, of the rap group Public Enemy, to be the announcer and host for NBA Ballers: Chosen One.

Listed as one of the “Immortals, 50 Greatest Artists of All Time” in April of 2004 by Rolling Stone magazine, Chuck D is an icon, not just in hip-hop, but in the music industry as a whole.

With a powerful voice also comes the addition of a great super-producer, Just Blaze, who has worked with some of the top talents in the rap game from Jay-Z to Kanye West.

“The talents of Chuck D and Just Blaze will greatly enhance the NBA Ballers: Chosen One experience, as players live the fantasy lifestyle of an NBA Superstar,” said George Gomez executive producer, Midway Amusement Games.

This is just another step for Midway to bring the casual gamer into the lives of the NBA superstars.

“Chuck D is one of the most recognizable voices in music history, while Just Blaze has produced multiple chart-topping hits. Together they’ll ensure that NBA Ballers: Chosen One will feature a sound to match the game’s amazing graphics and gameplay, said Gomez”

Giving the players a unique fantasy basketball, NBA Ballers allows one-on-one or two-on-two action with 65 of the top NBA stars.

NBA Ballers: Chosen One ushers in a new way of bringing the music to players, instead of random compilation of tracks from various artists, allowing a talented producer like Just Blaze to do the entire score may give the game a more unique “signature” feel in the end.

The Present day squad based, fight for survival BlackSite demo is available today!

Midway announced on Nov. 23rd that new demo would be available for download on Xbox Live. The demo will feature two areas, one has the user play through the town square to the court yard of Rachel, NV and the other is an escort mission where the user takes the gunner’s seat through the desert canyons of Nevada.

Midway Studios used a fully-customized version of for the development of BlackSite. With the political storyline and cutting-edge design BlackSite: Area 51 is defiantly worth the free download.

Black Site: Area 51 is set to release in Europe Nov. 30th for PC and 360, and will be available on the PS3 first quarter of 2008. For more information go to blacksitegame.com or midway.com.

We’ve heard before from PS3 developers that it’s not an easy machine to develop for. These latest statements from Midway indicate that the main reason for this is because the PS3 uses a multi-cored “Cell” processor, which is so different from the 360 that every game has to be rebuilt from ground up.

Since developers never did anything with multi-cored processors before the PS3, games have been severely delayed and faults were often seen in the final product in terms of graphics and frame rate issues.

Midway boss David F. Zucker had this to say about their development problems:

“For our first wave of next-gen games… lead development has been on the Xbox 360, due to its earlier introduction and larger installed base. We ran into some technical issues developing for the PlayStation 3 that have taken more time to finalize than we expected.”

“These include… making sure that the frame rate, networking, and graphical features are at parity between the platforms. We’ve also encountered challenges as a result of shipping two of the very first PS3 games using Epic’s Unreal Engine 3.”

It really does sound like they were having problems compared to the 360, but it’s not all bad. Zucker also said, “We do believe that these technical issues are now complete at a core level in our engine. Looking ahead to 2008, we expect the PS3 versions of our titles to ship day and date with the Xbox 360 and other SKUs.”

Now that’s what we like to hear. Hopefully more developers can follow this trend and we will see a drastic improvement in game ports to the PS3. Sony may have to play catch-up, but at least third-party developers are doing their part as well.

Source: Kotaku

Epic is clearly interested in making games about burly space marines and their bad-ass weapons, and Unreal Tournament 3 is about as close to this vision as you can imagine. But if Gears of War was a relatively slow-paced, more thoughtful approach to shooters, Unreal Tournament is its jacked-up, circle-strafing, hyperactive twin.

During a 5 on 5 match of capture the flag, our two teams (Red and Blue… so classic) had a garage full of tanks and flyers that faced off down a long bridge. Falling into the water meant you could snag a shock core rifle, but it was slow going to get back to the top. Meanwhile, the flags were hidden in a secured bunker on the starting level, with access on the sides and an escape route through a jump pad in the back.

Getting to the flag was not easy, because all the action was funneled straight down the bridge and into the waiting team. Long distance weapons were hard to come by on this map, but there were plenty of short-term weapons like the shotgun-like flak cannon available.

First the torque bow and now the bio rifle. Epic has innovative weapons down.

For a speed boost, you could hit Q at any time to call up the hoverboard, but getting hit on it meant a few crucial seconds on the ground when you were vulnerable. Also, you couldn’t shoot on the hoverboard, but you could carry the flag. Another neat trick was to feign death with the F button, undergoing an elaborate death animation. The main drawback, however, is that it took a few seconds to get back to your feet.

The vehicles and environments were totally astounding on the high-powered systems we used. The Intel booth at E for All was just filled with great PC games, but Unreal Tournament 3 was noticeably prettier than any game on display (except, perhaps, Gears of War). It’s the same familiar style as Gears, but there hasn’t been a straightforward shooter with this much polish seen so far this year. Of course, when you’re playing a competitive twitch game like Unreal Tournament, you may need to sacrifice graphics for speed, so not all players will have this gorgeous PC experience.

The lighting and attention to detail are right up there with Gears.

Plasma flying and turrets humming, I was still able to make it across the map to deliver the final flag capture. It was pretty thrilling, but after years of capture the flag, maybe action gamers are ready to move on to something new. For what it is, Unreal Tournament 3 looks great and plays very well. Like a big-budget action movie, it’s exciting and pretty, without too much thinking to get in the way.

“Face Off against the Triads with style.”

John Woo has shaped cult cinema for years now. First making his big splash with the film A Better Tomorrow in 1986, Woo would be launched to a new tier of success (along with star Chow Yun Fat) within the Hong Kong movie making industry. Woo’s style was a ballet of violence and embodied the perfect combination of pirouettes and pistols. But to a greater extent, Woo’s films would fuse the popular chop-socky pictures of China with the six-shooter Westerns of golden era Hollywood. The result of which still affects cinema in a major way today: leaving future celluloid heroes standing waste deep in a pile of smoking bullet casings with exhausted trigger fingers – a dangling cigarette jutting from a face made of stone.

Fast-forward to the year 2007 and Woo has just delivered his next contribution to pop culture in the form of Midway’s newest release – Stranglehold. The new XBOX 360 entry puts you in the shoes Detective Tequila, the trigger-happy cop portrayed by the legendary Chow Yun Fat (who is beautifully rendered here). Tequila was first introduced to audiences in the director’s 1992 gem, Hard Boiled. This game, not unlike that influential film, follows Woo’s trademark of dual handed 9mm massacres and downpours of shattered glass folded together into a slow motion opera of violence. The raging battles will lead you from the underbelly of Hong Kong to the tattered streets of Chicago. The director’s signature style is invariably singed to the action of this game. And while this is the reason for most of Stranglehold’s more thrilling moments, it also leaves it teetering on cliché.

The game begins with Tequila uncovering the murder of one of his comrades, presumably committed by one of the Triad gangs that litter the streets of impoverished Hong Kong. The hunt for the perpetrator eventually ensues and our man Tequila will have to investigate in order to learn the truth. Investigate as defined by John Woo that is. Which actually means reading people their last rights instead of their Mirandas, and killing enough bad guys to populate Sandusky, Ohio. Eventually you’ll discover that some people very close to you have been kidnapped – making the plot not so much thicken as lengthen.

A story of this kind has been well tread and, while at times becoming mildly intriguing, offers up little more than opportunities for Chow Yun fat to pull off some aerobatic fragging. While the yarn tends to be pretty thin, let’s not forget that this is an action game being adapted from the work of the same man who gave us Broken Arrow. Tigerhill Entertainment wasn’t trying to modify a David Lynch piece here after all. And while fans of Woo’s earlier work shouldn’t expect the same depth in Stranglehold, the content doesn’t stray too far into the shallow end.

The gameplay can easily be compared to Max Payne, simply because Payne (like many of the other games from the last 10 years) used Woo’s films as a blueprint for all that’s cool in modern gaming culture. The layout for the controller has been well thought out and responds accordingly. The two buttons you’ll be focusing most of your attention on will be the right and left triggers. The right one will send that hammer flying back and dish out that wall of bullets you’ll be putting up in front of countless waves of narrow eyed goons. The left trigger will send you diving head long over a variety of destructible environments, as well as allowing you to interact with particular rails, trolleys and chandeliers; adding some extra panache to your onslaught. Certain measures have been taken to make controlling our Cantonese-speaking hero relatively easier. You will automatically slide over all variety of counters and tabletops without so much as a button press.

The camera follows a stock third-person perspective, which is a good match for the past pace action. However, problems can arise while in the crouching position, mainly due to its inability to make Tequila transparent enough to spot the oncoming enemies. Tapping the left bumper initiates your cover, which comes in handy when the firefights jump up a notch, and the left bumper will send you into “Tequila Time”. Tequila Time is the same mechanic that we’ve seen in Max Payne, The Matrix Game, and countless others. It encapsulates you in a slow motion focus mode that will enable you to splatter your foes before they can get the upper hand on you. In most instances diving will automatically trigger Tequila Time when surrounded by enemies, so using the bumper isn’t necessary in most situations. However, it can come in handy when you are behind cover and preparing to storm into a Tea House hallway swarming with baddies.

The one really nice addition to this game is the inclusion of the “Tequila Bombs”. As you progress, you’ll collect some tools that’ll help our hardened cop become damn near indestructible. These secret weapons come in the form of health / Precision Aim / Barrage / and Spin Attack. Hitting the D-pad will help you pull off all those logic defying scenarios from the action movies you grew up with. Health will stitch you up, Precision aim will make long distance head shots a cinch (or if you are feeling a little more malicious…crotch shots), Barrage will give you a dose of temporary invincibility and Spin Attack will have Tequila commence a spinning ring of gunfire that’s definitely more Yin than Yang. When used to their full advantages, these moves will make you feel just like the well-dressed, grossly underpaid Chinese supercop you always wanted to be.

Tigerhill Entertainment did a nice job with the presentation for this game. The graphics look quite good, especially when playing on a Hi-Def television. The character models are pretty clean, with Chow Yun Fats looking just how you remembered him. The one stand out feature of this game is the highly destructible environments. It seems as though every object you come across can be blown to bits by any of the guns that you have at your disposal. So once bullets start flying in the crowded outdoor market, artifact-ridden museum or the bright Casino lights, you’ll see that interior decorating bill start to skyrocket. The nice part about this is that it isn’t just a gimmick, but something that sways gameplay.

The first time you take shelter behind a nice cozy column, only to observe it being completely eroded by gunfire, you’ll realize that this game is designed to keep you in the tussle. But remember, the new physics can also work to your advantage. See that sign hanging above the gold-toothed punk up on the scaffolding? Send a round into its base and watch that neon-lit beauty take him out head first…along with his partner below. Did you notice the propane tank sitting on the chop block next to the felon with the Uzi? Well, take a shot and watch the explosion send him flying through the air. Aiming at interactive targets will make things easier for you while marching through the game, so it pays to keep your head on a swivel and see what’s around. You also have the ability to use railings, pushcarts, winding dragon statues and fallen telephone polls to put you in a more favorable position. Approach any of these parts of the environment and hit the left trigger to slide, swing or roll your way into the action.

Stranglehold’s positives and negatives stem from the very same source. The game is satisfying for the very same reasons that make it lack substance. Like the movies that inspired it, this is a popcorn experience. It’s explosions, violence and smarmy one-liners. It never derails from this fact and doesn’t offer much in the way of depth. An addition like the game’s multiplayer (which really just includes an assortment of deathmatches) really just extends an experience that doesn’t need to be extended. The Mexican standoff mini-game, which has you take out enemies in slow-mo while dodging their oncoming bullets, offers a little break from the mayhem; but does little in the way of creating variety. That being said, this is a good and enjoyable game. Fans of the shooter genre will be quite happy with the 8 or so hours they get out of Stranglehold’s single player, and the game makes itself available to busy gamers who lack the time or will of sitting through a 100+ hour RPG. So, in the end Stranglehold turned out to be what it set out to become. It’s John Woo. But it’s also Michael Bay, Tony Scott and the Wachowskis. A lot of shine, but oh so little substance.

When I first saw Zombie Ninja Pro-Am, I truly didn’t know what to expect. The title wasn’t too specific in what you’re doing with the characters from the Adult Swim show Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but I quickly found out that this game, like the show, is very funny and foul-mouthed.

The title refers to two things– “Zombie Ninja” (but there are no zombie ninjas in the game, I’m sad to say), and “Pro Am”, which seems to refer to miniature golf. I found the golf angle to be a plus, because in this game you visit a number of golf courses, playing as Master Shake and Frylock.

There are a number of different golf courses from toxic waste sites to the pits of hell, and even the craters of the moon. Each course has its own little traps that are tough to move through. For instance, early on you come across a laser grid covering your golf hole. The kicker is if your golf ball touches the grid it will explode, so the only safe spot to sink your putt is at the top of this grid.

Other traps are just for show, like the sand traps, rivers and ponds. The sand traps will have things living in them that you have see to believe, and the rivers and ponds are rarely made of water. You’ll need to stay clear of these traps at all cost, because if you lose a ball in those areas they stay lost.

After you hit the ball and walk to where it landed, you’ll have to battle a number of different kinds of characters from past episodes of the series. The most recognizable are the Mooninites, Frat Aliens, and M.C. Peepants . You don’t just smash them with a nine iron– you get a medieval sword, a chainsaw, and a shotgun among other weapons. You can also shoot laser beams and fireballs from Frylock’s eyes.

The third mode involves racing characters to different courses, which I found to be great fun. Still, the graphics behind the game are not the best you’ll see, and like the show, it won’t take you that long to get through the whole thing. It’s only a few hours long, so maybe it’s good for an afternoon’s play.

The best thing about ATHF Zombie Ninja Pro-Am is the humor before and after every hole, which is worth playing the game to see. The voices and writing make it feel like a never before seen episode of Aqua Teen Huger Force, which is worthwhile if you’re already a fan of the show. Otherwise, there isn’t too much here for fans of racing, fighting, mini-golf, or zombie ninjas.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

The King of Kombat, Rajah of Rampage, and Baron of the Blitz — Midway Games — has unleashed their 2007 E3 lineup on us today. Midway’s CEO had the following to say about the lineup…

“Our 2007 E3 lineup truly reflects our product strategy to develop top quality titles in a wide range of genres across all major platforms,” said David F. Zucker, president and CEO, Midway. “With exciting next generation games such as Stranglehold and proven brands like Mortal Kombat, along with games for the younger market and handhelds, this is Midway’s most diverse and strongest line up yet.”

The Midway E3 lineup includes:

• Stranglehold (PS3, Xbox 360, PC; August)
• BlackSite: Area 51 (PS3, Xbox 360, PC; September)
• Unreal Tournament 3 (PS3, PC; Fall)
• Ultimate Mortal Kombat (Nintendo DS; November)
• Cruis’n (Wii; November)
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am (PS2; October)
• Game Party (Wii; November)
• Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends: Imagination Invaders (Nintendo DS; November)
• The Wheelman (PS3, Xbox 360, PC; Winter)
• TNA iMPACT! (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 2; Spring)
• The Bee Game (Nintendo DS, GBA; November)
• Hour of Victory (PC; Fall)
• The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (PC; Now Available)