-
Plus, 50 per cent price cut until Sunday.
Worms Reloaded has just let rip with a batch of free, Team Fortress 2-themed DLC.
According to Neoseeker, the most recent PC iteration of the long-running multiplayer strategy franchise gets five new forts, new hats and gravestones based on the various different classes from Valve’s FPS favourite.
The update also brings with it a new speech bank editor that lets players create and share speech banks to use in game.
-
Studio founder and president discusses just-announced test of Gears of War 3, Bulletstorm pack-in, and the status of the big-screen version of the franchise.
This morning, Epic Games announced a way to promote two of its games: a pack-in for early buyers of the Xbox 360 edition of Bulletstorm. The Epic Edition of the game–available in limited quantities at no extra cost–will come with access to the public beta of Gears of War 3. The deal between Bulletstorm publisher Electronic Arts and Gears publisher Microsoft represents a first-ever agreement between one major game maker to have its game’s beta promoted via another’s title.
To help explain the unique deal, GameSpot caught up with Epic Games president and cofounder Mike Capps this morning. The executive also discussed the timing of the beta, why other Gears games never had betas, and the small matter of the long-in-development Gears of War film.
GameSpot: Now this is something that has never been done before–a beta between publishers. I mean there was the Halo 3 beta in Crackdown and the Halo: Reach beta with Halo: ODST, but those were all released by Microsoft Game Studios. How did this come about?
Mike Capps: Well that was part of the genesis of the idea. Crackdown worked really well to expose Halo folks to a new IP that was a lot of fun. We don’t ship two games like this very often, and they’re so close to each other it was kind of an obvious opportunity to do something cool for Epic fans. We started talking with EA and Microsoft, and obviously those guys have been working together forever doing lots of great game promotions. So it was kind of cool how everyone put aside the “my game, your game” stuff and let us get Epic fans excited about both titles.
Lots of brainstorming later, we were in a good spot. We’re gonna test that the game works internationally, with dedicated servers all over the world. A game launch is a really good way to do that, since Bulletstorm will be selling everywhere, so the timing’s perfect.
GS: Have you set a start date for the beta yet?
MC: We’ve been saying spring. My guess is it will be sometime around April or so. It’s going to be early enough so it really impacts Gears [of War 3’s] development, but we want to make sure everyone has the chance to play Bulletstorm before they jump right into the beta.
GS: You mentioned April–that was the original launch window for Gears of War 3 itself. Why did it get pushed back so far?
MC: Well the thing I liked about April is that’s when Gears fans expected to play Gears 3. This way, they can still do that. Microsoft approached us about moving the game back to September. Now normally you hear stories about evil publishers trying to convince the developer to ship it early. Whenever we’d have date conversations, we’d say, “Oh the game has got to be good; it’s got to be done when we ship it!” That part of the industry, for us, is now completely gone. Now we say, “If we can do this in September, October, November, we can do something amazing like Halo: Reach.” That had huge promotion that got a lot of people behind it and got huge attention at retail. So a couple extra months was fine by us–it’ll just make the game better. They thought it would be better for them, so we played along.
GS: This is the first public beta for a Gears of War game. What prompted it?
MC: We’ve kind of actually always done betas. Unreal Tournament had betas to test it out before the main launch, and we actually did one for Unreal Championship 2 for the Xbox. But it’s actually a lot of work to do a beta on consoles, because you still have to go through all of the certification process, so it adds a lot of time to the schedule. To take what you have, chop off a bunch of it, and cert it–it adds a month or more to your schedule. Generally, we’ve not seen that as a good trade-off. But at this point, with those extra couple months it gave us the ability to do it.
Also, I think everybody knows we had some multiplayer stability issues with Gears 2 multiplayer out of the box. While we fixed those later, the opportunity to be really, really sure that our new dedicated server infrastructure is going to be operational on day one with Gears 3 was totally worth the time to make the beta.
GS: Now the Epic Edition of Bulletstorm is limited to the Xbox 360 edition of the game. Are you planning extra bonuses or special editions for the PlayStation 3 and PC versions of the game?
MC: We’ll be announcing something early next year.
GS: How limited will the Epic edition be, quantity-wise?
MC: This really is a limited edition. Like Gears of War 2’s limited edition, it will be gone in the first week or so. The surest way to get time in the beta is to preorder it. We won’t have pallets of these sitting around months later. We want it to be limited as a sort of present to our hardcore fans.
GS: If you preordered the game, do you automatically get the Epic Edition?
MC: Since it’s the same price, it’s our intention to fulfill all preorders which have already gone in with Epic Editions. We should double-check and make sure. We just put this plan together a week ago, so we have to check with the retail guys and make sure.
GS: Getting a little off topic–what’s the status of the Gears of War movie right now?
MC: (Pauses) Oh, golly. It’s been Hollywood-ed, fully. It comes and it goes. We think we’ve got a really good plan, and then we change personnel, and then we go again. I wish I had more to talk about because I think it would make a really good movie, but we don’t have much to say right now.
GS: Is [Live Free or Die Hard director] Len Wiseman still attached to direct?
MC: I don’t believe he is currently attached to the project, no. It’s too bad, because he was a great guy and it would have been a lot of fun. But he had another project he had to move to.
GS: So is it safe to say the Gears film is in development limbo?
MC: Um, no, because we’ve actually had some progress. But anything other than “It’s in full production” to me at this point means “It’s in development limbo” in Hollywood. (Laughs)
GS: How about this? It’s in permanent preproduction.
MC: (Laughs) There you go!
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Epic’s Capps sounds off on Gears beta, movie” was posted by Tor Thorsen on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:56:34 -0800 -
Carry XP over into main game.
A demo for PSP chop ’em up Lord of Arcana hits the PlayStation Network next week, publisher Square Enix has announced.
The demo, which goes live on 22nd December, lets you play through the tutorial and the first three missions.
Any experience points or items you pick up in the demo will be carried over to the full game, should you deem it worthy of purchase when it hits shelves on 4th February.
-
Namco Bandai’s gruesome fantasy action adventure pegged for midwinter release on Xbox 360, PS3.
Namco Bandai earned a strong critical response in October with Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, a third-person action adventure in which a crafty female dominated a thuggish male in a far-future dystopia to ensure her safety. The publisher will be revisiting that formula next year with Knights Contract, announcing today that the gore-heavy action adventure will arrive for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation on February 22.
Knights Contract sees players following the unlikely duo of the witch Gretchen and the immortal executioner Heinrich. Though Gretchen actually died at Heinrich’s hands, she has been resurrected and now controls the scythe-wielding warrior. Together the pair struggles to save the world from a “black spell of death” and a supernatural army called the Harmonculous.
The duo fight in what Namco is calling “stylized and over-the-top action,” with players controlling Heinrich and stringing together appendage-dismembering combos while the computer-controlled Gretchen uses her magic in a supporting role. Players will be able to coordinate the pair’s attacks by issuing mid-melee commands to Gretchen, as well as executing finishing moves. While Heinrich is invincible, players will need to protect the vulnerable Gretchen if they want to make it far.
For more information, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage of Knights Contract.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Knights Contract signed for Feb. 22” was posted by Tom Magrino on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 12:32:23 -0800 -
Capcom’s PSP action game retains top spot as Studio Ghibli-Level Five collaboration Ninokuni, Donkey Kong Country Returns spar for second.
Along with the flagging rhythm genre, slumping sales of Wii games and portable titles have been blamed for the US game industry’s 2010 woes. However, the picture in Japan is considerably different. Media Create released its Japanese sales figures for the week of December 6-12, and games for the PSP, DS, and Wii claimed eight of the top 10 chart spots.
Monster Hunter Portable 3 dominated in its second week of release, adding 629,541 copies to its first-week total of 1.95 million copies sold. Capcom’s multiplayer-focused action game far outsold the closest competition, with the Studio Ghibli-Level Five collaboration Ninokuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi selling 179,548 copies in its week of release. The DS role-playing game narrowly beat out Wii platformer Donkey Kong Country Returns, which led Nintendo’s offerings with 163,310 copies sold.
Nintendo had a strong week on the whole. In addition to Donkey Kong Country Returns, the company claimed the middle of the charts with Pokemon Black and White, Mario Sports Mix, Wii Party, Super Mario All-Stars, and Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem in fourth through eighth place, respectively. The final two spots were occupied by the PlayStation 3’s only two representatives on the chart, Namco Bandai’s Tales of Graces F and Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.
On the hardware front, the PSP easily claimed the top spot with a boost from the Monster Hunter Portable 3 launch, even if the 158,029 systems it sold was less than half the previous week’s total. The Wii retained second place with 79,424 systems sold, while the DSi and DSi LL (DSi XL in the West) leapfrogged the PS3 to take third and fourth place. Finally, after an extended breather in the middle of the pack, the PSP Go returned to the bottom of the charts, selling just 1,904 systems.
JAPAN GAME SALES WEEK OF DECEMBER 6-12, 2010
Software:
Rank / Title / Publisher / Platform / Unit sales
1. Monster Hunter Portable 3 / Capcom / PSP / 629,541
2. Ninokuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi/ Level Five / DS / 170,548
3. Donkey Kong Country Returns / Nintendo / Wii / 163,310
4. Pokemon Black and White / The Pokemon Company / DS / 79,819
5. Mario Sports Mix / Nintendo / Wii / 68,430
6. Wii Party / Nintendo / Wii / 55,412
7. Super Mario All-Stars / Nintendo / Wii / 53,670
8. Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem / Nintendo / DS / 51,828
9. Tales of Graces F / Namco Bandai / PS3 / 39,640
10. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood / Ubisoft / PS3 / 36,098Hardware:
PSP – 158,029
Wii – 79,424
DSi LL – 59,709
DSi – 55,993
PS3 – 41,882
Xbox 360 – 3,695
DS Lite – 3,309
PS2 – 2,054
PSP Go – 1,904Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Big in Japan December 6-12: Monster Hunter Portable 3” was posted by Brendan Sinclair on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:56:12 -0800 -
PS3 RPG threatens immortality.
Support for monstrous PlayStation 3 RPG Demon’s Souls’ US servers has been extended again, publisher Atlus has announced.
Earlier this year, Atlus pledged to keep the game online until at least March 2011, but it has now extended that deadline until at least October next year as the game continues to enjoy huge popularity.
“We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again,” said Atlus exec Aram Jabbari, “we will support the online servers for Demon’s Souls as long as we possibly can, and we’ll be as transparent about the entire process as possible, hence us constantly updating folks as to what to expect.
-
Following purportedly leaked release schedule, cofounder Frank Pearce says studio has begun talking about title as a recruitment tool.
Early this month, an austere document appeared online purporting to be Blizzard Entertainment’s road map for the next five years. Dated April 2, 2010, the document listed quarterly release windows for all of the Irvine, California-based studio’s projects, including Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm (Q4 2011), Diablo 3 (Q4 2011), and World of Warcraft’s fourth expansion (Q2 2012). Also appearing in that chart was a mystery project, bearing the title Titan and a Q4 2013 release window.
Though the validity of the chart is apocryphal at best, it has been lent some measure of credence this week, courtesy of none other than Blizzard cofounder and executive vice president Frank Pearce. As part of the 2010 VGA ceremony, Pearce spoke with gaming blog Destructoid, confirming Titan as at the very least a working title for the studio’s much-speculated upon new massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
“Titan is… the media is not meant to know anything about that,” Pearce said. “It’s our next-gen MMO, and we’ve only started talking about it in a limited fashion because we want to leverage the fact that we’re working on something like that for the purpose of recruiting–getting some of the best talent in the industry on that.”
Blizzard has been teasing out pieces of its next big project since 2007, when it confirmed that a non-World of Warcraft MMOG was in development. The game, which Blizzard does not see as a competitor to WOW, will be an all-new property with, according to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, “a little more broad appeal.”
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Blizzard confirms next-gen MMOG called Titan” was posted by Tom Magrino on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:35:00 -0800 -
Geo think it’ll get a European release?
Should the forthcoming NeoGeo Station on PlayStation Network not do enough to satisfy your retro cravings, then publisher SNK Playmore might have just the thing: a classic, PlayStation 3-compatible NeoGeo control pad.
Spotted by Engadget, it’s a note-perfect replica of the old NeoGeo CD system controller, aside from a PS button and two extra face buttons to account for L1 and R1.
Alas, it’s Japan-only for now but Play Asia are currently taking import orders for $44.90 (around £29).
-
2011 release looks unlikely.
A 2011 release for Max Payne 3 is looking increasingly unlikely after publisher Take-Two left it off its latest release slate.
Yesterday, the company gave investors a taster of what it had lined up for the next year or so when it released its latest set of financials. Its planed launch schedule looks like this:
The one game noticeable by its absence was Max Payne 3. The game was delayed indefinitely back in June after missing both its planned early 2010 release and then its revised Autumn date.
-
To infinity, and repeat.
Here’s what we were(n’t) picking from: Out This Week.
As I mentioned last week, there’s no reason the download gaming scene needs to slow down over Christmas, and no reason we have to endure the traditional drought of new releases between early December and late January.
So it proves. Over the next three weeks we’ll be treated to abstract PlayStation Move puzzler Echochrome II, Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s Vietnam expansion, the first episode of Telltale’s Back to the Future series on PC and Mac, 360-exclusive Dead Rising 2 epilogue Case West and a tempting trio of Xbox Live Arcade releases: World of Keflings, Raskulls and ilomilo. We’ve heard very good things about the latter two at least.
