Capcoms new RE5 screens

You realize your marketing has executed perfectly when people are ecstatic to just see four new screen shots of your game. Capcom has released four new screens of the hugely anticipated Resident Evil 5. The game never needed the controversy it gained after the first trailer to sell games but it got it in a colossal way. Now with the new screens it looks like you maybe doing some cross country cleansing. With the backdrop of the cradle of life you be taking out the walking dead. Here's a quick link to the very promising screens.

Red Alert 3's new trailer

Up on Gametrailers.com there is a new Red Alert trailer. The trailer all be it fun and showing a quick snip-it of the actresses and all the actors; is all it shows. No game play no in depth look at what is coming out. All the game tells me is that I have to play as the Russians, that's it. Seriously you be taking orders from Tim Curry, the Devil himself. How could compete with that? OK George is a really really persuading argument to play for the land of the rising sun.

Of course the other main reason to play as the land of the rising sun would be the mechs, yeah they get mechs. But as everyone knows the red alert series has never been about reality, or even trying to remain semi-realistic. It's looking like Three will be no different. If your heart is set on the Soviets they will have their shock tanks. Because Tesla coils should always be mobile. OK that could be done so where is the weird stuff? Fine if you need it, the Ruskies will give you armed bears, yeah armored bears. Though if you watch all the trailers one of them state that the sharks will have armor soon. It appears that the Soviets not only want a government that screws everyone over but have really relaxed enlistment credentials.

With troops like that it's little wonder why the red alert franchise has such a great loyal but very tongue in cheek following.

DS refresh by the end of year

It seems videogaming247 has an interesting story about Nintendo. Sometime this year, ( obviously near Christmas) a new DS will come out. Though the price will be changing up a bit, the word is that it will retail for $189, So what are you getting to justify the extra $60 bucks? How about a larger screen, plus Nintendo is offering the ability to use sd cards. That's right you can turn your DS into a mp3 player. But that's not it, you will also be able to take pictures with it. Then lastly they state it will have an "advanced" wireless functions. I'm not sure what that entitles, my guess is that you may actually see people near you and be able to drop in and out of multi player games, or sharing music over a wifi or what.

*edit* I have been told that my sources on this story are subject at best. I am sorry for anyone angered by the story.

1up.com showing some love

Next week 1up.com is giving away 2,00 little big planet beta codes away. All you have to do is head to their LBP page on Monday. No word yet on how you can win the prize but, if you end up not getting one of those coveted tickets. Fear not, they will be getting at some point beta tickets in the excess of 25,000. The only downside to that is the official word on the extra 25k is they will be getting them "soon." For more details and a direct link to the contest page it can found here.

Steams "new deal"

This weekend you will be able to get a great deal on Rockstar games from steam. How good are we talking here? How about Grand theft auto3 and vice city for $5 dollars each. This also includes one the most hated games of all time, manhunt. Though oddly enough grand theft auto two is right around $15.00. Or if GTA is not your cup of tea how about the Max pain games? $5 a pop or $7 for the both. All of these juicy details where broken by the nice people of Joystiq With this deal it'll be hard not to pick up some of these classics and either give them a spin for the first time or just to remember what made them so engaging in the first place.

Florida re-gains some respect:: kicks Jack out

I just want to thank the people over at Kotaku for this feel good story. For the few of you who have not already seen it. It now appears that Florida is trying to make amends to the whole country, and they started with booting Mr. Thompson.

The order came down so Jack Thompson has only thirty days left to annoy you and I with our money. After that he will just have to go back to be the hobo on the street telling you that it's the end of days. So not only has he been kicked out of the the halls of justice he has to pay a very nice size fine. The amount came to the sum of $43,675.35 all I want to know is how after they charged him $43,675 they thought; what the hell tax the bastard another .35 cents.

I guess people have just realized that playing GTA and Doom never brought about bloodbaths. Oh but it doesn't stop there. He said and I S*** you not about the judge. "A raving wild women." Yeah, that'll help to play to your misunderstood sensitive side.

Duke Nukems new anniversary

With a new year coming up very quickly comes the one year anniversary of the Duke Nukem forever trailer. If you take the time to tour their site you'll notice their message when will Duke Nukem come out? In a very Blizzard answer "When it is done." But that begs the question what are you making?

Duke Nukem was a game about humor and and mindless killing. For it's time it was controversial, and a toy. Over the years it has became a folk legend to most of the younger gamers of today. We are now to the point that the last duke game came out when todays college freshmen where six.

So with this extreme level of time and disconnect by todays gamers can 3D Realms do anything to bring them into the fold? I guess only time will tell, and at this point what do they have to loose? Duke only has everything to prove and all to loose. The trailer that 3D Realms debuted back at the end of last year was jaw dropping, and showed the world that yes in fact the game had people still working on it.

Though the problem was it didn't show much of anything in gameplay. My only hope is that they played and learned from Doom three. If you haven't played the game the problem became *spolier* that you would clear a room then a re-spawn would happen. So all you had to do was clear a room turn a round and walk backwards. Then boom with a shotgun you could drop the hell spawns.

So with a game that was meant to be out over a decade ago, this had better be the second coming of shooters. Or at least make people forget about that little green space marine.

Warhammer another flash in the pan mmo?

ms a story has a risen at Big Download that some analyst are already claiming that warhammer will top out about 300,000. Now this is not a bad number it's enough to keep a game running. Though out of that how many will dual play Wrath when it comes out? Will we see the Conan effect in warhammer, I highly doubt it. The reason being that while Conan is a really fun world to read, warhammer has been a fun world to play in for over twenty years.

So don't take to much stock in the reports you'll read the coming months, it's their job to drive you to click on their links and get you on the sites they work for. Warhammer is to established to be snuffed out so quick. Plus you know that they have yet to bring out all the classes out that they want. You know I'm talking about those lovable rodents and the wood elves. Sorry couldn't bringing the wood elves up. But fear not this should be a mmo that can stand on it's own two feet for quite some time.

Sonys "little" drm issue

The story comes via ars technica, So Sony's rental system is nothing new. It's just the same as Apples and pay per view like on cable or satellite. You rent it, then have 24 hours to to get through the movie or show. Though if you want to buy it that's a different story.

Right now it's not clear if this is Sony's doing or all the studios doing but, once you buy a movie that's it for the most part. You wont be able to get rid of it off your hard-drive and bring it back like on Steam. Though if you talk to the customer support you will be able to get a code that will let you re-download one more time. That will be it, like the article stated what happens when the Ps4 comes out? do you really want to have to rip out that 40, 60 or 60 gig drive out because you would still like to own the movies?

It's odd how "buying" sounds a lot like renting. The question is with enough of a outcry will Sony change their ways or is this a pricey lesson to all of us about trusting Sony's movie service?

Diablo III with a whopping four new screens

That's right, all should rejoice for the small nuggets of Diablo news. The screens in note are here, via the nice people over at Kotaku. The four screens have two of the barbarian one of the male and one of the new female charter models. But the last one had a person I could not quite tell, I would think witch doctor but I would be wrong. I wouldn't put it past Blizzard to "reveal" a class this way but I am pretty sure it's the good doctor.

The most dangerous game

So lets say you have to log into that wow charter but your not in for one of the funnest nights. No huge raid, no battle grounds for you. It's your guild telling you to grind that fishing skill, or else. Or else what, that's right. Now don't get me wrong I know staring at your screen waiting for fish to bite is electrifying.

Though the nice people over at WOW insider have been given something to help with the tedium. Turns out that PoP Cap is there to help you out. They will be releasing for free if the news is true. Bejeweled will now be able to work seamlessly in the game. That's right Bejeweled. So fret not for mindless rep or skill grinding. Now you can just hit the auto attack or grind fifty stacks of bandages all while playing that great game with the techno and explosions.

oit, it's not done yet: warhamer makes amends

Thanks to an interview over at 1up Mr. Mark Jacobs has stated that all the content that plans on making it's way in the game will be coming back to us free of charge. To be honest this might be some of the best news I have heard come out in a while.

The only downside is when and what all is coming back, you know the cities will make it back in. That's a must, the question is really, who is coming back? I'm hoping for the Choppa but from what I've read this would be one of if not the most popluar choice.. remember “Wuz betta den one choppa? Two choppas! Two choppas is one more… is one times da… is lots more fun! Waaagh!”- Chopmo, Dung Heap Philosopher

It has already begun

Are you already sick of playing warhammer online without knowing where to go. First off, damn it's only forty levels. It wont take that long to get to the high level killing RVR it's OK. Though if you demand to not be slowed down, hammer wiki is up and running for you. One of the really fun things on the site is it has a lore section, so if you want the whole bloody story and really desire an interesting reason to want to chop them up into little pieces you will find the reason.

It seems sony has standards over microsoft

Shuhei Yoshida is the big cheese at Sony worldwide studios, and it seems he was nice enough to talk to videogaming247. One of the major problems he said is Microsoft has not chosen which one of their systems id the main one. Is it the premium or the arcade? Mr. Yoshida said that Sony made the decision a long time ago that they would only offer hard drive machines. It may cost more but it creates a standard and will allow all the player s to have the data cached so we can provide more seamless gameplay.

Mr. Yoshida even goes on to say without this ability to cache data, Uncharted wouldn't have been nearly as playable. Also he went on to state, "without a hard drive we wouldn't have been able to offer games for digital distribution."

We will "hate" blizzard, blizzard says

Seems videogamer.com has a really interesting interview with Jay Wilson Lead designer of Diablo III. They seem to have really paid attention to some of the now glaring flaws. Now when you team up with players everyone gets loot that's class specific and only they will see it. So gone are the days training to be the fastest mouse on the net.

It turns out all the haters of rainbows did not cause the lead art designer to leave in tears. I know, I bet you all felt really bad about this. The word is he had a once in a lifetime job opportunity outside of gaming so he took it.

Turns out the Barbarian was not meant to be in the game, it's they just called it that because they couldn't make the warrior class all that different. Jay admits people will be pissed about the other classes since no one else will show up. No pally, necro, amazon, sorceress ,druid, or assassin. Time will tell how well the new ones work in multi-play and hardcore grinding.

A very humble Molyneux

OXM has a great interview with Peter Molynuex. It's a very stark and honest interview with the man behind Lionhead. Some of the interesting things that came up are he wants to deal with the people who exploited the pub game. He's been thinking of making a achievement that says congratulations you cheated. Though I'm not sure if that would drive people away or be seen as a badge of honor?

He also said something I found very revealing about who he was, and who he has become. What Molyneux brought up during the interview about Fable one. "I'm gonna be very harsh on myself. I use my reputation. Now I didn't do this because I'm some PR guru, I did this because when I talk to you I'm a kid showing off my toys at Christmas, that's who I am. I just can't help myself getting excited and saying, 'you've got this and this and this.' And I talked to you lot and I put this game up here [raises hand in the air], and when you looked at it, it was actually there [lowers hand]."

He went on to say he thinks how games are paced for release is bullshit. Granted even he said this is not a new idea. He brought up in one week Fable Two, next Falllout 3 then Gears of War Two. Why not release them in a timely manner? Of coures it's because of Christmas.

I hope you check it out, this is by far one of the most interesting interviews I have read in a while.

Want to be a zombie, lets talk how: left 4 dead style

So on the the Left 4 dead 411 site they have some of the zombie details I know a lot of us wanted to know about. Just to go over a couple of the juicy details really quick, in verse mode you will get to trade off every other level on who gets to be the dinner and the hunter. Also the game will not give you any breaks at all like in co-op, so one wrong move and they will be all over you. But don't fret to much you will now have very quick re spawn time so you wont be sitting to long in that penalty box. For some more info on the story plus a link to a trailer showing some people playing the zombies you can check it out here.

Blizzard to conquer itunes

Just wanted to let all the people who haven't already checked the Blizzard page on itunes in the lat couple weeks, you may want to right now. Turns out Blizzard has released not only released three WoW CD's(The Original Soundtrack, The Burning Crusade and Taverns of Azeroth.)They have also released the StarCraft (orignail soundtrack), Diablo (Diablo 2 soundtrack) and WarCraft Three sound tracks as well. For more information you check out the Blizzard site here.

War server lists are out

Looks like the nice people over at Massively have the Warhammer online server lists are out. Turns out that they will have role playing servers. Not only will they have rp servers they will also have open rvr servers. So what does this mean for you? Well it means if you really want to to tear into the opposing side but can't stand killing a kid with name noob killer, well maybe the rp/open rvr server is for you.

One thing that will also drive the kids away will be the enforced role playing. I'm not sure how this will be done but it sounds interesting. The last thing that will be implemented game wide is "chickened" so if someone who is a much higher level than you tries to gann form they will have k you, they will be turned into a chicken. In chicken mode you will have ten hit points and will o a whopping one damage.

wow PVE to jaoin the PVP ranks

Blizzard is about to change up something that will cause thousands to scream at their monitors and maybe even snap a keyboard or two. For all you PVE players out there that have fantasized about ganking low levels of the opposite side your time has come.

The only real downside is once you join your shiny new PVP server plan on being ostracized by all of the other players. PVP players have a deep sense of entitlement to what they have. Anything else to them that has not been obtained on their server is considered easy mode.

For more detailed information 1up has a great write-up on the story.

LIke Cosplay, love Atlus? Get Free stuff

To all of you out there that are huge cosplay fans, and I know there are a ton of you. How would you like to to recognized for your hard work and get a ton of free swag. Of course you do; it turns out Atlus is running a contest thorough out all of October.

The contest will be on website; at this time it is unannounced. Though Atlus for those of you unfamiliar with the company they are the fine people who brought us Disgaea hour of darkness, which just recently has come to greatest hits.

To get the full details you can click here.

World Tours complete set list now out.

So Today Activision announced their set list for World Tour. World Tour boasts a very impressive eighty-six song set list (which can be found here.) Of course you will have bands that span the decades from Jimi Hendrix to newer rock bands such as 30 seconds to Mars, and tons of acts in between. Another thing that has now become a staple is master tracks, so no one will have to cringe through a wannabe Cobain. Speaking of Nirvana about a girl will be on the list. The interesting thing is that they decided to go with the unplugged version instead.
Though one thing I found interesting is that Tool will have three songs. Though none from albums older than Lateralus.

heavy rains possible wash-out

At videogaming247 they have gotten back from talking to David Cage of Quantic Dream about Heavy Rain. The good news is that Mr. Cage said Heavy rain is at the halfway point. So he has stated that his best guess is if you play at a non rush speed you can get a good eight up to twelve hours. Now some people have commented that eight to twelve hours dev speak is closer to four to six gamers time.

Other people have stated that Bioshock is another short game that has gotten rave reviews. So the question is how much fun per hour are you willing to pay? Do you want a bunch of kinda fun over fifty hours or is eight ours of "oh my god, my eyes....their bleeding joy!" A good trade? It's a question that wont be answered until the sales come in.

PS3 Bioshock going all out in the site

If you have not already checked the site out by 2k for the Bioshock port I would scamper over there for a minute or so. This is by far one of the more entertaing game website I ahve been to, it starts off by showing you the opening in the game and then has you walk about in Rapture.

As you walk around the website points out tonincs, guns and potions. They also give you a little movie about how each are used. It seems that Bioshock is getting far more than the port treatment, and I glad personly that it is.

Death is not the end in Heavy Rain

It appears not only is Heavy Rain a gorgeous looking game, it is going to be a big picture game. How times have you maybe picked the wrong class or after a while got bored with your character but still thought the game was interesting? Turns out you are not alone. A really interesting bit of gameplay has been announced by Quantic Dream’s David Cage. The story was came via videogaming247.com

Turns out from what it sounds like so far is that if you do get killed in the game. The game will still progress without that person. Now they have released any information whether or not you'll be able to jump quickly into the next person closest or how the game will progress merely that it will.I was not able to find much more than that at this time though any new news comes up I'll be right here to update you as fast as I can.

EA still thinks you and everyone is a theif

Don't take it poorly it's not like it's some thing new to EA fans. I don't really think EA is trying to annoy and drive anyone away from the game. It seems we are at that point in video games like the record company a year or so ago. (EMI dropped drm in all cds about a year ago or so.)

The story comes via Kotaku, it's in reference to a forum post on EA where the unfortunate news dropped. But after reviewing it, this might be a large step in at least the right direction. Granted I think we all would like EA developers join in rational thought like what Sins of the Solar Empire developers did. Until that day I am happy for whatever baby steps they can take; and hope they continue down this path.

For a link to the forum it can be found here. Just to give you a quick over view it does have a authentication phase, but it's only one time when you first pop in the game to install. Second one you put it on to five machines. They also said they would provide you with more keys on a case by case basis. So far it's not perfect but better than it could be. Plus you won't have the pop in the CD every time you want to play the game. They also stated that you can play offline without impediment or any penalty. So like I said it's not perfect though I do believe it is momentum in the right direction.

Some of MMO's bigest hurndles

If you talk to most people who don't like M.M.O.s; the first thing they will cite for not liking the genre is the monthly cost. I can understand that to a point. But what I think the main disconnect between people who really like M.M.O.'s and those who just don't get them is the big picture.

A MMO is more than just the game. Granted the game is very important though it's how you play it. The game can be much more than a DPS, Tank, heal-bot and nuker. I think one of the really fun parts of the game that seems to get overlooked or trivialized is that you can play with anyone other the planet. That alone I think would and does appeal to tons of people. It helps you get a little world perspective, plus it's fun to see people from other countries go at it. Case in point just listen Australians and New Zealanders go at it. That alone for me has been worth fifteen bucks a month for me to see them really go at it. The only down side is I now refuse to where any wool products from either of those two countries. If you have never heard the two people go at it from either of those two countries lets just say steam cleaned is just not enough.

Now lets address the elephant in the room. A game in which you only rent time to play. It's the same as when you go to a concert or a movie but; because both have been happens longer than MMOs this is not seen as a waste of money. Well you might think it's not a waste to see either of those because other people are there. Yet when you log into a game most of the people running around are really there as well. So that can't be it. So is it ownership of the game? Because as I have already stated that the disk you buy to install the game is yours. You do buy it.

Still you might say that's good and all but I'm still pissing money down the drain. Then I would ask you if you have a netflix account or game fly account? That's pissing money away as well. Yet there is one game that I can point to that has a one time buy option. It turns out that Turbine has a one time buyout option for the Lord of The Rings Online. the cost what two years cost. That's it, you can log on for for the rest of the games life and play to your hearts content for no more cash except for the price of optional expansions.

So as long as you like or can stand Tolkien fans who seem to unusually nice for a online community. You could enjoy the game for as long as it is up and running. If that's not enough of a reason to at least give a mmo a chance I don't know what else to say. �

Gears 2, really no PC?

This is an interesting story that has been around for a little while. Though I just had to throw my two cents in on the controversy of Gears of War two. with sixty days and counting to the next installment of the largest charter models in a first person shooter have seen in a while, seriously their arms are have got to the width of me. Then Soul train, just, damn is all I can say.

It's no secret to anyone one that Gears two will be seeing no PC love this time around. Granted Gears One took a year to make it's way to the PC. Some people have become very defensive about this. Of curse if you do any form searching you'll see that pissed off fifteen year old saying, who needs another shooter on the PC anyway. I guarantee this same kid will gush over left 4 dead when it comes out. Now the real question is who are really pulling the strings on this deal? A lot of people will quick to blame Microsoft on this. I have read the interview where Cliff Bleszinski nonchalantly tells the interviewer that gears two will never see the PC.

The thing that annoys me is that all he says the interviewer didn't press him. So it makes me wonder if it is staying on the xbox 360 because that is where they saw the biggest success. If that's it why not just say it. Granted we don't "need" gears of war two on the PC but the series so far has very fun look and interesting cast of charters. It makes me wonder if porting to PC and trying to change up the controls are harder to do? Hell they where able to do halo pretty well. To this day you can still find halo one games still going on. So the question is are they just lazy or do they really just do not want to be on PC with this franchise. It's not working on the PC would be new to Cliff Bleszinski . Hell he is still known as the Unreal guy to a lot of people.

But it's not all bad news they have in store some really fun stuff for the 360 crowd. one the new features will giving a thank you to all the Gears of War one players. It turns out that if you have played Gears one some of your achievements will unlock goodies for you new Gears two game. It's always nice when game developers remember the fans that get them to where they are. Another thing you will be able to unlock in the the game will be bringing the dead back to life from the first Gears of War in multi-player. IGN has a picture of one of the guys. It turns out you can play Carmine the mysterious man in the mask, and one of the others they showed was Minth. With attention like this to the multi-player I hope that they expand on what they did do in the first one. Some of the things I have heard that could be improved are bringing more maps out in a timely manner, and to have more play types. With games like TF2 Gears would have had to stay on top of the multi-player if they will wanted a long and prosperous online PC community. There in lies the problem how many updates have you seen on gears compared to other online shooters? It may not be lack of skills and more lack of time to dedicate a full team to keep the community happy.

The Spore has landed

Today is the beginning of a terrible cold, flu, stomach cramp etc. Today is the day Spore comes out, so once you take that first pause at 3am Monday morning you just now know what it's been like for all of your Sims playing friends. Though for all the old Will Wright fans out there, and I know by now that must be most of you. Sitting down when it's light out and emerging from a game when dawns first light begins to break will be nothing new.

To say this is one of the most ambitions games made to date wold be a understatement. Even if the game falters on a few steps. From what I have heard and read it only falters in some ways when compared to games, where that type of game play is the only element of the game instead of one aspect of it like in spore. Case in point in Spore you can take over other nations. Now some reviewers have stated that it is simple and redundant to more experienced gamers. I have no doubt Spore will lack the nation building depths of say civilization four. Yet it would be silly to also assume it would have combat that would be on par with games like god of war. Though I am assuming obviously reviewers know that Spore will be a hard game to draw comparisons to.

So what is spore anyway in a nutshell? Well it's a game that you will control life from the very beginning of time at the single cell stage to being able to eventually travel to distant stars to and either conquer or live with the civilizations there. So it sounds like it is a game to take a long weekend on.

For a very cool in depth interview on Spore and what Mr Wright was hoping to do you can check out this article on cnet.com though if you are after just a few of the tasty morsels from the interview I can help you out there.

The first question which is the most obvious one is why did you want to make this game? The basics are and it's pretty cool is it turns out Will Wright is a huge space nerd. I know a big surprise, but the game was meant to be a huge space travel game, where you went off to distant worlds to explore and witness how other worlds worked. Then that go him and his team thinking about evolution, the rest is now apparent what came out of that thought.

One of the other other features that came about that they thought wouldn't be as interesting to the general public is the Sporepedia. Mr. Wright said they only continued with it is because of the colossal popularity of social networking and file sharing. Yet I don't think that is a nod at pirates. In any case it doesn't matter what I say because I have already seen first hand the demand of the game first hand. The very first call I got this morning at my job at an Apple store was "do you have spore in?" That and cosplay people picking up the game, I was told this since I don't get the floor that often.

Mellon then enter: All mourn Gloin in Moria

Ennyn Durin Aran Moria: pedo mellon a minno. Im Narvi hain echant: Celebrimbor o Eregion teithant i thiw hin.,( The doors of Durin, Lord of Moria) See I'm not like a Lord of the rings nerd or anything. Anyway, with the mines of Moria almost in sight I thought now would be the time to bring everyone up to speed on what is going on in the mines both Man and Dwarf fear to tread.

One of the first things you'll notice when you finally get your hands on the game. Is that you will be able to try two new classes, the first one want to talked about is the Runekeeper. There's no secret that lotro is low on the magic classes, it's not because Turbine doesn't want to make them it's just they can't make them. To those of you unfamiliar with Tolkiens world he was not a man of high fantasy. So this is why the Runekeeper is such a great new class. The Runekeeper will work as both some offense and some heeling. Though one of the really cool things that will happen as you end up becoming a magical dps or healer you will see the bar between the two move toward the one you are doing more so you gain a higher proficiently in that. So I think this class will find a huge following in the game.

The other class in the game is the Warden. Now the warden from what I have been able to read up on will be neither a tank or dps replacement. She will be a spear wielder with medium armor. So I'm thinking either a off tank that the mistral will have to watch more or a more self sustaining dps player. So where the Warden shines is that as she cycles through her abilities if she does it in a specific chain you will be able to pull off new skill to unleash.

A really interesting new feature will be added the game come launch and that will be the new Legendary Items. To give you a idea on what they mean by legendary think something like Bilbos Sting. An old Elvish blade that would shine a brilliant blue when the orcs where around. Just think of a having a edge like that in middle earth. To help you make such unique treasures lotro will introduce two new NPC's the Relic and Forge masters will be on staff to help you make a blade or item truly yours. the Rune and relic maters will be able forged and re-forged when need be a variety of abilities and boosts that will actually grow in efficacy over time. Not only will you be able to walk around with an legendary item you will be able to take on all sorts of evil with being able to carry up to six legendary items at once.


It turns out that you will be able to go beyond the mines and join back up with the fellowship. In the expansion you will be able to travel to the great forest Lothlorien. That's right you will be to see Galadriel's garden. So Elven fans rejoice, it turns out it's not all about the Dwarves. First their no Dwarven women and then the Dwarves have to hand some of the spotlight over to the elves. Man it's not easy being stout.

Now I have been trying to find anything I can on the mines them selves. I was only able to find a couple of nuggets of information that sounded very hopeful. One the mine will have 200 steps you must traverse down, and the second which I found on Massively.com is that this will in fact be the largest underground space ever created in a game. Now how does that not at least make you want to keep you your ears open for any new information?

Prince minus the eyeliner

So the new word on the street is that the prince is no longer a angry little kid. OK he was never a little kid but you know what I mean. It seems that over at gamespot they have a sweet lowdown on the new game. To those of you who have yet to see the trailer from Leipzig I would recommend it. Granted it's more of a showcase of some of the basics and the art which has gotten the most amount of attention so far. If you have seen any of the trailers so far you'll know why so many people have been drooling over even just the first few trailers when it was just a picture of the prince and Elika. Though in the article they bring up some really interesting nuggets of information.

One of the main points the article touched on was that this story will be outside of the main story arc of the sands of time trilogy. This means that you will be introduced as not so much as a prince per say; but more of a man who is setting off to find and acquire his own riches. The article goes on to talk about some of the inspirations for the new "prince" to give you a better feel of who the prince will be like. Some of the names thrown out are Han Solo and Lo "Dark Cloud." If the name doesn't ring a bell that's OK. It just means you where not caught up in the Crouching Tiger hidden Dragon mania that hit the states. It was called the greatest movie of all time by Al Roker. So you know it must be true. Yeah, so anyway sorry for that tangent.

The game is said to focus more on acrobatics than combat, we'll see what they mean by that. I highly doubt this will turn into a circus show but personally I like the idea of focus on acrobatics just by watching the trailer you can see why. If you watch the video you can see the princes new partner Elika. She is there to help the prince out in a multitude of ways. Just name a few of the cool things she can do to help you out are if you ever are to get lost while roaming Elika will help guide the way to your next goal. another one of the very helpful things she will do is give you that extra little distance when trying out some of the more interesting acrobatic moves in the game. Though one thing I did notice was that Elika seems to also be a pretty good fighter as well. The last thing you'll notice that the end of the demo she can heal parts of the world around her.

It turns out she is being very well received those who have played the game already. One of the things they like about her is when you are on a ledge and have to get by she will just drop down and the prince will garb a hold her and move her to the other side. Also on top of that Ubi has said that they plan on making her un killable by the AI.

With all of this I only hope that Ubisoft can pull most of it off.

Bioshock: What was right what the player couldn't get.

Gamasutra has an insightful write up on Bioshock this week and I urge anyone who has not read it to do so no now. The Story can be found at their site Gamasutra.com
I'll just talk today about some of the highlights I found while reading the article.

One of the more interesting things they brought up early on was; how can you merge two very different play types and still end up with something fun. As you read on you notice that at first they where going down the path of a very nerdy and slow moving game. So they addressed the issue that in the beginning they had the classic leveling of skills. Though cool it was one of the things that took away from the pacing and overall use in the world. As it is they had to re-write the enemy AI because it was to far along on a rpg style.

Another major problem they had which is the biggest problem any game company has is, how do you make the game fun? They talk about in the interview that for the most part it was well received by the internal testers and family. Yet once it went to open testing the group hated it with a passion it seems. So much so they had to remove levels and "dumb" the game down quite a bit. Their words not mine, I'm not that good at FPS so I would have crashed with training wheels. Anyway once they got the news the game was to hard but people did kinda see how cool the game ultimately became. It became very clear that a lot more had to be done than they thought. As it is they had to change the entire pavilion to less sandbox to more of a teaching aid on the importance of plasmids; and on top of that make it so you had to deal with the little sisters and big daddies more directly than in previous builds.

One thing I think worth mentioning when it comes to how they determined how hard to make the game was how well their own developers where playing the game. So it seems that everything was going fine in their minds until they learned one little secret, the secret is that the developers where using cheat codes. Granted this is not a problem when doing testing on how the Ai reacts to you. It's also not bad on trying to find glitches I would think. Without the fear of death you could run around all day and look for weird poly rips or poor movement animation on that third guy on the left. Though it seems using cheat codes was a poor way to guess how hard to make your game. Of course we are all gods with IDDQD, (for those of you to young to get the reference it's the god cheat in Doom one and two) sorry had to do it.

I think now knowing more about all the issues the game had and learned what had to be done I am amazed that the game was one as good as it was and two received as well as it was. My hope is now that we all know the name Bioshock the very dedicated staff can bring us a much closer vision of how and what Rapture should be.

Mirrors Edge: Beauty and the blinding

With Mirrors edge almost out I thought it would be the right time to let all of you thinking about picking up the game to help fill in the gaps of what you might not know. Granted for some reason it's been all quite on the news for a while now. So first off what do we all know? Well we all know that this game is gorgeous but that takes about two seconds to discover so that's most likely nothing new. Plus the other thing you probably know is that you'll have the choice of most systems to pick this up for.

Though what may be new is that you take the role a women named Faith who is a runner for the underground. Yet this is not just for money or a way to just stick it to the clinically clean totalitarian government, no, your end goal is information. It turns out the police force in the city has set up your sister, and Faith believes this is the only way to get the information she needs to find out why they targeted her sister.

It turns out that in this game that guns will not play a huge roll in your defense or offense it seems. It has been stated that when you get into hand to hand combat with a guard or cop you will be able to disarm him or her and then use the gun after elbowing the poor sap in the temple. The other thing thing is that you will not be able to reload a gun, so feel free to go hog wild with the bullets because you'll be able to just jack a gun from the next guy you that has the ill fate coming between you and your packages destination. One of the fun things about the guns in the game is that size will matter, it will matter the point of slowing you down and making you less nimble if you so choose to wield one of the lager weapons. Granted at first this may sound like a bad thing but I believe it'll give you a more realistic feel to being a regular person trying to wield a large bulky gun jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

The one of the last things I wanted to touch on with you was as you play you'll notice very quick that you will not see a life bar. Granted this is becoming very popular this year and a little bit of last year. But what they are doing is something that you'll have to pay attention to; the world as you have seen is incredibly vibrant. The color scheme seems to be two fold the first is that you'll notice a lack of green. Dice says it's because it takes away from the clean and sterile look of the city and grey is used as little as humanly possible. The second part of the colors you see is that as you get closer and closer to death the world will start to loose some the radiant look the city has had. It seems that though Dice and EA have moved away from a sad but running joke of next gen FPS's that the future is very crisp and very drab.

Save pc gaming: Is it really dying?

OK we have all read the cries of the death of the PC gaming. I don't know if these people just think if they whine enough about it their hopes are it'll be self-fulling or maybe it's something much more sinister than that. I think the people that bitch about it just get paid on page views. That's the only thing I can think of.

Let's be honest we are not fearful of the death of PC gaming what we are scared that might happen is that it'll be the death of "hardcore" games. I don't think anyone who really cares about the state of PC gaming will shed to many tears if one day you when you buy a computer it wont have solitaire on it or minesweeper. What they care about is if Blizzard will go console only. Or if City of Heroes will wither and die.

We all know the truth weather we want to admit it or not. Blizzard has more money than all the gods put together thought history and more computers are sold each year than game systems. So is PC gaming dying? No it's just accelerating at a faster pace than consoles because it can. It's really that simple, when was the last time you saw on the Nintendo store to up the ram or processor? Granted

Now what I will concede is that the PC gaming market does care less and less about people who do not upgrade on a regular basis. Well that's really to true either I guess because remember Blizzard the people with all your money? They strive to make games work on the lowest possible machine they can. Now the truth isn't that sexy as it seems no rush to arms no great cause; just the cold hard facts. OK we have all read the cries of the death of the PC gaming. I don't know if these people just think if they whine enough about it their hopes are it'll be self-fulling or maybe it's something much more sinister than that. I think the people that bitch about it just get paid on page views. That's the only thing I can think of.

Let's be honest none of us are fearful of the death of PC gaming. What we are scared that might happen is that it'll be the death of "hardcore" games. I don't think anyone who really pays attention to the debate about the state of PC gaming will shed a tear if one day you when you buy a computer it wouldn't have solitaire on it or minesweeper on it. What they care about is if Blizzard will go to console only. Or if for some mysterious reason Valve shuts down forever, and that would scare people on two fronts. The first is Valve is in fact important to the "hardcore" community because the list of such strong titles; also it's love of the mod communities. Yet, those of who are not Valve fans fear that steam would up and die. No one wants to have to re-buy a game and no one should. I think if Valve would just release it's numbers on steam sales. The "discussion" about the state of PC gaming would be the one dead. But then these writers would have to go and do some real work and not just preach the end of days.

We all know the truth weather we want to admit it or not. Blizzard has more money than all the gods put together thought history and more computers are sold each year than game systems. So is PC gaming dying? No it's just accelerating at a faster pace than consoles because it can. It's really that simple, when was the last time you saw on the Nintendo store the ability to up the ram or processor?

Now what I will concede is that the PC gaming market does care less and less about people who do not upgrade on a regular basis. Well that's really to true either I guess because remember Blizzard the people with all your money? They strive to make games work on the lowest possible machine they can. Now the truth isn't that sexy as it seems no rush to arms no great cause; just the cold hard facts.

Dead space: Get killed in all directions at once

So I had some luck on my side. I was able to talk to the head art director, So of course I asked him if he wouldn't mind mind explaining some of the game. I mean why would you ask him something stupid like why did you chose this art direction or how hard was it to come up with very impressive Gothic space looking designs. No I wouldn't do that no one would be interested in such things. Though he was very nice and indulged me since all I knew about Dead space was just a really cool looking trailer of this poor guy trying to blow a hole in a tentacle that is trying to wisp you off to a dark secluded place. Ian(the head art director) was able to give me a quick tutorial on what has gone down and what is about to it the fan. In the game you receive a message that something on the station has gone wrong and out are needed to help. Now before you go off and say "oh great I'm just another super soldier out to save the world." Well maybe then you should let me finish and stop being so damn cynical.

You are instead you play a poor welder with only your gear to protect you. It turns out that you have an obviously inept military escort seeing as they were no where to be found. So you are now wandering alone in a space station that is slowly on it's way to hell, or something much worse. The few things I was to fight before getting sliced open looked incredible. The overall pacing was very well done. One thing I noticed is the pacing of the monsters coming at you, the pace I saw was a lot closer to horror style than shooter in that zone.

Just incase you don't have a real good idea about the game I just I wanted to touch base on it really quick. One of the first thing you will notice is there is is no hud in the game. At first I was a little off put though as you get drawn deeper in the game you will notice that all relevant information is already in front of you. The weapons you use have a clip meter on them, your cool glowing back is really your health bar. Which I think is a really nice un intrusive way to let you know how you are doing, and the last one I want to touch base on real quick is the map. The map you bring out to help you move around is actually a glowing beam that comes from your hand and goes on the floor; to illuminate your path in the right direction.

Turns out I had the privilege to meet up with some of the fine staff at Joystiq and was able to bounce around or thoughts on the game. So we where in all in a agreement in the look and pacing of the game. The one part we where not in complete agreement was the quickness of the guy. I didn't think it was the quickest movement speed but as they where kind enough to point out (One of the writers is a friend) pointed out is that I don't have a 360 and when you are used to the twitch of a mouse everything will seem "clunkier."

Though the thing they pointed out that I wish I had caught on to quicker was that it seems to be the say setup or very close to that of resident evil 4. Even to the non strafing ability. I can now say with confidence that Dead Space is a title Definitely worth your attention and possibility some hard earned coin.

left 4 dead hands on

Left 4 dead is almost out, and for the few readers that are not already experts on all things Valve.( I know there must be a couple of you out there.) To those of you who are not familiar with it; is the new project that will reward you for killing everything that goes bump in the night. The game is an online shooter like previous titles Valve has produced such as team fortress two and day of defeat. Though that's about where the similarities part ways. Left 4 dead is implementing some new features that I hope will become the new standard we will begin to see in new upcoming shooter titles.

The one that pops into mind first is that the game tracks how well you are doing and scales up or down. This I see is a huge bonus. Another really big bonus I saw while playing is when you get separated you will see a blue outline of the rest of your group, so they are always easy to find. Trust me this is a game that will punish you hard you want to be that lone maverick that saves the day. More times then not you will just piss off every zombie in the zone and bring them all home to roost and rape you and your friends.

Now one thing I'm not to fond of and this is because if you are like me you may be used to doing the "spy check" as the pyro; or you could be used to the blind fire in D.O.D. In Left 4 Dead this is a huge problem. The game will always have friendly fire on so you will have to become a very good twitch precision shooter. So with that said my hope is since friendly fire will always be on gamers will see this more a challenge worth conquering then as a leper that must be shunned.

One thing that should be noted is that Zombies is this game really want you dead. I know that statement may seem redundant but it's true. I have little doubt that you haven't heard about in the new resident evil about and how the zombies will look roud and climb to get you. OK good now that you have smart zombies on the brain add the speed and desire to kill of the zombies of 28 days/weeks later. Now multiply by their weight in crack. Once you have done this very simple math problem you'll start to get the idea of what you are up against. Let's just hope you end up with a good group. To fight this undead Horde.

Some more good news is the system requirements. It has been said that if you an run Orange Box you can play Left 4 Dead.