New Games |
- Director of Sinister signs on for Deus Ex movie
- Free weekend of Awesomenauts on Steam
- Star Wars: The Old Republic can now be played for free
- Android Humble Bundle adds Canabalt, Zen Bound 2, more
- Namco Bandai iOS sale discounts titles up to 80%
- PS3 gets Sony Crackle movie and television app
- Kat and Emmett Graves will become PS All-Stars next year
- OnLive cloud gaming service built into LG television sets
- Preview: Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS, Wii U)
- GameStop Wii U preorders: 1.2m games for 500,000 systems
- Who needs a Wii U when the Wii has YouTube functionality?
- Review: Magical Drop V
- Metroid fan arrange album 101% Run out on November 17
- Note Worthy 009: Halo 4, Rock Man, Bravely Default, ACIII
- Black Ops II on balancing and player feedback
- Contest: Win a copy of The Art of Halo 4!
| Director of Sinister signs on for Deus Ex movie Posted: 15 Nov 2012 02:30 PM PST The film adaptation of Deus Ex: Human Revolution will be directed by Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose), CBS Films announced today. He'll also be writing the screenplay alongside C. Robert Cargill, who he worked with previously on Sinister. "By combining amazing action and tension with big, philosophical ideas, Deus Ex is smart, ballsy, and will make one hell of a movie," said Derrickson. "Cargill and I can't wait to bring it to the big screen." Horror isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Deus Ex, but there's a lot to work with given the source material -- here's hoping we end up with a halfway decent movie. Between this news and the recent "Terminator" prosthetic arm video that recently made the rounds, I've been thinking way too much about our cybernetic future lately. Scott Derrickson tapped for Deus Ex as writer/director [Flixist] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Free weekend of Awesomenauts on Steam Posted: 15 Nov 2012 02:00 PM PST This weekend, one of my favorite games of 2012 is going to be enjoying a free weekend on Steam. Starting tomorrow and through Sunday, everyone will be able to play Awesomenauts for free! And if you like what you play and want to play more of it on other days, the price of the game will be discounted by half during the free weekend to encourage such behavior. Damned thing is worth it for the soundtrack (which, of course, you can buy separately or in a bundle with the game on Steam), and I say that having played ridiculous amounts of the game as well. Sometimes, I'll turn the game on and just listen to the menu music. I have it in a file on my computer and could listen to that, but it isn't the same for some reason. Like the way there's a difference between music on vinyl and digital, except stupid when you think about it. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Star Wars: The Old Republic can now be played for free Posted: 15 Nov 2012 01:30 PM PST Today is the day that Star Wars: The Old Republic added its free-to-play option. While the game's eight classes are playable up to level 50, there are a number of restrictions that non-paying players have to put up with which will slow down their progress or simply lock out features. Not exactly ideal from our perspective, but it's understandable. Additionally, Game Update 1.5 went out today, adding everyone's favorite HK-51 as a potential ally and Section X of the prison world Belsavis. Have any of you new players gotten the chance to try out The Old Republic? Still worth checking out, from that perspective? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Android Humble Bundle adds Canabalt, Zen Bound 2, more Posted: 15 Nov 2012 01:00 PM PST I held off on the current Android-centric Humble Bundle since, well, I own almost all of the featured games. I had hoped that the obligatory additions would push me over by offering something mostly new, but the same "issue" has come up with the bonus titles. For those who have the patience to wait for these deals, you're in for a treat. Joining the current line-up of Sword & Sworcery EP, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Eufloria, Splice, Waking Mars, and Machinarium are -- for those who beat the average contribution amount -- Avadon: The Black Fortress, Canabalt, Cogs, Swords and Soldiers HD, and Zen Bound 2. That's quite a bit of value considering these titles are multiplatform and the current average is hovering around $6.30 at the time of writing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Namco Bandai iOS sale discounts titles up to 80% Posted: 15 Nov 2012 12:30 PM PST Need some iOS gaming to fill in that downtime when you're stuck at family gatherings this holiday season? Namco Bandai has got your back with discounts of up to 80 percent off many of their iOS game titles. Have you ever played the Soulcalibur iOS game? Me either! Now's your chance at $6.99 instead of $14.99. If you want something cheaper, there are several $0.99 titles, like Time Crisis Strike, Pac-Man Championship Edition, and Galaga Remix. Hit the jump to see the full list. This sale runs from today through November 19, so get clicking now.
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| PS3 gets Sony Crackle movie and television app Posted: 15 Nov 2012 12:00 PM PST Sony adds their own streaming, ad-supported television and movie service to the PS3 with a new app. Finally coming outside PS Home, Crackle gets a proper app for Sony's console, giving users in USA and Canada full access to its free movie and television library. The app is free and available now. Sony says that more than 200 films and 1,000 TV shows are in their library. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kat and Emmett Graves will become PS All-Stars next year Posted: 15 Nov 2012 11:30 AM PST Next year, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale will get two additional characters via download: Emmett Graves from Starhawk and Kat from Gravity Rush. I know how some of you feel about downloadable content being discussed before the core game has even released -- we've still got another week to go, in this case -- but this pair will be free. The characters themselves are still in development, according to Sony Santa Monica's Seth Killian. When they are released next year, players will have a two-week window to nab them for free. After this period, they'll cost an undisclosed amount of money, which seems fair enough. I'm sure they could have gotten quite a few sales -- especially with Kat. First PlayStation All-Stars DLC: Kat and Emmett Join the Battle Royale (For Free!) [PlayStation Blog] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| OnLive cloud gaming service built into LG television sets Posted: 15 Nov 2012 11:00 AM PST LG and OnLive announced this morning that the LG Smart TV with Google TV built in will now see integration from OnLive's streaming gaming service. This means instant cloud gaming, straight from the television, with no console needed. They say that their latest model, the S2, supports OnLive, and future LG Google TV models will also include this feature. All new S2 series TVs will already have OnLive preinstalled. Those of you that already own one can add this feature in an over air update. You'll need to buy a controller first. “Our partnership with LG has enabled us to take an important step forward in making high-end gaming accessible to everyone, across a variety of consumer electronic devices,” said Gary Lauder, OnLive Chairman. “Gamers can now enjoy hundreds of amazing console-quality games with no new hardware necessary beyond an OnLive controller and LG’s fast and intuitive Google TV.” Would you get into streaming gaming if it was built into your television? Any LG S2 series owners out there looking forward to trying this out? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preview: Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS, Wii U) Posted: 15 Nov 2012 10:30 AM PST The infamously content-heavy Monster Hunter series is an indefatigable juggernaut in its native Japan, despite being relatively new on the scene compared to some of the popular series that have been around for decades. It doesn’t seem like the United States is going to get that promised Monster Hunter Vita by the end of the year. Instead, series fans without a Japanese 3DS and working knowledge of the language will have to settle for playing Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, an expansion of Monster Hunter Tri, either on the 3DS or Wii U. It’s perhaps not too much solace, with Monster Hunter 4 possibly dropping around the same time -- March 2013 -- in Japan, but it’s something. If you’re a fan of the franchise, you’ve likely already played the initial Wii release of Monster Hunter Tri, or at least one other game in the confusingly titled sequence. I, however, have never played a Monster Hunter game, fearing the risk of becoming engrossed in a title easily capable, if the stories are true, of sapping away hundreds of hours of my life. Unfortunately, I rather enjoyed what I played of 3 Ultimate, much to the satisfaction of friends who’ve been trying to bait me into the series for a while now. Hopefully this fresh perspective will be helpful for soon-to-be-new Wii U owners, emboldened by your fancy new Nintendo, and 3DS users who have yet to take the plunge.  Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS, Wii U) I started with the 3DS version, hunting a mark with three other players seated around a table; cooperative play on the 3DS is local only. As an honest-to-goodness newbie, I opted to take a fleet-footed, quick attacking dual-blade character through the wintry tundra on the trail of some wooly beast. When you’re starting out, you’ll be given some low-grade armor and one of every weapon type, allowing you to experiment with them and see which might suit your style. However, you’re never locked into a role. Gunners (ranged fighters) and blade masters (melee fighters) make up the two classes at which point armor diverges, however, changing your armor to the appropriate garb allows you to get right into the action on the other side of things like James Bond peeling off his wetsuit and exposing a fly tux. Within the classes, there are various sorts of weapons for different play styles, like the Dual Blades or Great Swords or Long Swords. The relatively teeny 3DS screen packs in everything happening on screen pretty admirably, though I did wind up keeping the 3D off, finding it a bit too busy and dizzying. More problematic was the area map, mapped to the touchscreen, which made branches between segmented areas and player direction a bit hard to discern, even upon tapping to zoom. That being said, the touchscreen also features one of the neatest features in its customizability. You can choose which widgets to display, including the new Target Camera. A tap of the target camera will make it so that pressing L automatically reorientates the camera toward the monster you’re hunting, rather than simply centering it. The customizable touch screen is particularly neat on the Wii U. You can effectively remove all the widgets from the Wii U’s gamepad screen, which automatically splashes them on the HUD (or vice versa if you want a clear main display) and lets you keep your eyes on screen at all time.  The Wii U and 3DS 3 Ultimates are more or less the same game with minor differing functionality (if you don’t have a Circle Pad Pro, you don’t have a free second stick with which to rotate the camera freely like you do on the Wii U). There’s also some nice connectivity between the two for owners of both or for people with homies. First, the game supports Kojima-coined transfarring, the ability to transfer data between the Wii U and 3DS in order to take your file on the go and bring it back again. Additionally, a Wii U player can posse up with one to three 3DS players locally. As an aside, now that I know this is a thing that works, I am going to be terribly upset if we don’t see a Wii U remake of the original Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. When I jumped to 3 Ultimate on the Wii U, with one ravenous beast notched up on my bed post (or, uh, knife handle), my appreciation of the game became a bit clearer still, perhaps abetted by the crisp HD visuals and 60 frames per second. I quite like the art direction. Technically, it’s not the most detailed, but I dig the lavish vibrancy of the colors and the decidedly Japanese role-playing look. Now solo, I gained some help from two Shakalaka, little helper characters, named Kayamba and Cha-Cha who, incidentally, both reminded me of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles’ Lilties (definitely not going to drop that train of thought until it’s addressed). While you can’t give the Shakalaka orders, they did prove quite helpful in my solo quest to pacify (brutally murder) a tyrannosaurus rex-ical beast. They can deliver pot shots to enemies, occasionally buff your stats, and give you a non-damaging courtesy thwack when need be. Enemies will occasionally wallow in the muck and spew nature at you, leaving you ensconced in a ball of snow or mud or what have you that keeps your character all gummed up and waddling slowly. Teammates -- or Shakalaka -- can give you a love tap to free you from that encumbrance without you taking damage. While these jovial imps will aid you in solo play, they can also tag along in two player co-op, which lets each of you take one of the two with you, rounding out a party of four.
Now, in terms of the actual monster hunting, I quite enjoyed what I played. While monsters will certainly engage you if you start throwing sticks at them and whatnot, they’re not above running away to get out of the line of fire, requiring you to give chase like a proper hunt. What’s more, the lack of a health bar requires you to pay attention to visual clues regarding how you’re faring; if a mark begins walking staggered, for example. These cues are also important to the combat, which employs basic combinations, but tasks you with knowing when, where, and how to attack without leaving yourself vulnerable. Having spazzed my through the dual blades -- I often found myself going combo crazy after the mark had left my range, leaving me attacking the air like I ran through a spider web -- I opted to go solo with the appropriately opposing Long Sword, a much stronger and slower weapon. With great power comes a great necessity to not start long attack animations that end up missing landing blows, because it’s an easy way to get wrecked. In a neat addition, I also managed to focus some blows on my mark’s tail and eventually lopped it off (and I don’t think it was meant to come off like the survival mechanism of certain lizards of modernity), granting me an extra piece of loot on top of the three I would inevitably get when I dropped my target. It may not be a proper Monster Hunter 4, but Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is appearing on both the 3DS and Wii U for the first time in the series, so perhaps it will breed a whole new slew of fans. Those looking to satiate a Monster Hunter fix get a pretty Wii U version, cool interplay between the 3DS and Wii U, and 17 new monsters, among other little additions. It’s something of an expansion, but at least it seems to be living up to the “Ultimate” moniker. I know it’s definitely done a lot to make me think I may end up finally giving this series a whirl. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| GameStop Wii U preorders: 1.2m games for 500,000 systems Posted: 15 Nov 2012 10:00 AM PST GameStop's Wii U preorders show that things are looking pretty good for Nintendo. According to Gamasutra, GameStop has 1.2 million preorders for Wii U games, and that's for the 500,000 consoles they were allocated. That's 2.4 games for every console, double the preorder numbers the Wii saw. I think this strong software number says way more about the launch selection than anything else. I'm up for New Super Mario Bros. U, but not much else. How does your preorder lineup compare to GameStop's numbers? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Who needs a Wii U when the Wii has YouTube functionality? Posted: 15 Nov 2012 09:15 AM PST Do you have a Wii U preorder in? Are you excited about this weekend's launch? Screw it! Cancel it all! You don't need it anymore as the Wii gets YouTube functionality. Today (yes, just today), YouTube announces that the Wii has a free app up on the Wii Shop that lets you watch YouTube on your current Nintendo game system. Again, no need to buy that expensive new thing with this free application. "Better late than never"? No, more like just in time. To think that I almost bought a Wii U when I could have been watching YouTube on my existing Wii. Phew! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 15 Nov 2012 09:00 AM PST There are thousands, if not millions, of games out there, begging to be played but last summer there was only one that mattered to me: Magical Drop 3. Whether I was practicing at home or showing off at my local arcade, Magical Drop became my obsession. Like Bust-a-Move, Magical Drop is a timeless puzzle series that perfectly displays that throwing balls at other colored balls is all it takes to make a good game, sometimes. It all comes down to how the game feels: The swift character movement, the sounds of clearing a row of icons, and the sight of crushing an enemy with a combo.
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| Metroid fan arrange album 101% Run out on November 17 Posted: 15 Nov 2012 08:30 AM PST
Last year, Metroid fan site Shinesparkers assembled a massive team of musicians for Harmony of a Hunter, a two-disc explosion of Metroid tunage. It was so incredible that even original Metroid composer Hip Tanaka was digging the groove! That wasn't enough, though. Plans were quickly underway for an "expansion pack" of sorts to be titled Harmony of a Hunter: 101% Run. As project coordinator Darren Kerwin explains, "Originally, we only decided to include roughly 12 tracks to the Harmony of a Hunter expansion, focusing on the big tracks that didn't make it the first time. But then other musicians felt that there were other tracks we could cover, and soon enough that number doubled and then tripled. We ended up with an album that is larger, longer, and higher in quality than the original." At final count, 101% Run contains a whopping 39 tracks by 32 musicians -- 50 if you include vocalists. It'll be released for free on the HoaH page on November 17, just in time for the tenth anniversary of Metroid Prime. A project this massive deserves your time and attention, so enjoy the final preview above as well as further behind-the-scenes goodies below.
Here is a practice session for "Samus Voyage," a massive series-spanning medley performed by the HiScore choir based out of the University of Skövde in Sweden. "It's a very diverse track and really shows how talented the group are," Darren says. "Not only were they working with content they were not familiar with, but they also had to make it all work together and to deadline. I can tell you from personal experience that it's no easy task trying to manage multiple people, but I feel that [group leaders Sebastian Mårtensson and Samuel Lidström] did a fantastic job." A track like this demonstrates just how well the music from the Metroid series can be adapted to a variety of styles and genres -- Darren draws attention to Sebastian Mårtensson and Kristin Björkebäck's "Kraid's Campfire Ballad," an entry off the first HoaH that features acoustic guitar and an accordion. Each game has a different feel, lending themselves well to different interpretations. Even the oft-scorned Other M, Darren believes, has a very atmospheric score with beautiful cutscene melodies that is often overlooked because the overall soundtrack wasn't as memorable as the others in the series. Some of the returning artists wanted to step up their game for 101% Run. Sam Dillard is back with the Super Metroid Maridia arrangement "Beyond the Glass," heard in the preview above at the 3:30 mark. Sam muses, "My idea was to convey an initial sense of beauty and intrigue, like gazing into a bizarre aquarium, there is a sense of disconnect with the outside world. But then the glass begins to shatter, and the illusion of safety is gone. Now you are thrust into this dangerous world and the real journey begins." Derris-Kharlan follows up his original "Metroid Medley" with a second, heard at the 2:14 mark. Remember how I said Hip Tanaka was pleased by the HoaH album? He was specifically praising Derris-Kharlan's chiptune mix. "For my second entry," he says, "Darren asked me to focus on the Prime trilogy, a series of games that I had, admittedly, had very little exposure to. However, upon becoming familiar with the music it was clear that I had been introduced to a gold mine of audio goodness, and I got hard to work at reconstructing each theme in a memorable, but very personal way." There are many newcomers, such as Stephan Wells, who has dipped his toes into several tracks on the album. The first song he tackled was based on "Secrets of the Chozo" from Metroid II. He states, "It's a very conspicuous and strange track that was very hard to work with, but at the time that's what Darren proposed to me, and I didn't complain. I'm glad I didn't because the resulting remix, fittingly called 'Alluring Darkness,' was quite a success I think. It's got a pretty dark atmosphere, helped by spacey effects and [fellow album artist] Buoy's fantastic guitar work." Notable artists like Martin "Video Game Pianist" Leung and Vomitron join returning faces like Mazedude and VikingGuitar. They're all prepared to rock our worlds this Saturday when Harmony of a Hunter: 101% Run drops. Make sure to keep the album page bookmarked, and don't forget to follow the project's Facebook page for any future developments. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Note Worthy 009: Halo 4, Rock Man, Bravely Default, ACIII Posted: 15 Nov 2012 08:00 AM PST We're back to our regularly-scheduled Note Worthy with reviews for a number of highly-anticipated albums this month. I've been greatly looking forward to the Halo 4 soundtrack, and we have impressions of the entire contents of the limited edition set along with the two Rockman 25th anniversary arrangement albums.
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| Black Ops II on balancing and player feedback Posted: 15 Nov 2012 07:45 AM PST Balancing, balancing, balancing. Developers do as much as they can to make sure their multiplayer is designed as best as possible before shipping, but it's when the title has made it into the public's hand that really puts everything to the test. Making sure a game is balanced well is a never-ending battle with any multiplayer game. Black Ops II is no different, and Treyarch has created a new system called Black Box that analyzes player data to really see how everything is performing. "What we said was we need to balance the emotion of using something, like your personal visceral reaction to it, with math," design director David Vonderhaar told me. "There's a lot of instrumentation in this game, there's a lot of data logging, so I know exactly what the power band of a weapon is at all times. So I can combine how something feels with how it's actually behaving. I know, I know this is going to happen: A million people are going to Tweet me and tell me that the [for example] 'PDW 57 is overpowered, Vonderhaar what are you doing?' "What I'll do is I can go and look at the math and I'll go 'Actually, you know what dude? You're just good with it. Have fun, because the math says that it's not overpowered.' I have the averages, you're being successful. That means Pick 10 is working, and if it's overpowered I'll know it for real. Like not because someone said it was, or because I felt it was, or because you sent me an angry Tweet because you got killed by the SRM Shotgun one night 17 times so you're mad. The data will tell me the truth." "So combining your opinion with mathematical fact is the way we can handle this and that's only possible if the game is instrumented well, and it is," David continued. "Like a whole new level of instrumentation, it's crazy cool. Data nerds would just die if they had any idea what kind of stuff we can yank with this." Basically, Black Box is a series of databases that allows Treyarch to run various queries against it in lots of interesting ways. They can take a weapon like the SRM with the long barrel attachment, for example, and compare how many shots it's taking to put someone down on average against some other data set. That's one example of the cross checking they can perform now. "Once you have the data you just need to figure out how you want to use it. You can create new queries and modify queries and that allows you to run all sorts of reports. I have this chart on my wall that we run all the time to just be sure how things are trending. What's really cool about it is you make a little tiny tweak [and] you get a sense of what that does to the tuning, what would happen if you did that. It lets you do some really lightweight modeling, it's pretty neat. "I'm just going to kill people with facts [with] this game when they come over and go 'This thing is OP.' I'm going to go 'Actually it's not OP, you're wrong.' I'm not going to yell at them or anything, I'm just going to tell them the truth. I don't have to hide this stuff from people, just drop knowledge bombs on guys. It's gotta be done! What people are doing is reacting emotionally, and I'm like a really emotional guy so I get it."
David is one of the more prominent developers out there who actually uses Twitter as real-time feedback in a large way. "It's like the world's greatest instant fact checker. You can get really close to something when you work on it so it's always healthy to say, look, let me just put this out in the stratosphere and see are my assumptions about it still right and that's when you'll see me do that. The other thing is it's really great to just tell people look this is how it's going work and why. You may not agree with that but I'm going to tell you. I'm going to be transparent and tell you." Social media also proves to be a great early warning detection system for David as well. "It's a really good way to understand what's happening before something becomes. That allows us to be on top of it. You can't tell people what they want to hear, that's the wrong way to do it. But what you can do is say 'I got it. Thank you. I'll look into it. I looked into it and this is what we're doing.' Or not, and then you'll move on from there hopefully." And while he's open to hearing everyone's feedback, at the end of the day "you can't let Twitter design the videogame. These are just fans, and they just want to talk to somebody. Who are they going to talk to? A guy that doesn't work on the game? I'm the best guy for them to talk to, someone who can actually make decisions about the game is infinitely better than talking to somebody who has no control over what actually happens. I think it's better that way, even if it comes with this whole new level of responsibility and possibly headache. It's worth it in the end. I'm glad for it and I'm glad for them, honestly." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Contest: Win a copy of The Art of Halo 4! Posted: 15 Nov 2012 07:30 AM PST Our buddies over at Titan Books have given us five copies of The Art of Halo 4 to hand out to you lovely Dtoiders! This gorgeous hardcover is jam-packed with never-before-seen concept art from the recently-released title, and can be yours right now! To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment telling us why you deserve it! Limit one entry per person, and the contest closes this Saturday, November 17 at 11:59 PM Pacific. We have three copies for US/Canadian residents and two for UK Dtoiders, so please tell us what region you're in when you comment. Good luck! Notes about The Art of Halo 4 from the publisher:
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