Luke Plunkett

And The Top-Selling Games In Australia For 2008 Were…

Yeah, it’s April 2009. So what, things move slowly down here. Which is why we’re only just getting our hands on the list of the ten best-selling games in Australia for 2008. And, surprise surprise, it’s dominated by Nintendo titles. Five of the ten are published by Nintendo, and two more involve Nintendo characters and…

GameTap Launches Redesigned Service

GameTap has an all-new service! Completely redesigned, from the ground up. And while it stuttered, fell over and died for a little bit at launch, it’s now all good. Courtesy of a “technical outage”, users heading over to the site to check out the new digs last night were not greeted by a new GameTap.…

King Of Kong Rematch Going Down At E3

If you haven’t seen King of Kong, I won’t spoil it for you. Let’s just say that Steve Wiebe has a Donkey Kong record he’d like to claim. And at E3, he’s taking a crack. All the relevant authorities will be on-hand – including arcade score-keepers Twin Galaxies – as well as TV types G4,…

Your April Fool’s Day Roundup

April Fool’s Day is ostensibly a day for fun and pranks, but for anyone looking for news on the internet, it’s a royal pain in the ass. So thank the maker it’s all over. Below, we’ve highlighted some of the best, worst and most painful attempts at humour on this international day of hijinx. The…

And On The Third Day, FileFront Was Risen

OK, it’s been a bit longer than three days. But with Easter around the corner, it’s somewhat apt, because just as everyone was done saying goodybe to FileFront, it’s now back from the dead. The popular PC file download service was closed late last month after its owners, Ziff Davis Media (who were trying to…

THQ: There Will Be More Red Faction, More…Darksiders

Things aren’t looking so rosy at publishers THQ at the moment. But they shall persevere! And they shall do so by pushing original IP, pledging to release more Red Faction and Darksiders titles. By more, we don’t mean Red Faction 3. That one’s already coming. THQ are referring to another Red Faction, and a sequel…

A Game Magazine Outsells Time, Playboy & Sports Illustrated

Most game magazines are dying a death. One, though, is not. It’s the one that’s owned by GameStop. Yes, it’s Game Informer, and more people read Game Informer than you probably thought. According to data released by BurrellesLuce, the mag has a monthly readership of 3,517,598. Which makes it the 12th most read magazine in…

Mass Effect 2 Has Shorter Elevator Rides

Mass Effect was pretty great, wasn’t it? Oh, except for those elevator rides masquerading as load screens. Those weren’t great. Which is probably why Bioware have remembered to fix them for Mass Effect 2. Speaking with MTV, Bioware’s Ray Muzyka said: We have a completely new system to handle transitions between areas that speeds the…

Killzone Becomes, Of All Things, A Love Story

Bravo, IGN. Bravo. Having set a high standard last April 1st with their Zelda movie trailer, this year, attention shifts to Killzone. And how it’s not a story about killing. It’s a story about love. More Videos at IGN.com

Big Layoffs At Big Huge Games

Hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for Rise of Nations developers Big Huge Games. First they were threatened with closure. Now, according to Develop, there have been a “huge number of layoffs”. Yes. Huge. Cute. A few weeks back THQ announced that, if a buyer for the studio had not been found within 60…

Red Faction: Guerilla Destructs Itself A Release Date

Red Faction: Guerilla is an interesting title. Ditching “destructible” FPS corridors in favour of a sandbox world isn’t something a series does every day, so at the least it’s got something new to check out. And you can look out for it in June, as that’s when publishers THQ say the game will be out.…

With This Atari, I Thee Wed

I’m getting married later this year. Need a wedding ring. Funny, then, that at this precise time in history, I come upon this gold ring, made out of the heart of an Atari. As it’s called a “1981 Atari Ring”, I’m guessing it’s from an Atari 2600. Regardless, it looks great, especially since – if…

British Sales Charts: We Call ‘Em Twitchers

So long, Resident Evil 5! You couldn’t hang about feasting on the flesh of the living forever. And, when you finally fell, bullet in the head, of course it was Wii Fit pulling the trigger. And Professor Layton was on clean-up duty, mopping up the blood, careful not to get any in his mouth or…

The Video Game Audio Awards

Games have long preferred visual innovation to audio. I mean, they’re called video games, not video and audio games. But that’s not to say game audio doesn’t deserve recognition! GANG stands for Game Audio Network Guild, a group dedicating themselves to championing the work of music and sound effect teams in the game industry. And…

Donkey Kong Monster Truck Has A New Play Control Scheme

And it’s called “driving on 2.5 wheels after crashing”, after the Donkey Kong monster truck – and its bow-tied driver – did a few too many big jumps at the Monster Jam World Finals. As a note to the novice drivers out there, it’s generally not a good idea to keep driving after one of…

Kojima Celebrates April Fool’s Day In Style

Continuing a tradition of going completely over the top with April 1 gags, Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima and his team have come up with…this. Metal Gear fans, be warned: you’ll go bananas. First teased at GDC, it’s a long, elaborate video showing an old friend doing…stuff. I won’t spoil any of it. Just hit…

A Look At How Microsoft Approve A Game For Release

Introversion – developers of Defcon and Darwinia – have a treat in store for us. Following “unprecedented approval” from Microsoft, they’ve uploaded a paper trail documenting the journey a game takes from pitch to release. And it is fascinating. Provided you find this kind of backroom stuff interesting, anyway. Available for perusal are bug reports,…

So, How Many PS3 Games Are Any Good?

Picture the scene: your mum walks into GameStop. She walks to the PlayStation 3 section, and picks out a game for your birthday. At random. What are the odds she picks a good one? Let’s find out! Just like they did for Xbox 360 games, market research firm EEDAR have tracked every PS3 game’s Metacritic…

Is This A Partial Rock Band PSP Setlist?

Probably. It’s on GameStop’s website, after all, and last I checked big corporations aren’t as prone to throwing up April Fool’s jokes as common folk. As you can see from the image below, there are 15 artists/songs specifically named, out of a promised 40+. And if most of them look familiar, that’s because they are,…

Syndicate Remake Looking More Likely

Way back in October 2008, we first heard talk that Starbreeze were working on a remake of Bullfrog’s classic Syndicate. Was nice talk, but talk nonetheless. Today, that talk has resurfaced. First, industry site Gamesindustry.biz said that, according to sources, Starbreeze (developers of The Darkness) were at work on a new Syndicate title, and that…