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There’s A Half-Minute Hero Coming That’s Super Mega Neo
The excellent Half-Minute Hero, a mix of role-playing, side-scrolling shooting and strategy, all delivered in short bursts, looks like it’s making the leap from PlayStation Portable to Xbox 360. Australia’s ratings board seems to have let slip the existence of Half-Minute Hero – Super Mega Neo Climax a bit earlier than expected. With a name…
By Michael McWhertor Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Devil May Cry May Come To Movie Theaters
Dante the demon slayer may be gracing the silver screen soon, now that Hollywood studio Screen Gems—the people who make the Resident Evil movies—has acquired the rights to make a Devil May Cry movie. Variety reports that Capcom and Screen Gems have struck a deal to adapt Devil May Cry into a feature film, with…
By Michael McWhertor Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
A New Look At Brink: Seeing How The Other Half Lives
What’s taking Brink so long? Why won’t this ambitious, complex first-person shooter come out already? We’ve already seen and enjoyed its “SMART” approach to speeding through levels and over obstacles. We’ve been impressed by the detail of the futuristic Ark and Brink’s teamwork-focused gameplay. Recently, we got a deeper look at what else Splash Damage’s…
By Michael McWhertor Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Make a Game, Help Stop Teen Dating Violence
Can you create a game about teen dating violence without using violence? That’s the question that the Life. Love Game Design Challenge has been asking for three years now. The results have, over years, grown from simple flash games to meaningful works of interactive education and fiction. February is National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and…
By Brian Crecente Published February 28, 2011 -
UncategorizedThe Next Great Era in Gaming, Cool Metroid Prime Concepts and Why the PS3 is Contraband
I flew back from a half week in New York last night. We got home about 11 p.m. Tomorrow morning I’m flying off to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. I’ll be joining Michael McWhertor and Stephen Totilo as we report, interview, and write our way through the week-long show. Looks like there’s going…
By Brian Crecente Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Child of Eden Has A ‘Beauty’ Unlike Rez And A Vibrating Belt
The moment that Child of Eden, the follow-up to Sega’s trippy musical shooter Rez, starts to look evolutionarily different from its predecessor is during the level known as “Beauty.” It’s a trip through a softly colored, garden-like alien world, full of bizarre abstract creatures. Child of Eden still plays just like Rez, however. It too…
By Michael McWhertor Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Vagrant Story Brings A Riot To The PlayStation Store This Week
This week, PlayStation 3 owners in North America will be able to enjoy one of the greatest role-playing games of the PlayStation generation: Vagrant Story coming to the PlayStation Store as a “PSone Classic.” For those of you who haven’t played this SquareSoft great, Vagrant Story is a fantastic mix of dungeon crawling, puzzle-solving, rhythmic…
By Michael McWhertor Published February 28, 2011 -
UncategorizedKilling Tasty Animals The Windows Phone 7 Way
After the initial lineup of Xbox Live-ready games for the Windows Phone 7 platform debuted, new releases have slowed to a crawl, and crawling is just want you’ll need to do to score a kill in Deer Hunter 3D. Like many Windows Phone 7 games, Deer Hunter 3D is a port of an older iPhone…
By Mike Fahey Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Metroid Prime’s Coolest Concepts From The Cutting Room Floor
What could Metroid mainstays Mother Brain, Crocomire and Kraid have looked like in the beloved Metroid Prime video games? See for yourself in some recently excavated art work from the artists behind Nintendo’s first-person Metroid adventures. My personal favorite may be the Galactic Federation super suit seen above, a concept sketch from artist Sammy Hall…
By Michael McWhertor Published February 28, 2011 -
UncategorizedPing-Pong For Perverts, Another Secretly Smart Video Game Innovation
It’s an odd scene to be a part of. I was sitting on a couch in the penthouse of a Manhattan hotel, a guy who works for video game publisher Sega at my side. A bunch of other men stand near us. Everyone is watching the TV, which runs a video game that is mostly,…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Serious Sam 3 Gives You 16 Player Co-op This Summer
Make the next Serious Sam game official. Developer Croteam is bringing the next entry, Serious Sam 3: BFE, to PC and consoles this summer, a “glorious throwback to the golden age of first-person shooters,” they say. That’s when “men were men, cover was for amateurs and pulling the trigger made things go boom,” according to…
By Michael McWhertor Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Rift Combats Massive Player Influx With Massive Server Additions
Response to Trion World’s MMO Rift has been overwhelming, with the 17 servers allocated to North America for last week’s head start blossoming into 39 to combat long login queues. The game launches tomorrow, with more servers on the way. My Dwarven warrior Oprah might be exaggerating a little, but not much. Since the Friday…
By Mike Fahey Published February 28, 2011 -
UncategorizedAnother Glimpse At The Most Ambitious Kinect Game
Call it Project Milo. Call it Milo & Kate. Call it, last we heard, canceled. You can also call Lionhead Studios’ attempt to use the Xbox 360 Kinect sensor array to let players interact with a virtual boy a more ambitious effort than anything else we’ve seen using Microsoft’s popular new tech. But we’ve seen…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
European Customs Seize PlayStation 3 Shipments
Tens of thousands of PS3s were seized by customs officers last week in the Netherlands as part of an ongoing contentious court battle between LG and Sony, the Guardian reports A ruling by the civil court of justice in the Hague surrounding patents related to the playback of Blu-Ray discs means that all new PS3s…
By Brian Crecente Published February 28, 2011 -
UncategorizedThe Bleak Despair Of Abject Poverty In Video Game Form
You’ve lost your job, your house, and your savings are completely gone. Can you survive for a month on $1,000? That’s the challenge put forth in the game Spent. Are you up to it? For many of us, poverty is something that happens to other people. We have comfortable jobs, reliable transportation, good health insurance,…
By Mike Fahey Published February 28, 2011 -
UncategorizedOur First Look At The Bloody Ninja Gaiden III In Action
See what it’s like to be stabbed repeatedly by Ninja Gaiden star Ryu Hayabusa in this, the first teaser video for Team Ninja’s next project, Ninja Gaiden III. The third Ninja Gaiden game, according to its creators “will take fans on an epic journey as they discover a side of their hero that has never…
By Michael McWhertor Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Steam Plans To Take Over Your Television
Not content to dominate digital downloads on the Mac and PC, Valve is heading to GDC 2011 with plans for a “big picture” mode, a controller-friendly version of Steam perfect for playing on your big-screen television. Steam is big, but Valve wants it bigger. With the digital download platform’s dominance on the PC growing every…
By Mike Fahey Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Suspect Compares British Shooting Spree To Grand Theft Auto
Qhuram Awan was either an unwilling hostage or a willing accomplice during Raoul Moat’s 2010 crime spree that left one dead and two seriously wounded. Speaking to Newcastle Crown Court, Awan recalls the event was “like a video game.” “It’s all getting too much now. It’s like a cross between GTA and Jason Bourne.” Those…
By Mike Fahey Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Yes, Really, The New Dragon Age Facebook Game Is Worth Playing
There are so many games on Facebook, and so few worth playing. But there’s a new one based on the acclaimed Dragon Age universe. And it’s made by a team led by EA2D’s Mark Spenner and Soren Johnson, a guy who made a mighty fine version of Civilization (and is pretty good at solving the…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 28, 2011 - Uncategorized
Flashback Designer Creates Survival Horror Babysitting Adventure
Paul Cuisset, the man behind the rotoscoped classic Flashback, takes a turn at survival horror with Amy, a tale of post-global warming horror that charges you with protecting one very special little girl. Developed by Cuisset’s VectorCell studio and published by Lexis Numérique for the PlayStation Network, Amy tells the tale of a near-future Earth…
By Mike Fahey Published February 28, 2011