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Star Ocean Scoots Up A Week

North American fans eager for the next installment of the Star Ocean saga now have a week less to wait, as Square Enix pushes up the release date for Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Originally scheduled to release in North American on March 3rd, North American Xbox 360 owners can now look forward to living…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

Halo Wars! No, Robbie Bach isn’t bumping up the release and giving me early code, I’ll just be playing it as much as possible at CES. That and some Killzone 2. Embargoes be damned! Surely there’s no embargo on the six level preview at Sony’s CES booth, so I’ll be plopping down in front of…

New Burnout Legendary Cars Channel KITT, Ecto-1, And The General Lee

Criterion continues to rock the 80’s as they reveal the remaining three Legendary DLC Cars for Burnout Paradise, which bear striking similarities to the most well-known vehicles of that decade. Carrying on the proud tradition of the Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters is the Manhattan Spirit, a slow but stunt-friendly vehicle with a hidden secret. Then we…

Best Buy Sees a Drop in December Gaming Sales

Despite revenue of $7.5 billion in December, Best Buy still saw a drop in video game sales. “While the environment continues to be as challenging as we expected, consumers are being drawn to brands that they trust, and they are responding to our customer-centric model. In this light, we believe the market share gains we’ve…

CES 09: What Did Microsoft And Sony Bring To Vegas?

Games! Or, I should say, games. Mostly older games, but games nonetheless. CES isn’t the place for four year-old tech like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. But that doesn’t mean they’re totally absent. Killzone 2, for example, is playable in Sony’s big booth, as is Resistance: Retribution. Microsoft brought pre-release builds of Warhammer 40,000:…

Atlus Delivers Old School Tokyo Beat Down To DS

Atlus delivers old school beat ’em up gameplay with a badass 70’s cop show vibe to the palm of your hand, announcing Tokyo Beat Down, coming in March to the Nintendo DS. It’s a 3D beat ’em up with shoot ’em up tendencies, allowing players to punch, kick, shoot, stab, parley, and explode their way…

EQ 10th Aniversary Book Art Revealed By Uncomfortable-Looking Firiona Vie

A woman dressed up as elven princess Firiona Vie stood off to the side looking uncomfortable at Sony Online Entertainment’s private CES unveiling of the EverQuest: The 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition book cover. Yes, Everquest is 10 years old, and Sony Online Entertainment is celebrating their baby with a massive hardcover book detailing the rise…

Death Knights Officially All Over The Place

As mentioned in the Test Realm patch notes we posted on last month, a blue Blizzard post confirms that they are indeed removing restrictions to allow players to create Death Knights on any server. Previously you could only create a Death Knight on a server which housed a level 55 or higher character on your…

The Electrifying InFamous CES Trailer

Sucker Punch pulls no punches in this new trailer for their upcoming PlayStation 3-exclusive free-roaming superhero game InFamous, which displays an outstanding disregard for public transportation, and the public in general. Looking just as good as it did during my time with the title at the 2008 Games Convention in Leipzig, the new trailer wastes…

Phantasy Star Zero Heads West

Phantasy Star fans rejoice! The Nintendo DS entry in the series that hit Japan last month is coming to America, as Sega announces Phantasy Star Zero for U.S. and European release next winter. Phantasy Star Zero is set on an alternate Earth 200 years after a massive war called “The Great Blank” brought civilization to…

SOCOM: Confrontation Update Should Be Live, Stats All Sparkly New

SOCOM: Confrontation’s 1.30 update should now be available for download on your Playstation 3. The release of the patch was proceeded by a couple-hour outage to update the servers with the new code. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in order to “resolve incorrect player stats” and to correct the stats for…

Fallout 3 Level Cap Getting Dialed Up To 30

In an interview with Eurogamer, Fallout 3 lead producer Jeff Gardiner reveals that the Broken Steel downloadable content due out in March allow players to take their character all the way to level 30. Along with the promised raise in the level cap to 30, Broken Steel also removes the ending for the game, allowing…

New Diablo III Screenshots Showcase Supersized Foe

Blizzard has updated the official Diablo III website with a set of four bits of artwork and five new screens, one featuring an opponent that could even the bravest player pee a little. We’ve seen quite a bit of Diablo III since the game was announced, so when I was first flipping through the new…

Nintendo Patent Reveals Potential Paradigm Shift in Design

Call it hints 2.0. Nintendo is working on a gameplay system meant to ease the pain of completing a difficult game, without watering it down so much that it turns hardcore gamers off. The new system, described in a patent filed by Nintendo Creative Director Shigeru Miyamoto on June 30, 2008, but made public today,…

Smedley: Half Of SOE’s Business Will Be PS3

Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley is in love with the idea of massively multiplayer games on the PlayStation 3, suggesting that one day the console will account for nearly half of the company’s business. Smedley made the statement during an interview with GameDaily regarding the evolving MMO space, explaining that the PlayStation Network’s 15…

ELSPA Celebrates First Anti-Piracy Raid Of 2009

The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association rings in the new year with news of their first anti-piracy raid of 2009, in which they seized computers and more than 1,000 illegally copied games. The raid occurred in Staffordshire, England, at a house that was running an illegal copied games business via online classifieds site Gumtree.com.…

Halo Wars Play in the Snow

This detailed glimpse of a bit of Halo War gameplay does more than show off the snowy terrain and unit design. We also get a chance to see how simplified they’ve made unit selection and description. I’m not sure if I love or hate that when you select a unit it tells you, clear as…

Arcade Mania Now In Second Printing

To: Crecente From: Bashcraft RE: Hellooooo CES Today my editor Cathy Layne passed the word that the arcade book I wrote, Arcade Mania, has gone into its second printing. I was rather flabbergasted as the book’s been available outside Japan since December. And in this cratering economy? It’s beyond flattering that people are spending their…

Build Your Own Profanity-Filled Mario Level

Retro Sabotage, back at it. Their latest work? This create-a-Mario tool, which allows you to customise a few lines of text that appear in-game as giant banners. Made of coins. So you can fill in your name, your mum’s name, a season’s greeting, whatever tickles your fancy. Your imagination’s the limit! Golden Words [Retro Sabotage]

A Sulky, Expensive Cloud Strife Statue

Can’t appeal more directly to the soppy FFVII fan than this, a 13″ statue of Cloud standing, sword over shoulder, amidst “the protecting light of Aerith’s church with flowers of remembrance at his feet”. What, no bloody, lifeless Aeris corpse at his feet? You’ve gone soft, Sideshow Collectibles, you’ve gone soft.