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Halo Wars sells one million copies and new DLC hinted

Posted by The Gamer in Game News on March 19, 2009 | no responses

0476c halowars screen 012309 Halo Wars sells one million copies and new DLC hinted

Two weeks after the release of Halo Wars comes the announcement of the millionth copy sold today, along with a few other interesting facts. Halo Wars has just been given the title of the best selling real-time strategy (RTS) game on any current generation game console to date. What’s more, over 2.6 million matches of Halo Wars have taken place over Xbox LIVE. That equals around 118 years of time spent worldwide, with over 200,000 Halo Wars fans fighting each other every day. If you would like an up-to-date look at the statistics of Halo Wars, you can visit the official Halo Wars website here.

With this announcement, Microsoft and Robot Entertainment (formally known as Ensemble Studios) also hinted that downloadable content for the game will be released sometime this year. No other specific details have been announced for the Halo Wars downloadable content yet.

Halo Wars sells one million copies and new DLC hinted

Source: http://www.gamingbits.com

BattleForge Interview

Posted by The Gamer in Game News on March 19, 2009 | no responses

Click To Watch Video

Brad journeys to far-away EA to get the lowdown on its upcoming card-based RTS.
Source: http://www.Giantbomb.com

Review of MadWorld

Posted by The Gamer in Game News on March 19, 2009 | no responses

Platform: (WII)

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3 out of 5

It’s easier to tell what’s going on when it’s all in motion.

MadWorld is a terrific idea. From a distance, it looks like an amazing, unique project, full of creativity. But the closer you get to it, and the more time you spend working your way through its levels, MadWorld loses a lot of its charm, quickly becoming a slow-paced brawler that shows you all of its best tricks in the first ten minutes. Everything else, from the game’s unique art style to its rampant use of blood and cursing, feels like a sleight-of-hand trick designed to make you think the game is more than it really is. If you can keep up the suspension of disbelief, MadWorld is probably pretty amazing. But after hearing the announcers repeat the same handful of phrases again and again for the first hour, and seeing the same death animations applied to multiple levels and multiple opponents, all I could see was the basic, repetitive fighting underneath MadWorld’s thick layer of style.

The game takes place inside some sort of futuristic terrorist-run killing game show known as DeathWatch, and it’s sort of like The Running Man or Smash TV. The organizers of the game have cut off access to a large island in a big city and given everyone some sort of virus. The virus vaccine is given to people who agree to join the game by killing one of their fellow citizens. You play as a tough guy named Jack, who, at first, appears to be nothing more than a contestant. But as you play, you’ll discover his true motives for being on the island and in the game. The story is loosely told between levels, and it’s just enough to provide a point to all this madness.

MadWorld is level-based, and most of the levels are relatively open. You can run around anywhere and beat up standard enemies to your heart’s content. But the levels progress via your points total. So as you earn points for taking out enemies, you’ll earn additional weapons, health recovery items, minigames that can be played for more points, and eventually, the boss battle. The control in MadWorld is effective, using Nunchuk shaking to avoid incoming attacks and Wii Remote shaking to pull off different attacks or toss enemies onto various death-dealing contraptions.

You’ll earn more points for eliminating enemies with combos, but there’s more to the combat than just using your fists. The combos let you take tires or other similarly hoop-like items and ring a guy to immobilize him. Then, you might want to jab one or more street signs through his neck. And to finish him off, you might want to throw him in a burning garbage barrel, or toss him up against a spiked wall, or maybe lay him down on a catapult that’s helpfully pointed at a statue’s large, sharp sword. Or maybe you just want to unleash your retractable chainsaw and cut him in half. While the later levels use higher point totals to coerce you into playing along with the combo system, it’s usually pretty easy to just grind out the points with less-elaborate kills. While there’s always a time limitl, you usually have plenty of time to get things done.

The problem is that there really isn’t all that much to do. Even though you change environments, the basics of the action remain the same. In the city levels you’ll find tires, street signs, and trains with spikes on the side. In the castle you’ll find big gears, lamp posts, and meat hooks. In the “Asian Town” set you’ll find spiky trees and lanterns, and so on. The action doesn’t really change too much from level to level. The boss fights do offer some differences, but it’s not enough. While you can slug it out with each boss and hope for the best, you’re better off trying to trigger a Quick Time Event, which are easy to pull off and do significant damage. The catch is that each boss only has one QTE, so you might be performing each one three or four times over the course of a battle.

The art style really makes the blood stand out.

Of course, it helps that those interactive cutscenes look great. The entire game has a terrific sense of style to it, presenting most of its action in black and white, only making exceptions for red blood and yellow action words to give jumps, hard landings, and cutscenes a little more flair. The blood splatters around quite well, staining the otherwise-stark landscape in a dramatic fashion.

The game’s audio gets to be a bit much. In addition to the standard sounds of fighting and the splats of bodies coming apart, the game’s soundtrack is an aggressive, rap-fueled collection of music, most of it featuring vocals. On top of that, the game has a two-man commentary team who chatter constantly while you’re playing. When you first dive in, it’s pretty intense, and a lot of the commentary is really funny. But it’s one of those things that’s only great from a distance. If you spend time focusing on the music, you’ll realize that most of the songs only have one repeating verse… and that they really aren’t very good. The commentary sounds great at first, with a lot of natural back and forth between the two announcers, but if you single that out and really listen to it, you’ll quickly realize that they’re constantly repeating themselves. Weirdly enough, the audio mix sounds like it was mixed so that no one element stands out, like they knew that if you paid any actual attention to any one aspect of it, you’d notice that it was kind of crummy.

And really, that same statement could be applied to the entirety of MadWorld. It makes an amazing first impression, and it has a consistently great sense of style. But once I started digging deeper, I hit bottom fast, and the spell was broken. If you’re the type of person who can appreciate style-over-substance games, you’ll probably love it. But once I figured out what was really going on in MadWorld, it felt pretty thin.

Release Date:

Source: http://www.Giantbomb.com

COD: WAW Map Pack 1 Trailer

Posted by The Gamer in Game News on March 19, 2009 | no responses

Click To Watch Video

It's a Nazi zombie party in Treyarch's first map pack for COD: World At War.
Source: http://www.Giantbomb.com

‘Sea of Dreams’ Discarded from BioShock 2 Name

Posted by The Gamer in Game News on March 19, 2009 | no responses

This was a good catch by Alex over at Primotech. If you saw the cover of Game Informer with the sequel to BioShock 2 on it, you might have noticed it was missing the subtitle “Sea of Dreams” on it. The title was first shown during the teaser trailer awhile back. Since that time, not much info was released until the magazine had the exclusive blowout debut.

Alex decided to contact 2K and to see if the ‘Sea of Dreams‘ subtile was scraped. According to the 2K community manager Elizabeth Tobey, the name has been dropped:

“You won’t be seeing ‘Sea of Dreams’ moving forward, just ‘BioShock 2.’ “

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand it really doesn’t matter — it’s just a name. But for some reason, I was kind of partial to ‘Sea of Dreams.’ Think about it, every great sequel has a purported subtile like; Terminator 2: Judgement day, Jaws: The Revenge and of course, the great Gremlins 2: The New batch.

Source: http://www.slashgamer.com

Andy Dick Confirms Himself in PS3’s Pain

Posted by The Gamer in Game News on March 19, 2009 | no responses

Not to long ago, ‘international celebrity’ David Hasselhoff was announced as a playable character in Sony’s DLC game PAIN, for the PlayStation 3. Now, according to his personal blog, Andy Dick will be making an appearance. The D-list actor confirmed his arrival yesterday and wrote a little bit about the process of what he did:

“i’m feeling great. just got done recording my voice for the sony playstation online game PAIN. they made an avatar of me and my daphne aguilera character. basically, i screamed for two hours. if you have ever had the urge to beat my scrawny, lily-white ass, now you can, literally… virtually.”

No word on when we should expect Mr. Dick, but he did show some concept art of himself (above, below). The second picture is a glimpse of what he would look in a stripper/prostitute outfit. Who is excited about that? Hello? Anyone here?

Source: http://www.slashgamer.com

COD: WAW Zombie Verruckt Trailer

Posted by The Gamer in Game News on March 19, 2009 | no responses

Click To Watch Video

Nazi zombies love brains in this new downloadable World at War map.
Source: http://www.Giantbomb.com

Hands-On: COD: World At War's DLC Map Pack

Posted by The Gamer in Game News on March 19, 2009 | no responses

Activision and in-house developer Treyarch are taking another page from Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty playbook, this time with a new downloadable Spring content release. Like last year’s Variety Map Pack for Call of Duty 4, Treyarch’s new Map Pack 1 contains four maps for COD: World at War and will run you $10 on PlayStation Network or 800 points on Xbox Marketplace. And, oh, hey, it’s available right now! But is it worth your time and money? Let’s take a look.

The most interesting new addition in this map pack is a new map for the Nazi Zombie mode. Considering there was only one Nazi Zombie map in the shipping game, that’s a pretty significant increase in playable content for what’s apparently become a really popular mode. Treyarch crammed Nazi Zombies into the shipping game at the last minute, in a breakneck labor-of-love fashion, but players have apparently taken to the new mode like, uh, zombies to brains. So I imagine a lot of you will be happy about this new map.

The abrasively titled Zombie Verruckt starts the four-player team out with two players trapped on one side of an old hospital, holding off the undead lovelies. The other two players have to cash in the points they earn from killing zombies to clear debris from stairwells and access higher levels of the facility. Your ultimate goal is to reach a generator and restart it, restoring power and reactivating doors that will let you join all four players up to make a last stand against the zombie horde. This multi-stage approach ought to give this map a different feel than the simple hold-out-as-long-as-you-can action in the original Nazi Zombies mode. It’s also worth noting that Treyarch will start tracking stats from the Nazi Zombie mode on callofduty.com once all this business is live.

You know, I could blabber on all day about Zombie Verruckt, but you could also just watch this trailer to get a feel for how it–and the rest of the map pack–will play.

You’ll also get three regular infantry-only multiplayer maps in Map Pack 1, as seen in the trailer above. Here’s a quick rundown with a little more information.

Knee Deep. This map is on a heavily jungled South Pacific island, Japanese versus the U.S. A river bisects the map, with battered wooden buildings on one side and a stone fortress on the other. There’s a lot of contrast between high and low ground here, from the upper riverbank down to the river.

Station. This is a ruined train station in Berlin, with the Soviets attacking the German defenders. The expansive train platform serves as the central hub of the level, and the roof has collapsed in, providing you a ramp to run up and gain the high ground. Numerous peripheral rooms and stairwells extend off of the central platform.

Nightfire. This is the most visually striking of the three maps, sending you running through besieged Berlin’s nighttime streets. Everything is on fire, which gives a nice contrast between the orange glow of the flames and the otherwise blueish color palette. There are several buildings you can enter to snipe at your opponents from second-floor windows.

The maps in this pack are all well-made and graphically appealing, so my gut feeling is that if you’re still playing World at War online, you need to get this pack. After all, the rest of the community will, too, so you’ll just be left behind on old maps if you don’t jump in. Though, if you’ve already gotten your fill of WAW and have moved on to more recent games, the pack may be less enticing. But since Treyarch has literally doubled the amount of Nazi Zombie content in the game, anyone who had a lot of fun with that mode in particular ought to give this one a look.

Source: http://www.Giantbomb.com

One used-game marketplace gives earnings back to game developers and publishers

Posted by The Gamer in Game News on March 19, 2009 | no responses

0f602 switchgames One used game marketplace gives earnings back to game developers and publishers

Game developers and publishers haven’t been thrilled about the used video game market place. After all, they don’t get a cut from the recycled game sales. To curb some used game sales, game publishers and developers have offered unique download codes with new games, as well as slowly releasing downloadable content over time so people hang on to their games. With more retailers entering the used-game market, there’s one place that’s looking to return some money to game developers and publishers. SwitchGames.com is giving sellers or buyers of used games the option to give a percentage of the money to game publishers and developers.

We want to tackle a fair concern head-on, said SwitchGames founder and CEO Jason Crawford, and I think weve arrived at a practical solution. Current annual used game sales of $2.4 billion are a goldmine for retailers. But neither game publishers nor developers can touch that revenue. SwitchGames is changing that. When gamers sell used titles on SwitchGames theyll have the option to share a percentage of a used game sale with the people who actually made the game. Like everything else at SwitchGames, gamers are always in control and its up to them to decide whether theyd like to cut in developers and publishers.

Developers will have to add a developer contract provision (here) to their developer agreement. It’s a unique start and solution to the used game market, but it probably has a way to go until game publishers and developers are satisfied. Would you, as a gamer, want to give a portion of your used-game revenue or purchase back to game publishers or game developers?

One used game marketplace gives earnings back to game developers and publishers

Source: http://www.gamingbits.com

Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1 available on Xbox LIVE and PSN today

Posted by The Gamer in Game News on March 19, 2009 | no responses

0f602 cod wow mappack1 Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1 available on Xbox LIVE and PSN today

The first map pack for Call of Duty: World at War will be available today. It’s currently available for the Xbox 360 (see here), and will be available later today for the PLAYSTATION 3. The Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1 will cost you $10 (or 800 Microsoft Points).

Details from the Xbox 360 Marketplace:
“The Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1 expands the addictive COD multiplayer experience with four new maps. Players fight through the burning streets of Berlin in Nightfire and take up battle positions in fortified Japanese bunkers in “Knee Deep.” Station offers a bombed out underground train station, and the Nazi Zombies return in Verrückt (Zombie Asylum) featuring more weapons, new Perks-a-Cola machines and electroshock defenses.”

See a gameplay video from the Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1 below, from the PlayStation Blog.

Some of the developers from Treyarch will be on the PlayStation Network this weekend, which happens to be a double XP weekend too. From Treyarch:

“To kick off the launch of Map Pack 1, were offering up a full week of double XP, starting today at 10am (PT) and ending Wednesday, March 25 at 10am (PT). Some of the team will also be playing online specifically from 1-5pm (PT) on Sunday, March 22, although youll also be able to catch us throughout the weekend, so be sure to add our PSN IDs:

JD_2020

CODWWLeadOnlEng

CODWWQA

CODWWMPEngineer

CODWWScripter2

CODWWLeadSoftEng

CODWWQATestLead

CODWWQA2

UPDATE:
Here are some more details from Activision’s press release, with details on the PC release:

“The map pack is available on Xbox LIVE(R) Marketplace for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft for 800 Microsoft Points and on the PlayStation(R)Store for the PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system for $9.99. The Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1 will be made available for Windows(R) PC at a future date to be announced.

Nightfire

Fire-bombed Berlin provides the backdrop for “Nightfire,” an intense battlefield for mid to large-scale team games. Shelled buildings and ruins of the city provide coverage among the war-ravaged streets, and the flames of the burning city expose the enemy running through the night. Fight for your life knowing that this fiery urban battlefield may soon be your grave.

Station

“Station” offers a bombed out underground train station littered with destroyed subway cars, hidden passageways, loading platforms and second story overlooks to use to your advantage against any number of enemies. Ideal for dominating Capture the Flag and other team games, this map provides you with a wide range of combat options from close range choke points to hidden sniper spots.

Knee Deep

“Knee Deep” takes place on the island of Peleliu in a once tranquil village turned chaotic Japanese command center. You and your squad will fight through the jungle, wading knee-deep in streams, in order to retrieve valuable intel and take battle positions in fortified Japanese bunkers all to secure an important communication center. The harsh jungles of “Knee Deep” are perfect for tactical team games and all-out assaults on multiple enemy positions.

Verruckt (Zombie Asylum)

The fan favorite 4-player co-op Nazi Zombies Bonus Mode returns with “Verruckt,” a terrifying Zombie asylum located in the outskirts of Berlin. Players are split into pairs, in the challenge to find each other for survival. Featuring more weapons, and perks via the addition of Perks-a-Cola machines, electroshock defenses and the endless Nazi Zombie horde, “Verruckt” will push you to the edge of your sanity.”

Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1 available on Xbox LIVE and PSN today