How bout that PlayStation 2, eh. The console may be eight years old, but that doesn’t mean developers are going to stop makinggood-looking RPGsfor it anytime soon. Such is the case withAr tonelico II: The Girls’ Song of Creation that Echoes to the World, which is being brought to North America this December by publisher NIS America — the folks who brought (andkeep bringing) usDisgaea— hopefully sans the unnecessarily long subtitle....
I interrupt your scheduled weekly program with a new and improved version! I’ve decided to add a new element toFriday Comic Intermission. Seeing as howNierodecided to reviveFriday Robot Intermissionand I won’t be focusing on just comics, the name change is more than appropriate. So what’s this new element that I’ve added? Every other week in between web comics, I will be covering regularJoeswho just like to draw random and awesome video game related art....
German musician Mona Mur has been confirmed as the soundtrack composer for the upcomingKane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. Mur, an “underground” artist who’s garnered cult status in certain scenes, has worked on games before — she provided select music for Replay Studios’Velvet Assassin. She calls the composition process “a long intense trip and alchemistic process,” which sounds like pretentious chat for something or other only Mur really understands. “The first gameplay video I saw was a sensational setting of phantasmagorical nightmarish Shanghai,” she says, “dark and surreal in a way....
Global Agendais one of those games that have tried to make themselves hard to classify by straddling genres and trying to come up with its own unique identity. Developer Hi-Rez Studios calls its game an “action-based shooter MMO” and I suppose that’s as good enough a term as any to describe it. At its core, however,Global Agendais a straight third-person multiplayer shooting game. It has elements of the MMO genre, certainly, not to mention a rather significant strategy section, but the heart of the game is in some good old fashioned gunslinging....
Hot off the heels of the returning widescreen glitch inBioShock 2, it appears that the multiplayer also has a rather aggravating problem. Players are complaining that the game is freezing for them, most notably during the post-game recap screen and the apartment hub section. This has actually happened to me before on the Xbox 360 version, except I encountered the freezeduringa match. A match, I hasten to add, that I was doing really well in....
TheBit.Tripseries came to a close on Friday with the release ofBit.Trip FLUXin Europe. I’m sad to see to the series come to an end, but I’m also excited to see whatGaijin Games and their subsidiary Robotubegames will come up with next. Maybe this collection ofBit.Tripconcept art will give us some clues as to what their next project could be, like the very different version ofBit.Trip FATEseen above. It looks like in the original version of the game, it’s central gameplay hook, “the Fate line”, is totally missing....
Yesterday, Blizzard banned over 350,000StarCraftandDiablo IIaccounts from Battle.Net, thereby bringing the total amount of users of the service down to around three billion. The bans were the result of Blizzard officially updating their ban policy in regards to players found using third-party hacks. These aren’t to be confused with second-party hacks, which are totally acceptable on Battle.Net. The bans aren’t permanent by any means. In a statement about the update (provided after the break), Blizzard noted that the accounts would be free and clear for more action after 30 days....
Gearbox has finally revealed the game we’ve all expected for quite some time —Borderlands 2! Theofficial site went live today, with news that it will launch sometime after April 2012 and that fans will get a look at the game at PAX Prime. Returning to Pandora,Borderlands 2will offer new characters, skills, environments, enemies, weapons and equipment. As always, Game Informer has seized the exclusive rights to coverage, and will be revealing all-new character classes and other details on thisupcoming page....
After massive success on the Xbox 360 withLost PlanetandDead Rising, it seems the house of Ryu is all set to pack up its wagons and roll out to plunder the western territories. One of the first Japanese companies to seriously embrace Microsoft’s machine, Capcom obviously hasn’t missed the massive profit potential in pandering to the western world, and so has announced large-scale plans to actively pursue overseas partnerships and acquisitions in order to secure more of a foothold in the international market....
In another example of shocking newsrelated to studies, a recent gaming survey on the homophobia that permeates the video game landscape says that a majority of online players use the words “that’s so gay” or another form of “gay bashing” in their time spent shooting people in the face. FromNext-Gen: 88% of respondents said they had heard the phrase “that’s so gay” while 84% said they had heard ‘gay’ used in a derogatory fashion....
Valve is getting into the spirit of Halloween this weekas they have somespecial spooky themedTeam Fortress 2stuff to unleash upon the masses lasting until November 2. The update will bring in five new achievements that will unlock scary paper bag masks, a pumpkin bomb and corpses will transform into candy … I guess. The Halloween update also sees a ghost by the name of Zepheniah Mann haunting players on the Harvest map....
Look, I’m a fan of NBC’s action-comedyChuck, but there’s no doubt that the producer of the show are the kings of product placement. I couldn’t count on both hands the number of times one of the characters was eating (and then commenting on) a tasty Subway sandwich. Hey, this is our fault — we all fast forward through commercials or leave the room, right? So I guess this is the next step: build an entire episode (or in this case, a “webisode”) around a product, in this instance,Halo: Reach....
Games likeClive Barker’s Jerichoreally frustrate me. While I’m a highly enthusiastic gamer, and like to look for potential positives in a new title until I’m given reason to think otherwise, when writing about an unreleased game I have to hold back and maintain a degree of journalistic scepticism until the final product is in my hands. Some games hold so much pre-release potential though, that they blow my reservations clean out of the water and play havok with my sense of reservation....
