Gaming - Page 1202

In the January 2012 issue of UK magazine PSM3, they suggest that the fourth major instalment in the PlayStation-exclusive God Of War series is coming at the end of this year and will feature online co-op play.

Co-op has been popular lately, with Resistance 3, Dead Island, Gears of War 3 and Portal 2 all sporting the amazing feature. Not that it's new, but it seemed to disappear when next-gen consoles and their seemingly watered-down games started coming out.

GoW IV's development news is nothing new, but the co-op nugget is. GoW IV will see players breaking out of Hades, with the two protagonists will be a dearly-departed Kratos and his equally undead brother, Deimos. I hope to see some more on this soon.

This is one game I hope doesn't get affected by consolitis, where Gearbox have shared some information about the next Borderlands title. It has already been reported that the four playable characters would be either replaced, or drastically altered, but one of them was already teased: a bearded dwarf named "Salvador" is a "Gunzerker" who can dual-wield any two weapons, and acts like Brick the Berserker from the original Borderlands.

Back in August, two of his abilities were teased. The first one increases the fire rate of any gun the longer the trigger is held, while the second boosts accuracy when dual-wielding same class weapons or doubles damage with mixed class weapons.

But now, we have some backstory to this character, with Gearbox saying:

We all know the next Grand Theft Auto outing is going to be huge, but when EEDAR's Jesse Divnich spoke to IndustryGamers as part of his feature on the top five predictions for 2012 (other than the world ending), he noted that GTA V will generate the most sales next year. and not the next Call of Duty game.

He's been quoted:

An update to the popular Infinity Blade 2 is coming soon, with lead designer Donald Mustard teasing that the update includes "Clash Mobs" which will let players all over the world play Infinity Blade 2 and fight enemies together in real-time.

Mustard says:

Sony have released their next-generation portable, PlayStation Vita, in Japan over the weekend. This is something Sony are really hoping scrapes back some of their lost market share, not to just Nintendo, but mainly to Apple and Google with their smartphones and tablets getting into the mobile gaming market.

PlayStation Vita will launch in the U.S. and Europe next February, but over the weekend saw thousands of PS Vita future-owners lining up to grab one at launch on Saturday. Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House said that pre-orders of Vita in Japan had sold out as customers lined up at retailers to make reservations.

PS Vita sports a 5-inch OLED touchscreen with a resolution of 960x544, dual analog sticks, front and rear touchpads, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and optional 3G. Horsepower-wise, the Vita includes a quad-core version of the same SGX543 graphics processor that is found in Apple's A5 chip.

My good friend Chris posted this on my wall today, and while the title "Most Epic Battlefield 3 kill EVER" caught my eye... I thought it would be some trick shot, or long headshot. But no. I'm pretty sure Chuck Norris or Bruce Willis have gotten onto Battlefield 3 and played out the most epic kill you've ever seen.

It starts off with Rendezook/Stun Gravy in a SU-35BM FLANKER-E fighter jet, where he blows up a helicopter, he then takes vertical flight at a 90-degree angle into the air, ejects out of his plane... looks down at another fighter jet flying up on his six, and fires a damn rocket launcher at the incoming plane. The rocket flies directly into the plane killing the pilot and scoring him some sweet, sweet points in one of the best things I've seen in the game yet.

This deserves your 30 seconds, for sure. Multiple watches from me already!

Duke Nukem Forever is still cranking along, and a second DLC pack is now out called "The Doctor Who Cloned Me". It's available through Steam for $9.99 US and includes a bunch of new material including four new multiplayer maps, a full new single player campaign which includes brand new weapons, all-new enemy types and bosses, more Achievements, and brand new interactive items within the DNF world.

A detailed run down of what is included is below (or in the full story):

Sky-High: The alien-infested corporate offices of Pooty, Inc. near the center of Las Vegas. This map includes three indoor floors taken over by the aliens and two rooftops, jump pads, stairwells, and building-to-building combat.

Valve have always been masters of secrets, as we all know Gabe has been playing Half-Life 3 for a few years now and just wants to master it completely in every way possible before releasing it. Until, that is, the Spike Video Game Awards over the weekend.

The VGA's saw quite the number of teases, and announcements and this nugget of info is no different. Steam's message boards have been going absolutely crazy trying to figure out if Valve actually teased the upcoming game, with theories heavily relying on a half-speed YouTube video of Portal 2's AI "Wheatley" giving a speech.

The center of attention lies on a line of text at the top of the video, which is written in Greek. The translation for this text, according to the Steam message boards, is "OBSERVATION SATELLITE "LANTHANUM."

The development team responsible for the amazing Uncharted series of games on the PlayStation 3, have some good news for the world. Shortly after Uncharted 2: Among Thieves came out, Naughty Dog split its focus into two separate projects.

One team handled the sequel to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception, while the other tem handled a new IP, "The Last of Us" and have been working on this new title for the last two years. The Two uf Us is a PS3-exclusive game, about an apocalyptic Earth, in which you'll find abandoned cities reclaimed by nature. The population has been decimated by a modern plague, There are survivors killing each other for food, weapons, or whatever they can get their hands on.

Joel, a brutal survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together if they hope to survive their journey across the US.

The studio responsible for S.T.A.L.K.E.R have reportedly closed down, with Ukrainian developer GSC Game World closing their doors. The company was founded back in 1995, and have had quite the run of success with S.T.A.L.K.E.R., their first-person shooter game.

There were multiple games in the series, Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was being developed and was looking to have a release next year.1C Ukraine's Sergey Galenkin blogged about the closure, with 1C being one of the publishers of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The blog states the shut down has been confirmed, with Galenkin attributing this to a combination of things including a failed publishing deal for a console version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and the difficulties in self-publishing a PC game in Eastern Europe.

It's a sad, sad day and I'm truly disappointed that GSC Game World have gone. What next?

OK, let me collect myself here. Bioware, check. Frostbite 2-powered, check. Command & Conquer, check. PC-only, check. That's all I need to say, enjoy and goodbye. But really, At the VGA 2011 awards, it was announced that Bioware are making an RTS, they have an RTS studio under their label.

Announced, was Command & Conquer Generals 2, which will be powered by the same engine that drives Battlefield 3, Frostbite 2. It will be PC-only, but excites me more than I can express through my keyboard with Dr Ray saying:

Bethesda have been very quick on patching their dragon-slaying, you-can-do-everything RPG, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. They've released Patch 1.3 which brings general stability improvements, optimized performance for Intel's Core 2 Duo processors and resolves the following problems:

Fixed Radiant Story incorrectly filling certain roles

Fixed magic resistances not calculating properly

I could sum this news up in just four letters: ROFL. But, I'll explain what is going on here... the Red Cross are investigating whether 600 million gamers are violating the Hague and Geneva conventions when they kill and blow stuff up for fun.

Delegates at the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Red Crescent raised their concerts over the potential "International Humanitarian Law" violations, which can constitute war crimes - during a workshop in Geneva.

The Red Cross wrote in its daily bulletin:

PC fans may miss out on Back to Karkand this week to PS3 gamers, but they gain a 2GB patch that fixes and balances so much of the game. The changelog includes the tactical lights which have been way OP (over-powered) and have now (with the patch) been scaled down at a medium distance.

The patch also includes most of the content for the upcoming Back to Karkand DLC, as well as dozens of other tweaks. The IRNV scope is now limited to close range, certain weapons are properly suppressed and conceal your minimap location, stealth air vehicles are less effective, firing a weapon on full auto is now less accurate, miniguns have been made weaker against jets and helicopters, and 12g FRAG ammo is now less effective and not so OP with auto and semi-auto shotguns.

[edited] - actually 3.9GB. Thank you Blair McClelland ‎for pointing this out on the Facebook feed. Also, restart Origin for the update to intialize!

Good news PlayStation 3 Battlefield 3 gamers! Back to Karkand launches tomorrow for the PS3, a week ahead of when PC and Xbox 360 games will get the B2K love. Back to Karkand features four old-school Battlefield maps reimagined using the Frostbite 2 engine.

It also includes three new vehicles (the VSTOL fighter jet, Desert Buggy, and an APC), ten new weapons that you can bring back to the base game, and a new layer of persistence with DICE's all-new "Assignments" make this a must-have for any Battlefield fan. DICE have also included some of the best maps such as Wake Island, Sharqi Peninsula, Gulf of Oman, and Strike at Karkand.

Not only that, but DICE have also upped the destruction, where "huge portions of these maps can be razed to the ground", while the buildings may go down, this excites me and makes me go up. DICE have given some more details on the "Assignments" inclusion in B2K:

We knew it was coming, but wow has the time gone by fast. Tomorrow is the day Microsoft's new Metro-powered UI theme for the Xbox 360 goes live. Kinect is still a central part of the update, where users can now speak naturally to the Xbox, this will change the way a family or household uses the Xbox, instead of a clunky controller to navigate menus and such, a simple voice command is all that's required.

Let's say you want to run a search, if you're Kinect-powered, you could just say "Xbox: Bing, 'Fast and the Furious'", the results will show all of the content that matches the searched criteria across games, music, video and other categories.

The new Metro styling is instantly recognizable to anyone who has played with or owns a Windows Phone. This format will also be taken across to Windows 8. Microsoft are also trying to make the Xbox a set-top box, and is set to have a fair amount of live TV and movies on offer with companies such as Verizon FiOS, YouTube, HBO GO and Xfinity On Demand, TMZ, UFC, Wal-Mart's Vudu service and others lending a hand.

Fan of Minecraft? Fan of Super Mario? Get ready for your worlds to collide. Three guys have spent over 500 hours recreating the first two minutes and twenty four seconds of Super Mario Land. In their quest for insanity, they used more than 18 Minecraft blocks.

The above movie was made by carpenter James Wright, Joe Ciappa and a gamer known as Tempusmori, had the game running through an emulator and then replicating it pixel-for-wool-block-pixel inside a giant Minecraft Game Boy.

The three guys spent approximately four weeks, where each day consisted of six to seven days of hard work inside Minecraft creating the shots, which were then dropped into a video editor and slowed so each frame displayed for one sixth of a second. Crazy, but so, so awesome.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's beta went live last week and its just days later we have our first taste of gameplay footage. CS: GO looks much prettier than the previous Source-powered Counter-Strike. Check out the video of gameplay below:

It doesn't look too bad, but compared to next-gen shooters like Battlefield 3, it just feels so... old. But, for fans of Counter-Strike, they'll look past these things. Below is also a comparison between Counter-Strike: Source and Global Offensive.

I do like the improved buying system, it looks much better than the old CS/CS:S versions. Graphics look much better than CS:S and the original CS [of course], and all of the old-school sounds are back. "Lock and Load", "Fire in the Hole", all of the gun sounds, all make it back.

Someone on the NeoGAF forums have gotten their mits on the South Park edition of Game Informer and have released details on the upcoming South Park-themed RPG. The RPG will be the first game that South Park duo Trey Parker and Matt Stone have directly participated in, where they've written the script and dialogue.

As the protagonist, you will be silent. Parker has always preferred silent protagonists, so his wishes will come true. The character you play has a smartphone which acts as the primary game menu and has a Facebook-like app which shows the number of friends you have and your current standing with the various kid factions. Five classes are said to be included, wizard, paladin, adventurer, rogue, and a fifth unannounced class.

Obsidian will be using the Dungeon Siege III engine and have developed a dynamic lip-syncing tool to accommodate changes in the script. Parker and Stone have given an astonishing 15 years of assets to Obsidian to make the game with. For full details, check out the insane list below:

Sony have release a new system software update, version 4.00 for some. Not all users, but some at this stage. This new version is in preparation of the NGP launch, PlayStation Vita in Japan.

This update will prepare the PS3 to serve as a content management device, allowing users to copy over media such as games, music, photos, and videos between the PS Vita and PS3. It will also allow the backing up of PS Vita save data to your PS3 hardware, and update the system software for your PS Vita using the network features of your PS3.

Other changes include: