All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Last week, Xbox 360 owners got the first look at Fable 3, the newest Peter Molyneux game. Don't feel left out, members of the PlayStation Family -- you've got your own Molyneux game on the way! An old one!

The ESRB has rated the PlayStation version of Magic Carpet for release on PS3 and PSP, meaning it'll join last week's release of Populous: The Beginning as PSOne Classics at some point in the future. Why settle for being a king when, for the low price of $5.99, you could be a wizard on a flying carpet!

If that doesn't grab you, you'll also be able to pick up Sorcerer's Maze at some point. While not a Molyneux game (it's a low-budget Arkanoid-style game published by XS Games) it is also about a sorcerer (not sure about the "maze" part). And how can you refuse that box art, even in a digital version with no box?

We feel a disturbance in the force.

While it's true that the high-rolling blogging lifestyle has left us out-of-touch with the needs of the unwashed masses, even the fat cats at Joystiq understand that everyone loves a deal (if only to free up some much needed capital for, let's say, a chronically underfunded game publishing division).

To help lighten the burden on your wallets, Capcom is offering the following: 50% off a single PSN game every week for five weeks, beginning with Marvel vs. Capcom 2. In total you could scoop up all five games for just under $30 and, since this is a 50% off sale, that also means you'll have saved just under $30. That's math. We've pasted the full list below for you to mull over:

February 18, 2010 - Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for $7.49
February 25, 2010 - Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix for $7.49
March 4, 2010 - Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix for $4.99
March 11, 2010 - Age of Booty for $4.99
March 18, 2010 - 1942: Joint Strike for $4.99

Nintendo has filed for a trademark on the phrase "Eternal Darkness," the title of the GameCube's Silicon Knights-developed psychological horror game. It tricked us by doing things like pretending to reset the console or lowering a fake volume indicator on the TV screen, due to a low in-game "sanity" meter. Apparently the trademark lapsed recently, and while we'd love to tell you that this means someone is working on a brand new version of Eternal Darkness for the Wii, it likely just means that Nintendo is covering its trademarked bases.

Besides, if you just want a Wii game that will drive you nuts, try some SPOGS Racing. That game is so bad it's crazy.

Firaxis reveals the next title in the celebrated strategy series.

The company says that had Microsoft's new tech been around three years ago, it'd have considered it for Epic Mickey.

Can’t wait to get your high school ring, but you have no idea what to get on it? Don’t play a sport or participate in an after-school activity? No worries…Jostens has you covered! Man, I wish they had this option back when I was in high school. I’m all about the geek pride! [...]

Okay, avid World of Warcraft players. We take back all the mean things we said about your habit of purchasing in-game vanity pets with real-world money, even though the in-game pets do nothing while the real-world money does everything. See, we didn't know that you were actually just donating money to charities in a sort of roundabout fashion. You're like money launderers, but with Tier 9 armor sets.

Blizzard recently donated half of the proceeds from players' purchases of a special pet, the "Pandaren Monk," to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, for a grand total of $1.1 million. The O.C. Register reports that Blizzard made a few more wishes come true at its HQ during the check-signing event -- WoW art director Sam "Samwise" Didier sketched kids' characters for them, and even hooked up 17-year-old Jordan Cofinco with a shiny new level 80 character. In short, Blizzard -- and anyone walking around WoW with a tiny Kung Fu Panda following close behind -- just gained some major karma points.

We thought we'd reached a point in the year where Uncharted 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 would stop being nominated for awards; apparently, we were wrong. The Game Audio Network Guild adorned both games with nine nominations in its 8th annual Audio Awards. Winners will be announced and awards will be distributed on March 12 in San Francisco, alongside the Game Developers Conference.

Check out the full list of nominees after the jump. They seem pretty fair, though House of the Dead: Overkill's absence from the "Best Dialogue" category almost ensures that we'll be boycotting the event.

We’ve featured these figurines before, but they’re finally dropping in Japan tomorrow. No word on whether these suckers will see release in the states, but Capcom has hinted that they’ll do their best to bring them here if we’re interested.

Mario Kart isn’t the only kart racer in the video game industry. There’s no doubt that the huge success the franchise has seen helped pave the way for multiple knock-offs and unique interpretations. Kart racing video games have become a pretty profitable area of the market, and developers keep trying their hand at [...]

The Last Remnant represented a major experiment for Square Enix. Not only was it one of the company's first Xbox 360 games, it utilized the Unreal Engine, a first for the Japanese publisher. Unfortunately, the experiment wasn't quite successful, with critics calling it "a technical mess." Thankfully, the company isn't simply ignoring its mistakes, with Square Enix's new chief technology officer explaining how the misuse of the Unreal Engine led to such disappointing results. "One of the traps with middleware (like Unreal) is that some game teams believe that, because they got this middleware, maybe they need less programmers on their team, or maybe they don't need that many skilled programmers," Julien Merceron told Gamasutra.

By relying too much on middleware, teams face precarious situations when issues arise that can't be solved internally. "You don't have anyone that is able to solve the problem on your team," Merceron explained. In the case of The Last Remnant, the "problem" happened to be a wildly inconsistent framerate.

Merceron isn't advising against using middleware, noting "it won't be possible anymore to work without middleware because of time, talent, and cost reasons." Hopefully, under the new guidance of Merceron, Square Enix won't repeat the same mistakes it made with The Last Remnant.

The Terrans destroy the Zerg despite a hidden expansion at the super minerals in this devastating demonstration of Siege Tanks vs Zerg Roaches.

Guilty pleasure is taken to the extreme as Crackdown 2 promises to deliver a fun core experience full of mayhem.

Some familiar faces show up to give you a helping hand in The Passing downloadable content.

The Terran team tries desperately to stay alive against the scourge of the Protoss and Terran alliance.

The PC Beta gives seasoned players and newbies the chance to become acclimated with the StarCraft gameplay.

Terran take on an overwhelming Zerg swarm in this brutal gameplay from the StarCraft II beta.

click to enable hardware embiggenation
Even if you don't know your tessellation from your displacement mapping, there's no denying that these freshly delivered screenshots of THQ and 4a Games' upcoming FPS Metro 2033 look stunning, thanks to the game's support for "a number of advanced DX11 features with the latest generation of DX11 graphics cards." These effects include the aforementioned tessellation, which produces rich detail from simple 3D surfaces, and some mighty-impressive depth of field camera focus effects.

NVIDIA is using Metro 2033 as an example of what's possible with its latest DX11-compliant GPUs, saying that "The 4A Engine is one of the most advanced game engines we've ever worked with, and with DX11 enabled, Metro 2033 is undoubtedly one of the best looking PC games of 2010." We agree -- it is very pretty in action, and the PC version we've seen wasn't yet employing any DX11 voodoo. Also, remember: In Soviet Russia, hardware tessellates you!

A portion of the Blog Critics’ Review: Cook Wars has decent value and high cooking task variety, but a low recipe cache and diminished realism for authentic minded gamers. Movement physics focus on mechanics and timing rather than more natural motions. Several high temperature situations and hand placement would result in real life injuries so don’t [...]

A portion of the GDN Review: Ultimately, The Sky Crawlers is a competent mission-driven flight game and does the core of the experience well. It retails for around $30, significantly less than most Wii retail titles, but this is partially because The Sky Crawlers is a very short game. Each of the seventeen main stages (there [...]

Disney Interactive will announce a sequel to its million-plus-selling DS game on Thursday.

Murumasa: The Demon Blade - ERS Trailer Shiren 4 - Commercial, Pokemon Ranger: Tracks of Light - Multiplayer Trailer, One Piece Unlimited Cruise Episode 1 - ERS Trailer, Arc Rise Fantasia - ERS Trailer, Muramasa: The Demon Blade - ERS Trailer, Pokemon Ranger: Tracks of Light - Commercials, One Piece Unlimited Cruise Episode 1 - ERS [...]

A portion of Honest Gamers’ Review: 8 out of 10 Keep pressing on and what you’ll ultimately find is a charming yet somewhat flawed game. If you can get past the dated visuals and boring bosses, you’re left with an entertaining dungeon-crawler that will challenge you for hours on end. In today’s generation, Shiren the Wanderer is [...]

A look inside the soundtrack to C&C 4, the birth of the Kodiak and meet the new motion comic, and more in this ep of Battlecast Primetime.

Nate talks with top NFL talent about their hopes for next year's game.