All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Tour the dried up lakebed infested with Skag-riding Badass Midgets.

Mission system enters testing phase.

Were you looking forward to playing some Black Sabbath songs in Guitar Hero 5 this weekend? Of course you were -- that sounds awesome. Anyway, it's not going to happen. (And, it's certainly not happening for you either, Band Heroes -- whoever you are.)

Before the scheduled Thursday release of three tracks from Black Sabbath's Master of Reality album, Activision announced on its Guitar Hero Facebook page that the DLC wouldn't make its appointed release date, and added, "We hope to have the content available for download at a later date, so stay tuned!"

We were going to say, maybe the DLC was turned into steel in a great magnetic field, but, unfortunately, Iron Man isn't one of the songs in the pack. (Although, it would appear we just said it anyway.) We're checking in with Activision to find out what happened.

Choose a class of MCV and take it out on the battlefield. In this walkthrough, unpack your crawler and take out a GDI hub in the Pacific.

By way of G4 and IGN comes this handful of Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening videos, found after the break. In the first, meet dwarven legionnaire Sigrun, tasked with returning to the old fortress of Kal'hirol. There's talking Darkspawn, those merry band of adventurers known as the "Legion of the Dead," and even a cameo from our old friend Oghren.

The additional two videos are simply B-roll, but that means gameplay footage. You'll get a look at some of the new characters in action and even some vistas of the new environments. We get it, it's not much, but you've got less than a month until this old-school expansion pack (remember those?) slays its way to retailers.

Now that you've established yourself, tech to tier three and build the big boy toys like Stealth Tanks and more in this Nod walkthrough.

Big changes in EA's big real-time strategy franchise.

WWII aerial combat missions come to life; game created by industry veteran and Air Force Command Pilot JW "Wild Bill" Stealey.

Why pay money to obliterate flesh-eating undead bears when you can do it for free?

English version of space drama in US and Canadian retail stores; IGS to handle U.S. retail distribution.

Once more into the dungeon.

Prepare to wait a little longer for Rocket Racing.

Last week, the Rock Band Store got a few healthy slices of Americana with tracks from Otis Redding and the Brian Setzer Orchestra. This week's offerings are much more foreign -- there's a three-pack from Finnish rock band HIM, a song from Britain's One Night Only, a track from The Police, and a song from Marilyn Manson, whom we all know actually descends from an extinct alien race whose name our human tongues could never hope to pronounce.

Click past the jump for the full list of new additions!

Giants steps are what you take.

Earlier this week, PC Gamer got its hands on a retail copy of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed 2 for PC, only to discover that its digital rights management was a bit ... shall we say, "restrictive?" Aside from the initial online registration procedure, the game allegedly requires a persistent connection to the online game server in order to continue stabbing fools. In practice, this means if you were to lose the connection during play, you'd lose your progress and, if and when the connection was re-established, you'd be kicked backed to the last checkpoint -- not exactly diggable management, right?

Ars Technica followed up with Ubisoft on the DRM issue (that also affects The Settlers 7), which said, "As long as you do not quit the game, the game will continue to try to reconnect for an unlimited time ... once the game is able to reconnect, you will immediately be returned to your game ... AC2 reconnects you at the last checkpoint ... There are many checkpoints so you're back to the point where you got disconnected in no time."

Ubisoft also assured that the required internet connection speed is supposedly minimal. "Our online services platform will require a maximum of 50kbps of available bandwidth, so even with the slowest connection, gameplay won't be affected," an Ubisoft representative told Ars. That said, it seems that gamers lacking an online connection (or, say, those on a plane or in the armed forces, as Ars points out) may be out of luck if they're hoping to play Assassin's Creed 2 on PC.

Though we're pretty eager to explore the back stories of Heavy Rain's quartet of protagonists and even step into the shoes of the Origami Killer, it seems those of us in North America will have to wait an extra week to get started on the prologuing. GameStop, which, among other retailers, is offering a code for the first Heavy Rain Chronicles DLC episode as a pre-order bonus with the game, recently updated the title's listing on its site, stating, "due to a delay by the publisher, this content will not be available for download until Thursday, March 4, 2010."

SCEE confirmed to VG247 that the delay wouldn't affect the DLC's European availability on "day one," so it would appear that the delay is particular to North America. We've contacted Sony America to find out what we can about it -- we just can't wait to find out why Madison is such an exhibitionist.

It looks like PixelJunk Racers is going to join PixelJunk Monsters, PixelJunk Shooter and PixelJunk Eden in the exclusive "PixelJunk Games with Sequels or Expansion Packs Club" -- a hypothetical club whose name can now be changed to the snappier "All PixelJunk Games Club." The ESRB has outed "PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap" for PS3.

While the ratings board doesn't yet offer a content description for the title, we can confidently conjecture that 2nd Lap changes Racers into a board game about managing a pretzel store includes more tracks for the four existing modes, possibly a new type of race and a few new features.

When we awarded Uncharted 2 our top spot in 2010, we simply thought we were aligning ourselves with other people with impeccable taste; however, after reading the results from last night's 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards (i.e., the DICE awards) we've discovered that we've also aligned ourselves with the entire video game development community. While we only bestowed a single award on Naughty Dog's latest outing, the Academy dropped ten awards on ol' Nathan Drake and friends, including Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering ... oh, and Game of the Year. (Pictured above: Some of the Naughty Dog team, visibly exhausted from climbing up to the stage ten times.)

While Uncharted 2 was the hands-down "winner" last night, there were 17 other awards handed out (some of which we're sure Uncharted would have won, had it been eligible). Other familiar names on the list (which can be found in its entirety after the break) include: Batman: Arkham Asylum, with three awards; Scribblenauts, with three awards; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, with two awards; and Brütal Legend, with two awards.

Congratulations to all the winners. Oh, and let's just give Naughty Dog all its awards at once from now on; it's tough to make award-winning games without any cartilage in your knees.

If the Xbox-less among you have been jonesing to try Binary Tweed's independent platform-puzzler Clover, you'll get your chance to play a PC port of the game in the coming weeks. A press release from the studio has revealed the game will be released "via a range of download services" on March 3. No price point for the game was specified, though the 360 version of the game sells for 400, so we're guessing it'll be within spitting distance of five bucks -- just to be safe, we've contacted the developer to find out.

As we've mentioned before, the PC version of the game has seen significant improvements over its Indie Games iteration, including tighter controls, English, French and Spanish dialogue tracks, an expanded soundtrack, and in-game text that doesn't make you want to claw out your own eyes. Sounds like this one's the version to get!

Update: The game's developer just sent over the game's various international prices -- we're looking at a $9.99 price tag, while other territories will have to shell out £5.99 and €6.99.

USD 9.99

Square Enix, apparently, is all about the cosplay. Just today, the publisher announced that it'll be rewarding the first 50 people dressed in "Final Fantasy costumes" who arrive at the March 9 launch event for Final Fantasy XIII with a free copy of the game's soundtrack. Oh, and also, Square Enix producer Yoshinori Kitase and art director Isamu Kamikokuryo will be there, signing whatever you want.

The release further entices attendees with "high-profile DJ and TV presenter Alex Zane," who'll no doubt be spitting hot fire into a mic all evening. The event kicks off at 5:30PM at the Oxford Street HMV in London and runs until the sun comes up -- or 7:30PM, whichever comes first.

[smilingsquid] Vicious Cycle today announced that the second iteration of its Vicious Engine is getting set to ... viciously tear apart the innards of the Wii, PlayStation 2 and PSP. Wait, that doesn't sound very nice at all! What we mean to say is that the engine that brought you Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond for XBLA is heading to ... okay, that's not helping too much either. Anyway, for the past year, Vicious Engine 2 has been available for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but today's news announces the game creation tools' ubiquity across pretty much everything else.

Vicious Cycle will be next showing off the engine for the aforementioned consoles at GDC next month, where game industry folks and journalists will get a chance to see it in action. With any luck, they won't be deterred by the "Vicious Cycle" signs surrounding the booth.

In order to try and pull in visitors to the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, organizers are going all out. They'll have Glenn Beck as a keynote speaker, the NRA will be on hand, and there will be a video game lounge equipped with Xboxes and Wiis. Why the games? The conference is aiming to bring in the under-30 crowd, and to do that, organizer Kevin McCullough has created something called the XPAC Lounge, an area outside the Conference where attendees will be able to play Xbox, snack on junk food, and attend a "late night rap/jam session" with cool conservative cats like Mike Huckabee and John McCain's blogging daughter.

Kevin McCullough's name sound familiar? He's the same conservative commentator who had to apologize to gamers after claiming the first Mass Effect game was "pushing our next generation of young men through the gates of hell." But apparently he's gotten over any issues he's had with interactive entertainment -- he now says that games like Guitar Hero and Call of Duty can help the conservative conference give this generation "a pat on the back and the encouragement of, 'We believe in you.'" All well and good; Just watch out for Sean Hannity. We hear he's a beast at Halo Wars.

[Via G4]

Capcom has announced that MotoGP 09/10 will hit the the American retail track on March 16 and Europe on March 19. The game, developed by new team Monumental Games, brings with it a career mode with management features, an arcade mode, online racing and a spectator mode. Better still, Capcom has already promised to release free DLC for the title shortly after release. The DLC is set to feature "all the 2010 season content, including all new tracks, team updates, and new bike classes." A demo for the title is also planned shortly before release

Furthermore, Capcom has announced that the online mode will accommodate 20 players, which it claims is a first for console racing games. Check out a new trailer for the game above.

Direct link here Made my crap my pants back when the game came out, and it’d make me do the same today. Hope your underwear is still clean!

Believe it or not, North American DSiWare users have had the chance to download Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon for four months now. Even worse, the rest of the world hasn’t had a chance to download it. The good news is, an OFLC rating has finally popped up for the title. Looks [...]

Whoa, what happened to House of the Dead: Overkill? It was up a lot higher last time we saw. I can’t remember seeing such a big drop for the game. Is this going to be the end of the longtail that this one has demonstrated?

I don’t know why, but the brains behind the AIAS decide to get comedian Jay Mohr to do the hosting job every year. I don’t even know if the guy plays games, and it seems like he gets less and less interested every year. Also, he gets a little more vulgar with each [...]