All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

All of the radio locations in Portal Version 2, courtesy turinpt2.

#screengrab Battle.net gets meme-y when landing on an invalid page, a common theme at Blizzard— amusing if you Know Your Meme. As seen on Reddit. More »

This week's Virtual Console release is Sega's Zaxxon for the VC Arcade, an isometric viewpoint shmup from the early '80s. There's nothing flashy or particularly complex about Zaxxon, other than the difficulty of quickly ascertaining your altitude and relative safety in your immediate surroundings. Basically, you crash into stuff or get shot by stuff or run out of gas and then crash into stuff, as you can see in the latest episode of VC in Brief above. It's a tough life out there in space, gunning down countless unmarked ships, missile silos and cannons -- believe.

• Zaxxon (Arcade, 1 player, 800 Wii Points)

Every week, we like to check out what's new on the Virtual Console. We offer VC in Brief as a sort of taste to help you decide whether or not you would want the game in question. We also toss in our own two cents because we're pushy jerks like that.

Check out "Jesus of Suburbia" and "Hitchin' a Ride."

Check out the video here (complete with movie location spoilers!)

#omg Six years, three arrests and three rehab stints after Lindsay Lohan starred in Mean Girls, its video game adaptation is being released. Without LiLo on the box. This, folks, is what the suits call "leveraging a hot property." More »

You can wear an Axe deodorant logo shirt in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Now, thanks to retailer UNIQLO, you can wear a Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker shirt in real life. Whether or not you wear Axe is your call. On April 26, UNIQLO will roll out a line of Peace Walker shirts featuring various logos and imagery from the series, Militaires Sans Frontieres patches, Yoji Shinkawa artwork ... and two suit-wearing gentlemen with cardboard boxes on their heads.

That last one is, appropriately, a multiplayer riff on one of the designs from UNIQLO's Metal Gear Solid 4 line. If you'd like to tell Hideo Kojima how clever that is, CVG reports that he and Shinkawa will be at the London "flagship" UNIQLO on June 19 signing autographs.

One character is Link and the other is Zelda. We’ve all known this for years and years, but there are still people that have no idea what the difference is. They played the original Legend of Zelda back in the day, and they keep calling the main character Zelda. No, you never [...]

Get your Freek on.

#wii You may already have a special Netflix disc that will let you stream movies over the internet to your Wii. You may not. As of today, Nintendo says, all systems are go for Netflix video streaming in glorious Wii definition. More »

Hey everyone, Happy Monday! Mick Perona here again with LittleBigPlanet’s “This Week in DLC Goodness” post! Here’s a look at what we’ve got coming this week on the PlayStation Store for LittleBigPlanet PSP!

Coming this Thursday:

Temples Costumes for LBP PSP (FREE) – Get these free costumes from the Temples Theme Pack!

Temples Theme Pack for LBP PSP ($2.99) – A new set of costumes and CREATE materials to create your own Temples levels! The Temples Theme Pack includes 6 Costume items, 11 CREATE Materials, 15 Stickers, 1 Music kit, and 1 Background.

Download the Temples Theme Pack Thursday.

Note: Some of you may have received an email this past weekend regarding a “LittleBigPlanet beta.” This email was sent out in error, and references the old, already-existing LBP beta. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

With everyone focused on the 2D return of a certain cerulean hedgehog, I'd like to point out that another nocturnal hero in blue is making a comeback: Sparkster, the armor-clad, jetpack-wearing opossum star of Rocket Knight. Konami has brought in UK developer Climax to resurrect the series, which hails from the 16-bit era and included two games: Rocket Knight Adventures and Sparkster.

Having played through the first couple of levels from this XBLA, PSN and Steam release, I can say that not a whole lot has changed from Sparkster's adventures of yore -- and that's a compliment. There must be something inherently difficult about capturing the feel of a 2D game using entirely polygons, since the number of remakes that have gotten it right far outnumber the successes. But, like Bionic Commando: Rearmed and even Street Fighter IV, this snappy action platformer should feel like revisiting a childhood home for retro junkies.

As enlightened parents of the 10s, we make an attempt to expose our many children to violence at every opportunity as part of a revolutionary new parenting style we call "Not Paying Very Close Attention." Not all parents are as liberated as us though, so it's nice to know that their children too can enjoy this week's big release Splinter Cell: Conviction with IGN's Splinter Cell Activity Book.

We're sure your mild-mannered children will just adore the "Night Vision Crossword Puzzle" and "SpyLibs" -- just warn them not to get so absorbed in them that they accidentally bump into our kids. It's ... it's hard for us to predict how they'll react.

We thought it prudent to take a break from the WarioWare D.I.Y. highlighting of the last few weeks even though there's a new video in the ongoing series this week, with Alex Neuse from Gaijiin Games. See, this week some of the developers from Capcom show off a great deal of Monster Hunter Tri, documenting some of the weaponry, multiplayer features and, of course, the monsters in the series' latest. It's an enlightening few minutes of footage, so check it out above.

When you're done, head past the break for the full list of this week's Nintendo Channel content.

We hope that Dookie, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown are your favorite Green Day albums, because that's all you're getting in Green Day: Rock Band. Speaking to Plastic Axe, Rock Band project lead Chris Foster revealed that Green Day won't receive any DLC beyond the 21st Century Breakdown tracks that are already available on the Rock Band store. According to Foster, Harmonix has crafted "sculpted experiences for every single song" complete with specific animations. Unlike the dreamscapes of The Beatles: Rock Band, the work that's been done on other tracks can't simply be reconfigured for Green Day.

As such, Foster said that the team decided instead to focus on rounding out 21st Century Breakdown with the already available tracks, which will feature their own motion capture, assets and bonuses that fully tie into the game. Maybe not the best news, but it's not like the band sings about the boulevard of fulfilled dreams, does it?

[Via 1UP]

Suffice it to say that there is far too much talk about Justin Bieber this week. A week ago, none of us knew who he was. This week? Fascinated. There's also plenty of talk about video games, including the announcement of Respawn Entertainment, the new outfit founded by ex Infinity Ward heads, Jason West and Vince Zampella. Also, there's some serious discussion about turning the Xbox 360 Fancast into a zany morning radio show. You should download it.

[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3).
[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in Zune Marketplace (MP3).
[RSS MP3] Add the Xbox 360 Fanboy Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

Hosts: Richard Mitchell (SenseiRAM, @senseiram), Alexander Sliwinski (Sli Xander, @xandersliwinski), Xav de Matos (Snypz, @xav) and Dave Hinkle (KnifefightYaDad, @davehinkle)

Music: Intro/Outro: "Electromooq" by Uma Floresta. Break: "Balloons" by Foals.

For fans: Xbox 360 Fancast Facebook group

#screens These seven new screenshots from Konami's Ninety-Nine Nights are prime evidence that the words 'pretty' and 'pink' don't always go hand-in-hand. More »

#korea Wracked by sensational news reports that have made the nation a caricature for games addiction, South Korea is imposing throttling and even six-hour blackouts on 19 MMOs comprising 79 percent of the local market. More »

Konami is no stranger to the stranger side of wrestling games. After all, it was the company that brought us the all-girl Rumble Roses. Now it has picked up publishing rights to Lucha Libre: AAA Heroes of the Ring, which delves into the wild world of the Mexican luchadores and their masked in-ring antics.

Playing an early build of the game at last week's Konami Gamers Night, I couldn't help but notice that, underneath all of the focus being placed on the type of wrestling going on, the game itself already feels like a competent wrestling title. I had a chance to enter the ring one-on-one against another human opponent and what followed was a well-paced match, albeit not the most exciting to look at -- but only because we were both just learning the ropes.

Something like setting up an instant-streaming service on your gaming console may sound like a somewhat laborious task, but, in all reality, it's pretty darn simple stuff. Oh, you want us to prove it to you? Well, check the video above, which coincidentally shows you how to set up Netflix on your Wii.

In its fashionably late arrival to the Wii, Netflix doesn't skip a beat in the features department. You'll find almost all of the same functionality you've come to expect from streaming Wii on other consoles and even through the Netflix site itself -- just, you know, without all of the high-defs.

Professor Layton developer set to show new game later this week.

Get the hell out of hell.

Oops! Prank Party may sound like a belated April Fools' joke but, tragically, it most certainly is not. Because the Wii needs another minigame collection, Hudson answers the call this June with Oops!. This cornucopia of cheap to produce content consists of 100 "brain-teasing, puzzle-solving, reflex-testing" challenges.

Failure in the game results in your individually designed avatar putting on "embarrassing costumes" or submitting to "pranks." The "light-hearted and hilarious" costumes include a monkey suit and cardboard pants. How charming! We'd actually mock this game, but considering how phenomenal Just Dance sales are, the joke's on us.

Our protagonist awakens, covered in debris from a train wreck he managed to narrowly escape from. How did he get there? The game rewinds to earlier in the adventure, as our hero makes his way on a sordid journey towards the disastrous ride. Along the way, he'll have to dispatch enemies, taking cover, mixing gun play and melee combat.

No, this isn't Uncharted 2. It's Namco Bandai's Dead to Rights Retribution. And unfortunately, it too easily welcomes comparison to Joystiq's Game of the Year 2009 ... and comes up short.

Professor Layton developer set to show new game later this week.

#coverstory The bold new art direction for Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days spills over onto the cover of the game, sporting a nifty spy camera look, complete with pixel imperfections. More »