All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Yesterday Sega revealed a new Sonic the Hedgehog game, Sonic Colors, but didn't mention who'd be handling development duties. According to an update from ArchangelUK at the Sega City Blognik, the development team formerly known as Sega AM8, Sonic Team, will be handling development on the Wii version, with longtime Sonic collaborators Dimps pitching in on the DS version. More »

[Nintendo Power] The upcoming July issue of Nintendo Power reveals a new de Blob game coming to the DS and Wii, called de Blob: The Underground. Wii players can expect two-player support in The Underground, as well as "new moves, new foes" and "new 2D platforming segments." Blue Tongue will once again handle development on the Wii version, while Australian studio Halfbrick works on the DS debut.

de Blob: The Underground is currently slated to launch in Spring 2011 -- but before that, you'll see much more at next month's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

The successes of 1988's arcade brawler Splatterhouse were almost entirely due to its shocking portrayal of over-the-top violence and gore. More »

#piracy Oh yes, this is another post about piracy and video games. These men, photographed this month, are members of the Swedish Embarked Military Force on board the warship HMS Carlskrona. They hunt Somali pirates on the high seas. They also play Mario Kart Wii. Good prep for nabbing pirates? (AP Photo/Tim Freccia) More »

You've used your Wii Balance Board to exercise, ski, hula hoop and snowboard. Soon, you'll have the opportunity to use the peripheral in the manner God intended: To do the Hand Jive Hop. According to a press release from publisher 505 Games, Grease: The Game will allow two teams of four players to fight for "musical domination" using two USB microphones and the Balance Board. Oh, man. We've got chills, and we'll be entirely damned if they're not multiplying.

The board will be used for Grease's many minigames, which include T-Bird racing, carnival games, and singing to the title's 16-song soundtrack. Not mentioned in the presser is the minigame where you take a nice, sweet-natured young girl and transform her into a spandex-clad hussy. We'll find out if that one made the cut when the game launches on Wii and DS in September.

Click image to jump into our gallery Capcom has finally released some in-game shots of Marvel vs Capcom 3. The screens are missing HUD elements, but that's fine -- we just wanted to see how the game would "blur the line between 2D and 3D graphics." Frankly, we're surprised it doesn't look more like Super Street Fighter IV. And not a single curleh mustache in sight? How will the fans react?

Head into our gallery below to check out the new screens, which feature a Ryu vs Wolverine match-up, Iron Man shooting Morrigan in the face and a trigger-happy Chris Redfield taking on The Hulk.

People who are reading this (see also: visitors of PlayStation Blog),

Hexyz Force is making its way onto a retailer’s shelf near you (and is already available via PlayStation Network for you folks who are on-the-Go… see what I did there?). To celebrate, we’re posting this post onto the place where things are posted on PlayStation Blog.

We’d like to take one last opportunity to alert you to what is undoubtedly one of the biggest, most substantial RPGs yet to hit the lovable PSP system. Why so meaty? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that you can play the game’s satisfying, drama-filled narrative (complete with political intrigue, betrayal, magic, and such things) as one of TWO different characters: Levant, an elite knight with a disdain for non-humans, or Cecila, a young cleric with potent dormant magical abilities.

Each protagonist has a unique backstory and perspective on the world of Berge (that’s where everything goes down). More importantly, they each basically experience a completely different game (20-25+ hours of game, mind you), meaning that folks who play through as both characters will get a rich, two-sided adventure with 50+ hours of amazing roleplaying goodness (it’s kind of why we’ve been calling it a 2-in-1 RPG epic). Is that a PSP in your pocket or did the last paragraph just excite you?

Famed developer Sting (makers of Riviera: The Promised Land, Yggdra Union, and Knights in the Nightmare), introduces their most accessible and enjoyable combat engine yet, delivering fast-paced, smooth battles with easy to navigate menus and gorgeous attack animations. A risk/reward-style “Hexyz Charge” aspect means that proper planning and knowing when to take calculated risks can mean the difference between triumphing over your puny enemies or your parents hearing you cry out in frustration from the upstairs bathroom.

Errr—I mean—

And then we arrive at the visuals. Now, there have been plenty of gorgeous games to hit PSP system, and in our opinion, Hexyz is right up there. Stunning full 3D visuals, complete with cinematic event scenes, make for a sumptuous feast for the RPG-lover’s eyes. To further sweeten the deal, over 20 minutes of anime cutscenes make for a completely immersive experience.

So, we’ve told you all this, and we even threw some screenshots in, but really, we reckon you’d rather see it for yourselves. So allow us to debut our Hexyz Force Walkthrough Video, right here on PlayStation Blog, which will take you through just about all of the above (minus all the awkwardness) and let you see for yourself how Hexyz Force is poised to go down as one of the best PSP RPGs of the year!

Look for Hexyz Force to land on shelves this week, or pick it up now via PlayStation Network. For more info on Hexyz Force, visit the official game website.

Ubisoft is the latest company to attach DRM to its PC games in an effort to curb piracy -- an initiative that has had basically the opposite of its intended effect in keeping out people who bought the games. Blizzard's Frank Pearce told VideoGamer that it's not the strategy Blizzard intends to implement in StarCraft II, with the company opting instead for a compelling Battle.net that will make people want to stay online in single-player, rather than requiring it. It's still a form of DRM, requiring online authentication, but it's also meant to serve other, gameplay-enhancing purposes.

"If we've done our job right and implemented Battle.net in a great way," the StarCraft II producer said, "people will want to be connected while they're playing the single player campaign so they can stay connected to their friends on Battle.net and earn the achievements on Battle.net."

Pearce called DRM "a losing battle for us," noting that the group of people who want to crack DRM is always "larger than our development teams." Pearce said "We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology" -- something with which those of us patiently waiting for StarCraft II will agree.

#wii What better way to capture the splendor of the leather-clad, hip shaking of Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in Grease than with a game for the Wii? By making sure that the game forces you allows you to use two microphones and a Wii Balanace Board while playing it, that's how! If only they could figure out a use for the Vitality Sensor. More »

#ds Square Enix's Japanese-only portable game The Four Warriors of Light: A Final Fantasy Anecdote is coming to the U.S. with a less unwieldy name in October. Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light arrives on Oct. 5 for the DS. More »

Popular Warcraft III spin-off League of Legends is coming to the Mac this summer. Players will be able to download the game for free once it hits. More »

#clips Role playing game White Knight Chronicles 2 is the upcoming sequel to White Knight Chronicles 1. Here is the "opening trailer". More »

It will likely come as no surprise that Square Enix recently published a press release announcing an English localization for Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. The DS RPG, which touts "beautiful picture book visuals and an easy to control battle system," and a setting which "goes back to the basics and origins of the Final Fantasy series," will come to the US on October 5, according to the game's official site. Europe will get the game sometime this Fall, but a release date hasn't been specified.

The game features a classic turn-based battle system with customizable commands, and a "Crown System" that allows players to change character classes at the drop of a ... well, a hat. Players can also team up with three of their friends to tackle dungeons cooperatively. Check out the first screens of the localized version of the game in the gallery below.

Perhaps fed up with off-topic posts, the folks over at Guild Wars banned more than 3,700 accounts from their online role-playing game yesterday. I kid, the bannings were really over the use of automated player bots and hacks. More »

#nintendo This year, like every year, Greenpeace has given Nintendo the lowest marks out of the electronics companies it graded. More »

#home Kirk Ewing, from PlayStation Home developer Veemee (who make virtual spaces and items), reckons Sony's underwhelming virtual network service will be emerging from its long-running beta at the end of this year. More »

Guerrilla Games showed Killzone 3 in action for the first time tonight at an event in San Francisco. Managing director Hermen Hulst was on hand to lay out some key details about the sequel -- unfortunately, any sort of release date wasn't among them.

Saying that the team was inspired by the ambition exhibited by other Sony Worldwide Studios releases, specifically Uncharted 2 and God of War 3, Hulst detailed planned improvements across the board for Killzone 3. Chief among them is more variety in environments, weapons, vehicles and enemies. Promising more epic, unique moments throughout, he pointed out that the first three minutes of the demo featured more cinematics and scripted events than the entire first level of Killzone 2.

We'll be delivering our full hands-on with the game at noon PDT, but for now you can read on after the break for more on Killzone 3's new environments, weapons and more.

#tv So, Lost fans, Lost is finished. What are you to do? What half-brained theories as to what it all means will you come up with in its wake? I don't know. Here's an 8-bit NES game of the show. More »

#blizzard Oh really? More »

Okay, Mark Hamill isn't just Luke Skywalker, star of Star Wars. He's also Luke Skywalker, star of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. More »

#sports Having only been revealed by EA a couple of weeks ago, Playfish's FIFA Superstars game has gone live on Facebook. And I must say, it's rather good. More »

#squareenix Miwa Shoda joined Squaresoft, now Square Enix, in 1995 and went on to write Japanese Legend of Mana and Final Fantasy XII. Those are big games with big stories — something that they apparently do not need. More »

Watch MT Framework do its thing in these full res shots of Capcom's new ultimate crossover fight.

#mvc3 You've seen fighting game Marvel vs Capcom 3 in grainy trailers and even grainier magazine scans, but here for the first time is Marvel vs Capcom 3 as nature intended: in big screenshots, on the internet. More »

Guerrilla Games showed Killzone 3 in action for the first time tonight at an event in San Francisco, and Joystiq was there. Managing director Hermen Hulst was on hand to lay out some key details about the sequel -- unfortunately, any sort of release date wasn't among them.

Saying that the team was inspired by the ambition exhibited by other Sony Worldwide Studios releases, specifically Uncharted 2 and God of War 3, Hulst detailed planned improvements across the board for Killzone 3. Chief among them is more variety in environments, weapons, vehicles and enemies. Promising more epic, unique moments throughout, he pointed out that the first three minutes of the demo featured more cinematics and scripted events than the entire first level of Killzone 2.

We'll be delivering our full hands-on with the game at noon PDT, but for now you can read on after the break for more on Killzone 3's new environments, weapons and more.

#foxconn In what seems to be a daily occurrence, another worker at the Foxconn Shenzhen plant has jumped to his death on late Wednesday. More »

Don't be too shocked if your next flight offers you a PSP as part of your in-flight entertainment package. IFE Services has announced a new partnership with SCEA to offer airlines the ability to add custom tailored PSPs to flights. In addition to being "fully certified for use in-flight," the systems will include an extended life battery which offers up to 11 hours of playback -- perfect for lengthy flights. In addition, IFE will offer "comprehensive crew training" for flight attendants of interested airlines.

IFE Services currently works with six airlines, including South African Airlines, making today's announcement perfectly timed for any South African bloggers flying out for upcoming video game conferences.

#mmo Online role-playing game Guild Wars, like any other game played over the internet, has its fair share of cheaters. How Guild Wars deals with them, though, sets them apart. More »

#nsfw Capcom's action role-playing game Monster Hunter Frontier features plenty of opportunities for players to catch monsters and...take upskirt photos of female characters. Capcom's latest title, Lost Planet 2, features... More »

Oh how good it feels to be back. After a forced hiatus, Nintendo has finally released a new Virtual Console game -- and a good one, at that. We're talking about Kirby Super Star, a content-rich SNES offering from HAL Laboratory. Check it out in the latest episode of VC in Brief above.

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.