Tomorrow, ModNation Racers, uh, racers can download Title Update 1.02, which addresses long load times, squashes some bugs, improves server stability and adds a new "casual" difficulty level. The update will go live at 2:00 a.m. PDT and also brings with it a bunch of changes to the community site including race logs, tracking systems for monitoring your favorite creators (and their favorite creators), plus friend and rep search utilities, according to the PlayStation Blog.
Speed demons looking to expand their roster of racers can also download Nukular and Kart this week, a new ride and driver who look like they just leapt out of Mad Max or something. All we can say is we'd definitely steer clear of the guy on the track with the huge plow on the front of his ride. Just saying!
#books
That would be bookshelves, kids, in bookstores. A new revision of Eric Nylund's "Halo: The Fall of Reach," first published in 2001, went on sale today with 27 pages of new material. More »
I never understood this character. What in the world does Chargin’ Chuck have to do with anything else in the entire Super Mario universe? Has he even appeared in any other entries in the series? I can’t remember him, and I think that’s for the better.
Konami is raking in the dough with all kinds of merchandise for LovePlus. They’re going to pimp out every area they can. Here’s a little something to celebrate the in-game birthday of a fictional girl!
The only problem is, we don’t know what food they were made out of! I think the resounding answer is pineapple, but it could be something else. What do you guys think?
They're probably cookies. Why the hell would you put frosting on pineapples, GoNintendo.
*crag* you
Peter Molyneux foretells the end of the App Store's gold rush in an interview with Develop. "I think there's this opportunity now for game developers," he said, discussing the case of creative director Dene Carter, who left to Lionhead form an iPhone studio. "I think of the iPhone and Facebook and all these types of channels offer a window of opportunity for small developers to experience what it was like in [the bedroom coding era of] the late eighties."
Unfortunately, that ends, he says, when big companies start pouring money into iPhone games. "It's inevitable that a Star Wars or Disney game, a five million dollar iPhone project, will be released. And when it does, consumers are going to like it. They're going to say "I can pay 59p for this [indie iPhone game] or I can pay 59p for this [triple-A iPhone game]."
He's cultivating creativity in his staff now (giving them less incentive to, say, go make iPhone games) by instituting a one week period in which Lionhead staff can work on whatever they'd like. "And at the end of the week we're all going to come together look at people's ideas, and that's going to form the foundations of what happens next at Lionhead."
Speaking about his own game, Fable 3, Molyneux dismissed the most notable features of many RPGs. Most developers took the wrong inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons, Molyneux believes, emphasizing stats and random numbers. "But actually," he said, "the purity and the core element of role playing games is to feel more powerful. That's the true core of them. It's about growing as a character, finding and collecting things, and freedom. What we want to do is amplify those feelings with Fable 3."
- area from the E3 demo will be divided in the final game
- bosses from the demo will not appear in their locations from the demo
- the demo area was the realm below the clouds
- the demo area was a field, not part of a dungeon
- once again, field and dungeon layouts are being reworked
- [...]
#ruhroh
Kids, if someone promises you a video game! if you let them borrow a bottle of mom's pills without telling mom, that's bigtime STRANGER DANGER and you need to tell McGruff the Crime Dog. More »
#blizzard
Not all chest-thumping is equal. Those StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty first-day sales figures publisher Activision heralded today? They are less than half of the World of Warcraft first-day figures for that game's last two releases. More »
PlyStation Blog has announced that PlayStation Plus subscriber content will now be updated every other week (instead of weekly). With no Plus additions to this week's PSN update, subscribers can look forward to new content coming next Tuesday, August 10, including a timed trial of Red Faction: Guerrilla, the August episode of Qore, a discount on PixelJunk Racers: Second Lap and a free copy of the Minis title Aero Racer.
Of course, a few previous items will be pushed off the PlayStation Plus carousel in order to make room. Click past the jump to see the particulars of next week's update.
#hollywood
Hothead director David O. Russell will not be directing any Uncharted movie, the Los Angeles Times reports, and the unsuccessful negotiations to bring him to the project have pretty much shot any chance the movie has of releasing in 2011. More »
The new Virgin Gaming initiative currently operates online tournaments for several EA and Sony games, as well as Halo 3. Ubisoft has announced that Ghost Recon: Future Soldier will be added to the lineup of games for which Virgin offers cash awards.
If you like playing games for money, but don't like Ghost Recon, there's good news for you too: Ubisoft North America president Laurent Detoc said, "We have an exciting lineup of multiplayer titles this year that we believe will be a perfect fit for gamers to play and compete against each other in a tournament setting." Perhaps you'll get a chance to win some prizes in RUSE, HAWX 2 or some other acronym.
David O. Russell, director of Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees and Spanking the Monkey, is no longer being considered for the job of directing the Uncharted: Drake's Fortune movie. The LA Times reports that Sony-owned Columbia Pictures, the movie's producers and Russell were unable to reach terms satisfactory to all parties, and now the studio has to start looking for directing talent once again, while also searching for lead actors.
The Times' Steven Zeitchik speculates that the delay caused by the lost director scuttles any chance Sony had of having the movie done in time for a 2011 release. At this rate, it'll probably coincide with the release of Uncharted 4: Baby Drake's Crystal Crawl. That's right, we're calling it now: Naughty Dog's going to change up the gameplay with a tale from Nate Drake's infancy.
#iphone
A day after releasing news of its behemoth patch on Xbox 360, the folks who make Backbreaker say its free iPhone version has picked up a Kentucky Fried Chicken sponsorship. Runners will now celebrate with, what else, the Chicken Dance. More »
