All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

So… better late than never right? Yes, finally PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap is coming to PSN and we’ve had a lot of fun fiddling with the original Racers to bring it up to date with the other titles in the PixelJunk series. Instead of going back and just adding trophies we decided to go through and give it a difficulty overhaul — making the game far easier than it used to be (we used to make these games pretty tough back in the day eh). It is still a pleasant challenge of course but not the insurmountable cliff face it used to be.

Let me be the first to say this, but PixelJunk Racers is *not* a racing game – it is more like a PixelJunk reaction-based party game based loosely on slot-car racing. There are all kinds of different rules to play with, for example in one rule all you do is hold the trigger down to “puff up” your car, release the trigger and your car flies along the track like a balloon, the goal is to get as far as you can without hitting anything. We support up to 7 controllers and it makes for a superb game to play with friends around. In another mode you can only keep your speed up by “eating” the other cars (by hitting them and destroying them). For anyone who enjoys fun rules with a bit of a driving motif, this should be right up your alley. It is one of our favourite games in the PixelJunk series — it’s a personal favourite of mine and the one that kickstarted it all off.

On top of this we added a new global scoreboard called Driver’s Points which add up as you play the online score attack modes. This should give everyone a nice long-lasting challenge, especially as to enhance this further we have added ghosts of the other players in the high score rankings that you can play against. You can only select ghosts from either your friends’ list or from the other players near you in the high score table so as you go up through the ranks you should be able to see some incredibly skilled play from some of the best players out there. It makes for a very addictive challenge.

Before I forget, 2nd Lap is totally FREE to existing owners of Racers, and you get to keep the original (difficult) Racers for posterity (it doesn’t overwrite it). PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to get this upgrade a whole two weeks before everyone else too, with also a 25% discount (those lucky folks!) Regular PSN users will soon catch up though, two weeks isn’t too long to wait I hope – it will be available on Aug 24th for just $6.99!

Whether you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber or not, if you’re an existing owner of Racers, be sure to get the FREE upgrade to 2nd Lap. All you have to do is click the FREE button on the 2nd lap product page, add to cart and install… that’s it! For those that are new to Racers, you will automatically be upgraded to 2nd lap at the time of purchase.

Anyway, it’s time for me to get back to work finishing up PixelJunk Shooter 2 (looking pretty cool btw!), I’ll be back in a little while to talk it up and perhaps even to discuss our latest collaboration with Baiyon of PixelJunk Eden fame, so see you soon!

If you've held off on purchasing Dragon Age: Origins until now ... keep holding off. GameStop listings have appeared for something called "Dragon Age Origins: Ultimate Edition" on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, supposedly due for release on October 12 for $59.99.

The listings have no information at all about what's included in the package -- and neither EA nor BioWare have officially announced this thing, though we've asked for a comment regardless -- so it's anyone's guess as to what's included. If it were truly "Ultimate" it would include the Awakenings expansion and all the DLC. Now that word's out about this thing's existence, we expect an announcement soon, at which point we'll learn the precise level of ultimateness contained within.

[Thanks, No Name]

#esrb What innumerable whimsical scenarios can Scribblenauts players generate like some sort of god in the sequel? How about knife-wielding murderous computers, flaming snowmen and flesheating bicycles? That's just the tip of the iceberg in the still kid-friendly Super Scribblenauts. More »

#pc Skype, the mostly free, Internet replacement for phones and video phones, may get into online gaming. More »

#gameface Henk Rogers of Blue Planet Software, the man who secured the console rights to Tetris with Nintendo, posing outside the first Classic Tetris World Championships in Los Angeles. More »

We mentioned in our Monday Night Combat review (you should read it!) that the game would feature the ability to make balance tweaks "on the fly without needing to do a patch." Considering most Xbox 360 games require a full title update even for the most rudimentary fixes, this makes Monday Night Combat something of a standout. Now, thanks to Penny Arcade, we have an explanation. According to Uber Entertainment's John Comes, the magic comes courtesy of "Title Managed Storage" (TMS), an amount of storage space on Xbox Live servers that Microsoft allows for its developers.

"So what we did," said Comes, "is put a text file with all of our balance numbers up there [on TMS] and when the game starts up it overwrites the balance numbers with any numbers it pulled down off of TMS." As an example, Comes noted that if Uber were to discover that Snipers earn ability-enhancing Juice too fast, the company can easily adjust the corresponding number in TMS. The next time a player boots the game, the adjusted number overwrites the original. Voila, instant balance fix. Now, if someone would just turn the Assassin's cloak ability up to "infinite," we'd be much obliged.

#soundeffect Unless you've lived off the grid for the last 60 years, you've heard the "Wilhelm scream." It's a stock sound-bit originally used in film and television post-production. It started in a Western movie. It's back in a Western video game. More »

Marvelous Entertainment has, in the recent past, been reporting disappointing earnings. Well, not even "earnings." Losses. To combat those losses, the company reduced its slate for fiscal 2011, a strategy that appears to have worked.

In its last fiscal quarter (which ended June 30), Marvelous's digital content division had ¥71 million ($829,000) in profit. The same quarter last year saw $1.5 million in losses! According to Siliconera's summary of the report, the boosted performance has more to do with reduced costs than game sales -- sales were actually down 55.4% year-over-year. Marvelous released just three games in the quarter, including No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise.

Sequel lets players create and raise an aquarium with more than 60 types of underwater creatures with real-world weather.

#science The only thing I can imagine that would be more exciting than racing a Ferrari F2007 at high speeds, is pretending to drive a Ferrari F2007 at high speeds while being swung about by a giant robot arm. More »

Yes, not only does Japan get the awesome Mega Man e-Tank pillow that we showed you yesterday…they also get this fantastic 1up pillow as well. Again, no word on any retailer bringing these to the states, but we’ll keep an eye out at import retail outlets.

We're pretty sure you'd need one of those bulletin boards from TV crime dramas -- you know, the ones with pictures of mafioso higher-ups with multicolored strings and push pins connecting them -- in order to keep track of all of Square Enix's upcoming games. The studio's resident star designer, Tetsuya Nomura, recently gave an update on these projects -- a laundry list which includes Final Fantasy Versus and Agito XIII, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Re:Coded, The 3rd Birthday, and "a number of unannounced titles."

According to Andriasang's translation, Nomura explained the dearth of news on Versus XIII was due to a number of hardships which have rendered the company's old developmental tricks "completely inapplicable," but that progress is being made. He couldn't be any more specific than that, due to Square Enix's policy of promoting games in the order they'll be released. In that case, we may not hear more on Versus or Agito for some time -- Nomura explained that some of the company's unannounced games would arrive before the next installment in the Fabula Nova Crystallis franchise.

For more info on the fate of Square Enix's future projects, check out Andriasang's translation of the 3rd Birthday Twitter feed.

Check out more screens here SAN MATEO, CA – Aug 9, 2010 – Wii™ owners can dive right into underwater adventures this summer as Hudson Entertainment, the North and South American subsidiary of HUDSON SOFT, invites players to explore and create their own deep sea world, complete with real-world weather, with My Aquarium 2, [...]

Looks like the hype was a bit bigger for Madden 10, especially earlier in the game. Will this result in a poorer sales tally for Madden 11? I guess we’ll find that out in a few months!

Change the world around you with nothing but a board.

#worldchampion Yesterday at Los Angeles' Downtown Independent Theater, 29-year-old loan coordinator from Redondo Beach, California Jonas Neubauer was crowned the first-ever Classic Tetris World Champion. More »

Outside of the knowledge that a second episode of DLC for Alan Wake -- titled "The Writer" -- will be coming sometime this fall and that it will cost 560 MS Points ($7), little else is known about the developer's plans for the future of the series. Though head of franchise development Oskari Häkkinen didn't get too specific, he told Eurogamer that the second DLC may not necessarily be the last we see of Mr. Wake on Xbox Live Marketplace. "I can't confirm whether this is going to be the last one or not. There are some things in the pipeline that we're looking at, and we're balancing out how we will move on with this," Häkkinen said.

In terms of "The Writer," though, Remedy ... writer Mikko Rautalahti added that gameplay will skew towards the type found in the first DLC ("The Signal"), while level design errs more on the side of fantasy than the first. "You will be seeing a lot more weird stuff. And we've learned quite a bit from making 'The Signal,' and we'll be applying that to 'The Writer' quite a bit," he said.

Both Häkkinen and Rautalahti remained relatively tight-lipped on the subject of an Alan Wake sequel, with Häkkinen only allowing, "I don't see any reason why we wouldn't continue with Microsoft with a full-blown sequel for Alan Wake. We definitely want to do it. We have great ideas for it. I can see Mikko here twiddling his thumbs with his ideas for Alan Wake 2. There's certainly a want, and that want is I believe from both sides." He did, however, add, "Right now I can't confirm anything." Given our feelings on the game (and the first DLC), we've got all our fingers and toes crossed for more.

Xseed's thirty second RPG looks just as retroriffic as before!

Voice casting now underway for much anticipated Final Fantasy XIII sister projects.

Voice casting now underway for much anticipated Final Fantasy XIII sister project.

Collector's Edition includes two single-player maps.

Collector's Edition includes two single-player maps.

Xbox and PC release remain unchanged.

Our beloved Fat Princess reached her 1st Anniversary!

We’re proud to celebrate this occasion by slicing a few dollars off the price of Fat Princess, down to $7.49 as part of the Summer Sale on the PlayStation Network. Grab it fast since the sale ends on Tuesday, 8/10. We’re also whooping it up by releasing our very first Fat Princess single: Castle Intruder!

Fat Princess has been a labor of love for the development team here at Atomic Operations and our good friends in Santa Monica Studio, and it has been a highly rewarding experience for all of us to hear feedback from gamers around the world. We are constantly adorning our walls with Fat Princess fan art and jumping into games with clans online. We are reading the forums daily and we are always looking for ways to expand our Fat Princess world. (You do have the recently released Fat Roles DLC, right?

Thank you again and again to all the fans and clans who continue to spread the good word about the game. We are always amazed at the effort our fans put into supporting and growing the community, and we want you all to know how much we appreciate it.

Happy Birthday to Princess Plump and Princess Muffintop from the entire Fat Princess team!

Were you concerned about whether or not you'd be able to create a man-eating bicycle in Super Scribblenauts? Parents, do you have a strict "no homicidal houses" policy for your kids' entertainment media? The ESRB has stepped in to offer a few (extremely) random examples of what's possible.