All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Game Description: The producer of Devil May Cry™ 4, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, brings you the newest installment to the BASARA series, Sengoku BASARA: Samurai Heroes, on the PlayStation®3 and Wii. A fun, action-packed and accessible title set during a tumultuous period of Japanese history, Sengoku BASARA: Samurai Heroes follows players as they fight their way to the [...]

Wrap your head around this.

#idsoftware There are people who are excited about Rage, the next game from id Software, makers of Doom. And there are people who say they don't get it. It's a first-person shooter. With car combat. What are these people missing? More »

#wii As with the original, the sequel to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed will be getting different versions of the game for the DS and Wii. More »

Peter Molyneux and the Giant Sausage.

Hello again, everyone! I’m Jamie, co-founder of Klei, doing one final PlayStation.Blog post before the game launches on PSN tomorrow! You can see my previous articles on the PlayStation.Blog, and watch the Shank launch trailer below.

Over the last few days, we’ve been announcing the Shank Costumes over at the official Shank blog, and divulging how to unlock them on our Twitter account.

Jeff asked if I could divulge one unlock criteria especially for PlayStation.Blog readers, so obviously I complied. The costume I chose was one that’s close to impossible to stumble across.

So, today’s special is costume number 8 — the ANY-S costume!

Unlock Criteria

After completing the single-player campaign, input a slight modification to the classic Konami code: up+up+down+down+left+right+left+right+circle+x.

As you can guess, these outfits are odes to our own geeky fantasies. Naming them was a fun little exercise. Did you know that “Droid” is trademarked? I didn’t.

And with that, I’m off! Enjoy the launch trailer and let me know if you have any questions! As usual, I’ll lurk in these forums as well as the official Facebook page.

Peter Molyneux and the Giant Sausage.

Just one year after launching a retail portal for Xbox Live content, Amazon is "no longer selling Xbox Live Arcade game codes," according to a statement on the site's Xbox Live page. Following a prompt on the same page to buy Castle Crashers for Xbox 360, for example, shoppers will find the item listed as "Currently unavailable," with a notice adding, "We don't know when or if this item will be available again."

It's unclear why Amazon discontinued its Xbox Live program, considering the retailer continues to sell codes for games on PlayStation Network and Nintendo's WiiWare service. "You can continue to purchase Xbox Live points on Amazon.com and those points can be redeemed through your Xbox 360 console to purchase any of the games that were previously available," Amazon notes. (Those points can also be redeemed through the Xbox.com Marketplace, which does not offer standalone content codes for sale.)

In related news, Microsoft has partnered with GameStop to sell Xbox Live content codes in stores. Following a recent trial, codes for more than 45 downloadable games and add-ons will be offered in the retailer's locations nationwide, including the XBLA Summer of Arcade selection Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. With supposedly only "15 percent" of gamers buying downloadable games, GameStop President Tony Bartel told USA Today's Game Hunters that "the marketing and selling of downloadable content in store as a meaningful way to participate and expand the sales of digital content, providing the customer with a richer gaming experience." Essentially, the brick-and-mortar exposure should make more people aware that downloadable games exist in the first place -- something Amazon.com might not do so well.

Super Ghouls N’ Ghosts, U.N. Squadron, Mega Man 10…surely someone that has composed for these games and many others is worthy of a little Wikipedia entry? Apparently not, as composer Mari Yamaguchi does not have her own page, and Wiki isn’t allowing it at the moment. These composers work hard to create fantastic [...]

Peter Molyneux and the Giant Sausage.

Because those zombies aren't going to kill themselves.

It's almost time to start honing your rocket-sliding skills. Sega has announced that a playable demo of its over-the-top Platinum Games and Shinji Mikami developed shooter Vanquish will arrive on the Xbox Live Marketplace and PSN Store on Tuesday, August 31. Europe will get the demo a day later on September 1, with Australian gamers getting their hands on it Thursday, September 2. Famitsu reports (via Siliconera) that Japan will also receive the demo on the 2nd.

The "Vanquish Official Demo: Velocity Attack," as Sega calls the demo, will comprise the section of the game we played at E3 -- a space station interior with bipedal "Walker" mechs to commandeer and an enormous spider-like robot boss to defeat in incredibly stylish ways. (You know, the usual stuff: by grabbing the monstrosity's missile out of the air, turning it around and throwing it back like a giant lance.)

#dlc Ruffian Games and Microsoft detail the Toy Box add-on for Crackdown 2 today which adds the eagerly anticipated Keys to the City cheat mode for free, as well as a handful of new content for those willing to pay the price. More »

SEGA has finally nailed down an official release date for both the the Wii and DS versions of Sonic Colors in Japan. According to SEGA, gamers can expect to pick up both games on the same day, November 18th. SEGA has also announced a preorder bonus in Japan, which is a collaboration card [...]

What's gonna give Halo: Reach the best shot at topping Modern Warfare 2's $310 million in day-one sales? Marketing. Much to no one's surprise, Microsoft is splurging on its biggest game campaign to date, according to Advertising Age. While Reach's marketing budget has not been disclosed, it's expected to easily top Halo 3's reported $6.5 million bill.

The ad campaign, which began in earnest with a big-budget plug ... for the multiplayer beta (way back in April), will continue to use live-action segments to attempt to forge an emotional connection with a broad audience across TV and the web. "We're trying to get people to connect back to their lives, not computer graphics or something overly sci-fi," Taylor Smith, director of global marketing communications for Xbox, told Ad Age. "Live action is a way to capture that." In particular, director Noam Murro (Smart People) has created three live-action short films that depict life on planet Reach before the Covenant invasion.

Meanwhile, potential buyers will be urged to "remember Reach" as they consume Pepsi products. A renewed partnership between Microsoft and the snack-time mogul will put Halo branding on some 300 million Mountain Dew bottles and 30 million Doritos bags beginning next month. Of course, to top past efforts, Microsoft will expand the Reach campaign beyond these somewhat pedestrian reminders: Cue massive KUKA KR 140 robotic arm!

The viral site RememberReach.com, which becomes fully operational at 3AM ET tomorrow, features a user-generated light sculpture of Reach's Noble Team, created by the robo-arm and some fancy camera equipment. Typically used to assemble cars, this KUKA bot has been outfitted with an LED and stationed in an undisclosed San Francisco warehouse. As detailed by GameLife, visitors will direct the machine to plot the 54,000 points of light that will form this Noble Team "monument." Bizarre.

Halo: Reach launches on September 14.

A pair of reviews from Nintendo Life… Ivy the Kiwi?

It's like parkour free-running with guns... at least that's what developer Crytek is hoping for with their shooter Crysis 2. More »

I never thought of Sonic the Hedgehog 3/Sonic and Knuckles as poorly designed games. As a matter of fact, I believe Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is my favorite in the traditional Sonic series. Sonic and Knuckles is good as well, but I don’t love it as much as Sonic 3. With that [...]

With justice not entirely dispensed, evil still to be vanquished and plenty of downtrodden to be, uh, heroed, the titular DeathSpank returns in DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue. Hothead Games today announced a full-on sequel to this summer's Diablo homage (parody?) on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network -- and it's almost complete! Thongs of Virtue will be launched on PSN and XBLA on September 21 and 22, respectively.

#gamescom2010 Saber Interactive created 2007's TimeShift, a first-person shooter with a time-twisting gimmick that wasn't particularly well received. Now they're back with Inversion, a third-person shooter with a gravity-twisting gimmick. Will history repeat itself? More »

There's a bit early on in Mafia 2 where war veteran and budding crook Vito Scaletta tries to go straight. He takes some grunt work at the docks, just like his late old man, loading hefty wooden crates onto a truck bed. After a few minutes of player-controlled hauling, he abandons his short-lived foray into working stiffery permanently.

But after playing though the entirety of his criminal career, after seeing the gameplay and narrative drudgery he was in store for, its hard to say for certain that he made the right choice.