All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

#pennyarcadeexpo2010 At the Gearbox panel at PAX today, company president Randy Pitchford told a Borderlands-loving audience that the level cap for that game will be going up from 61 to 69. For zero dollars. More »

We've got bad news and good news. First, the bad news: The new Borderlands DLC pack - that's Claptrap's New Robot Revolution - won't include the two most requested features. Those would be a new level cap and a rebalancing of the main game to accomodate the new level cap. And neither of those will be included with the latest DLC.

Now the good news: They are being included in a free update for the game across all three platforms, Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford told a live PAX audience that his studio resisted making it a part of a DLC pack since, if they included those features, "you'd have to buy every previous DLC" to get access to said features. So, instead, Pitchford said they were going to release a "free update to Borderlands that will both rebalance the original game around the level cap and increase the level cap for everyone."

But Pitchford said the studio still struggled with how high to raise it. On the one hand, Gearbox didn't want to match the 11-point upgrade that many people paid for with the "General Knox" DLC, but on the other the devs didn't want it to be too low, like 5-points. Instead, they came up with another number. "With the current level cap at 61," Pitchford teased, "we realized if we added 8 levels ... "

The audience groans.

So the new level cap is 69 and it will be released sometime around the October 12th Borderlands Game of the Year Edition release.

Any fan of Disney, Final Fantasy and RPGs are more then familiar with the Kingdom Hearts series. Sadly, being a fan of all three — I am not. With my upcoming travels to Japan next week to cover Tokyo Game Show 2010, I’m looking forward to jumping head first into Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep on my PSP to help past the time on my long flight. Gamers with schizophrenia, and a lack of arachnophobia will be web-slinging on their PlayStation 3 when Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions hatches this week as well.

PlayStation fans can also put their hockey and MMA skills to the test when they’re given the chance to body check or guillotine their opponents in the rink or the octagon. The PlayStation Network and PlayStation minis also have some neat releases in the second dimension of gaming with galactic and terrain exploration. Come hither Keyblade Masters for this week’s The Drop.

PlayStation 3

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions – Blending together the many alternate universes of the world-famous webslinger with four unique take on Spider-Man’s history in comics. Spider-Man attempts to retrieve a piece of a tablet that’s been scattered across multiple parallel dimensions, and in doing so he crosses over to storylines famous to comic book aficionados as variant tellings of the Spider-Man mythology.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 – Plunge into explosives environment where you can become elite aerial soldiers in control of the world’s most technologically advanced aircraft. You will have the chance to control pilots trained to use cutting edge technology in aerial warfare missions.

R.U.S.E. – This is a one-of-a-kind real-time strategy game, allows players to bluff their enemies to lead their nation to victory. Controlling the action using views that range seamlessly from the heart of the battlefield to the full theatre of war, players will be plunged into the action thanks to the exclusive IRISZOOMTM Engine which offers an intuitive interface.

NHL 11 – Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the franchise, NHL 11 aims to to raise the bar yet again for hockey fans. With a real-time physics engine that brings a realism to the franchise, gameplay innovations — like broken sticks and a revamped face-off system — as well as the addition of the Canadian Hockey League, NHL 11 promises to be the most complete hockey videogame ever created.

PlayStation Network

TerRover – TerRover’s gameplay is based on navigating a terrain rover through over forty stages of puzzling arcade levels in five different 2-D art styles including the icy vistas of Congelata. TerRover features three local multiplayer modes for up to four people, leaderboards and PlayStation Network trophies.

PlayStation Portable

Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep – A tale of a new trio of heroes, told across three scenarios utilizing the technology of the PSP. With new features introduced on top of the traditional controls, game system, and visual style of its predecessors. Before Sora took up the Keyblade, there were other Keyblade masters. One of these masters, Xehanort, disappeared one day along with his apprentice. This event proved to be a foreshadowing of great disaster to come. Aware of the threat, another master ordered his three apprentices to seek out Xehanort and his cohort.

UFC Undisputed 2010 – Players manage Octagon control with a variety of strikes, submissions, transitions, cage positions and more. In addition, players will have customizable freedom with created fighters by combining move sets from numerous MMA disciplines to become true mixed martial artists.

PlayStation minis

Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags! – This is a fast-paced horizontally scrolling shooter with a unique, slapstick take on the best of 50s and 60s sci-fi movies and cartoons. The game features a unique weapons system: instead of collecting power-ups, Ace must down enemies using the incredible power of the Recyl-o-Ray! before turning the Scumbags’ own weapons against them!

#twig A lively week of releases kicks off the stretch run of Labor Day through the holidays; EA Sports ships two hockey titles; the first PlayStation Move game arrives and a couple of strong handhelds round out the week's cattle call. More »

Somewhere there's an alternate dimension where monster games like Rampage and War of the Monsters are not oddities but rather fine examples of a whole "monsters destroying crap" genre. Eat Them!, which I played recently at PAX 2010, is a game directly from that dimension.

In Fluffy Logic's (Savage Moon) upcoming PSN release, you play as a monster that you've customized every slimy, scaly inch of, from his shoulder rockets to his tentacle legs. Then ... well, you destroy shit.

Conduit 2 Fact Sheet – Launch Date: 2011, Players: 1-12 Set moments after the explosive finale of The Conduit, Agent Michael Ford finds himself thrust once again into the machinations of the sinister and enigmatic John Adams and his Trust organization. After uncovering and partially thwarting Adam’s fabricated alien invasion, Ford and the alien entity Prometheus [...]

Spot 1 - “This winter’s ultimate fantasy, from a dream staff.” Spot 2 - “The game you’re all looking forward to, Ni no Kuni, is the first game to come with a book of magic. We’ve been receiving a rush of inquiries, so you should quickly pre-order.

A new, bug-free version of Crackdown 2's "Toy Box" DLC pack was released yesterday morning on Xbox Live Marketplace, according to Ruffian Games. Unfortunately, rather than a patch, the DLC has been re-issued, meaning that folks who downloaded the content will need to delete it and redownload. The new version fixes issues ranging from "crash on loading" to issues with the narrator's voice and Achievement problems, which we reported on earlier this week.

Ruffian says that the glitches were "caused by problems mastering the DLC package," thus the reissue rather than a patch. The developer assures players that "all will be fine" after the download, which was available publicly as of yesterday morning. We've yet to hear of any issues with the re-release, but feel free to let us know if you find any.

We can all agree that Sonic Unleashed had some pretty deep lows -- specifically, the Werehog. But the daytime segments in the game showed promise; almost a return to form. These areas of the game, for the unaware, combined Sonic Adventure-like 3D free-running elements alongside more classical, 2D elements from the series' past. It was easily the highlight of that game.

And Sega knows it, which explains why Sonic Colors is pretty much nothing but those portions of gameplay. That alone would make for a pretty serviceable Sonic game, but Sega has also added Wisps: small alien creatures who imbue Sonic with one-time-use powers.

First Hoggy, now Backbreaker. NaturalMotion's iPhone/iPad port of its addictive "Tackle Alley" challenge is also free for today only on the iTunes App store in North America and the U.K. Thanks jayc4life! More »

You know how we told you about DLC for the iPhone and iPad versions of Bit.Trip Beat a few days back? During an appointment with developer Gaijin Games here at PAX, Alex Nouse confirmed the exact nature of the DLC tracks: they're Bit.Trip Void songs!

He informed Joystiq that the tracks weren't actually being developed by Gaijin Games, but rather at Namco. He's looking forward to trying the new tracks, as you'd imagine -- it's not every day you have an opportunity to be stumped by your own game, you know?

#kotakuweekends Friday at PAX 2010, Capcom rented out a joint in downtown Seattle and turned it into a Dead Rising hardware store. They passed around this bogus ad circular to hype the party. Now we go to work on it. More »

“When you make a setlist, that’s something that you can choose to push to Facebook. You’ll need to link your game to the RockBand.com website. From there you can control the syndication to your Facebook feed, or Twitter feed. And you can throttle it, too. I’m sure you don’t want to spam your friends.” - [...]

A service that was only open to Amazon Prime members is now available to anyone for 99 cents. Not all games are going to feature release-day delivery, but the hottest titles coming up should pose no problem. An extra 99 cents to get the game on day one. That’s not too bad!

Other than a teaser image and a fall release window, we've heard little to nothing on the next Bit.Trip title from Gaijin Games, Fate. That all changed this past week with the reveal of the game's premise and its first gameplay trailer on the developer's website.

Fate will have players guiding CommanderVideo on a guided path (in 2D), aiming and firing his various weapons by pointing the Wiimote at the screen. The game also features "appearances from Super Meat Boy and Mr. Robotube," as well as a kickin' dubstep soundtrack that, frankly, we've been jamming too since we first found out about. Bit.Trip Fate may not be out until sometime this fall, but you can pick up its jams right now.

Reader Baseballer got this one-of-a-kind t-shirt for his birthday. Looks like his family knows and appreciates his love of all things Mario!

This special Pikachu is currently being sold at Pokemon Centers in Japan, but originally debuted at the Pokemon World Championships in Hawaii. I see this one going for a pretty penny on eBay!

Find out what to expect from the new Halo game.