All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

#art Artist Hollis Brown Thornton is selling this amazingly detailed permanent marker drawing for $600 in his online store. More »

• Contrary to the E3 build some of you may have played getting S-ranks are TOUGH. You’ll need to maximise your grabbing of bonuses whilst still maintaining your speed and maximising your ring count in order to gain them. • Yacker doesn’t have a voice as such, but makes an audible chittering noise. He’s also big [...]

#sonyonlineentertainment If you build a free-to-play massively multiplayer game set in the Star Wars universe, they will come. Sony Online Entertainment reports more than one million registered players a week after the launch of Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures. More »

IO Interactive opens up about its controversial sequel, game reviews, and rewriting the hero myth.

Next week's Rock Band DLC will digitally distribute a whole lot of Anthrax. A five-pack of the thrash metal band's hits will be available, with "Caught In a Mosh" held up in the Rock Band 3 disc. Individual tracks will also make it into the store from the Doobie Brothers, My Chemical Romance, 30 Seconds to Mars, Atreyu and Buckcherry. Check out the set list details after the break.

Medal of Honor will launch a PC beta for its Call of Duty-esque multiplayer component on October 4. The two modes available in the open beta are Sector Control, a territory-grabbing game type, and Combat Mission. The beta will turn back into an IED pumpkin on October 7.

The beta also appears to be part of a PR campaign in light of the military's sensitivity to subject matter in the game. EA Games Label Frank Gibeau states, "We also hope that by offering the Multiplayer Open Beta, we can clear up any misunderstanding about the patriotism and respect that are the foundation of this game. The Medal of Honor franchise has always shown extraordinary reverence for American and Allied soldiers -- this game is no exception."

#clips German a cappella metal band Van Canto makes the free-to-play MMO Runes of Magic look more exciting than it has ever been in this music video for "Magic Taborea." More »

#teamico A few more tantalizing tidbits of information about upcoming PS3 exclusive The Last Guardian popped up in a recent interview between the Playstation Blog and the game's developer. More »

#bioware If a video game is going to feature a character class based primarily on the exploits of Harrison Ford as Han Solo, that class better have a Wookie sidekick. BioWare delivers. More »

While we're still so totally mad at LittleBigPlanet 2 for its recently announced delay, we couldn't avoid sharing Digital Foundry's recent examination of the game's improved graphics engine. In a series of levels designed to test the game's graphical strength, the Digital Foundry team compared the fog, lighting, textures and special effects to those of LittleBigPlanet the first, concluding that ... um, the sequel looks way better.

However, the comparison brought about concerns that some minor changes between the two engines, such as the draw distance of fog effects, might end up breaking some of the user-made levels from the first game. Check out the comparison photos and video over on Digital Foundry.

A Gamestop listing hints at new hardware.

#capcom "Bring out your undead!" cried Capcom to London Dead Rising fans, urging them to dress in their zombie finest for an early launch event at HMV on Oxford Street. The fans answered. More »

Anthrax five-pack, plus The Doobie Brothers, My Chemical Romance, 30 Seconds to Mars, Atreyu and Buckcherry come to Rock Band next week.

Here it is, the second "debut" trailer for Explodemon. Wait, what? Curve Studios explains that the original video "was a pre-vis ... to try and get publishers interested," adding "it's changed a lot since then." It certainly has, experiencing a few delays and shrinking down to one platform (PS3) along the way. Pay close attention to the video to see the combo system in action, and its Bangai-O inspiration in effect.

This is not the line for Halo: Reach's Japanese launch. In fact, it's just a minuscule sampling of the reported 2.6-million-and-then-some strong who picked up Pokémon Black and White in Japan last weekend. Reach debuted several days before, on September 15, selling a respectable 44,413 units through Sunday, which ranked fourth on the weekly Japanese sales chart, according to Media Create.

While Reach is hardly Japan's "Cabela of the Week," it would seem that a new Pokémon diverted some sales away from Bungie's encore effort. Recall that in September 2007, Halo 3 launched in the #1 spot in Japan, recording about 59,000 units sold in its first week (though combined sales of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Toki and Yami reached 101,000 units that week, the games' third week at retail). Still, Reach's Japanese launch week sales easily trumped those of ODST (about 30,000 units), which was -- this is getting predictable! -- buried under sustained sales of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver a year ago.

[Image credit: 1UP's RPG Blog]

Fumito Ueda is a name well known to most PlayStation fans. After directing the iconic PS2 games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Ueda-san fast became one of the most celebrated figures in international game development. Now he’s working on a new game, the boy-beast buddy adventure The Last Guardian. If you missed the new trailer released one week ago at the Tokyo Game Show, you can watch it below.

While in Tokyo, I had the pleasure of speaking with Ueda-san about The Last Guardian and his upcoming PS3 compilation Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection. I knew that getting a lot of firm details about a game as enigmatic and ambitious as The Last Guardian would be no easy task, so I decided to focus my questions on learning more about how the game plays, its core mechanics, and nuances I spotted in the trailer. Ueda-san’s replies provide a rare glimpse into one of 2011′s most intriguing games.

Sid Shuman: How would you describe The Last Guardian to somebody who had never seen it before?

Fumito Ueda, Director, The Last Guardian: It’s not a pet game, but there is a live animal in the game. I would describe it as an adventure game that you play with this animal.

SS: Will you control the boy, Trico, or both?

FU: You can only control the boy.

SS: What can you tell us about the boy? Does he have a name? Is he on a quest of some sort?

FU: The boy does not have a name…yet. The goal of the boy is to escape from the location you see in the trailer.

SS: Judging by the video, Trico (the beast) appears to be be a powerful force in combat situations. Is there a combat element to The Last Guardian? How does it work?

FU: As you saw in the video, Trico is able to defeat an enemy with one swipe. So in that sense, he functions as a guardian of sorts. But the boy is unable to defeat the enemies on his own — that’s the gameplay element involved.

SS: What can you tell us about the enemies we’ve seen in The Last Guardian? In the trailer, they appear to almost fall apart like statues…

FU: I can’t give you any details about the enemies. But I will say that they are not acting fully out of their own intentions.

SS: Is Trico the only creature of that size in The Last Guardian’s world?

FU: Again, I can’t give you any specific details. But there may be something like that out there…

SS: Shadow of the Colossus was known for its unusual control scheme. Will The Last Guardian follow suit with its controls, or will the controls feel familiar to players?

FU: The actual method of controls and button layouts have not been decided yet, because it doesn’t take much time to change the control scheme. But because we’re using the theme of an animal for The Last Guardian, I also want people who are not serious game players to try out this game. So I want the controls to be simpler than before.

SS: Many game journalists — and even the entry on Wikipedia — have described Shadow of the Colossus as one of the best examples for video games being an art form. How does that make you feel? Do you agree?

FU: I’m happy about it, I’m flattered. But I wonder what part are they are referring to when they make that comment, that it’s art. What part are they looking at? Because I think it’s possible to make it even more artistic. But because it’s a video game, those possibilities have been subdued somewhat — it’s a game. So I’d be interested to know what part, exactly, they mean when they refer to it as art.

There are games out there that are much more artistic than Shadow of the Colossus. And personally I also believe that it would be possible to make it even more “arty,” so to speak.

SS: What other games do you think represent a good argument for games as art?

FU: I guess it depends on how you define art, of course. But in a Japanese conception of the term “art,” it’s thought that it might be something that’s difficult to understand, or complex. Or something unique or uncommon.

So given that definition of art, maybe it’s a little detrimental to actually name any titles.

SS: You were asking why so many people name Shadow of the Colossus as an example of art. I think many people would answer that it’s because players begin to sympathize with the Colossi…

FU: So it makes you think — I understand.

#film Enslaved has Hollywood talent like actress Lindsay Shaw. The game was written by Alex Garland of 28 Days Later and The Beach fame. And its developers originally pitched Enslaved as a feature film. More »

Who's won a dinner date with Dan?

Who's won a dinner date with Dan?

Who's won a dinner date with Dan?

Who's won a dinner date with Dan?

From what we've seen from Team Meat's challenging, retro-inspired XBLA platformer Super Meat Boy, the game's already packed with countless hours of missed jumps and gruesome deaths. Still, that hasn't stifled the developer's lofty plans for expansion -- Team Meat's Edmund McMillen recently explained to MTV Multiplayer that the game will have a level called "Teh Internets," a world that can (and will!) be automatically updated with free level packs using the "Title Managed Storage" system we learned about from the release of Monday Night Combat.

Each pack will contain 20 new levels, all belonging to a different theme -- for instance, a pack titled "The Butcher Boy" places you in the shoes of an 8-bit Meat Boy, and will be available on launch day, October 20. McMillen explained on the game's official site that the long-term goal is to release the game's level editor "no more than six months after the PC version ships," and start putting player-made creations on Teh Internets. We hope the chosen creators don't have a mean streak -- the game's hard enough as is.

Go green with the upcoming online game.

The most Apocalyptic adventure game of the year is finally here.

Land ho.

#clips It would most definitely not sound like this. More »

Thank you to all the dot designers who contributed.

Though Nintendo's quirky, somewhat under-the-radar throwing game FlingSmash doesn't seem like the most likely partner for the launch of a new accessory, it would appear that's exactly how Nintendo is handling it. The GameStop listing for the Artoon-developed Wii game shows that it's bundled with a "Wii Remote Plus," and still due November 7. Given FlingSmash's MotionPlus requirement, we can safely guess that the Wii Remote Plus is a Wiimote with the MotionPlus already all up in it -- a trick we've seen from third parties.

Nintendo confirmed the existence of the controller to Eurogamer, declining to offer any more details. No GameStop listing was found for just the controller, leading us to suspect that FlingSmash was always intended as a pack-in with the Wii Remote Plus (its Wii Play, so to speak) -- which neatly answers the question of why Nintendo would make FlingSmash a full-priced retail game. We're contacting Nintendo for more details, since it probably knows a bit more about its own release plans than GameStop.

It seems like just a couple months ago that Peter Molyneux was on stage at the prestiguous TED conference sharing "Project Milo" with the attendees, and now rumors suggest the virtual boy-shaped tamagotchi has been put down and carved up. We spoke with Microsoft Game Studios boss Phil Spencer in Tokyo last week and asked him about the commercial prospects of the always commercially vague Milo project.

"If I had to bet, which I guess I do, I think you will see the innovation that that team put forward come to market, absolutely," Spencer told Joystiq. "Will it be under the idea and framework of 'Milo,' I'm not as convinced of that."