All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

This game made me power gag.

#blizzard As promised, Blizzard has opened up pre-orders for its next World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, on Battle.net. Buy World of Warcraft: Cataclysm now, download it before launch date, then play one minute after the add-on officially launches. More »

We're sure there are plenty of Monday Night Combat fans that were pleased at all the changes implemented by the recent title update. Taking a gander at what Uber has planned for the first (and free) DLC pack -- scheduled to release this November -- there are a lot more fixes and changes where that came from. First and foremost, the 'Spunky Cola Special' DLC will add two new maps.

Crossfire mode gets the very purple Spunky Cola Arena, which offers up only one lane of attack, which should lead to some hot and heavy battles right from the start. Blitz mode also gets the new Survivitol Arena. In addition to the new maps, the DLC will introduce a whole host of fixes, changes and balance tweaks. It's not just the classes either, as the arenas themselves will be fixed and rearranged in various ways.

The most important addition, however, is still veiled in mystery. Bacon is easily the most sought after (and most delicious) power-up in Monday Night Combat, but apparently a new one is on the way. Referred to only as "tasty pickup," all we know is that it rewards players with "something awesome." Find the DLC change list after the break. Get yourself something to eat, because it's long.

A portion of a WildGunman interview with Graham Markay, Vice President of Operations at Natsume… WG: How does the multiplayer work? What can you do and what benefits can you gain? Is it local based only or can you play online? GM: Locally, up to 3 players can team up to tackle a series of randomly generated [...]

#pc StarCraft II may be popular in the U.S., but not the way it and its predecessor are in South Korea, where TV networks so badly want to air matches that a legal battle with Blizzard Entertainment could be heating up. More »

Coming from the Capcom Unity blog… This November UDON returns to the most classic of all fighting game eras with STREET FIGHTER GAIDEN, a 2-volume manga series featuring the classic cast of Street Fighter II!

#salesget After five weeks at the top of Japan's sales charts, Pokemon Black and Pokemon White have met their match — Mario. Nintendo's budget priced Super Mario Collection for the Wii has landed in Japan and has dominated the competition. More »

We thought Idea Factory's bizarre strategy RPG Hyper Dimension Neptune was too, well, bizarre to localize, given that it's about game consoles (in the form of girls) fighting against the scourge of piracy. We should have remembered that NIS America is on call to localize weird strategy games that probably have no business in America.

NIS is localizing the PS3 game as Hyperdimension Neptunia, in which you take the role of the title console/goddess in order to save the land of Gameindustri from the evil Arfoire, using summon spells based on other games. Unlike the dead Sega console for which it's named, Neptunia has a release window: spring 2011.

The Gran Turismo Awards are back for an eighth year, ready to crown a new performance vehicle with the honor of getting digitally recreated in a future edition of the Gran Turismo franchise. The awards event will be held Wednesday evening, November 3rd at 9:00 pm at The Joint, located in the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. In addition to the awards ceremony, music acts Thirty Seconds to Mars along with DJ Diplo will play individual sets to help celebrate the evening in style.

The Gran Turismo Awards at SEMA recognizes the best vehicles in five different categories: Best Hot Rod, Best Asian Import, Best European Import, Best Domestic Automobile, and Best Truck/SUV. After the five category winners are judged, one winner from each category is selected on performance and style by leading automotive media. From there, it falls to Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi to select the overall GT Awards “Best in Show” winner. Walking the show floor, Kazunori-san views each of the category winners and selects a vehicle that best represents the Gran Turismo brand; one that will be immortalized as a fully playable part of the Gran Turismo franchise for millions of fans around the world.

In addition to the music acts following the awards ceremony, guests will have a chance to check out and play Gran Turismo 5 prior to launch.

For those of you in town to attend SEMA, come on by with your badge to check out the awards event and a great show. We look forward to seeing you Wed evening!

Spare Parts, EA Bright Light's XBLA/PSN platformer about lovable robots, has a bit of star power in addition to its known cuteness power. Shaun of the Dead and Star Trek actor Simon Pegg has joined the cast as "Con-rad," a computer who guides Mar-T and Chip on their search for spaceship parts. In fact, he may be the cast, since he's the only announced talent.

This means that Pegg now has the distinction of playing both Montgomery "Hello, computer" Scott and a talking computer. That has to be important somehow, right?

#screengrab LA animator Chris Houghton created this cartoon of me using Nintendo's Art Academy. More »

With a title like that, how could you go wrong?!

#namcobandai Namco's sequel to the brilliant Pac-Man Championship Edition is coming later this year to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network and my god does it look like the most spectacular thing ever. More »

If you're eager to hasten the world's demise -- and you've seen the internet, so why wouldn't you be? -- you can now log in to your Battle.net account and pre-order World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. The expansion, which promises to wreck and rearrange the realm of Azeroth, will become available for download at 12:01 a.m. PST on December 7 (and 12:01 a.m. CST in Europe and Russia). Online pre-orders will be granted automatic access to the expansion's content as soon as Blizzard's servers go live.

As with director Roland Emmerich's take on armageddon, there are few caveats you should be aware of before going in. You'll be charged as soon as you place your pre-order, and you will have to log in to World of Warcraft at least once before launch date in order to begin a background download. Cataclysm's Collector's Edition bonuses, like the in-game pet, will only be available with retail copies. Maybe Blizzard is trying to tell you something.

We can't be certain how many more Kinect purchases Microsoft will score by targeting Ellen's demographic. What is certain is that Ellen has scored major props for putting down some "flawless" Dance Central moves. Step your game up, Kietzmann.

While not exactly an Oprah-caliber performance, with the help of Microsoft, Ellen is getting DeGenerous in her own right by offering up a chance to win one of ten Kinect units (personal information required to enter the giveaway) on her site -- where you can also check out her full dance clip (completely anonymously).

#clips What happened when you pile 200 frag mines around some guy standing around in Fallout: New Vegas and then shoot the explosives? Fun, that's what! More »

What the smurf? Did you hear that Capcom is set to release a social Smurf game for the iPod, iPhone and iPad this November? We couldn't smurfing believe it either. Promoting the upcoming Smurf movie, the game is called Smurfs' Village and has players rebuilding (what else?) a Smurf village that's been sacked by Gargamel. Players begin the game with a single mushroom house and a plot of land and are allowed to rebuild the village as they see fit (sounds familiar).

The game will be free to download and play, which sounds hunky smurfy, until you read this smurfing bit of text in the press release: "To expedite growing and construction times, players can opt to purchase Smurfberries as downloadable content." Well that's just smurfing smurf.

Two bits of love for the NES days, both from Lovesac. The bean bag company put out a Lovesac bean bag in the colors of the NES, which looks mighty nice and comfy. The company also created 10 golden Power Gloves for their retro gaming tournament. How nice would it be to [...]

#ea EA's modern military shooter is getting a double dose of downloadable content next week. Medal of Honor players can pick up "Hot Zone" and "Clean Sweep" on November 2, but only one of them will cost you. More »

Following this week's announcement that Xbox manager Scott Henson is taking over as the head of Rare, the newly appointed exec is defending his studio's mission to the media. Speaking with Eurogamer, Henson re-established Kinect as "a key part of the studio's future," adding that it won't exclusively be working on 360 motion games, "but it will be the centerpiece of our strategy for sure."

He also teased further support for Rare's back catalog. When asked about revisiting the titles -- and even the possibility of adding Kinect functionality -- Henson explains, "You can look at what we're doing with Xbox Live Arcade and you can see how we've taken those classics and refreshed them and brought them to the service. We'll continue to look at those kinds of opportunities. Don't just think about packaged goods in terms of opportunities and Rare and how we bring those things to life." Unfortunately, Henson was less talkative on the subject of Killer Instinct, only offering "I know Killer Instinct is very high in the fan list and one we need to continue to keep our eye on."

#gameface A group of Japanese comedians promote Winning Eleven (Pro Evo Soccer) at an event in Tokyo. As seen on Game Watch Impress. More »

Lifetime sales reach 44.6 million units worldwide.

Microsoft has issued its earnings report for Q1 of its fiscal year 2011, and things are looking good for its gaming division. The company reported revenue of $16.20 billion for the period, which ended on September 30. This amounts to a 25 percent increase over Q1 FY 2010 overall.

When it comes to Xbox 360, the console was cited as a top performer, alongside Windows 7 and Office 2010. In fact, Microsoft reports that sales are up 38 percent overall, compared with the same quarter last year, "outselling every competing console in the U.S. for each of the past four months," it gloats.

Diving into the numbers, Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division (home to Xbox, Zune, and Windows Phone 7) benefited from a 33 percent rise in revenue from Xbox 360 sales over Q1 FY 2010, to the tune of $409 million. Shipments of the console to retailers totaled 2.8 million units for the quarter, up from 2.1 million during the same period last year.

Revenue from software sales also increased, bolstered by (what else?) Halo: Reach. The Bungie title generated a whopping $350 million for Microsoft in the quarter -- a number made more impressive by the fact that, having launched September 14, that revenue resulted from only 17 days of the game's sales. No wonder Microsoft is considering releasing Halo games on a more frequent basis.

Bobby Kotick managed to come in at spot 16 this year, where AskMen didn’t even include him on last year’s list. There’s no doubt that Kotick has made a bigger name for himself this time around, with plenty of controversy and comments centering on the bigwig.

Here's a bad idea: making a cartoon in 2002 based on a TV series that ended in 1995, which relied entirely upon one actor's physical comedy skills, and featured very little dialogue.

Here's a worse idea: making a Wii platformer in 2008 based on that animated series.

The worst idea yet: Taking that 2008 game based on the 2002 cartoon of the early-1990s TV show about the near-mute man, and then releasing it in another country where that character isn't nearly as popular. Oh, and doing that in 2010 or 2011.

Crave is doing just that. The ESRB's description of Crave's new "Mr. Bean" game -- including use of cooking pans and bug spray as weapons -- matches up with the gameplay in Mr. Bean's Wacky World of Wii, meaning that those of us stateside will be able to take part in Mr. Bean's search for 1,000 cat biscuits. Because that's what the game is about. That has to factor into the quality of this idea somewhere.