#japan
In years past, Club Nintendo gave loyal Japanese members a whole host of awesome prizes. This year, Club Nintendo won't. This year's "Platinum Member" prizes are so lame. More »
So you bought a new Xbox 360 S console bundled with Kinect last week and, like many others, found your new camera doodad doesn't come with its own power supply -- clearly, Microsoft thought you intended to use your Kinect with this console and this console alone. You were up the proverbial creek, sans paddle ... until now.
Microsoft's online store now has a listing for the power supply. No, you can't simply get one on the arm since you purchased the Xbox 360 S bundle -- no, instead you've got to reach into your wallet for $34.99 if you want one. That's almost one whole fifth of the cost of Kinect on its own but, hey, if you need one, now you know where to get it.
#anime
In 2008, Sega's war saga Valkyria Chronicles was turned into an animated series. It should come as no surprise that PSP game Valkyria Chronicles 3 is getting an anime send-up, too. More »
If you like fighting, tower defense, Bruins, Celtics, and playing video games before they're released, you're probably the perfect candidate for developer Fire Hose Games' call to arms. The studio is looking for gamers in the Boston area to beta test its genre-mashing PSN title, Slam Bolt Scrappers.
#ps3
You know, I watch more movies on my PS3 than I play games. So a service like Mubi - which caters specifically to lovers of fine film - is the best thing to happen to my console in a long time. More »
#clips
First person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops is out. People are playing it. But just wait until they find the floating apple, then they won't. They'll be too busy being horrified for that. More »
#pc
As online connectivity becomes more prevalent in our games, there's a niggling fear that the singleplayer game may soon become a thing of the past. So it's good to know Half-Life developers Valve still see a future for solitary gaming. More »
#review
Call of Duty: Black Ops slips players into the subterfuge, counter-espionage and abiding fear of the Cold War's international turmoil. It also serves as a polished, powerful link between the countless World War II games that came before it and the likely countless modern shooters that will come in its wake. More »
Maybe it's our competitive streak. Maybe it's the fact that we're constantly battling, over leaderboards and in deathmatches, that pushes us to compare one console against another, one franchise title against its peers, or even, as the industry has grown and matured, one developer's artistic creation against another's. Even when developers work in huge teams for years to craft a great experience, we're children of numbers and "less or greater than," of rankings and high scores and levels. Someone's got to win, and someone's got to lose.
Maybe it's only natural, then, that much of the discussion around Call of Duty of late falls into the question of whether Infinity Ward is a better studio than Treyarch, or whether megapublisher Activision can continue to have a successful series of games without Jason West and Vince Zampella. Our little community keeps asking, like some political zealot overcome with decision on the eve of an election: Are you with IW or Activision? Did you like WaW or CoD4? Will you like Black Ops more than MW2?
Our competitive nature is working against us here. The truth is that, in the latest two iterations of Call of Duty, we've gotten two great games. With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Infinity Ward brought us a cinematic, action-filled FPS combat title with a strong and lasting multiplayer element. And with Call of Duty: Black Ops, Treyarch has done the same thing.
#pc
Users have long been able to edit the appearance of indie hit Minecraft, but it's taken some tinkering to do so. No longer, as the game now contains official support for "skin packs". More »
#culturesmash
Just as massively multiplayer game Hello Kitty Online celebrates the character's 36th birthday, a Dutch court ruled that a Hello Kitty friend is too similar to one of the country's beloved characters, yanking the Kitty pal from store shelves. More »
Next time your Dad's all, "I wanna play Halo with you, little Billy, but I just can't get a grip on the controls of these crazy new games!", there could be a better answer than "Eff off, Dad!": Coach Turnbuckle's FPS Trainer. The browser-based first-person shooter is designed to improve FPS players' skills by offering coaching tips and providing a detailed rundown of player strengths and weaknesses.
Developed by Play2Improve, the game is described as "a series of mini-games to practice various FPS techniques and skills utilizing a real-time coach to provide constant feedback and advice, along with an online multiplayer mode that also includes coaching and the use of Microsoft's Xbox Live Avatars (not shown in playable demo)." Play2Improve reps explained the odd inclusion of Xbox 360 Avatars to Joystiq this afternoon, saying, "We were previously developing FPS Trainer for consoles, following a successful concept pitch at GDC last year; however, after developing a playable demo, we decided to take the product in a different direction and are going down the browser-based/online route initially, prior to a potential port to consoles early next year."
FPS Trainer's visuals are "designed to fit with the Xbox Live Avatars," so think more Team Fortress 2 than Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Or just head past the break and get your eyes on the game's introductory trailer -- we like to offer you options. The game arrives in beta form this coming January, and is planned for a full release in April.
#mario
Legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto created Mario, having some part in most of the plumber's games to date. But after nearly thirty years of Mario, then, do you ever wonder which game is Miyamoto's favourite? More »
Marcus Rivers may not be as well-known as Kevin Butler when it comes to televised Sony spokespeople, but he's already getting credit as inspiration for a video game. Lame Castle appears in an ad that shoots down mobile games, with Marcus noting that phones "ain't built for big boy games."
Apparently, the ad was a throwdown for Bradley Johnson, who left Crystal Dynamics after working on the downloadable game, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. As a newly independent developer, the ad encouraged Johnson to buy the domain name and work on a prototype -- a process that took only a few weeks. "It's been a very quick development cycle, but it's been quite smooth," Johnson told Gamasutra.
Johnson and his newly founded development team, Be-Rad Entertainment, have since released Lame Castle on Android, with an iPhone version also in the works. His hope is to eventually work on downloadable games on all platforms. May we suggest an ironic PSP Minis port?
#gt5
Earlier this week, the Gran Turismo Awards were held as part of the Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas. The prize? Some regular guy would get his custom car made available as a vehicle in the game. More »
#retail
This won't be much of a surprise to anyone who's been keeping tabs on the mainstream media and the general public's reaction to both devices, but a GameStop executive reckons Kinect will outsell Move this Christmas. Especially at his house. More »
Last month, EA sent out invitations to a Crysis 2 closed beta on the Xbox 360, and now one apparent player has uploaded this sharp-looking video preview of ... the preview. Don't think looking this good comes easy, though -- do you even know how much the dry cleaning bill for a suit like that costs?
Creating a functional user interface through Kinect can't be an easy task -- how do you make waving your arms around mean something, after all? Harmonix was confronted with exactly this problem in developing Dance Central, and judging by reviews, the developer figured it out just fine.
So what's the secret? The team had to actually teach players how to gesture, using visual and even aural feedback in the game when players got it right. Developer Ryan Challinor told the Montreal International Games Summit this week that in testing, player swipes varied widely across both speed and position, and so the final solution was to make the players react to the game, rather than programming the game to react to the players.
A few different solutions were prototyped, however, including the utilization of a cursor, which was dragged around the screen and planted in "notches" to choose the game's songs or options. The team also tried to get players to interact in 3D space, either "pushing" on virtual buttons or "grabbing" and pulling a scroll wheel around. In the end, Challinor said, simply iterating these ideas was the key to solving the Kinect conundrum: The team implemented idea after idea, and then polished the one that worked best.
Of course, not every development team responsible for the first batch of Kinect games took this approach. At least one studio seemingly went with its first idea, and then made it as raw as possible.
Prepare yourselves to be genuinely unsettled, dear readers. Media Molecule released a batch of truly revealing concept art and an animation test, revealing the true reason for LittleBigPlanet's protagonist's plushy composition. Now, we're just guessing, but by the media seen below, we think Sackboy is made of ... well, sack, because it makes him all the more entertaining to squish, crush, immolate and eviscerate. We may never look at him (or his creators) the same way again.
Check out the disturbing concept art in the gallery below, and the even disturbing-er animation reel after the jump.
#thq
Fans of the apocalyptic action-adventure Darksiders better get ready for a new hero to take the reins in the game's sequel, because it appears War will be taking a back seat next time. More »
Microsoft is waging the Great Motion Gaming Wars of Holiday 2010 with a half-billion-dollar war chest -- we're talking Jimmy, Ellen and Oprah money right there. Sony, on the other hand, has taken a more subtle approach: Enter the good ol' fashioned "stats" sheet.
