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Posted by Joystiq Nov 11 2010 18:20 GMT in Call of Duty: Black Ops
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Since Call of Duty: Black Ops is still fresh off the press, we're going to do our very best to avoid spoilers here, so bear with us.

Okay, who's the most famous Cuban guy you know? No, not Andy Garcia. Not Daisy Fuentes either, she's a girl. The other one, with the beard. Rhymes with Lastro. ... Right! So in the first mission of the game you're tasked with finding him and ... hurting him. Maybe hurting him so badly that he will be, like, the opposite of alive. Hint, hint.

That's predictably peeved some folks in Cuba. According to a Guardian translation, a recent story on government-run website cubadebate read, "What the United States government did not achieve in more than 50 years, it now tries to do virtually. This new video game is doubly perverse. On the one hand, it glorifies the illegal assassination attempts the United States government planned against the Cuban leader ... and on the other, it stimulates sociopathic attitudes in North American children and adolescents."

We had reserved this space to make fun of whatever crazy thing the Cuban paper said, but they kinda nailed it, right?

Posted by Kotaku Nov 11 2010 18:00 GMT in Rock Band
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#harmonix Viacom, like any good media conglomerate, loves big margins... and it can not lie, you other investors can't deny that when a subsidiary walks in with itty bitty net earnings you've got to sell it... More »

Posted by Joystiq Nov 11 2010 18:00 GMT in No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise
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Those "additional boss characters" added to the Western PS3 release of No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise? "All of the additional bosses in the game are from No More Heroes 2," Konami's Tak Fuji told GameSugar, "making this much more than just the original Wii game." That's welcome news for people experiencing the series for the first time through this PS3 game, as it now encompasses at least a bit of a sequel.

He didn't mention which bosses or how many -- but we can guarantee that whichever bosses are included, whether it's the revenge-obsessed young man who pulls his own head off, the flamethrower-wielding ghost of a murdered child, or the robot filled with cheerleaders, they're going to be weird.

Fuji also indicated that Konami is at least considering a Kinect-enabled release on Xbox 360. "We have, and are still tossing around ideas for linking NMH with the Kinect for Xbox 360 gamers," he said, "but since the Kinect is such a unique device, it's a bit more difficult. This isn't to say that the Kinect is a poor interface by any means, but more that in its uniqueness it requires a bit more care and planning to bring Travis to the Xbox 360. So if we were to do so, we'd need more time." It's worth noting that Heroes' Paradise was released on both Xbox and PS3 in Japan, so there is a 360 version to work with.

Posted by GoNintendo Nov 11 2010 17:48 GMT in de Blob 2
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More screens and art here de Blob 2 is currently set for a February release in Europe.

Video
Posted by Kotaku Nov 11 2010 17:40 GMT in Farmville
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#clips A life well lived is a life well documented on Facebook, it seems. More »

Posted by GoNintendo Nov 11 2010 17:41 GMT in Nintendo Stuff
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Celebrating the upcoming release of the highly addictive puzzle game Frenzic for Nintendo DSiWare™, developer and digital publisher Two Tribes reveals the first official screenshots Frenzic is a unique puzzle game that dazzles the eye, teases the brain and makes other puzzle games look like child’s play. The game was originally developed by the Iconfactory and [...]

Posted by Joystiq Nov 11 2010 17:45 GMT in Gaming News
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Tango Gameworks head Shinji Mikami tends to be reticent in interviews, but he opened up to Famitsu in a recent talk (translated by 1UP), discussing abuse from his father, and how he ended up at a Capcom job fair mostly out of interest in free food.

He also talked at length about his displeasure with moving into a producer role at Capcom after the first Resident Evil. "There was a time when I wanted to leave Capcom because of that," Mikami said. "I joined Capcom in order to create things, and I thought that going away from that would be counterproductive. It was hard, not being directly involved with the development process." Even so, it was with some reluctance that he took over directing for Resident Evil 4. "I had been a producer for eight years, and the moment I finally get a chance to return to development, it's on RE. That sure wasn't what I intended!"

Discussing his future at Tango, he didn't put quite the sense of finality on his next game as he had in a previous interview with Famitsu. "Sooner or later, I'll have to shift my attention to raising new talent and handing the baton over to them. Joining the ZeniMax family puts me in a situation where I can leave the more boring details of that to other people. I'm trying not to expect too much, but I do feel that this is a chance for me to keep working in the front lines of development."

[Image: Tango Gameworks]

Posted by Kotaku Nov 11 2010 12:27 GMT in Call of Duty: Black Ops
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#numbers About 5.6 million people bought copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops in North America and the United Kingdom on Tuesday, when the game went on sale. More »


Posted by Kotaku Nov 11 2010 17:20 GMT in Gaming News
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#accessories Behold The Avenger, an Xbox 360 controller prosthesis that promises to improve your accuracy and reaction time. Steven says "It's almost like having extra fingers." We say "Who the hell is Steven?" More »

Posted by Joystiq Nov 11 2010 17:15 GMT in Gaming News
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Mega-publisher ZeniMax Media made its acquisition of Swedish developer MachineGames official today, specifying that the studio would be working on multiplatform titles under ZeniMax's Bethesda banner. MachineGames' first unannounced project will be built using sibling studio id Software's id Tech 5 game engine.

"Working with our new colleagues at id and the world class publisher, Bethesda Softworks, is a tremendous opportunity," said MachineGames CEO Jerk Gustafsso, who will serve as executive producer of the new game.

Barely a year old, MachineGames has nothing to show for itself publicly, though the company was established by a gang of ex-Starbreeze founders, including Gustafsso, which is credited with critical darlings The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher's Bay (2004) / Assault on Dark Athena (2009) and The Darkness (2007). Legal documentation of the acquisition appeared to indicate that MachineGames would be re-branded "ZeniMax Sweden," but it seems the studio will retain its original name.

Just two weeks ago, Zenimax made its acquisition of Shinji Mikami's Tango Gameworks official. Just this week, subsidiary Bethesda made its shipment of 5 million blatantly buggy copies of Fallout: New Vegas official -- hey, revenue's gotta come from something while these new studios get settled.

[Pictured: id Software's Rage, built with id Tech 5]

Posted by Joystiq Nov 11 2010 17:02 GMT in L.A. Noire
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Update 12:02pm - We've got the trailer embedded just past the break. Does it look like the original 2006 trailer below it? Not really. The most notable addition: color. The slick black-and-white aesthetic has been replaced with bright colors, not unlike other LA-based noir tales, like Chinatown and LA Confidential. And while you're watching it, get a load of those facial animations. Kind of freaky, right? We can't tell if they're perfect or terrifying, but we're leaning towards the former for now.

And perhaps the most notable addition to this "first trailer" is the release window: Spring 2011. That's just a few short months away, folks. Expect to be hearing a lot more about LA Noire soon ... or not. This is Rockstar we're talking about.

Original post - Heads up: The "first trailer" for Rockstar's open-world crime caper, LA Noire, is scheduled to appear in just about an hour from now. While Rockstar calls this its "first trailer," some of you may think back to the CGI trailer released back in October 2006, almost exactly four years ago.

Watch that old one after the break and check back shortly for the new stuff.

Posted by Kotaku Nov 11 2010 17:00 GMT in L.A. Noire
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#clips It's here, the first real trailer for gritty 40s detective game L.A. Noire and it's going to blow you away. More »

Posted by Joystiq Nov 11 2010 17:02 GMT in L.A. Noire
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Heads up: The "first trailer" for Rockstar's open-world crime caper, LA Noire, is scheduled to appear in just about an hour from now. While Rockstar calls this its "first trailer," some of you may think back to the CGI trailer released back in October 2006, almost exactly four years ago.

Watch that old one after the break and check back shortly for the new stuff.

[Update 12:02pm - We've got the trailer embedded just past the break.]

Posted by IGN Nov 11 2010 17:05 GMT in Shogun II: Total War
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The war for Japan starts in four months.

Posted by IGN Nov 11 2010 17:05 GMT in L.A. Noire
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We give you a voice in deciding if Rockstar's latest will end up a winner.

Posted by PlayStation Blog Nov 11 2010 17:01 GMT in Create
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Create is all about your imagination – tapping into both visual creativity and creative problem solving. We have created challenges that require you to exercise many different types of thinking and problem-solving. You will be tasked with a challenge, then given hundreds of objects in the game — all with different physical properties — that you can use to solve it. We have themed 140 Challenges divided into four main types.

Object challenges encourage you to look for the most efficient solution to a simple problem using a small set of items. These can actually be quite tough to solve! Scoretacular challenges seen in the video above are the complete opposite of the Object challenges, as you’re tasked with solving a problem in the most outlandish way possible using multiple objects and setting up crazy chains of events. This mode is incredibly fun and causes intense competition to find the wackiest solutions. Contraption challenges present you with a set of parts, such as wheels, planks, pivots and girders, as well as a place on the screen where you can build. The challenge is to construct a contraption that works! Pick-up party is a bit more creative, as you are encouraged to take a number of different routes, not always the most obvious, in order to solve the challenge while picking up as many Create Sparks en-route as possible.

The main thing to remember about Create is that while the challenge itself is a general guide, the game is driven by the creative solutions that you bring to it. Create is not a puzzle game with only one solution – people bring their own unique set of solutions to the problem. I have spent an hour in a challenge just playing with new ideas and ways of chaining events together – it is a huge game in that respect. The more time you invest in trying out novel and “out there” solutions, the more you will enjoy playing. And, for the Trophy hunters amongst us, the higher score you will achieve!

One of our original mantras on this project was: “Make it easy enough for someone who can’t paint or draw to be creative.” Create provides a multitude of easy tools that allow you to fully customize the worlds we provide, enabling the building of a scene from background to foreground and adding all of the details in between. For example, you can choose a sky as a starting point and change the lighting and mood as you go. You can then add your own details like clouds, birds and airplanes and set them all in motion. You could paint on top of that if you wished to add more detail and make it unique. You can add texture to the world, and then add details like stickers, scene props, creatures and decorator brushes. For a finishing touch, you can add full-screen effects like rain or blowing leaves.

PlayStation Move allows us to streamline the controls to make something simpler and more intuitive to use. For instance, the precision it gives you when painting with our brushes, to rotating and scaling props and stickers in their scenes. Though PlayStation Move is fully supported in Create, it’s also not required.

Create isn’t a traditional game in that it doesn’t have separate ‘game modes’ – many of the tools and objects are available all of the time. For example, you can be working with a challenge solution, decide that you want to decorate their scene some more and do just that, in real time. Additionally, you can also create your own challenge at any time, play around with any of the game items to see what they do, or just create crazy chains of events (which is fun in its own right). We also allow you to share all of the above online with other creators. You can also download and remix other people’s solutions, creations and challenges via PSN.

The development team can’t wait to see the crazy solutions that you’ll come up with in Create!


Posted by IGN Nov 11 2010 17:00 GMT in PC Gaming News
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Munich-based browser game specialists look back on a turbulent past and keep their focus on expansion.

Posted by Joystiq Nov 11 2010 16:45 GMT in Rock Band 3
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After seeing this morning's news of Viacom selling developer Harmonix, many of you were concerned about the company's persistent work in supporting its products with downloadable content.

Harmonix has responded to our inquiry, stating, "This morning's announcement does not affect the ongoing work at the studio as we continue to support our existing franchises, Rock Band and Dance Central. As stated earlier, Viacom is in discussions with several potential buyers and will continue to fully support the business until a sale is completed."

The developer plans to continue answering outstanding questions on its forum on this thread. We're currently following up with Viacom and MTV Games regarding the status of the licenses for the music store and whether they'll transfer with Harmonix once the company is sold.

Posted by IGN Nov 11 2010 16:37 GMT in PC Gaming News
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PopCap's first mobile social game service to launch in Japan early next year.

Posted by IGN Nov 11 2010 16:35 GMT in Rock Band 3
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Viacom puts Harmonix on the block.

Posted by IGN Nov 11 2010 16:32 GMT in Star Wars: The Old Republic
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Groundbreaking MMORPG from legendary developers at BioWare set for global launch in 2011.

Posted by Kotaku Nov 11 2010 16:20 GMT in Gaming News
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#squareenix It's no secret that the second MMO to bear the Final Fantasy name has issues. Square Enix today lays out plans for massive patches in November, December, and early 2011 to fix the game. What's changing? More »

Posted by IGN Nov 11 2010 16:31 GMT in PC Gaming News
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Action-packed shooter 'Gatling Gears' coming in Spring 2011.

Posted by Joystiq Nov 11 2010 16:30 GMT in Call of Duty: Black Ops
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According to player reports picked up on by Strategy Informer, the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops suffers from some rather serious issues. Most notably, players have been experiencing performance dips in single player and multiplayer. As the video after the break demonstrates, the game will stutter and periodically freeze every few seconds, resulting in some undeserved deaths and undoubtedly a fair amount of rage (Destructoid pointed out similar issues in its review of the title).

The issue appears to stem from a memory problem, with users reporting that Black Ops often hogs up much more CPU than is necessary, even climbing as high as 100 percent according to some users. According to Treyarch's David Vonderhaar, the company is aware of the problem, though he offered no further details on a potential fix. Additionally, GameServers.com, which provides dedicated servers for the game, has stated on its forums that the lag is related to an internal game bug and that Treyarch is "looking into it."

We've contacted Treyarch and will update as soon as we hear anything.

Posted by IGN Nov 11 2010 16:30 GMT in PlayStation News
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Action-packed shooter 'Gatling Gears' coming in Spring 2011.

Posted by Joystiq Nov 11 2010 16:15 GMT in L.A. Noire
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Heads up: The "first trailer" for Rockstar's open-world crime caper, LA Noire, is scheduled to appear in just about an hour from now. While Rockstar calls this its "first trailer," some of you may think back to the CGI trailer released back in October 2006, almost exactly four years ago.

Watch that old one after the break and check back shortly for the new stuff.