How could not want to hear all about Fight Night Champion from a man named "Jazz?" Okay, okay -- he's also an assistant producer on the title and he goes into detail about the game's much improved Legacy Mode. That might be more important ... we guess.
In other Fight Night Champion news, the game's entire roster has been revealed by EA. And yes, before you start asking, Marvelous Marvin Hagler is totally in there. We've dropped the entire list after the break, aka "the only place you'll find Joe Frazier hanging out next to George Foreman."
#amazon
Here's a curiosity: Over the past 90 days, eight of the top 12 sellers in the Kindle Store - including all of the top six - are games, dusting President George W. Bush's memoir and heavyweight writers like John Grisham. More »
Tomorrow night during the 2010 Spike VGAs, kindly join us for our annual tradition of liveblogging the show. Let us laugh, cry and roll our eyes together as one Joystiq biomass during the show. The show officially starts at 8PM, but we may begin a little early with our antics.
#fanart
Link turns to the power of the Four Swords and restores peace to Hyrule. Ry Shiu created a amazing tribute illustration to go along with the great game. More »
#ruhroh
Two words on the back cover boilerplate of Fighters Uncaged have invited a lawsuit from Dana White and the UFC, which will probably supply a fresh dose of publicity for a game bound for the bargain bin after terrible reviews. More »
Despite some quality arcade racers being released in 2010, the genre has had something of a rough year. Racing fans take heart, though, as it appears that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is off to a reasonable start. After the NPD revealed that the game ranked seventh in November's sales figures, GamesIndustry.biz reports that Hot Pursuit managed to sell 417,000 copies last month.
Granted, it's not as high as many of the blockbusters we've seen lately but, after the cruelly low launch numbers seen for Split/Second and Blur, the arcade racing genre needs all the good news it can get.
#review
Between Disney's 1982 classic Tron and its flash 2010 sequel lies Tron: Evolution, the video game that seeks to bridge the gap between the two films. This is one shaky bridge. More »
And now, some news that is simultaneously awesome and depressing. Hudson is (officially) bringing Turbografx-16 games to iPhone and iPod Touch "this winter" in a free TurboGrafx Gamebox app. It'll launch with a library of $3.99 games, and will include one, the Olympic-style World Sports Competition, for free. Each day, Hudson will select one game from the library and make it available through the app for a free three-minute trial.
Hudson didn't announce the initial lineup, but we're going to go out on a limb and guess it'll include Bonk's Adventure and Military Madness. And knowing that many people missed out on the TurboGrafx-16, we're happy to see the games being brought to such a popular platform.
And there's the terrible part. Last time we checked, the iPhone continued not to have buttons. So that's $4 each for a potentially great game to be rendered totally unplayable.
The latest Fallout: New Vegas patch (v1.02) is available now on PS3, with the Xbox 360 and Steam versions available "early next week." The update includes a major batch of fixes, which are expected to continue, for the notoriously buggy title. Review the list after the break.
#sports
Arturo Gatti couldn't make Fight Night Champion. It's not because he's dead - so's Sugar Ray Robinson, and he's in the game. It's just that negotiating likeness agreements with boxers is head-bangingly more frustrating than in any other sports game. More »
Before the year ends, Oddworld Inhabitants will launch The Oddboxx, a collection of four games for the PC: Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. The latter two titles are being ported to the PC for the first time -- if you want to get your grubby Mudoken mitts on the game, you can pick it up for $24.99 at retail or through one of the more popular digital distribution channels out there, including Steam, Direct2Drive and Amazon.
#gameoftheyear2010
As the year wraps up and the last of the big games roll out it's time to start our debate, the debate about what was the single greatest game of the year. More »
The Operation Flashpoint franchise has, for better and for worse, never been a fully "accessible" series. Its focus on realism is both what has earned its fanbase, and arguably what has prevented it from reaching Call of Duty or Medal of Honor notoriety. Codemasters' latest iteration, Red River, attempts the difficult task of continuing to offer "realistic" gameplay, whilst wooing the casual Modern Warfare gamer. It's a balancing act that forerunner Dragon Rising didn't quite realize.
That hasn't stopped Codemasters from trying. Red River's new stylized visuals make an immediate and effective statement: this is not the same Operation Flashpoint of yesteryear. As with Codemasters' other FPS, Bodycount, the team is going for a "J.J. Abrams-inspired" feel. The team wants you to feel like you're viewing the world from a helmet cam and, as such, bright lights will blind you, colors will be slightly distorted, and should you get hit you'll experience Kane & Lynch 2-style visual glitching. The tactical military genre doesn't really lend itself well to such an artistic decision, and it was hard for me to decide if it made the game memorable, tacky, or both.
The balance between realism and entertainment is further evident in the narrative crafted for Red River. This new tale sends you into Tajikistan, a (real) country that borders Afghanistan and China. In the "it could happen" fiction of this world, the military has chased insurgents out of Afghanistan into Tajikistan, and the army must do its best not only to stop these forces, but maintain goodwill in a newly destabilized country. China's PLA, focused on ensuring the war does not seep into its borders, joins the assault, creating a conflict that quickly gets messy. Having the American military go directly against the Chinese army, whilst fighting guerrilla insurgents, is at once absurd, terrifying and exciting.
Man, it seems like only yesterday that we first stepped virtual foot into PlayStation Home, communicating with fellow PS3 owners using a complex system of gestures and gender morphing. In actuality, it's been two years since the platform launched, and according to a Sony press release, over 17 million users have visited its ghostly halls in that time. These users have participated in over 600 "community events," some of which were sponsored by other game developers and publishers, while some of which were hosted by us, such as our lightly-attended "Virtual Pizza Party/Singles Mixer 2009."
The presser also announced two games which will arrive on the platform next spring: Sodium 2, a follow-up to Outso's successful, Home-based competitve tank shooter, and Conspiracy, a multiplayer "Spy/Puzzle game" from Jet Set Games. You can check out a few screenshots from the latter of these two titles in the gallery below. We wonder if our own proclivity for sexual espionage will give us a leg up?
