GAME Australia Lays Off 281 Employees, Closes 60 Stores 
How Diablo III's Always-On Internet Requirement Makes It A Better Game GAME: No Buyers Yet, Crisis To Drag On For Another Month 
Have Your Say On Video Game Pricing 
35,000 Telstra Passwords Reset After Games Services Hacked 
Dragon's Dogma: The Kotaku Review While the Gizmondo handheld device was almost immediately forgettable, the storied lives of its executives, especially notorious “Uppsula mafioso” Stefan Eriksson, have stayed with us much longer than the failed device. Today, the bizarre yarn of Eriksson’s Ferrari Enzo crash in Malibu adds another thread. The mysterious “Dietrich”, an otherwise unidentified German man whom Eriksson told police was driving the rare wrecked sports car, was finally arrested by police.
Sierra today announced that they are working on a new title for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 which they describe as a “new kind of open-world game, featuring a rich story line of conspiracy, deception and deadly shape shifting action.”
The game is being developed by Radical Entertainment, the folks behind Crash of the Titans and Scarface, and tells the story Alex Mercer, a man haunted by his past, fighting a secret war in New York City. There’s action, there’s conspiracy, and there’s that deadly shape-shifting action, which is auto-hot. Apparently this shape-shifting power will allow the lead character to morph into people he meets in the game and steal their skills or powers. Let’s hope you get to play as that guy.
Hit the jump for the press release.
The Entertainment Software Ratings Board may have left slip news on an upcoming PlayStation Network release with Konami’s Castlevania Chronicles for the PLAYSTATION 3 and PSP recently rated by the organisation. Castlevania Chronicles, for those not intimately familiar with their Castlevania remakes, was a PlayStation release from 2001, bringing the Japanese Sharp X68000 game AkumajÅ Dracula to North America for the first time. AkumajÅ Dracula was actually a remake of the original 8-bit Castlevania for the Famicom/NES.
The U.S. version came late in the PlayStation’s lifecycle and at a relatively high price for what was basically a remake of a remake…of a remake? It’s confusing. Regardless of how many layers must be peeled away to get to the source, the game’s addition to the PlayStation Network should give Belmont Clan fans a chance to take a crack at this old-school action-platformer.
It should also give Konami a chance to drum up more hype for its PSP release of another remake, Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles.
GameTrailer just posted up the new trailer for Beautiful Katamari for the Xbox 360 and, according to the site, the PS3. Not that again. I’m glad to see that the game remains bizarre and mildly disturbing.
Don’t forget. Our last meeting for the Mr. Robot edition of Game Club is next Thursday. This time around you’ll need to complete the game, which really shouldn’t take that much longer if you’ve been keeping up.
Feel free to make any suggestions about formatting for Game Club here. Our next meeting isn’t till Thursday night so we have time. Also, if you missed the first or second meetings, you can still jump into the discussion over in the transcript we posted from the event.
We know, it’s Friday night and you had plans. Well they can wait—at least fifteen minutes while you watch this 1UP preview of Mass Effect. There’s a lot of new stuff here that will give you a better feeling for combat, character creation, and the universe of Mass Effect.
We’d recommend taking your time with this one. Crack a bottle of wine, take a rosewater bath, and be all good smelling for the experience. So yeah, just cancel your plans. There’s a new Mass Effect video. They’ll understand if they love you.
Mass Effect ’1UP Exclusive Preview’ [gamevideos]
It’s official, everybody’s favourite RTS that isn’t really an RTS is hitting North America on September 18. The innovative strategy game will sell for $US50, or you can pay an extra $US10 for the Collector’s Edition.
I played a bit of the game when it was in beta and I quite enjoyed it, though I think it would be a lot more fun if you were playing with a group of friends. That’s mostly because in the game you take control of one type of unit and then have to rely on your team mates to provide support and such. I often played artillery and after hammering the enemy from a distance for most of the game found myself royally screwed when they came hunting for me and my team mates were nowhere to be found.
Hit the jump for the official press release.
Wow! What a week of updates over at the Smash Bros. Dojo!! It was so thrilling, so spectacular, so packed with mind-scrambling megatons that it might warrant a third exclamation point!!! Actually, it was dry as dust, with five business days of C-level updates dragging down the site. Outside of Pit’s fan-boner of an update, the rest is simply… *yawn* housekeeping. Here’s the Dojo Dump!
Yesterday and today saw this Kotaku associate editor playing a trio of this fall’s bigger hits, including the one I’m able to chat about, Activision’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat. This weekend I think I’ll be sticking to older fare, as my recent purchase of Beyond Oasis for the Sega Genesis means I’ll finally get my hands on this action-RPG classic. For what I’m playing beyond Beyond Oasis, I expect that Picross DS will consume to soak up most of my free time. It’s all rather dull isn’t it? Your input is far more exciting.
So, let’s have it. What are you playing this weekend? To the comments with you!
