Monday, March 3, 2008
Starcraft 2 Is Blizzard’s “Best Game Ever”
11:30PM Luke Plunkett | Lost Vikings? Great. Warcraft? Wonderful. Diablo? Fantastic. But Starcraft 2, well, it might just be better than the lot of them. Or at least that’s what Blizzard is saying, hoping we’ll be swept up by the pre-release hype and play along. Totally unnecessary, since we were going to do that anyways, but whatever. Blizzard’s Chris Metzen: I think we’re all doing the best work of our careers… It’s been very, very rewarding to see this thing take shape. Just getting back to that Blizzard of yesteryear where it’s not all about WoW – don’t get me wrong, I love WOW! But we’re so much more than that. After all these years, Chris, it’s lovely to hear someone from within Blizzard say that. StarCraft II is Blizzard’s “best work ever” [Blizzcast, via Eurogamer] More »
Lego Will Make Your Lego MMO Designs (And Dreams) Come To Life
11:15PM Luke Plunkett | We (and I mean “we” as in “humanity”) are all already super-excited for the upcoming Lego MMO. We’ll all have to find room to squeeze a little more excitement in, though. Think there’s some space up the back. Why? Because Lego have announced that, if you’d like, they can take any character – and “other creations” – that you create in the game and make them. Into real Lego. At the proper Lego factory in Denmark. Somebody hold me. Brick by Brick [GI.biz] [Pic] Ed’s note: The NetDevil folks first mentioned this possibility a year ago when we broke the news of LEGO Universe. More »
Dine On Wii Pro Eating Game
11:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Like eating? Like eating so much you feel like you’re gonna puke and then you actually do? Me neither! But for those who do, go pig out. Everyone else, check out the WiiWare port of PC title Major League Eating: The Game. The game will take advantage of the Wii-mote and have players mimic shoving food down their gullets. What’s more, the game will feature “famous eating athletes.” It’s apparently like a fighting game complete with burp attacks. We’re sure competitive eating is a sport of some sort, but man, every time I see Gal Sone on Japanese TV stuffing plates of whatever into her face, I get a little grossed out. Nothing wrong with eating, nothing at all! But eating six kilograms of curry in twenty minutes or consuming 40,000 calories in a single day doesn’t sound exactly good for the human body — pro eater or not. A Wii eating game does sound fun, though. Pig Out [CVG] More »
Datel Say Freeloader Can Beat Firmware Upgrades
10:30PM Luke Plunkett | Datel’s Wii Freeloader is awesome news. PAL gamers can get games on time, American gamers can play Japanese games, everybody wins. There’s a few niggling doubts surrounding the deal, however. Well, one: won’t a future firmware update stop the Freeloader from working, as it’s already done once to Datel’s previous GameCube-only disc? Datel say no, replying to reader Willis in an email: …we can confirm that on every occasion that the product is used when the disc is inserted in the console that it allows the usage of any imported Wii game discs and disables the console from been able to update its firmware, if the disc is removed after been inserted and reinserted this will again enable the console to update its firmware but still allow the usage of the any imported Wii game discs. Which unless my eye for English-as-a-second-language fails me is their way of saying “don’t worry, firmware won’t break this one”. Course, they’d have to say that, otherwise nobody would buy the damn thing, so if you’re wracked with uncertainty over picking one up I’d say wait until the next firmware update hits and we can get some independent verification. More »
News
Sega America President Opens Mouth, Makes Sense
10:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Sega’s trying. Trying its best, trying to make good games, trying not to suck. Good for Sega! While many Japanese publishers keep up the same old song and dance, Sega is releasing a diverse smattering of games, some of which seems directed towards Western tastes, some of which were made by Western devs and some of which we actually want to play. Says Sega US president Simon Jeffery: Much of the product that comes out of Japan isn’t really suitable or appropriate culturally for the Western market, and Sega has become the first of the Japanese gaming companies to recognise that the global market has various tastes and isn’t necessarily just one great big Japanese market. Give this man a gold star. He sounds like a smarty! Simon Jeffrey Interview [Game Daily via Go Nintendo] More »
Are The Kids Still Hot For Lara?
9:30PM Luke Plunkett | Shhhh. It’s Kotaku After Dark. Time to dim the lights, pull the door closed and look at these. This. These. This Italian minx is Silvia Shon, and Silvia likes Tomb Raider. That or she thinks a Tomb Raider-inspired calendar – with naughty bits – will still do good business on the internet. Could be both, but is probably the latter. This has absolutely nothing to do with SCi or Eidos, and is already two months late, so don’t expect a marketing blitz. What you can expect are Lara Croft poses and, predictably, lady bits. Clicking through while at work is not advised. More »
Another Bug! Look At It
9:00PM Brian Ashcraft | And the amazing bug entries keep rolling in! Here’s a creepy crawly from reader WhyCause, who writes: I made this guy out of a packing peanut and staples. With a little ink thrown on for colour. So yeah, we’re giving away a copy of Insecticide (DS or PC, the winner decides). Here’s the contest, it’s a fun one: Make an insect. Like a 3D, real world one. That’s it. You can use anything to make it EXCEPT CG. So yeah, if you want to make a bug outta newspapers, sticks, clay, whatever, DO IT. Send entries to kotakucontestATgmailDOTcom with the subject line “Insect.” The contest ends March 7th. The winner’s fame is ENDLESS. More »
TF2 Plushies Inbound
8:30PM Luke Plunkett | Via G4TV, it’s been confirmed that Valve’s desirable, adorable line of plushies are about to expand beyond the Half-Life universe. They’ll also be releasing plushies based on Team Fortress 2’s iconic characters, with the big, cuddly Heavy to be first in line. All well and good, I say, but don’t dilly-dally from the HL ones too long – my future, unborn son will not want a Wallace Breen plush toy, he will need one. [GameTrailers TV] More »
Two Thousand People Wait For New Erotic Game
8:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Nerds! Two thousand of them, apparently. They came in droves to the Akihabara Sofmap for the midnight release of erotic PC game To Heart 2 Another Days. The game’s launch is supposedly one of the biggest for an erotic game, and it would’ve been bigger if not for the game leaking online before it went on sale. So there ya go. ToHeart2AD [Akiba Blog via Alafista] More »
