Sunday, July 27, 2008
News
Ghostbusters: The Video Game Hands-On
11:30AM Michael McWhertor | One of the most unfortunate cancellations of Comic-Con 08 was the Ghostbusters: The Video Game panel, planned to feature actors Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson as well as reps from Sierra. While we were disheartened to learn of the nixing of that particular panel, we took comfort in the limited, but very awesome, showfloor demo of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Based on our limited playtime, we’re more interested than ever to get our hands on the final version, and not just for the stellar performance from the Ghostbusters booth babes. The Comic-Con demo takes place in the New York public library, the location featured at the beginning of the first Ghostbusters film. As the four Ghostbusters enter the library — Winston Zeddemore, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz and you, the new recruit — the cheers of New Yorkers can be heard in the distance. More »
Pick Up The Can …
11:00AM Owen Good |
Gears Of War Movie To Be Pro Wrestler-Free
10:30AM Michael McWhertor | At today’s Gears of War panel at Comic-Con, Cliff Bleszinski from Epic Games was asked about the Len Wiseman directed movie based on the IP. Bleszinski, the executive producer on the Hollywood adaptation, says he has high hopes for the film. “Look, we know that video game movies have been pretty bad”, Cliff admitted to the crowd, attempting to assuage their fears that the Gears flick will suck. “But just think how bad comic book movies were for such a long time. We hope [the Gears of War movie] will change that”. He noted that the Hollywood shot-callers are the same age as the average gamer — 35 years old — and have grown up playing and loving video games. “Hollywood gets it… and they dig games”, Cliff said. What may depress aficionados of Gears meaty, steroid overdosed look is that the feature film may not live up to the dream casting of certain fans. In lieu of filling out Delta Squad’s armour with accurately voluminous meatheads, he’s hoping they’ll find some actors who can, you know, act. “I know people have ideas where they want to see some wrestler, some huge buff guy”, Bleszinski “The thing we care most about is charisma, someone you’d want to watch for two hours”. What a novel idea! More »
GTA IV for PC Briefly — Briefly — Listed on ESRB
10:00AM Owen Good | Whoops! Well, just as soon as it was discovered, it came back down. But Grand Theft Auto IV briefly had a listing on the ESRB web site that showed Windows PC as a platform. The screenshot, gathered by Game-on-Game is above. If you go there now, it’s back to Xbox 360 and PS3 only. So who knows what the hell is going on. Erroneous? Premature? I’m going with the latter. This simply has to come out on PC, and Rockstar hasn’t definitively put the kibosh on any speculation yet. GTA IV Rating Shown With Windows PC as Console [Game-on-Game via Blue’s News More »
Gears Of War 2 Features ‘Backwards Compatible’ Linked Achievements
9:00AM Michael McWhertor | Cliff Bleszinski presented Gears of War 2 to Comic-Con attendees today, walking fans through the Sinkhole level shown last week at E3. While that gameplay session may be old news to Gears fans, Dude Huge had two new announcements for the crowd. The first was that Steve Jablonsky, composer on films like Transformers and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, was working on the score for Gears of War 2. Jablonsky was said to have been at Skywalker Studios working on the final mix of the soundtrack. Even more interesting was the announcement that Gears of War 2 would feature “linked Achievements”. In short, goals reached in the original Gears of War will carry over to the sequel, giving the player bonuses. Cliff listed three examples of how linked Achievements will work. Keep in mind, some may be light spoilers. More »Looking at SCIV Customisation and Gameplay
8:00AM Owen Good | Here’s an official trailer for Soulcalibur IV touting all the new stuff it has to offer. It’s worth it just to see the customised character they made — because a guy with a purple afro carrying a cricket bat is definitely some next-level shit for a fighter. They also discuss Hilda, the armored-up female knight, and some new gameplay elements, such as the “Soul gauge” that controls when a character will have his or her block broken, leading to hits that destroy their equipment, and enabling their opponent’s finishing move. Online play and the aformentioned deep customisation options are also mentioned. More »
News
The New York Times Analyses the (Bitter) Core
8:00AM Owen Good | We’ve chewed this topic to death, but it’s always interesting to know how others see you. And The New York Times’ Seth Schiesel comes up with a rather solid analogy to describe the backlash to the parade of dross we saw in Nintendo’s E3 presser (and, to a lesser extent, others). Call it nerd rage. Like loyalists of a once-partisan politician who tacks toward the centre later in an election cycle, old-school gamers are coming to terms with the ramifications of their favourite’s newfound popularity. Though they have long craved mainstream respectability for video games, players sometimes resent the concessions their champion must make to attract mainstream adherents. More »
Graduate School and Gaming: The Making of Winterbottom
7:40AM Maggie Greene | While at E3, I wandered down to check out the Indiecade offerings (I meant to post my impressions earlier, but they’ll be up tomorrow — better late than never). I’d posted earlier about the postmortem of The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and was happy to get some hands-on time with the game, plus the chance to chat with Matt Korba (lead designer) and Paul Bellezza (producer) about the game and life inside USC’s Interactive Media program. This is a nice look at the making of Winterbottom and designing in an academic setting; I enjoyed the parts of the game I got to take a look at, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here. The USC program is really pretty exciting, in that their students and graduates are actually going on to do something. [via IndieGames] More »
The Ecclesiastical Church of St. Mega Man
7:00AM Owen Good | Before you trundle out your “old/not news” trolls, and in the interest of full fuckin’ disclosure, yes, I know this pic went around some sites in April, but not here. And I deem it cool enough to post, so there. And it’s not a cake. Artist “Gary in Cleveland” created this stained glass representation of our favourite 8-bit superhero around the new year, documenting the process on Flickr. It’s not a pixel-by-pixel glass (that would take too much time for an amateur glassworker, he says) but it’s pretty right on, and it would be an awesome showpiece for a window right over your console’s TV. Mega Man Stained Glass Project [Flickr] More »
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