Mike’s already there. Crecente’s there. And Ashcraft, well, he’s always there. Me, I’m about to board my flight to Japan, rounding out Team Kotaku (or Kotaku F.C. for our European readers) for our balls-to-the-wall Tokyo Game Show coverage. The show kicks off on Thursday (that’s THIS Thursday, October 9), but we’ll be doing stuff all week that you will find interesting. Stay tuned.
If Haze didn’t float your boat, and it didn’t float many, Free Radical’s right back atcha with TimeSplitters 4. Of course the game has been officially officially known for some time, but FR put up three concept art scans on the official website earlier this week. The chainsaw nun above is one. You can also get a look at some blinged out four-wheel cat (“Cat Racing: Underground”) and a dismembered Monkey/Frank n’ Furter transvestite robot on a torture rack. If those descriptions don’t send you over, I mean, what will. Check also the homage trailer to LucasArts/Revenge of the Sith with Vader’s role reprised by, what else, a monkey.
Free Radical Design – TimeSplitters 4 [via and thanks to Popzara for noticing the new content.]
Is President Palmer still doing the Allstate insurance ads? Why didn’t he tell us about this? It seems the U.S. auto policy underwriter wants to test whether video games can help make 50-year-olds (and up) into better drivers.
Allstate’s offering specialised computer games to some 100,000 customers in Pennsylvania between 50 and 75. The games they play are not necessarily driving specific; they test for visual alertness and try to slow cognitive decline. The developer, San Francisco based Posit Science will track the number of hours the drivers play, and their performance will be compared with the accident rates of their demographic.
Nintendo Everything reports Capcom’s Christian Svensson, VP of Business Development, says earlier reports of Mega Man 9 doing 140,000 US downloads in one week for the Wii are incorrect. “Any numbers you’ve seen or quoted are not correct,” Svensson said. “That said, I think we’re cautiously optimistic about MM9′s performance.”
For the record, VGChartz seems to be the source of the 140,000 figure, which it says would make Mega Man 9 No. 3 for lifetime sales and revenue on WiiWare. Sounds like good enough news to me, considering it doesn’t include any PS3 or 360 sales, but it ain’t true, says Capcom.
Capcom “Cautiously Optimistic” with Mega Man 9 Sales So Far [Nintendo Everything]
If anyone has the November edition of Electronic Games Monthly — big rumour is that LittleBigPlanet will be soon announcing DLC, and the content is “non-Sony” or, more specifically, Disney’s IP. And, rampant speculation on who that might be in 3 … 2 …
Really though, is this true, and if so, is it a good idea? Part of LBP’s appeal is that it managed to create iconic characters that have no other presence outside this particular world. To have Mickey, Minnie and or Goofy tromping all over creation seems more than a little inconsistent with that look. It sounds like Kingdom Hearts meets LBP.
EGM November 2008 Reviews and Rumors [NeoGAF via Joystiq]
GameTrailers TV got its hands on the backstory trailer for Halo Wars. The 3:28 video sets up what’s going on and why in the forthcoming RTS based on the Halo universe. Seems the Covenant have been scraping around in the ice on some planet and have found something that, of course, “it could just be the key to the whole war.” No gameplay, but a lot of threatening mandible-flexing.
Halo Wars – Field Trip to Harvest [Gametrailers]
Remember the lawsuit over the Chicago bus ads for Grand Theft Auto IV that the city took down after a TV report created bad publicity? Seems a settlement is in the pipeline. GamePolitics is reporting an agreement has been reached but there’s no comment and no specifics.
Back in April, Chicago saw a headline-grabbing wave of violence — close to 40 shootings, seven of them fatal, 13 of the casualties school age. Around that time the GTA ads went up on city buses, like they were in other cities, per a $300,000 contract between Take-Two and the city. Because local television’s business model depends heavily on the exploitation of others’ fear and misery for profit, Fox News Chicago called up a bunch of chickenshit pols and huffed about the appropriateness of the ads. So they were taken down. Take-Two then sued for breach of contract.
I’m not sure what the terms of the deal are but maybe this’ll teach someone to show a little spine next time some blow-dried shit-for-brains TV reporter waves a microphone in their face.
Take-Two Nearing GTA IV Ad Settlement with Chicago Bus Company [GamePolitics]
Lots of people on the Rock Band forums are complaining of a pretty heinous multiplayer glitch in Rock Band 2, which seems to only affect the 360 version. In a nutshell, it strikes bands with Live Enabled gamers as the primary account, and non-Live enabled as the secondary. The glitch wipes out your band in tour mode, and forces you to start over. Particularly aggravating is that it seems to wait until you’re a ways into the game.
Sifting through a 15-page thread I can’t seem to find any response from Harmonix on this, as to whether the glitch is known, what the problem is, if there’s a workaround, if a patch is coming, what. Now, I don’t have a direct line to Harmonix — I don’t even have the game here — and besides, it’s a Saturday anyway. But yeah, if this problem is as people describe it, that’s pretty goddamn aggravating and they’re owed an explanation, or at least an acknowledgment of the issue. So how about it, Harmonix.
Email from a tipster explaining the glitch is on the jump.
Hey, 2009′s almost upon us, and TF2Newbs has put out a 12-month zipfile of spies doing the crab walk in Team Fortress 2. My favourite is August, which captures this conversation between Nfreak (the calendar’s creator) and his cohorts:
{OSS} |CiC| Andy <3 amvalvo: Nfreak, turn around Bob Dole’s Woodlen Critters >:3: We’re trying to do a spycrab calendar Bob Dole’s Woodlen Critters >:3: SS {OSS} |CiC| Andy <3 amvalvo: Bob, keep walking back and forth
TF2Newbs promises to donate $1 to the National Spy Crab Fund for every download.
(/rushes to establish National Spy Crab Fund).
Rare Endangered Spy Crab 2009 Calendar [TF2Newbs]
High Voltage chief operating officer Eric Nofsinger told MTV Multiplayer that The Conduit, due out March 2009, will support MotionPlus and WiiSpeak, and alludes to an already-planned sequel that will make greater use of those capabilities.
“We’re hooking it [MotionPlus]up,” Nofsinger told Multiplayer. “We want to support it. Probably for this version of the game there’s not going to be a whole ton of really extensive use of the Wii MotionPlus. For the sequel to the game, we definitely do want to incorporate more melee and things like that. We want to support it.”
Earlier this month, reports said High Voltage would push to start work on a sequel once they got a publisher for the first, and that an announcement of the publisher should be coming soon.
The Conduit Already has MotionPlus Support, WiiSpeak Too [MTV Multiplayer via GoNintendo]
