Is Hitman's Next Target Assassin's Creed? 
Why Kotaku Australia Should Never Work With Children... Or Robots 
Three Words I Said To The Man I Defeated In Gears Of War That I'll Never Say Again 
New Doom 3 For Xbox 360 And PlayStation 3 Supports Head-Mounted Displays 
Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land 
Why Robin Makes Batman Better Lisa Miskovsky – the lady behind the Mirror’s Edge theme song Still Alive – is apparently a household name in her native Sweden, although has yet to crack the charts around the rest of the world with her musical stylings.
Square Enix’s new Los Angeles studio is still hiring, but they now have a small core staff of coders. To ease the new kids gently into the world of Squeenix development, the new studio is going to focus on downloadable games.
The Mega Man 9 invasion begins, and on the Nintendo Wii he’s bringing backup! This week’s Nintendo Wii update not only brings us the WiiWare version of Capcom’s retro redux on the blue bomber (1,000 points), we also get the Sega Genesis classic Vectorman (800 points), which is also the story of a robot going up against evil robots, but this one can turn into a mechanical fish.
It’s not just a robot parade though. We also get some hot sports action with Super Dodge Ball for the NES (500 points), one of the most beloved dodge ball simulations ever created, and PLÄTTCHEN twist ‘n’ paint (1,000 points), a WiiWare puzzle shooter from Bplus for up to 8 players with over 300 levels of gameplay that fills out the required obscure titles I’ve not heard of slot in this week’s update (hit the jump for a screenie).
So, which Mega Man 9 games are you planning on picking up?
CD Projekt Red’s super enhanced edition of their excellent RPG The Witcher should be on its way or indeed on the shelves of a store near you as we speak, but as promised, owners of the original game can now get everything included in the super mega mega version completely free via one hell of a download. The main patch, which includes animation changes, performance tweaks, and generally makes the game better weighs in at 1GB, while grabbing your language pack is another 500MB. Finally there’s the bonus pack, which contains new adventures, two CDs worth of music, and the bonus content from the box set, all scrunched up into another 1.5GB worth of data.
Part of me wants to get this started right now. The other part can almost smell the freshly-printed box scent of the retail version. Decisions, decisions. The Witcher Enhanced Edition Download Instructions [Official Site]
Another batch of closed beta invites have gone out for Sony’s Home service, this time to those who downloaded the PlayStation 3 Home theme from the PlayStation Store. If you haven’t already done so, check your e-mail address(es) to see if you’ve been selected. We’ve heard from scores of folks who’ve been plucked from the PS3-owning masses and are watching the download progress bar tick ever higher right now.
Just think, you could be staring into virtual space with a bad haircut and low quality streetwear with thousands of other folks by tonight! No Home beta invite for me yet, but I’ll be sexually harassing the lot of you via a fibre optic connection the minute it arrives. Bank on it!
The Spore creators have started releasing prototypes, apparently modeled on certain parts of the title’s overall gameplay, and now you can download and explore the first: “ParticleMan”.
“ParticleMan simulates gravitational attraction between particles in a cloud. This system was used to study such gravitational dynamics as orbits, nebula formation, star formation and particle streams from sources like pulsars and black holes”, says the official site.
Back in Leipzig, McWhertor and I hung out at Sega’s booth while Crecente played Universe at War on PC for hours. After a while, he let me take his game for a spin. I immediately blew up a non-replaceable ship. As I may have mentioned before, he was not happy.
Last year I posted a small program I coded for my monthly sessions of D&D. I wasn’t happy with any of the freely available tools for keeping track of initiatives in combat and decided a custom app would be best.
Yes, I’m a huge nerd. Yes, this is a bit off-topic. As such, interested parties can keep reading after the jump, while everyone else can enjoy their social lives.
Sony Computer Entertainment UK’s Ray Maguire, amidst a discussion on the Byron Report (chastising it for not keeping up with a growing internet-based industry), made a prediction about the future of games: …ten years from now the ratio of games sales will have gone from 90 per cent in-store to 90 per cent online.
And while that certainly doesn’t sound wrong, I think that I speak for everyone here by saying, we know that we’ll be downloading games in ten years. We’re wondering more about the next five. Sony: Web sales will rule by 2018 [MCVUK]
Epic has just released a 160MB “Bonus Pack” of maps for Unreal Tournament 3 that brings some old faves back along with one new offering. The PC/PS3 update resurrects classics Morbias and Facing Worlds, and it introduces Searchlight (designed for Capture the Flag). Only three maps in all, it’s not huge. But it’s free on PC and PSN.
