General gaming

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• Max Payne 3 Finally Releasing in March
• Resident Evil: Revelations Features Both Pre- And Post-RE4 Gameplay
• Sonic Generations Collector's Edition is Europe (and Australia)-Only
• Review: Driver San Francisco is the Fresh Take the Series Needed All Along
• Slavery: The Game Intended to Promote Dutch Documentary
• RollerCoaster Tycoon Makes its Handheld Debut on 3DS in 2012
• All PS3 Owners Can Soon Play the Assassin's Creed: Revelations Beta
• Madden 12 Sells 1.4 Million in its First Week
• A Game of Thrones: Genesis Hits This Month
• Kid Icarus: A Retrospective

Max Payne 3 Finally Releasing in March Posted: 08 Sep 2011 07:31 AM PDT More than eight years after the release of Max Payne 2, gamers will finally be able to get their hands on Max Payne 3. Rockstar today announced plans to release the elusive title sometime during March 2012 on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. It didn't nail down an exact date, but given how many times it's slipped back over the past few years -- it was originally supposed to be out in 2009 -- and how little Rockstar has talked about it as of late, this is at least something.

Resident Evil: Revelations Features Both Pre- And Post-RE4 Gameplay Posted: 07 Sep 2011 05:45 PM PDT Finally, after releasing the lackluster Resident Evil Mercenaries 3D, and cooling off on promoting Operation Raccoon City, Capcom decides to show off some more Resident Evil: Revelations. During our demo, I get to play as series veteran Chris Redfield in a fresh section of the upcoming horror-survival-game. Together with his new partner Jessica, Chris investigates a plane crash on a snowy mountain-plateau;after a few steps down a snow-covered path, they find themselves standing inside the badly damaged plane-wreck and discover the dead pilot. Only after scanning the dead body and finding an important item, can Chris continue adventuring. Here, the new scanner-system comes into play: You select the necessary gear via touchscreen and check the dead body thoroughly Metroid Prime-style. Only then will Chris find the aforementioned item, and he only picks it up after doing a second search after the scan! If you merely check the body without doing a scan first, you won't find anything except a prompt suggesting that a scan can reveal more information. I'm curious to see whether this new scanning element ends up being an interesting gameplay addition, or a cumbersome gameplay crutch that needlessly draws out the game's exploration aspect.

Sonic Generations Collector's Edition is Europe (and Australia)-Only Posted: 07 Sep 2011 05:27 PM PDT Sonic Generations is meant to be a celebration of the Sonic series for its 20-year anniversary, so one would expect its collector's edition to be especially nice. It does indeed seem to be fairly cool -- the only problem is that gamers in North America won't be able to get their hands on it. Sega formally announced the game's collector's edition for PS3 and 360 today. As seen in the picture of the PS3 version above, you get a figurine of both the new and old Sonic; an individually-numbered gold ring; a "20 Years of Sonic Art" book; a soundtrack with music from the series that's been selected by Sonic Team; a documentary on the history of Sonic; special packaging; and bonus downloadable content of some sort for Generations. That all sounds terrific for the big Sonic fans out there, depending upon how it ends up being priced. However, the Sega Blog also brings word on why you might not want to get too excited: it's only for Europe and Australia. So unless you plan on importing (a potentially expensive proposition in and of itself, especially since this is a larger package than your standard import game), it might have to be something you only enjoy in picture- and video-form.

Review: Driver San Francisco is the Fresh Take the Series Needed All Along Posted: 07 Sep 2011 04:36 PM PDT After waiting patiently to proclaim it for 12 years now, I can finally admit to finishing the last mission of Driver on the original PlayStation. Titled "The President's Run," this frustratingly difficult finale was far from the quality standard of fun even in 1999. After 100+ restarts and hundreds of furiously fought, choppy car battles in the rain-soaked NYC streets I learned the powerful virtue of patience; and to never mangle (or launch) a controller as a result of a 'rage quit' -- the true path of a 1UP monk, I suppose. While my unflinching determination could appear an act of sheer will and fortitude, it's important to point out that I'm quite fond of the Driver games despite their technical flaws. In fact, it's easy to forget that both Grand Theft Auto and Driver grew up as video game siblings: Both games tackled adult oriented subject matter, open world structures, and relied heavily on point-to-point driving missions within a year or two of each other. But while the developers making GTA seem to understand their boundaries and find safe ways to expand them, Driver comparatively felt stuck in proverbial mud by serious problems like choppy framerates, strange vehicle physics, and difficult car handling. The franchise itself hit an unforgettable low after Driv3r (the game the rest of us called Driver 3) and the series itself has felt like an afterthought ever since.

Slavery: The Game Intended to Promote Dutch Documentary Posted: 07 Sep 2011 04:09 PM PDT To the surprise of approximately no one, the trailer and website recently launched for a supposed game called Slavery: The Game is not real. It was, in fact, intended to promote an upcoming Dutch documentary on the subject of slavery. The documentary comes from Dutch public broadcaster NTR. In a press release issued today, it claims the trailer's purpose was to "confront people with an important, but often-neglected part of history" and to remind people that slavery still exists today. It didn't seem to really convey the latter message, instead simply sparking a controversy over whether slavery is appropriate subject matter for a game. But perhaps it'll do a better job of talking about the present-day slavery mentioned in the press release with its TV series De Slavernij, which will begin airing on September 18. It's noted that "De Slavernij" is an anagram for "Javelin Reds," the company credited as being responsible for Slavery: The Game. It's an observation made when the trailer was first discovered, and was just one of several reasons to believe the game wasn't the real deal.

RollerCoaster Tycoon Makes its Handheld Debut on 3DS in 2012 Posted: 07 Sep 2011 02:56 PM PDT As was rumored late last month, Atari is bringing the RollerCoaster Tycoon series to 3DS. It's the first time the theme park simulation series, which has its roots in the computer scene, will appear on a handheld platform. Since the first game was ported to the original Xbox (complete with the additions seen in two PC expansion packs), the games have stuck to computers. Developer Frontier Developments did create a spin-off series in Thrillville that saw two games come out for consoles and handhelds. Today's teaser trailer for RollerCoaster Tycoon 3D, as the new 3DS installment is called, tells us nothing besides a 2012 release date. The same can be said for the official website.

All PS3 Owners Can Soon Play the Assassin's Creed: Revelations Beta Posted: 07 Sep 2011 01:37 PM PDT The beta for Assassin's Creed Revelations' multiplayer mode began earlier this month exclusively on PlayStation 3, just like the beta for Brotherhood. Not all PS3 owners were allowed in, as access required players to be either a Uplay member or a PlayStation Plus subscriber. Beginning tomorrow, that is no longer the case. When the beta was first talked about, it was referred to as a "timed exclusive." That made it sound as if non-Uplay/Plus members would be able to play at some point, but Ubisoft refused to confirm if that's what it meant when asked by 1UP. We now know that's exactly what the timed exclusive was alluding to. Ubisoft announced today that the beta is opening up to all PlayStation Network members beginning tomorrow, Thursday, September 8, at 10am Pacific.

Madden 12 Sells 1.4 Million in its First Week Posted: 07 Sep 2011 01:09 PM PDT Reviews of this year's Madden weren't quite as overwhelmingly positive as they sometimes are, and at least to me, it didn't seem like Madden NFL 12 was being talked about nearly as much as in past years. That might very well be the case, but first-week sales of the game aren't reflecting that at all. 1.4 million copies of Madden 12 were sold in its first week of availability, reports IndustryGamers. EA claims this is an increase of more than 10 percent over last year's game. "With the start of the NFL season only days away, fans are thrilled to get back to football and they're doing so in record numbers through Madden NFL 12," says EA sports executive VP Andrew Wilson. "The growth across console and digital shows that the appetite for the Madden NFL franchise has never been bigger."

A Game of Thrones: Genesis Hits This Month Posted: 07 Sep 2011 12:39 PM PDT George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series was quite popular in its own right, and HBO's excellent Game of Thrones series only helped to introduce it to an even wider audience earlier this year. The series will now expand into the world of videogames later this month with the debut of A Game of Thrones: Genesis. As first announced back in 2009, France-based developer Cyanide has a deal to produce games based on Martin's series for both PC and consoles. The first project is Genesis, a real-time strategy game for PC we began seeing glimpses of last summer. Cyanide claims it's possible to win in Genesis without ever engaging your opponents in combat. It's nice to know that's a possibility; for those who find that notion boring, you will of course be able to use brute force while also employing spies to sabotage your enemies.

Kid Icarus: A Retrospective Posted: 07 Sep 2011 12:13 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet Kid Icarus: A Retrospective How did this humble little NES game earn such a fervent following? By: Jeremy Parish September 7, 2011 When I spoke with Kid Icarus: Uprising producer Masahiro Sakurai at this year's E3, he mentioned that dissecting Kid Icarus' popularity is an essential tool in his team's bag of tricks. "We're trying to figure out why people like the original game so much," he admitted. I offered to share my own take on the lasting appeal of the game -- which turns 25 years old this summer -- only to realize that it's difficult to explain in a few short sentences. In a lot of ways, Kid Icarus was one of those things where you just had to be there. The game seems painfully dated these days, with primitive graphics, shrill audio, and weirdly counter-intuitive game design. The action scrolls up but not down, meaning you're effectively creating your own bottomless pits as you advance! Duck to evade enemy fire and you'll not only duck, you'll fall right through the floor and into a fatal pit. Hearts collected from enemies work as currency, not as health pick-ups. It's a strange, clunky, unfriendly game. But cast your mind back to 1986 and you just might be able to understand why Kid Icarus was a hit and why kids who grew up playing it still love it. It's not a perfect game, and Nintendo is taking the right approach by making Uprising a loosely inspired sequel rather than a slavish follow-up. Yet in its day, Kid Icarus was like nothing before it -- memorably so.

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