General gaming

General gaming

Batman: Arkham City is The Game Where Joker Dies

Posted: 30 Sep 2011 07:04 AM PDT

After a year of teasing and speculation, and weeks before Batman: Arkham City hits shelves, I finally get to play the first meeting Batman has with his most iconic villain in this installment.

The early coverage for Arkham City prominently focused on Two-Face as the main villain -- given how he was noticeably absent in Batman: Arkham Asylum (and especially in light of him being a significant part of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight). The developers at Rocksteady have also noted how this is Hugo Strange's first appearance in the "Arkhamverse," and that his involvement in creating Arkham City (slums that have been renovated into a smaller city within Gotham that all of Arkham Asylum's inmates have been relocated to) probably has nefarious undertones. They've shown the expanded Riddler areas, where Riddler seems to have been inspired by the Saw franchise in creating elaborate deathtraps for Batman to rescue civilians from. Other villains, like Penguin, Mr. Freeze, and even Calendar Man have been shown, but the developers have been quiet about Joker -- until now.

Free Team Fortress Side-Scrolling Demake Out Now

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 04:23 PM PDT

Team Fortress Arcade

The latest demake from Eric Ruth, who was also responsible for the demakes of Halo, Left 4 Dead, and DJ Hero, is now available as a free download.

Team Fortress Arcade reimagines the first-person shooter as a side-scrolling beat-em-up with guns. It features the nine character classes from the real Team Fortress, each of which has been designed around their TF2 counterparts -- attributes like speed, health, and so on are accurate to Valve's FPS.

The game -- which you can download here, courtesy of Piki Geek -- features a four-player cooperative mode that is unfortunately restricted to local multiplayer (for now).

New Mortal Kombat Movie in Development From the Director of Rebirth and Legacy

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 03:51 PM PDT

Mortal Kombat

A new movie based on Mortal Kombat is in the works which will be directed by the man responsible for the live-action trailer that surfaced last year and the subsequent web series.

Mortal Kombat: Rebirth was an eight-minute video (embedded below) that showed it's possible to make an interesting, serious movie based on the notoriously violent fighting game franchise. Its purpose was unclear at first, but we soon learned it was intended as a pitch for a new Mortal Kombat film. Director Kevin Tancharoen eventually secured a deal to produce a web series to promote the new Mortal Kombat game. The nine-part Mortal Kombat: Legacy series was released on YouTube between April and July.

It's now being reported by both the LA Times and Deadline that Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has teamed up with the Warner-owned New Line Cinema to make a brand-new, live-action Mortal Kombat movie with Tancharoen in the director's chair.

Nintendo 64 Celebrates its 15-Year Anniversary Today

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 02:52 PM PDT

N64

After being released during June of the same year in Japan, Nintendo brought the Nintendo 64 to North America on September 29, 1996. It was the company's third videogame console following the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Although it was during this generation that Nintendo lost its foothold as top dog to Sony and the PlayStation, the N64 is still fondly remembered for being home to some of the most significant and beloved games of all time.

It was actually more than a year earlier that development of the system was complete -- Nintendo of America announced on May 5, 1995 that Nintendo and Silicon Graphics, Inc. had completed development of the final chipset for what was then being referred to as the Nintendo Ultra 64. (Previously it was referred to as Project Reality.) It planned to unveil the system at an event that November in Japan (as opposed to E3, taking place days after the May announcement), adding that its release was planned for April of 1996 in North America.

Join 1UP and Nintendo for a Dragon Quest Meet-Up, Get Exclusive Content

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 01:26 PM PDT

Nintendo's campaign to bring Dragon Quest joy to American hearts leveled up last week with the release of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 for DS. While not quite up to the incredibly high standards of a main-line Dragon Quest adventure, Joker 2 is good fun, especially if you're one of those people who takes perverse joy in capturing monsters and forcing them to fight one another to the death.

Psychonauts Updated With New Features on PC, Now Available on Mac

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 01:10 PM PDT

Psychonauts

One of Double Fine's best games was its very first one: Psychonauts. It combined the developer's signature humor with some solid platforming action to create a game that was critically acclaimed but didn't sell as well as it should have. Mac gamers can now finally get their hands on a copy designed to work on Apple's operating system, and those with a copy on PC can enjoy some new changes and features that have been made available today.

Double Fine has announced that, thanks to a partnership with Dracogen Strategic Investments, Psychonauts is now out for Mac OS X. The Steam version (which costs $9.99) supports SteamPlay -- in other words, the same copy can be played on either Windows or Mac. Alternatively, you can find it for the same price on the Mac App Store.

Steam users with the game already installed will find a new update brings with it several welcome changes and additions. Achievements and cloud saves have been introduced, and the difficulty of the Meat Circus has been toned down -- though you wouldn't guess that from the facetious Tim Schafer quote in the press release:

Xbox 360 Dashboard Update Reportedly Coming in November, More Live TV Details

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 12:39 PM PDT

Larry David Curb Your Enthusiasm

There is a lot in the way of new features headed to Xbox 360 in the coming months. In particular, the new dashboard may be here in a matter of weeks.

Internal PayPal emails shared with Kotaku indicate a launch of the new Twist Control dashboard is slated for November 15. Not only is that the 10-year anniversary of the original Xbox, November has been the month we've seen such major overhauls of the dashboard in the past. The email specifically asks employees to test the service in preparation for the November 15 launch; PayPal support was added to Xbox Live in an update released earlier this year.

The new dashboard redesign makes it fully controllable with Kinect, although the hands-free peripheral isn't required. Voice search with Bing (again, using Kinect) will be a key component, as will Beacons, cloud storage for game saves and Xbox Live profiles, and more.

Review: X-Men Destiny Chooses the Power of Irrelevance

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 11:31 AM PDT

It's never acknowledged at any point in X-Men Destiny that you're one of the most powerful mutants to ever appear in the X-Men universe. You can freely swap out abilities and powers at will, setting enemies on fire one second and freezing them the next. It's uncanny... astonishing even (see what I did there?). Yet when you're approached by any of the X-Men or Magneto's Brotherhood, this topic is never breached. You're simply treated as a newb that needs some coaching throughout the game's brief four hour adventure.

My core experience was with Aimi Yoshida, one of three different characters you choose to play as and little is done to differentiate them beyond their introductory cut-scenes. You'll still have access to the same choices of powers and abilities, same levels to traverse, and the same bosses to defeat. Most of the interactions with the X-Men and Brotherhood throughout the game are also the same. And when you're forced to choose a side, it doesn't matter unless you'd rather hear either Cyclops or Magneto give a heavy handed speech at the end of the game. This lack of variety makes the whole concept of having to choose a character at the beginning of the game irrelevant.

Gears of War 3 the Year's Biggest Launch With 3 Million Sold During Week One

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 11:24 AM PDT

Gears of War 3

Gears of War 3 was expected to be big and it certainly has been thus far. Microsoft announced today it sold three million copies in its first week alone, making it the biggest game of the year.

Microsoft claims Gears 3 has grossed more than any other game released in 2011, though with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 not far off, that may not remain true for long. Even if (or, more likely, when) that happens, the game's success has pushed the Gears franchise over the $1 billion mark in lifetime sales. This is apparently the first "Xbox 360-exclusive franchise introduced this console generation" to surpass the $1 billion mark. It's unclear if sales from the PC version of the first game (the only one in the series to be released on a platform other than 360) were included in that figure.

"Gears of War was the first killer app for Xbox 360, and the series has continued to contribute directly to the overall success of the platform ever since," said Microsoft Corporate Vice President Phil Spencer. "Gears of War 3 kicked off the biggest holiday in Xbox history with a bang last week, setting the standard for the kinds of amazing, action-packed experiences gamers should expect on Xbox 360 this year."

Setting the Stage for Skyward Sword: A Legend of Zelda Primer

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 11:00 AM PDT

Way back in 1985, Nintendo's top development team set out to create a game that would showcase their new Famicom Disc System add-on. The FDS expanded the capabilities of the Famicom (NES) hardware by adding more storage space and persistent, rewritable memory. That meant, among other things, developers could create bigger games that allowed players to save their progress.

The team's work eventually led to The Legend of Zelda, a game inspired in part by director Shigeru Miyamoto's memories of exploring the hills near his home as a child. The wandering bands of goblins, parsimonious shopkeepers, and three-headed dragons were embellishments, obviously, but the game did a remarkable job nevertheless of recreating the essence of striking out as a wide-eyed child in a big world full of mysteries and wonders.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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