General gaming

General gaming

Total War Conversion Mod Brings Zelda's Hyrule to PC

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 04:53 PM PDT

While there is a constant flow of interesting mods being released for PC games, it's not every day you see one that can really turn some heads (and make console gamers jealous in the process). Hyrule: Total War looks like one of those mods.

As the name implies, this is a conversion mod for a Total War game (Medieval II: Total War, specifically) which brings the races of the Zelda universe into The Creative Assembly's 2006 RTS. It's yet to be completed, but a demo is currently available that contains 16 different Zelda factions including the kingdom of Hyrule, Gorons, Zora, Deku tribes, Sheikah, Kokiri, and more.

8 Weird and/or Cool Xbox Live Indie Games You Must Own

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 02:57 PM PDT

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8 Weird and/or Cool Xbox Live Indie Games You Must Own

Thought you bought and played all you needed to? You thought wrong.

By: Ray Barnholt October 26, 2011

Maybe you've checked out the Indie Games section on Xbox Live once or twice. Maybe you heard about a game you had to check out, or you bought that carnival puzzle game or the stupid how-to-talk-to-girls one, or Zombie Avatar Whatever. We're not here to judge, but there are many other games worth checking out that very few people have told you about. Here are eight guaranteed fun Indie Games from the past and more-recent past that your 360 hard drive should not be without.


Downtown Smash Dodgeball

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Pushed Back in Europe

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 01:36 PM PDT

Metal Gear Solid 2 HD

It won't be until early 2012 that Metal Gear fans in Europe are able to get their hands on the upcoming HD Collection.

The high-definition bundle includes several of the games you'd expect -- Metal Gear Solid 2, 3, and Peace Walker. Also packed in are the original MSX2 titles Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake thanks to the versions of MGS2 and 3 being based on Substance and Subsistence, respectively. The one notable omission is the original Metal Gear Solid; in Japan a download code for the game is provided, but those in North America and Europe will have to track down a copy of the game without the help of the HD Collection.

Rock Band Could Look Much Different in the Future

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 12:50 PM PDT

Rock Band 3

This year we won't be getting any new Rock Band or Guitar Hero games for the first time since 2004. Guitar Hero was officially put on the back burner earlier this year. Rock Band isn't necessarily dead, even if we aren't getting a new game this year. The year (or perhaps more) off isn't just time being used to think of the next instrument to introduce -- future iterations of the series may end up being much different.

Sales of both Guitar Hero and Rock Band have declined in recent years. Many point to Activision flooding the market with Guitar Hero releases (each having a version packaged with a plastic guitar) as the cause of that. Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos told Giant Bomb that he thinks "there is probably some truth to that," but it's more complicated than a simple explanation like that suggests.

Review: Okabu Does Not Trust You

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 11:30 AM PDT

No matter how good a game may look or sound, it can never fully succeed if it doesn't have the confidence in itself and in its audience. It's this lack of grit that keeps Okabu from standing out in a sea of charming PSN titles. The game places you in the role of a pair of whale-shaped clouds called, creatively enough, cloud whales who are tasked with defending the peaceful inhabitants of the land from industrial creatures known as Doza. The story has equal shades Fern Gully and Avatar, but thankfully, it never becomes too preachy. There are frustrating moments where the narrative is presented by slow moving and unskippable blocks of text, but thankfully the story is mostly told passively, and avoids ever becoming too cumbersome.

As a cloud whale, you have the ability to absorb liquids and dispense them at your will, carry passengers with unique abilities, and fire projectiles at specific targets. You float around each area using your powers to cleanse the land of the mechanical menaces that seek to defile the otherwise peaceful world. However, you can only choose between a single power at a time, so switching between the pair of floating nimbi on the fly becomes an integral part of the game. There is a two-player co-op mode, but in all honesty solving puzzles becomes a frustrating shouting match if you aren't in complete control of both characters.

Nintendo Spent 11 Years on Three Kirby Games it Canceled

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 11:08 AM PDT

Before Kirby's Return to Dreamland hit earlier this week, it had been 11 years since a core Kirby game was released on consoles. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards came out in 2000 and since then Kirby has been limited on consoles to Air Ride, Epic Yarn, and his appearances in the Super Smash Bros. games. That gap in between Kirby 64 and Dreamland wasn't created intentionally -- it was a by-product of HAL Laboratory working on several Kirby titles that ended up being canceled.

In a new Iwata Asks covering the Kirby franchise and the development of Dreamland, producer Shigefumi Kawase revealed how three new Kirby games were in development over the past decade, none of which ever came to fruition. As he puts it, "We spent 11 years... making and abandoning these three games."

Review: Daytona USA is a Faithful, Yet Content-light Arcade Port

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 11:05 AM PDT

In 2009, Sega brought their long-celebrated racing game Daytona USA back to arcades, where it had flourished for years. This time, though, it was called "Sega Racing Classic" due to a lapsed license from International Speedway Corp. A couple of years go by, and Sega gets the rights again for a console port of the game, and thus, Daytona USA is restored to its former glory.

Former arcade glory, that is -- Daytona used to have a hard time adjusting to consoles. The original Saturn version was utterly gimped, and the Dreamcast semi-remake in 2001 was visually amazing yet suffered from wonky controls that needed to be tweaked to your liking. This XBLA/PSN Daytona benefits from hardware that is finally capable of doing it justice, but if you're expecting all the bonuses and additions of the old console versions, you'll be disappointed -- since this is technically a port of a "recent" arcade game, Daytona starts over from scratch: You get the original three courses, two cars, that insane music, and that's pretty much it.

Messy Battlefield 3 Launch Punctuated with PS3's Free BF1943 Bonus Dropped

Posted: 26 Oct 2011 09:39 AM PDT

Battlefield 3

Back at E3 in June, Sony was happy to tout the exclusives that the PlayStation 3 versions of several multiplatform EA games would feature this fall. Among them was one for Battlefield 3; with Call of Duty being associated with Xbox 360 thanks to a timed exclusivity deal on DLC, those who opted to buy BF3 on PS3 would receive a free copy of Battlefield 1943. With the much-anticipated game finally released yesterday, those who purchased the game on PS3 are finding themselves confused as the promised 1943 bonus has been quietly replaced with something else.

Last month DICE revealed a deal had been signed with Sony similar to Microsoft's Call of Duty deal, albeit on a lesser scale: all BF3 expansion packs will launch on PS3 a week early. It simply seemed like another nice perk, along with the free copy of 1943, for buying the game on PS3. Little did we know at the time that this expansion pack early access was actually meant to replace 1943 as the PS3's exclusive bonus.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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