Today, Perfect World Entertainment Released the first Rusty Hearts Developer Diary to the public. The video combines intense combat scenes, beautiful cel-shaded art style, as well as details about the core gameplay and interesting character identities to give players insight on which character they'd like to play as, the pros and cons of using a keyboard or controller, and more. Rusty Hearts is going into Closed Beta in 2 weeks' time, so head on to the official website (http://rustyhearts.perfectworld.com/) to get a key now!
Despite having played for a few minutes in Closed Beta 1, I decided to skip the second as I am convinced Gravity will not fix the various instabilities and bugs found. True enough, the 2nd Closed Beta began with several glitches according to various foreign media. On the first day, majority of the players were unable to log into the game, which is done through the game's website. On the second day, created characters were either being deleted, undetected or going into "invisible" mode. A lengthy emergency maintenance was carried out, but apparently did not fix many errors. Gravity hence decided to close the game early that day.
The official statement by Gravity, as usual, is that there were too many players (open to all Gravity members) hence causing the login server to be unstable. For the characters going missing, they claimed to have grasp the root of the problem. Ragnarok II's 2nd Closed Beta will end a few days later on the 17th.
Have you played Alliance of Valiant Arms (A.V.A), one of the hottest English online shooter since last year? If you have not, you should give it a try! Published by Ijji (official website), Alliance of Valiant Arms is one of the few MMOFPS I really enjoyed through my years of gaming. So, in this post, we will be taking a look at the game's developer. Red Duck Inc. and its headquarters in Korea. The company's other game will be Metro Conflict: Presto, also an online shooter as well. Pictures sourced from Korea's top gaming website, This Is Game.
↑↑ Red Duck's building in Korea. Metro Conflict: Presto's artwork can be seen reflected on the windows.
↑↑ Rows of working cubicles. Notice how they are slanted at a certain 120 degrees angle.
↑↑ Taking a look inside the cubicles.
↑↑ Red Duck's CEO (in red) walking around talking to staff.
↑↑ The music and audio room where sounds for Red Duck's games are created.
↑↑ Have a private phone call? Talk in one of these specially made compartments for privacy!
↑↑ One of the conference rooms, the Pac-Man room.
↑↑ One of the conference rooms, the Bubble Bobble room.
↑↑ One of the conference rooms, the Space Invaders room. There are various other rooms named after popular games.
↑↑ The Green Hill room, where conferences are held while seated on the ground.
↑↑ The Japanese-styled Tatami conference room.
↑↑ The Forest room. There is some kind of positive air reaction system stalled in in here which I couldn't quite translate.
↑↑ Cafe serving employees and guests.
↑↑ It seems the in0house cafe is from a popular coffee chain.
↑↑ Looking towards the relaxation area of the building.
↑↑ Yes, there is an in-house hairdresser cum beautician.
↑↑ A massage room! What?!
↑↑ Female employees' resting room. Much bigger compared to the guys' as there are lesser females.
↑↑ Male employees' resting bunk.
↑↑ Shower and rest room located at the male bunk.
↑↑ Art Director for Metro Conflict: Presto.
↑↑ The "leader" of the female employees in Red Duck.
↑↑ The CEO is finally free to take a picture.
↑↑ Red Duck Inc. will continue to develop the best FPS games for the online gaming market.
For those who doubted my post months ago about AsiaSoft publishing Alliance of Valiant Arms (A.V.A) for the South East Asia (SEA) market, have a look at the map below and judge for yourself!
The team behind Scarlet Legacy announced today details about the game's Aid Systems built into the MMO. The strategy behind the automating tool, which automates typical activities that players use on a frequent basis, is to allow for easier learning for players new to the genre and the ability to ignore tedious tasks for the hardcores. Check it out.
Microvolts, the Third Person Shooter Toy MMO from Rock Hippo Productions, is diving into summer with the Summer Recharge Patch. Be on the look out for a new map, new clothing items and more!
The Aion team is proud today to announce the details of patch 2.6, coming to players August 3rd. Features will include a solo version of the Empyrean Crucible instance, Difficulty level adjustments, and more. Check it out.
The Turbine team has released a new piece of concept art for the Lord of the Rings Online's upcoming expansion, The Rise of Isengard. The art depicts Draigoch, one of the most powerful living creatures in all of Middle Earth.
Drew Wood was on hand at SOE's Fan Faire this year for the reveal of DC Universe's first DLC pack: "Fight for the Light". After the initial presentation Drew had some time to chat with Creative Director Jens Anderson about the Green Lantern DLC, and what it all means for the game.
In this week's dedicated The Secret World column, Managing Editor Bill Murphy takes a look at what we learned from the EA Showcase's dungeon reveal. The classless system, the combat, the story, and more were discussed.
In this week's column, Managing Editor Bill Murphy takes a look at the recent unveiling of Planetside 2 and wonders aloud whether or not the MMOFPS will be enough to bring SOE back into the good graces of the hardcore MMO gamer.
Although the plan had been to include PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, at this point only the two consoles will be supported during the Call of Duty Elite beta that began today.
No reason for the decision was cited. An updated version of the beta FAQ states, "Currently, we do not plan to launch a version of the beta for the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops."
The FAQ also reveals that the beta is launching only on Xbox 360, but will soon bring PS3 players into the fold. There is no exact date for when PS3 players will get in, but at this point, the large majority of 360 players who signed up to participate aren't in either, so there's no reason to get angry over alleged console bias.
The creator of NBA Jam, Mark Turmell, has left EA Sports.
The news has been confirmed by EA, saying in a statement sent to Kotaku, "We appreciate Mark's contribution to Tiburon and EA Sports and wish him well in future endeavors." As for what those future endeavors might be, Kotaku reports Turmell is headed to FarmVille maker Zynga.
Following initial rumors of an NBA Jam revival early last year, it was confirmed that Mark Turmell had joined up with EA Tiburon as senior creative director. Turmell would serve as a consultant on the NBA Jam game that came to Wii (and later, 360 and PS3, once NBA Elite 11 was canceled), which was developed at EA Canada. Tiburon is the studio responsible for the Madden and NCAA Football series, as well as Tiger Woods PGA Tour.
Those hoping to attend the first ever Call of Duty XP event in Los Angeles later this year will want to be on their computers next Tuesday morning, credit card in hand.
Tickets will go on sale July 19 at 10am Pacific for $150. It sounds pricey, but as was noted when the event was first announced, 100% of ticket sales go to the Call of Duty Endowment, a non-profit group that supports military veterans -- this isn't a case of Activision being greedy. According to Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg, $150 wouldn't have covered all the expenses of the event anyway, "so this is partly about raising money for a great cause, and it's partly about just giving something back to our fans."
Each ticket allows its owner to visit both days of the event, September 2 and 3. Only two tickets can be purchased by a single person. Buyers need to know exactly who will be using each ticket -- a full name and certain unspecified "info" will be required for each person when buying the tickets. Those who attend need to be at least 18 years old and have an ID with them when visiting the 12 acre compound located outside of Los Angeles.
Duke Nukem Forever had a relatively strong debut in June -- its combined sales of the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC versions sold better than every other game in the United States with the exception of L.A. Noire last month, according to NPD Group numbers covering May 29 through July 2.
L.A. Noire sold 419,000 copies, while Duke Nukem Forever sold 376,300, Giant Bomb reprots. These numbers, like all NPD software sales, only account for physical sales, not digital.
1UP's Sucker Punch Blu-ray Prize Pack Giveaway How To Play
We've heard what you're saying to us on twitter: you want more movies!
Naturally, the first movie we thought of was Sucker Punch. With multiple protagonists and different vignettes, it would totally lend itself to a video game. That's why today we're giving you a chance to win Sucker Punch on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital, the Sucker Punch Origianl Soundtrack, and The Art of Sucker Punch book! That's a lotta swag!
Each winner gets all three prizes, so play to win from the moment we start! Here's what it takes to win:
For many, the highlight of Nintendo's weekly downloadable offerings will be the 3DS Netflix app. It isn't the only new item available to download today, and despite Nintendo making no mention of it whatsoever, the Wii's Virtual Console is now home to Super E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force.
Neither Nintendo of America's tweets nor its announcement sent out to media and published online makes mention of how Super Earth Defense Force is out now for $8. It joins WiiWare's 3D Pixel Racing ($5) as the only new Wii download titles this week.
Despite the similarity in names, this Earth Defense Force has nothing to do with D3 Publisher's two recent games of the same name, EDF 2017 and EDF: Insect Armageddon. Those are both a part of the Global Defense Force series, whereas the Super Nintendo game was a horizontal shooter from the early 90s that began as an arcade title.
Before it came to be the game we know today, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow started out as a remake of the original Castlevania. Players therefore would have again assumed the role of Simon Belmont, not Gabriel Belmont, who ended up becoming the main characters in LoS.
At the recent Gamelab conference in Barcelona, Konami showed off an early concept video that demonstrates what Simon would have looked like had he been the star of the game. Simon appears shortly after the 1:20 mark, quick lays the smackdown, and is gone before you know it.
While Simon didn't make it into the final game, you can still see his influence; Gabriel's armor is similar to that of Simon's in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, a game whose focus on exploration was also an inspiration to LoS' developers.
"Tell us something about your game that people don't already know." That was a question that we recently and repeatedly asked a bunch of developers while checking out a game. We didn't want the usual, "this game has 12 weapons that feel like 24 because of the alternate fire for each" factoid. We asked for stuff like whether a feature was cut, or if someone put in a picture of their dog in a poster within one of the levels. Think of this as the gaming equivalent of hearing that one of James Cameron's goals was to feature "the ultimate cat-fight between badass moms" in Aliens. We asked twenty developers to tell us one piece of trivia for their game, and here's what they said.
Battlefield 3: From executive producer Karl-Magnus Troedsson: "There might be one thing that maybe not everyone noticed what we did in the EA press conference [at E3] -- I challenge all hardcore Battlefield fans to take a look at the absolute first couple seconds of the presentation. There's an audio cue in there you might recognize -- it's an homage to Battlefield 1942. It starts out with a tune from 1942."
BioShock Infinite: Creative director Ken Levine gives us an alternate take on the one of the more significant narrative changes between the original BioShock and the upcoming Infinite: "In the early story briefs of BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth was mute." Which makes for an interesting inversion of having a chatty protagonist accompanied by a mute companion.
Just as the Call of Duty series is getting free social networking features with Call of Duty Elite (the beta of which begins today), Battlefield 3 will bring with it something similar in Battlelog.
As announced during E3, Battlelog provides players with a place to check out statistics, track unlocks and awards, communicate with other players, and so on.
The German Battlefield blog seems to have jumped the gun by posting several pictures of Battlelog from an alpha trial version. The post, originally located here, has since been pulled, but not before fansite Battlefieldo noticed.
"Please, please, please, don't let them break the game I loved and played for 100+ hours last year" -- that has to be the most common annual refrain of the sports gamer. And who could blame us? Having lived through The QB Vision Cone™, Read and Lead Passing™, Liquid A.I.™ Analog Spiral System™, Crease Control™, and The Truck Stick™ (only one of those ridiculous marketing terms isn't real), we've come to expect that, for the sake of adding a bullet point, the beauty and balance of a great game can be cast into disarray. Last year's NCAA Football 11 was just such a great game, and I'm more than a little relieved to report that this year's entry does nothing to damage that legacy.
In fact, to the casual observer, it would seem they've done nothing to the game... at all. That's because, while the list of updates and improvements to NCAA 12 is definitely extensive, the enhancements tend to be of the type that are either buried in menus (things like custom playbooks and custom conferences), or require some familiarity with the series to recognize their significance.
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The creator of NBA Jam, Mark Turmell, has left EA Sports. 
