Gabe Newell Teases New Song for Portal 2
Written by from on March 12th, 2010 | 0 CommentsIn an interview with 1UP after accepting the Pioneer Award at tonight’s Game Developers Choice ceremony, Valve’s Gabe Newell offered a few details about his company’s upcoming Portal 2 . When asked if he could provide a piece of trivia about the game that people wouldn’t know, Newell mentioned, “Jonathan Coulton is awesome — he’s just brilliant; he’s a joy to work with,” referring to the songwriter behind the now-famous end credits song in the original Portal . I followed up asking about a new song in the sequel, to which Newell replied, “He’s brilliant.”
Heroes of Newerth GDC 2010 Gameplay
Written by from on March 11th, 2010 | 0 CommentsNew gameplay from GDC 2010 of S2 Games’ upcoming RTS, Heroes of Newerth.
Cogs GDC 2010 Gameplay
Written by from on March 11th, 2010 | 0 CommentsOff-screen gameplay from puzzle game Cogs, filmed at GDC 2010.
Rock Band: Green Day GDC 2010 Trailer
Written by from on March 11th, 2010 | 0 CommentsA trailer featuring the song “American Idiot” from MTV Games and Harmonix’s upcoming Rock Band: Greenday.
Sony Considering God of War 3 DLC
Written by from on March 11th, 2010 | 0 CommentsGod of War 3 is due out next week, and Sony is mulling over the idea of adding downloadable content. VG247 reports that design director Todd Papy hinted at DLC at this year’s Game Developers Conference. “We’re talking about DLC, and the possibilities of it, to see if it’s worth for us to do it,” he said. “From a fan standpoint, I think it’s very worth it, but at the same time we don’t want to compromise our next projects.” If DLC does come, it may not be for a while. “We’re going to take a break, come back, look into new IPs, and at the same time we’re going to look and see if there is anything left in the God of War series that we feel is very compelling that we can sink our teeth into,” Papy said. If the team is planning to give the series a short rest before even starting development on DLC, it may actually be quite a while before any of it comes out. Papy refers to a few ideas the team is looking into, but says “we’ll see if it ever comes to market.”
Playstation Move GDC 2010 Trailer
Written by from on March 10th, 2010 | 0 CommentsA segment from Sony’s GDC 2010 Press Conference highlighting the Playstation Move’s features and capabilities.
PlayStation Move Games Include LBP, SOCOM 4, Move Party, More
Written by from on March 10th, 2010 | 0 CommentsIn addition to Sports Champions (which, let’s be honest, may as well be called “PS3 Sports,” but you can’t blame Sony for following the money), Sony also announced a slew of other games that’ll use the PlayStation Move motion controller, including Move Party , Little Big Planet , EyePet , Motion Fighters , and the recently revealed SOCOM 4 . First up was Move Party, which seems to be an amalgam of random mini-games with a bit of a WarioWare vibe, but also the “augmented reality” style of games the PlayStation Eye (and EyeToy on the PS2) often featured. It shows the player on the screen in each mini-game, but with the Move controller replaced by what each mini-game requires. The demonstration included mini-games where the Move controller was used to swat bugs with a tennis racket, color in shapes as though it was a paintbrush, or, uh, cut someone’s hair as though the controller was an electric clipper. Again, it was all very fast-paced in a WarioWare style. Motion Fighter was about what the name implies. The player controlled the character with a behind-the-back view, and common-sense motions translated into the game — throwing punches, crouching, leaning side-to-side, etc. You can change the aim of your punches, throw special kinds like hooks and uppercuts, or even throw a spinning elbow strike. Unfortunately, the spinning elbow didn’t work the first time (precision!), but the player demoing the game got it to work on a second attempt.
GDC 2010: Social Games Getting More Social
Written by from on March 10th, 2010 | 0 CommentsSocial games just aren’t social enough, according to experts in the field. A meeting of the minds took place Wednesday at the GamesBeat conference at GDC to discuss the future of social games — that is, internet-based games that interact with your social network. The consensus among the panel was that these games need to better integrate their social aspects into gameplay, rather than as a separate feature.
OnLive Launching June 17, $14.95 Per Month
Written by from on March 10th, 2010 | 0 CommentsAt the GamesBeat portion of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this morning, Steve Perlman, CEO of OnLive, finally announced details for the launch of the cloud computing gaming service. A year after the service was first unveiled at GDC in 2009, Perlman was able to point to E3 2010 as the official launch of OnLive. June 17th is the date, and according to Perlman the service will be up and running in all 48 contiguous United States at that time.
All about Japan’s Anti-Violence Game Rating System
Written by from on March 10th, 2010 | 0 CommentsIn Japan, the equivalent of the ESRB is the Computer Entertainment Rating Organization (CERO), the industry outfit responsible for giving content ratings to every console game released in the country. CERO rates based on a scale of five letters: A (all ages), B (ages 12 and up), C (ages 15 and up), D (ages 17 and up), and Z (ages 18 and up only ). That “only” attached to the Z rating has been the source of consternation for many a gamer in Japan. Unlike the ESRB’s “Adults Only” rating, CERO’s Z seems to be applied almost exclusively based on violence standards — if there’s too much blood, you’re out. What’s worse, while a Z on the box isn’t as bad as an AO rating in America (or being refused classification at all in Australia, effectively banning it from shelves), it essentially means that the game cannot be advertised in any public manner within Japan. The situation came to a head recently when Sony’s God of War III was given a Z, even though the first two games both got D ratings in Japan. Game-store owners were, to say the least, miffed. “[The Z rating] basically means I can engage in no practical advertising,” one Tokyo-based store owner blogged last month. “There are no TV ads, no videos playing in the store. The best I can do is put up posters and flyers, but no matter how great the game is, you can’t show what makes it fun with still images. Capcom [the publisher of GOW 1 and 2 in Japan] spent all this time building up the brand, and now it’s all ruined!”