All of you Potter-fans can now rejoice as this week marks the launch of not only the final movie in the series, but also the video-game tie-in from EA. To celebrate this release, EA have revealed a new launch trailer which honestly looks to be cut straight out of the movie.
The past few trailers that we have seen for this title have shown us quite a bit of the cover-based gameplay as well as the way the final battle of Hogwarts will play out. This trailer is a bit different however as it is all CG, with reproductions of scenes that will appear in the actual movie that launches worldwide this Friday. I for one am quite a big Harry Potter fan and while past video game releases have been a bit mixed for the series, it honestly looks that Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 2 will end with quite an epic climax. Check out the trailer for yourself below and let us know in the comments if you are planning to watch the final film or even pick up this brand new video game entry. Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 2 launches today for the Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo Wii.
Hey, you know that very popular HBO series that just finished airing its season finale a few weeks back, that is also based off of an even more popular book franchise called A Song of Ice and Fire that happens to have its fifth book coming out shortly? Well it is also receiving a video game adaptation.
A Game of Thrones – Genesis has been announced today and is being worked on by Cyanide Studios for the PC. Genesis will be a strategy based game and will be based off of the novels by George R.R. Martin’s series of novels named A Song of Ice and Fire which are some of the best selling high fantasy novels around. The title will be released Summer of this year and the single player campaign was written with the supervision of the author himself, George R.R. Martin. This means that fans of the series won’t find themselves disappointed with the game’s narrative, and can even go up against one another online in eight way conflicts to see who has the power to obtain the Iron Throne.
Over the past few weeks there have been some rumors circulating around that PopCap was going to be bought buy someone in the near future. Many numbers were floating around the internet, including a purchase for over $1 billion but that number is a little exaggerated. Because EA announced today that they have actually purchased PopCap for $750 million as well as $100 million in stocks. As long as the purchase is approved by those it has to go through, the deal will be finished in August.
CEO of EA, John Riccitiello had this to say about their purchase of PopCap: “EA and PopCap are a compelling combination. PopCap’s great studio talent and powerful IP add to EA’s momentum and accelerate our drive towards a $1 billion digital business.” Sounds like there will be some more games coming out through EA’s “exclusive” Origin service in the near future.
Looks like fans dying to experience the next Burnout game won’t have to wait all the way until the Fall after all. EA’s UK website announced today that Burnout Crash! will be released to the PSN and the XBLA in August. This means that players can be jumping to explode with their Kinect or playing it with a standard controller on the PlayStation 3.
Creative Director of the title, Richard Franke says that Burnout Crash “is a crazy mix of pinball and game shows.” Whether or not this will actually end up being the game that Burnout fans would want it to be has yet to be seen, though some still wish that there would be a full game being developed instead of an Arcade version.
Despite the title being announced recently, Game Informer has posted up an exclusive screenshot from the game and have also obtained a little bit of information about the title from developer Arkane Studios. First in the screenshot above you can see that the player is using a sword to attack an enemy that is holding a sword and a gun, meaning that there will possibly be both forms of combat available to the player in the game.
Players will be taking the role of Corvo, a man who was a talented bodyguard who possesses some interesting powers of his own, but has been imprisoned for murdering an Empress that he was meant to protect. The gameplay will center around stealth and combat and be based on assassination tactics. There will be a “chaos” mechanic which will track the player’s style of gameplay, whether they are violent, sneaky, underhanded or like to cause collateral damage and this will affect things behind the scenes. The game certainly sounds very interesting, too bad we won’t have a chance to play it until sometime in 2012.
So far the two DLC packs released for Fallout: New Vegas can be classified into either a horror type category with Dead Money and adventure with Honest Hearts. This time around, Old World Blues looks to fill in the insane and off the wall category in the trailer released for the pack today by Bethesda.
The trailer can be seen below and you better prepare yourself for some robotic scorpions and… larger robotic scorpions. It’s obvious that if the voice work in the DLC is anything like that in the trailer you can expect a very good time with the content when it is released next Tuesday on the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for $10 across all platforms.
So who’s making their way down to SMASH this weekend ? The Capsule Computers Crew will be there in full force to cover everything we can, from the cos play characters to the beautiful maids in the maid cafe. Oh yeah and of course we’ll be checking out all the cool new anime and manga stuff to. This years show has quite an impressive line up of special guests like Little Kuriboh (Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series), Shinichi ‘Nabeshin’ Watanabe (Excel Saga) and Kenji Ito (Square Enix).
But there’s one more special guest that will be attending this AMAZING event, who you say? Well none other than MasterAbbott from Capsule Computers. MasterAbbott (yes thats me) will be dressed up in some sort of outfit if you can find me and say “SMASH AND CAPSULE COMPUTERS RULE” you’ll win yourelf a cool prize. The amount of winners will depend on how many prizes we can muster up from our own private stash and also what SMASH can provide.
Gameloft has been busy with preview events and drop kicking fools left and right with new games lately and it looks as though they’re not slowing down anytime soon.
This Friday, July 15, Gameloft is holding a live multiplayer event at the Apple Store in Bondi here in Sydney. You’ll get a chance to check out Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, which is currently available for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) and Mac computers on the Mac App Store. If you come to the event, you’ll get to challenge other players live, including myself, so drop by if you’re in the area and take Asphalt 6: Adrenaline for a test drive.
ASPHALT 6: ADRENALIN LIVE MULTIPLAYER EVENT Apple Store Bondi
213 Oxford St Bondi NSW, 2022
Friday, 15 July 2011
2:30pm – 4:30pm
Namco are really getting known for their mysterious countdowns that lead up to an announcement, and this trend looks to continue due to another mysterious website emerging on the internet. This webpage features a countdown clock set it what appears to be an anime city set at night (or just with the lights off).
I normally can at least attempt to take a stab at it, but this time I am just clueless of what this big reveal could be. Whatever this announcement will bring, we are just 8 days from the big reveal. So what do YOU think this mysterious new title will be? Leave your guesses in the comment section below and check back soon as once this mystery is uncovered, we will be sure to bring out an update.
Publisher: Rockstar Games Developer: Team Bondi Release Date: July 12th, 2011 Price: 320 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live/$6.90AUD on PSN ($7.95NZD or $3.99USD)/Free with Rockstar Pass
This review contains spoilers on the Vice desk. Read ahead at your own discretion.
I will be the first to admit that the Vice desk was the desk I felt was severely underemphasised in L.A. Noire. While Arson had to be long to allow the overarching narrative to fully develop, and Homicide was long because, well, murders aren’t solved in a day, Vice seemed to me like a desk that didn’t make the most of its full potential. Rockstar released The Naked City Vice case to compensate for the somewhat shortened gameplay time spent in the LAPD’s self-proclaimed ‘most glamorous desk’, but it still wasn’t enough to satisfy our need to bust junkies and maintain our love-hate relationship with Earle.
Enter the Reefer Madness Vice case: yet another reason to crack open the ol’ game and spend another hour or two with our favourite righteous detective, Cole Phelps.
He’s not just sleeping, I promise.
As a story, The Reefer Madness is done in typical L.A. Noire fashion – Phelps and Earle get a tip off from a source about a local drug deal. When the detectives arrive there, though, they get an unpleasant surprise in the form of a shootout, and a rude awakening to one of the city’s largest narcotics rings. It is, of course, up to our two guys to figure out who is running this chain so they can book ‘em and let the families sleep safely in their beds at night.
As far as the narrative goes, it’s a little bit different from the other vice cases that come with the game. Instead of the string of government-issue morphine that seems to be making its way around the city, Phelps and Earle are chasing distributors of marijuana; instead of vics (excuse me, I’ve picked up the 1940’s lingo) of substance abuse, there are casualties from our detectives’ hands.
I can’t say the case stands out like a sore thumb like the Nicholson Electroplating Arson DLC did (you can read my review of that here); instead, it serves as a good break before gamers plunge into more complex morphine cases. In the narrative, Reefer Madness is slotted in after The Black Caesar (the first case you get with Earle). Now, I have had issues before with how previous DLC didn’t seem to gel with the rest of the game and Rockstar has attempted to resolve this by adding quips by Earle that will appear later in the game – when Phelps asks a female receptionist to show him to the boss’s office, Earle chimes in with something about how Phelps just used that as an excuse to watch her walk away.
Fortunately, Phelps doesn’t romance the woman on the back of this coin.
If you have played the game past the Vice desk, you will know that Phelps is accused of cheating on his wife later on, and this is Rockstar’s addition of a pre-cursor for adultery in the narrative. I do have to say this is a fair addition – Phelps’ image was far too clean and the adultery came out of nowhere in the final case of the Vice desk. At least here, there is some notion to add doubt in the player’s mind about Phelps’ integrity as the game progresses.
And speaking of integrity, Earle has none but that’s why it was so great to play with him as a partner again. While the other partners are either too jaded or too nice, Earle is a sarcastic guy who lightens up the atmosphere a little (with his wagering, rampant racism, and sexism). I really didn’t get enough of him in the original game, so revisiting him is always a bonus. It was also great to return to Phelps pre-sexual-allegations, where he still commands respect and is far less exhausted from the toll of being a cop.
Gameplay-wise, it’s still investigation and interrogation all the way and Reefer Madness houses a collection of easy interrogations and difficult investigations. I’ll admit, in many of the L.A. Noire cases I have had to restart my case at the last save point because I kept wrongly accusing suspects but in this case (which I played for just over an hour) I only had to restart once – and that was because I accidentally clicked ‘doubt’ instead of ‘lie’. However, the investigation side of it requires meticulous attention to the crime scene and a few mini-puzzles as well, which are always a bonus. All in all, the two balance each other out and really end up providing a smooth gameplay experience.
Who’s betting there aren’t just tomatoes in that truck?
As with every case as well, there is some form of action; I mentioned earlier there is a shootout, but what I should have said is “there are shootouts”. There is far too much shooting and not enough brawling, tackling, or chasing (of the motor vehicle or foot kind), and while I love most of L.A. Noire’s action I’d have to say Reefer Madness had too many guns – and yes, I’m going to complain about that because this isn’t Call of Duty. The only foot chase that was involved in the entire case literally took me about 4 seconds and I tackled the guy so quickly I even stopped and asked, “Is that it?”
But yes, that is it – all of L.A. Noire’s announced DLC is available now, and this is the last case we will be seeing for a while. The Reefer Madness case was three parts investigation, two parts interrogation, and five million parts shooting; all in all, though, it was a great way to spend some more quality time with the boys, Phelps and Earle. As far as cases go, this one won’t even make my top five from the game, however it did give all us gamers one last slice of the L.A. Noire pie. Hopefully Rockstar can release some more DLC soon, but until then, the Reefer Madness Vice case will keep our 360s and PS3s warm for another hour or two. After all, 320 Microsoft Points or $6.95AUD is a small price to pay for that last surefire hit of investigation, interrogation, detectives, shootouts, and 1947 Los Angeles.
