EA and 8lb Gorilla have officially launched their latest title, Ghost Harvest on the App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch. In Ghost Harvest, players take the role as caretaker over a “mystical” cemetery. As caretaker, the player must then manage, grow and customize their ghostly property while protecting the souls that inhabit it from ghost hunters and nosy reporters in a tower defense style.
Features Include:
HARVEST TONS OF SOULS – Plant, grow and harvest souls to earn you big karma points and coins! With zombie, grumpy bird and pirate ghosts, who needs crops?
PROTECT YOUR ENTERPRISE – Grow poltergeists to stop reporters, education channel ghost hunters and the Paranormal Patrol from ruining your altruistic enterprise in a tower defense style mini-game.
DECK OUT YOUR CEMETERY – Customize your cemetery by adding cool and unique decorations: Cerberus Scarecrows, mausoleums, haunted mansions and more!
GROW YOUR KARMA AND PROFITS – Increase the size of your graveyard by leveling up so you can get cool new items and scare off bigger, craftier invaders!
As much as I love Plants vs Zombies, a change of pace sounds rather nice and Ghost Harvest looks to be bringing a nice addition of customization to the standard tower defense formula. You can click here to be taken directly to Ghost Harvest’s page in the App Store and get a better glimpse of the game with the screenshots below.
Magic the Gathering is well known as one of the largest and most popular card games in the world. Unlike Pokémon and Yu Gi Oh, the game has been able to stand up on its own without the help of an anime background. Generally catered towards an older demographic of players, the game is well loved by collectors and competitors alike.
Back in 2009, Wizards of the Coast released the first Duels of the Planeswalkers game to mixed reviews from the gaming community. While the game was well enjoyed by gamers new to playing competative card games, some hardcore fans of the long running series criticised it for being too easy, and for having too many limitations on deck customisations. To be fair, only a small handful of decks were available to play with, and the ability to obtain new decks or rare cards was limited by how much one was willing to spend Xbox Live points on. The other major criticism was that the game seemed to be stuck in the slightly outdated 2009 core decks which were rapidly superseded in strength and effectiveness by the succeeding series, such as “Rise of the Eldrazi”. However, for a console based port, I think it did the best it could with what it had at the time. Overall it was a pretty good game, and something solid and intellectually stimulating when I was looking for a change of pace from the mainstream FPS games.
Now, in 2011, Wizards of the Coast is now releasing a new updated version of the ‘Duels of the Planeswalkers’ games, to be released today! Check out the official information post below:
“Gather your allies for a new battle, as Wizards of the Coast returns to Xbox LIVE Arcade with a brand new “Magic: The Gathering” game. Starting June 15, face off against powerful Planeswalkers with brand new decks in “Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012.” Features will include:
Modify your deck for your own play style: Players can add or remove cards from both starting cards and earned unlocked cards for each deck.
Gather your allies to face new Archenemies: In the new Archenemy format, you and two allies (players or AI) must work together to take down a powerful Archenemy and survive the extra powers from the Archenemy’s special scheme deck.
Fifteen puzzling challenge levels: Puzzles are back and better than ever with difficulties ranging from easy to (really) hard including new Archenemy challenges.
Three- and Four-Player Enhanced Co-op Play: For the first time, players can invite their friends anywhere in the world to partner up with them to take on the Archenemy or play against live opponents in Two-Headed Giant competition.
Players that download Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 will receive a voucher for an exclusive titan promo card which they can redeem in participating stores (while supplies last). Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 also features ten new decks using cards from the latest Magic: The Gathering expansions, including your first chance to play with cards from the Magic 2012Core Set that releases on July 15th.
Fans will be able to grab “Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012” when it hits Xbox LIVE Arcade on June 15, 2011 for 800 Microsoft Points.”
This promotion of a new game seems promising. I like that they’ve decided to release this as a brand new title, rather than put out a bunch of additional and expensive DLC packs. Additionally I’m liking the additional deck options that will be available to players. As a player that typically plays with a deck combination of Red and Green based cards, I would love to see the 2012 core decks introduce something that really fits my play style, or at very least offer the customisation options to construct the kind of deck that I would use. Heck, a chance to even see and use the 2012 core decks before they’re released next month is exciting in itself.
The plot and “archenemy” outlined in the description will likely be one of the major plagues or villains from the past 3 years in terms of MtG lore. My guess is that with the recent release of the “New Phyrexia” decks, we’re likely to see a planeswalker who specialises in undead machines to take up the antagonist mantle from 2009’s villain: Tezzeret.
But by the feature I like the most from this: 4 player and co-op play enhancements. As a player who has a group of 4 friends, including myself that play regularly, this feature will allow players who enjoy playing just for fun with friends to really engage with the MtG universe in a whole new way. Most likely in the form of 2v2 two-headed giant matches. Sufficed to say, I’m eager to see what’s been changed around.
The Game development industry in Australia has had rocky times recently, especially after people losing their jobs and some studios being closed, including Krome’s Adelaide office. So the announcement made by the Federal Government for a Research and Development Tax Credit to the Industry comes as great news for the future.
Announced via the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association of Australia, Chief Executive Officer Ron Curry of iGEA said the tax reform “Has already attracted the interest of many global game publishers” which can only be good news for our struggling industry. He continued “The games industry is already a major contributor to the GDP’s of a number of international territories and the introduction of the legislation could well put Australia on the same path.”
“Once the legislation is passed through the Senate we should expect to see an increase in investment interest from publishers that have established development studios in Australia and potentially far greater investment in the intellectual properties being developed within local game development studios.”
The global computer and videogame industry is worth an estimated US $50 billion worldwide, expected to rise to $76 billion in 2013 and is the leading entertainment sector, eclipsing DVD or theatrical movie releases. A study released in the USA last week, indicated that the average age of a videogame player is now 37 with 72 per cent of households playing computer or video games.
Antony Reed, Chief Executive of the Game Developers’ Association of Australia, sees the announcement as the Government making a strong commitment to the development of Australia’s knowledge economy. They welcomed the crossbench support for the $1.8 billion R&D Tax Bill.
“Since the first announcement of the R&D Tax reform and in our own discussions with the Department, it became very clear that the government has confidence in the abilities of Australian SMEs to deliver ground-breaking innovations for the global market,” said Reed. “Innovation is at the heart of game development and the introduction of the new legislation not only assists in levelling the global competitive playing field, but also affords the local industry the opportunity to challenge traditional gameplay conventions.”
“Games have both driven advances in technology and brought advanced technologies into millions of homes around the world. The industry is constantly exploring new mechanisms to create engaging and meaningful experiences for players,” said Reed.
The Gillard Labor Government may not be popular right now, but $1.8 billion R&D Tax Credit is expected to provide more funding to innovative Australian companies – including ICT – and begins on July 1 2011.
You can view more information about the R&D Tax bill here
No matter which way you look at this story, the news is still quite grim. Game Republic, developers of games such as “Genji” (yes, the GIANT ENEMY CRAB!) and “Majin & The Forsaken Kingdom” look to have closed up shop for good due to a flood of rumors that the main studio is facing closure (via Kotaku). After a generally negative critical reception for their most recent title, “Knights Contract”, we haven’t really seen too much from the Tokyo based studio. Knights Contract is however prominently featured in the most recent issue of Japanese Mag Famitsu, which may mean that Game Republic is simply restructuring, which is doubtful at the moment.
I heavily enjoyed Majin last year and I still feel there is (or was) a lot of future promise with Game Republic. As of now though, things look bleak for the studio and this very well could be the end of yet another developer. Stay tuned as we will bring you more news on this once something is officially announced.
Well, first I would recommend watching the new video for Darksiders 2 below which was released by GameInformer. In the video we learn a few things about the character Death and about the weapons he will be using to deal with his enemies in the game from director Marvin Donald. Unfortunately when you actually see gameplay of him in action, there is a very striking resemblance to another title.
Death’s weapons are two scythes which he can use to kill any enemies in his path, but then again wasn’t there another game that had two weapons that could do the exact same thing… you know… God of War style? Now I know God of War didn’t invent the whole high-action brawler combat we see today in games such as Darksiders 2 but it is is nearly impossible to avoid noticing the distinct resemblance in the trailer below.
Well, you can let it be said that an online petition actually changed something in a video game for once. Or at least it may have. Over the past few days we’ve reported about Battlefield 3 fans becoming angry over the fact that the Physical Warfare content would be exclusive to pre-orders only and never released to everyone else. This caused them to form a boycott petition against the title.
Well EA has responded on the Battlefield Blog that the Physical Warfare pack is only a timed pre-order exclusive and will eventually be released to the public for everyone to download for the price of free. This news should satisfy any of the boycotters as well as make everyone happy that they will be getting free additional items eventually after the game is released later this year.
If you turned on your Nintendo 3DS today you may have noticed that you can download a new firmware update. The firmware update will upgrade your 3DS system to Version 2.1.0-3U and the main reason for the update was to fix a problem with the software that is a “correction for the screen freeze symptom” that is found in the Ridge Racer 3D title.
This means that if you previously found your Ridge Racer 3D title to be unplayable then hopefully this update will nullify that problem. Besides patching up Ridge Racer, the update also allows for future updates to be downloaded automatically which is a decent little feature to have but not one worth much notice unless your doing something that you prefer Nintendo didn’t know about.
Not only has Activision confirmed that they will be releasing the Annihilation Map pack for 1200 MSP on June 28th today, but Treyarch has also released their preview trailer for the maps only a few short hours after the announcement was made.
In the preview trailer we see a great look at all of the new maps in the game, including the Hazard map which is based off of the Cliffside map in World at War. Except this time around it is a golf course. Also detailed was the Shangri-la zombie map. Rather than being an open map the level will be more compact and feature plenty of escape routes. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like we will be seeing any movie stars this time around, though it looks like the old crew may be returning… maybe paradise wasn’t exactly what they thought.
Well, it’s Thursday and that of course means Nintendo are bringing out a small load of titles to all of their download services. The biggest to talk about is the 5th title released for the 3DS Virtual Console, Donkey Kong (also known as Donkey Kong ’94). This Game Boy game was released in 1994 (of course) and plays a lot like the classic arcade version of Donkey Kong, but with more levels and a few new mechanics with Mario going after keys that block the paths along the way. Donkey Kong is priced at $3.99.
For those without a 3DS, Nintendo still have you covered as the NES classic, Mega Man V has finally released for the Wii virtual console for the usual 500 Nintendo points. A full list of all the rest of the downloadable greatness can be found below that covers the DSi, Wii, and 3DS e-Shops.
Activision usually has trouble keeping a tight lip on information concerning their map packs and the latest installment, Annihilation, was no exception. After a little bit of a leak to everyone yesterday, Activision confirmed today that they are planning to release the Annihilation DLC pack on June 28th on the Xbox 360 first with subsequent releases on later dates for the PC and PlayStation 3.
The map pack will cost your average expensive 1200 MSP ($15) and will include four new multiplayer maps and of course everyone’s favorite… a zombie map. The four new multiplayer maps will be called Hangar 18, Drive-in, Silo and Hazard while the zombie map will be called Shagri-La. Shagri La is an exotic zombie map full of deadly traps and dark secrets that will give zombie survivalists an experience they have never seen in a zombie mode yet.
