A community building project will kick off the next update to come for Lego Universe. Running for the whole month, this project encourages players to donate bricks to the Nexus Tower construction project. Stop by the Nimbus Station to donate your bricks in-game and make “Nexus Tower a reality, to serve as a beacon of light and hope to mini figures across the LEGO Universe!” The more a player donates and helps build the project, the more chances each player will have to earn exclusive rewards!
The next feature to come in the update is a new racing game. Gamers will soon face a tough challenge, the challenge to beat the Maelstrom on a racetrack.
The Dragonmaw Chasm racetrack is just one of the new tracks, and it comes “complete with a slew of new missions and some super-hot rewards,” along with the new race cars: Fire Brawl and Mach Lava. 8 other race cars will also join in the fun, and these racers will be representative of the four factions available for play in Lego Universe.
Finally, the last new feature to come out this update is the by far the most exciting. A new area will allow players to build even bigger creations on their personal properties.
The ability to add a personal pet to an area is also being included. Zoo and Safari themed model sets will be on hand to help your inspiration process.
The fabled unicorn of the tech world is now available to buy. That’s right. It is the iPhone 4, but instead of being black, its white! It is available in the 16 or 32 gigabyte flavors. If you want a taste being the talk of the party for the next few weeks, check out this link to order the phone from an the Apple online store. If you would rather line up outside a store and not stick out like a black sheep, then check out this link to find an Apple store near you.
Whaddya say? Will you be indulging your desires to buy the newest iDevice?!
Have you ever played a game or watch anime or cartoon and thought, “Hey, that voice sounds familiar…”? Odds are, you’re not going crazy. Many of the voice actors in the industry are quite ubiquitous and their voices can be heard in dozens of series, from bit parts to leading roles. Sometimes, you’ll realize that two characters in totally unrelated works have the same voice, and that can be a mind-blowing experience. So let’s take a look at one of the busier voice actors out there, John DiMaggio.
Marcus Fenix – Gears of War
When Gears of War was released, it gave Microsoft another huge exclusive to add to its list of killer apps. This was a big deal for the young Xbox 360 because Gears was released right when Sony and Nintendo were releasing their new consoles to the public. Right at the forefront of Gears of War was Marcus Fenix, the gruff and grizzly COD soldier brandishing an assault rifle with a chainsaw bayonet.
Normally I would say it can’t get any manlier than that, but when you hear Fenix’s voice it’s like being pummeled by a rock-slide of gravel. Marcus’s yell literally sounds like someone threw a pack of wolverines into a cement mixer, and then the strongest wolverine fought his way back out and built a football arena with the cement. Is that too manly? Perhaps, but we’ll just balance that out with all the homo-erotic fan fiction about Marcus and his ever present partner Dom.
Wakka and Kimahri – Final Fantasy X
Now if you were to imagine the opposite of Marcus Fenix, it would probably somewhat resemble Final Fantasy X’s Wakka. This tan islander with a passion for underwater soccer (football?) essentially wears a pair of waders with suspenders, is forever shirtless, and must use appromixately 1.5 cans of hairspray to get that kind of hold. Believe or not, Wakka and Marcus Fenix are both given life by John DiMaggio, fake Caribbean accent and all.
Of course, it was probably somewhere in DiMaggio’s contract that he couldn’t take the job unless he got to voice at least one tough guy, so Square (pre-Enix days) also gave him the role of Kimahri. Kimahri is a Ronso, a race of anthropomorphic unicorn cats who live at the icy peak of Mount Gagazet. Although completely mute early on in the game, Kimahri eventually warms up to the protagonist and is fiercely protective of the group. This Ronso’s characteristic trait is the broken horn on his forehead, and at over 2 meter talls Kimahri is considered “small” by the rest of his clan. Yeah, I’d say that makes up for Wakka.
Bender – Futurama
This next voice is the one that I instinctively hear whenever John DiMaggio voices a character. No matter what game I’m playing or what show I’m watching, every character of DiMaggio’s sounds to me like Bender. Wakka is Bender with a Jamaican accent. Marcus Fenix is Bender after the cigars catch up to him. It’s inevitable for me to hear this foul-mouthed, cigar smoking, larcenous robot everywhere.
As one of the stars on Matt Groening’s Futurama, Bender is a robot with a habit (well, a lot of habits) for crime. Crime and just being a jerk. A loveable jerk. Part con man, part pickpocket, and part folk singer, this mischievous automaton has even adopted a dozen orphans just to neglect them and collect the welfare checks. This guy has found a way to turn orphans into a business, people! I think that deserves some applause.
Jake the Dog – Adventure Time
Jake the Dog is a character that might be unknown to some of the older readers here, but that should change right now. Jake is one half of the adventuring duo from Adventure Time, a Cartoon Network show created by Pendleton Ward. The cartoon follows Jake the Dog and Finn the Human through their life of adventuring, which has included slaying candy zombies, dustomancy (which allows one to read the thoughts of dust particles), and Mannish Man the Manly Minotaur, who is oddly not voice by DiMaggio despite the apparent manly clause in his contract.
Jake, who is voiced by John DiMaggio, is a dog with magic powers that allow him to change his size and shape at will, and is the best friend of Finn the Human. Although Jake is 28 (in magic dog years, of course), he often acts less mature than his 13 year old companion. A personal favorite moment from Adventure Time has Finn and Jake melting washed up icebergs with flamethrowers in order to salvage the treasure within. After Finn finds a particularly awesome haul, a frustrated Jake complains, “I keep finding baby shoes. What the HECK man, and they’re all LEFTIES!”
Scotsman – Samurai Jack
And for our last entry in this look at the voices of John DiMaggio we have somewhat of a return to form. The Scotsman from Samurai Jack, voiced by the very not Scottish DiMaggio, is exactly what his name implies. He is a brawny, kilt-wearing Scot whom Jack first encounters while crossing a rope bridge. As the bridge is rather narrow, one of the men will need to go back in order to allow the other to pass. Neither man gives in, however, and in a display of sheer manliness (i.e. stubbornness) the two partake in an epic battle before plummeting into the river below.
The Scotsman, unlike Jack, is loud and boisterous and is more than a little bit like Gimli from the Lord of the Rings. I wonder why it is that Scots always get painted as brawny men who love to fight and drink. Must be a coincidence. Anyway, this guy is so freaking tough that he literally has a chain gun for a leg which he uses to pump enemies full of lead when he isn’t too busy playing his bagpipes. I don’t know how you can top that.
There are tons of other characters, in both video games and animation, that John DiMaggio has lent his voice to, but there are just a few of the more prominent ones. While some might say that he is somewhat typecast as the tough guy, seeing a picture of the guy makes it pretty clear that he isn’t just faking it. So that’s it for now, and as John DiMaggio’s character Shnitzel would say on Chowder, “Rada rada”.
Everyone knows that when it comes to making games targeted for the casual audience, no one does it better than PopCap. In the past few years, the company has been pushing a bit more into the social market with several Facebook applications, and to move more forward in that direction it was announced today that PopCap have now acquired ZipZapPlay, the creators of the popular Facebook title “Baking Life” (which has well over 2 million players) as well as several other smaller games on the site.
Most of the time when an acquirement of any company takes place, you see a lot of changes from the top, but in this case, PopCap seem to eager to move forward with ZipZapPlay by keeping the infrastructure relatively unchanged. Founders Curt Bererton (CEO) and Mathilde Pignol (CCO) will continue to direct all game design and development from the San Francisco studio.
A Statement was issued today from PopCap on this huge move for both companies:
“The team at ZipZapPlay is one of the best in the social games space, and combined with our existing group in Seattle gives us the opportunity to dramatically expand our development resources,” said John Vechey, PopCap co-founder and VP of Corporate Strategy and Development, who oversaw the acquisition. “While the acquisition creates immediate cross-promotional and operations benefits, this is a strategic move with huge long-term potential; we believe ZipZapPlay can help us further evolve and expand the definition of social games.”
“Adding ZipZapPlay’s strong design and development team to our rapidly-growing social games group is a big move for us,” said Jason Kapalka, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at PopCap. “ZipZapPlay is a great cultural fit: a truly creative company that lives and breathes in this space. And their next game is very innovative and exciting – we believe it has the potential to be a step forward in the evolution of social gaming.”
Bereton also offered his input on the future of ZipZapPlay as well: “We’re elated to join the leading casual games developer and help grow PopCap’s presence in the social arena,” said ZipZapPlay’s Bererton. “PopCap’s focus on innovative gameplay and user experience meshes with our own design philosophy. We can’t wait to put our heads together with PopCap and start creating the next generation of games for Facebook and other social platforms.”
With EA and Zynga currently leading the Facebook Market and PopCap already running a close third in the race for the top spot, this acquisition should only lead to spectacular results for the company as PopCap now expect “four to five” new games to be launched for the social networking site by years’ end due to the expansion. Personally, I only play Facebook games that are from PopCap such as Bejeweled and Zuma Blitz, but the options look to be about to open up in a big way very soon and we very well could be seeing the start of PopCap dethroning Zynga from the top of the food chain when it comes to social gaming. This story seems to be just heating up and will certainly be one to watch as the year progresses.
While those of us with flux-capacitor-enabled DeLoreans have already played all 5 episodes of Telltale Games’s Back to the Future episodic adventure game, the more chrono-impaired gamers out there are just now getting hold of episode 4: Double Visions. Clearly Marty and the Doc have by now completely thrown out the old rules of not altering the past, because utter chaos has broken out so far in the series. In the newest episode of Back to the Future: The Game, Marty and Doc Brown must travel back in time to prevent a young Emmett Brown from marrying his deranged future (present?) wife, Edna. While describing the events of any story that involves time travel can get confusing, perhaps the trailer below can do a better job. Now excuse me, I’m off to the end of 2011 so I can play Telltale’s Walking Dead game. Great Scott!
For those of you stuck in the present, you might as well make the most of your time and pick up Back to the Future: The Game at Telltale’s site or on Steam. PSN and iOS versions of Episode 4: Double Visions will be available at some point in the near future (present? man, you guys really need to get a DeLorean so we can keep this time stuff straight).
So PSN is still down roughly a week after this whole debacle has started. Arguments over who is to blame are largely over and done with, leaving one of the big questions left for the users to ask is, “So what am I getting out of this?” Sony has thought of that too, especially considering that some users do pay a fee for services on PSN such as Qirocity, PSN+ and DC Universe. Sony has stated that it’s going to do “something” about this issue of compensation, but no hard details as of yet. It’s pretty safe to assume that users will be reimbursed for the time lost.
More importantly is what’s going to happen to the regular, not-paying-any-fees users. Even though they don’t pay any fees on PSN, they were still hindered just the same by this whole situation. So what’s in it for us? A “thank you” and a pat on the back for being so patient? Possibly, but maybe not.
Sony has mentioned in their latest Q&A that they are,”…currently evaluating ways to show appreciation for your extraordinary patience as we work to get these services back online.”. What this means is anybody’s guess. Microsoft issued a free game (Undertow, great game) to all who were effected by a similar network outage way back when. Sony may do the same, if so a possible candidate is the recently released Mood Diver. But really, who knows what Sony will come up with, if anything at all (it’s safe to assume we are going to get something)
More interesting is that there are rumors that Sony is going to finally do something about a few key features that they have mentioned before but never followed through on in an attempt to retain their customers who may be considering dropping the PS3 for a 360. Specifically, a Sony employee has mentioned in their blog that, “As we are rebuilding the network, we are taking into consideration in implementing features such as cross game chat and in-game video chat to name a few…” Pretty interesting, though do note that the employee follows up with, “I cannot confirm any new features at this time but expect a massive update when the network is restored.”
Sony has mentioned before that when the network comes back up there will be an update, most likely to beef up security to make sure this won’t happen again. Will this update also include the much awaited cross game chat as well as others? Honestly, I’m not getting my hopes up. There have been rumors of cross game chat being added for quite a while now, so I’m just going to chalk this up to more hearsay. Regardless, be on the lookout for more information from Sony in the coming days. This whole situation should be nearing a close and finally be resolved in a few more days. Hopefully Sony will go into a bit more detail about compensation for its users and maybe even shed some light on these “new features” that might be added.
Yesterday we discovered that the cover art for both versions of Catherine were appearing altered on the Gamefly service and then also on Amazon.com (Amazon has since altered the box art back to the original). This spelled out bad news for fans of the game as it was originally announced that the cover art would not be censored at all and fans would receive the same cover as the Japanese version of the game.
Fans can breath a small sigh of relief however because after contacting ATLUS we were able to find out from Aram Jabbari that the cover art is only going to be modified for select markets. These markets are a minority and the vast majority of the titles will instead keep the same cover art originally released. You can read his full statement below:
“In addition to the existing North American covers for Catherine on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, there will also be modified designs that appear in select markets. The vast majority of copies available at launch will feature the cover we originally unveiled, essentially the Japanese cover of the game. A small percentage of copies, however, will feature a cover that is more considerate of certain retailers’ broader customer demographic. Fans need not worry; Catherine’s cover art is NOT being altered for North America. There is just an extra option being made available for more sensitive shoppers.”
If you feel like you haven’t had enough speed in your life and feel the need for speed then I should probably stop trying to milk the title name more. Either way EA has announced today that Need for Speed: The Run will be released on November 15th in the US and November 17th everywhere else. EA Black Box is developing the title with EA DICE’s Frostbite 2 development engine. The title is being released for practically every console available, the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii and Nintendo 3DS.
The Run will use the Autolog feature that was seen in previous Need for Speed games as well as the latest in fast cars and even faster chases. They have also released a teaser trailer to go along with the information but unfortunately besides that and the box art we will have to wait to hear more on the title as weeks go by.
At the sight of DLC some people cringe and then have to reach for their wallets. Well you can put your wallet back in because Portal 2’s first DLC won’t cost you a thing according to Valve. Valve announced today that Portal 2 is not only their fastest selling release since Half-Life 2 but that they will be bringing their valued customers Portal 2 DLC #1 entirely free of charge.
This DLC will surprisingly be free of charge even on the Xbox 360 which usually has a price tag for DLC that is normally free on the PC such as Left 4 Dead. But despite their past history of charging for free content the 360 will allow the DLC to be entirely free. The PC and Mac version as well as the PS3 version will also obtain the DLC for free.
The DLC #1 will offer new test chambers for players to experience, leaderboards and a challenge mode for both single and multiplayer. The potential release date given by Valve is some time this summer but that is as clear as they were able to be at the moment.
