Back in the day of the arcades beat em ups were some of the best. You had games like TAITO’s Double Dragon, Capcom’s Final Fight and Konami’s 6 player licensed cash cow X-Men, and Sega had Streets of Rage. Many of these games excluding X-Men found its way to home consoles. Streets of Rage was brought home to the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive back in the 90s and boy was it so much fun. Now a days companies are wanting to cash in on our memories as much as possible by remaking a lot of their classic franchises. While Sega has given the remake treatment to Sonic, Streets of Rage fans are begging and crying while firmly cuddling with their cartages in hopes they will hear their pleas. Not all hope is lost as a group of fans have made their own Streets of Rage game.
These guys have really out done themselves with this, you get 19 playable characters, 64 different kinds of enemies, 83 remixed tracks, 103 different stages, and many more. Its not ripped off of the games themselves it has all been made from scratch. Since this is a fan project the game is completely free and I highly recommend checking it out if you love this series or love classic arcade beat em ups then this is the one to try. Check out the website here :
There are plenty of online shooters. You can name nearly any title that is out there and it will have some sort of multiplayer aspect that was tacked on for no reason other than to provide that option to players. Sometimes this addition only ends up hurting the game as a whole but Brink certainly won’t suffer in these regards.
In the newest trailer from Brink we see plenty of footage that shows some of the abilities that players will be able to unlock as they play consistently with one class of character and level them up over time. Of course there is also a rather extensive character customization mode that will hopefully allow you to become a unique looking fighter on the battlefield when the title releases for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on May 17th in the US and May 20th in Europe.
As evidenced by my review of SHMUSICUP, I’m a big fan of rhythm games or games that can incorporate rhythm elements. While there are few big names out there making these types of games, the independent scene is always more than willing to provide. Sequence, a game planned for release this month on the Xbox Live Indie Games service, offers promises of rhythm and roleplaying to excited a frothing masses. Alright so maybe it’s more of a niche title than that, but come on, how can you not be excited? Imagine combining Rock Band/DDR with classic roleplaying elements all for only 3 dollars American.
The game, developed by indie company Iridium Studios, has surprisingly high production quality for an XBLIG release features 12 hours worth of rhythm gameplay with 28 music tracks by Ronald Jenkees and Michael Wade Hamilton, as well as 90 minutes of fully voiced dialogue and compatibility with guitar and dance pad controllers. Iridium recently released a trailer along with a walkthrough to help explain how they combine these two very different styles of gameplay. Even if you have no interest in the game, do yourself a favor and check out the below video, which contains some of the funniest voice over I’ve heard in a while. Watch the video at the bottom of this post to check out Sequence, and then head to Iridium’s website for more information and screenshots.
There is no doubt that PopCap have a dominate market on today’s casual games, but it now seems the company is looking to expand by launching a brand new label by the name of “4th & Battery”. 4th & Battery is going to be a bit of a developmental playground for PopCap, allowing them to launch new titles that are still in the testing phase. In a way, this kind of works like Xbox Indie games, except the consumers will be able to try out these new ideas while they are still in the experimental phase.
PopCap released this statement today for the launch of 4th & Battery:
“4th & Battery is a pressure valve intended to keep our heads from exploding,” explained Ed Allard, Executive Vice President of Studios at PopCap. “The PopCap brand has become closely associated with ultra-high quality, polish and attention to detail — which is a great thing. But our standard game development process is therefore long and involved, and doesn’t really accommodate all of the creativity pumping through our collective veins. 4th & Battery gives us a way to quickly try really strange or marginal ideas, and to give our designers a safe area to hone their chops.”
4th & Battery is expected to produce several games per year, primarily small-scale, arcade-style games for platforms ranging from PC to Facebook® and iPhone. Unlike PopCap’s traditional franchises, some of the content emanating from 4th & Battery, including its initial launch title Unpleasant Horse, will be aimed at mature audiences.
“4th & Battery is a purely experimental, creative label with none of the typical concerns like schedules, profitability, or even target audience. It’s kind of the video game equivalent of B-sides or short films,” explained Jason Kapalka, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at PopCap. “Expect weirdness.”
Unpleasant Horse will be available next month for the iPhone and iPod touch through the Apple App Store for the nice low cost of “Free” and will consist of “a strikingly unpleasant horse that sports wings and advances through the game by destroying small birds and landing on more pleasant horses from above”. A mature rated game with horses? Yes, I think we have a winner here.
Sounds pretty interesting and if this helps PopCap let their creative juices flow, I am all for it. With the many hits we have received over the years I have no doubt that there will be a lot more to come from 4th & Battery in the future, but for now you can check out the shiny new website for yourself at www.4thandbattery.com.
Feel like you haven’t gotten enough of Albert Wesker in your life lately? Also feel like it has been a very long time since the first Resident Evil game came out back on the original PlayStation? Then you are not only in luck but also correct. The 15th anniversary of Capcom’s first Resident Evil title has rolled around and they have released a video voiced by none other than Wesker himself in commemoration of the event.
The video itself shows off various clips from past Resident Evil titles but the highlight of the video is the fact that it shows off pieces of trailers from all of the Resident Evil titles that are coming out this year. You will find pieces of videos from Resident Evil: Code Veronica X HD, Resident Evil: 4 HD, Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D and Resident Evil: Revelations. Well at least only one of these titles is actually new but regardless of that it is nice to see everything together in one video.
BioWare has decided that the best way to reward its devoted fans would be to hold something they are calling The BioWare Sequel Celebration. This means that as long as you have purchased any copy of Dragon Age 2, whether it be on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or the PC then you will be entitled to to a free download of the PC version of Mass Effect 2. This deal is only available through the end of the month however so you have only a month to redeem your code.
The system uses the Black Emporium Online Pass content that was given to anyone who purchased Dragon Age 2 new. Then you must travel to the website for the offer here and enter the Online Pass Code again on this website to receive your download for the PC. They even released a trailer for the event. It is a bit of a let down that it is PC only for Mass Effect 2 because not everyone has a computer up to snuff to play Mass Effect 2 but hey, free is free.
Have to love when a company markets itself with comedy. Especially one as good at it as Valve appears to be. They have released the third trailer for Portal 2 that features Cave Johnson, the Aperture Science president and this time around he is making Portal’s iconic turret available for purchase. Of course he can’t sell us a product without telling us some of its features however.
The automated turrets come in a hundreds of different colors such as forest and table…. Plus it appears that the way they fit so many bullets into the turret itself is the fact that it is literally crammed full of bullets. Also you can set it up to help protect your baby, just better hope it realizes that you are a friend or else your in a bit of trouble.
Nothing like getting your current secret project outed by a retailer way ahead of when you wanted to announce it. It seems to happen a lot these days but regardless of the mistake itself, Call of Duty: Black Ops will be getting a new pack of DLC maps. The leak itself was from Australian retailer GAME and contained information about the Escalation Pack of DLC that will be released on May 3rd for the Xbox 360 with a PC and PS3 release later on.
Honestly the news of more download content for Black Ops is not a surprise because, let’s face it, they will probably release at least one more in the future. But what is interesting is that this advertisement, which has since been removed but snagged by VG247, contains a bit of information about what we can expect from the Escalation Pack. There will be four maps as well as a zombie map for your $15 and they will apparently take place in a zoo, hotel, convoy and a stockpile with the zombie map not getting any extra information. It certainly seems like they are trying to keep things fresh with the DLC maps at least. They could even have a tiger kill someone in the zoo or something to help spice things up.
Today came the news that Sony Computer Entertainment’s UK managing director, Ray Maguire, has made the decision to leave the company. With a career spanning 17 years, Maguire helped establish the PlayStation brand in Europe, but on a personal basis has decided to leave the company following “a lot of soul searching”, describing his future personal growth as “essential.”
He joined Sony in 1993 as Director of Sales, Europe, having made his presence felt while at Sega as UK sales manager when he oversaw the successful launch of the Mega Drive.
There’s no news yet on what he will be doing next or who Sony will put in his place.
3DS exclusive game Steel Diver has been given a solid release date for the UK and Europe.
Nintendo have confirmed that the game will arrive on 6th May on their latest platform, which is actually quite a while considering it is already out and available for purchase in the US. Still, it’s not too far away, so Europeans won’t have long to wait until they can engage in naval warfare using their submarines underwater. Using strategy you must hide your own ships and successfully locate enemy ships before trying to sink them with your torpedoes.
Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has called Steel Diver 3DS a ‘sleeper’ hit, but is this one on your radar?
