Earlier today we mentioned that the XBLA House Party would be kicking off shortly and what games will be released on what days. Runic’s Torchlight happened to land on the March 19th release date for 1200 MSP ($15) which means that in just over a month people will be crawling around dungeons and slashing and hacking away at plenty of monsters in this popular dungeon crawler.
The first XBLA gameplay video ever released has finally shown players what they can be expecting now that the game has jumped from the PC onto the Xbox 360. The trailer shows off a few interface changes but besides that everything looks quite similar to the PC version, which means fans of the series won’t be disenchanted and those who are going to give it a try for the first time should find it easily accessible.
Sony and Insomniac Games are teaming up to put you into a game. Well, your persona anyway. Enter the competition here for your chance to win: http://au.playstation.com/resistance3competition. If you win, you and a friend will get a chance to travel to San Diego, California for free. While there, you will be 3D scanned and have your smiling face put into the middle of the Resistance universe. Plus, you will have the opportunity to meet the people behind the game and get an early look at Resistance 3.
So how do you enter this sweet sweepstake? Get your acting and prop skills together Captain! You will be taking your very best picture looking like you are a haggard survivor. 10 people will be chosen. 2 will win. The competition ends on August 3, 2011.
It’s been quite a long time since fans of the Dungeon Siege series have gotten a new game. The latest game that they got was five years ago and that was called Dungeon Siege 2: Broken World. But after all the years of waiting there is a new Dungeon Siege game coming down the pipe. This time however Dungeon Siege 3 is being made by an entirely new development team and publisher.
Obsidian Entertainment has been handling the development while Square Enix is going to publish the game. Now this is all well and good, but we also know now that the game will be making its way to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on May 31st of this year. You can even find a brand new trailer below which talks about how loyal the characters of Dungeon Siege 3 can be, of course that also means that there will be plenty of monsters being killed at the same time.
It seems that almost every PS3 game has been at the risk of being hacked. Especially considering the way that cheaters can twist online FPS’ to their will and make the game an overall horrible experience for the rest of the legitimate players. Thankfully some companies are on top of their game when it comes to addressing the hacking problems that can run rampant on systems.
Gameloft has promised its fans that Modern Combat: Domination will be getting a patch within the next few weeks that will address the hacking problem that has already started to plague their online shooter. Also being fixed are a number of complaints regarding the money system. Check the full list out below:
Anti-Hacking protection
1X invisible collision to prevent players from going out of Factory map.
1X invisible collision to prevent players from going out of Souk map.
Respawn: prevent face-to-face respawns.
Default time for a game in objective mode set to 3 minutes.
Modification of the range of the knife (distance and angle).
Playtesters added to the credits.
Possibility to change the range of the ping display.
Money accumulates from $2400 instead of $0 in all modes featuring respawn.
Quick fix of ‘death on respawn’ problems caused by connection issues.
The February Mega Pack for Guitar Hero is now available from the Xbox Live Marketplace. This Ten-track bundle consists of plenty of songs to help you rock out with your loved one during this Valentines day. Check out the full list below, and see if their are any in the pack that you like.
With last weeks announcement of Konami acquiring Hudson Entertainment, we now have the sad reality that Hudson Entertainment will officially be closing for good at the end of this month. This grim news was announced officially by CEO Morgan Haro in a blog post that recently went up. While Morgan specifically stated that it was just Hudson Entertainment that was being effected rather than the eastern based Hudson Soft, the Japan offices are likely to just concentrate on social games. Sadly, this means that all projects have been canceled as of now though for the western branch, leaving the upcoming 3DS titles that were recently announced in limbo.
The whole blog post is an interesting read as Haro was brutally honest about the company itself, even pointing out the flaws with lack of innovation when it came to the Deca Sports series and how she was really pushing to bring a new Bloody Roar title to the XBLA & PSN just for the fanbase that craved it. It takes a lot of money to produce video games, and Hudson was always more of an underdog publisher that many fans really cared about and the feeling was always very mutual as Hudson have been very community driven in the past few years, from holding tournaments for Bomberman Live! to constantly conversing with fans on their twitter and facebook pages.
I hope all of the staff at Hudson find new homes soon, as they are all a talented bunch and we wish them nothing but the best in all their future endeavors. If you have a twitter page and have a memory with any Hudson title, whether it be Bonk, Lost in Shadow, Bomberman, Beyblade, ect., stop and just say “thanks” (@HudsonEnt) as Hudson deserves one last round of applause.
If you are enjoying Breach on the PC you will be glad to here that a patch came through that should fix the LAGG issues that many players were experiencing. The patch also includes the ability to have dedicated servers and also a bunch of other small fixes. I’m sure everyone playing the game on the PC is glad to receive this patch and those of us playing on consoles can only wait while they patch that version.
Enjoy your destruction mayhem, and check out the full list of updates below.
New features added to the Breach Dedicated Server include:
– Dedicated Server no longer requires Steam to be running
– New feature allows configurable ports in Dedicated Server
Fixes included in the patch:
– All known crashes fixed
– Many fixes to reduce lag
– Network performance improved by more than 33%
– Bug that caused Sole Survivor games to end in draw fixed
– Bug that caused invisible canister in Retrieval games fixed
– Bug that caused Vendetta icon to appear incorrectly fixed
– Server Browser can now sort by number of players
– Server Browser can now be manipulated with mouse scroll wheel
– Fixed bugs related to Friendly Fire settings
– Better ability for laggy game to recover when bandwidth improves
– Dedicated Server stability significantly improved
Sick of chocolates? Roses not cutting it anymore? Well, Gameloft has the perfect gift for you this Valentine’s Day.
Gameloft is celebrating Valentine’s Day by releasing fourteen of their iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad games for only $1.19 (AU) – 99c (US). Thirteen are currently available, with the fourteenth to be voted upon by the public. By which I mean, you.
Get to Gameloft’s Facebook page (http://on.fb.me/edPqBs), and vote for the game you’d like to see on sale. The title with the most votes will be available to download for $1.19 for the 24 hours over Valentine’s Day.
Android users have also been promised a similar offer, beginning on Friday. Check Gameloft’s Facebook page later this week for details.
So download them, and consider them a Valentine’s gift from Gameloft. Or gift them to that special someone. But please, make sure your significant other will appreciate the romantic gift of Zombie Infection, before you send it.
Below are the thirteen titles currently on sale, as well as where to get them.
Over the years one of the Playstation 3’s strongest selling points in my opinion is the huge selection of classic titles that can easily be purchased and downloaded straight to the system’s memory. Today, Natsume have made it all the more sweeter with the release of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature & Reel Fishing II on the Playstation Network.
“These are two great PlayStation classics that deliver just as much fun today,” said Hiro Maekawa, President and CEO at Natsume. “Reel Fishing II boasts the gorgeous settings and thrilling, realistic fishing action that have made the series such a long-running favorite. Harvest Moon: Back To Nature is loaded with colorful characters, fun activities, and action-packed minigames!”
Reel Fishing II was released a little late in the Playstation’s life cycle, but it made up for that with it’s beautiful graphics as well as being an enjoyable fishing experience which just about any gamer could easily get into. I have some fond memories of Reel Fishing II without a doubt as at the time, those visuals were groundbreaking.
Harvest Moon: Back to Nature was the very first Harvest Moon on the title on the PSN and is still considered a must have by the hardcore fan-base of the Harvest Moon series. Both titles truly stand on their own though as being two fantastic sendoffs for the PSOne and it is great to finally see them on the PSN.
Twin Blades Developer: Sanuk Games Publisher: Sanuk Games Platform: PS3 (mini), PSP (mini), XBLA, mobile Release Date: February 2nd, 2011 Price: 2.99 (EU)
Twin Blades is a simple, fun game that will help you whittle away your small tidbits of free time. Those who have played Odin Sphere or Grim Grimoire will find that the heroine in this game is very reminiscent of the characters from those games, being highly anime inspired and utilizing what appears to be flash animation for animations. It’s a somewhat unique style that looks pretty appealing.
The premise of the game is simple, if a bit out there. You are a nun charged with protecting the land from the zombie invasion. You have a decently sized selection of weaponry to choose from, ranging from a scythe for melee attacks and a plethora of guns for ranged attacks such as a pistol, machine gun, rocket launcher, flamethrower etc.. The gameplay is simple, choose a level and move left to right while killing zombies. Sometimes you will need to double back to kill any zombies that may have been still underground as you passed over. What sets this game apart is it’s energy mechanic. All ranged weapons require energy to be fired. Hitting zombies with your scythe will replenish your energy, providing a nice balance between melee and ranged. Every zombie you kill drops a heart, heart in this game is synonymous with experience or money. You use these hearts to buy new weapons and upgrade them along with your existing abilities such as scythe damage and health.
There are an adequate amount of things for you to spend your hearts on even accounting for the fact that this is a mini. It will take hours to unlock and upgrade everything to max. This is where the game loses a bit of it’s enjoyability. Grinding, and lots of it. There are only 9 levels (3 of those being bosses). To account for this, the game makes you clear a set amount to unlock the next section. Unlocking the next section will reset the previous levels and increase their difficulty, meaning you are going to be doing the first two levels MANY times before the game is over.
Bosses initially prove pretty tough. Normally you just move left to right killing zombies before they get close enough to grab you, but bosses break that mechanic and act more like a boss from an arcade beat em up. They have attacks that you’ll need to dodge (along with zombies that regularly pop up in an effort to provide you with energy). As their health gets lower and lower their attack style changes and evolves and you will need to adjust. Note that you can’t really take many hits before dying, two or three max. Luckily, zombies have a small chance of dropping a health potion that restores around half your health so you are able scrape if you can manage to dodge the bosses attacks.
Aside from “story mode” there is also a survival mode that just pits you against wave after wave after wave. The game keeps a scoreboard, both for story and survival, to see how long you can go without dying. You keep your score between levels so for the true fanatics you will need to “beat the game” several times over for the ultra high scores.
Overall, for a mini, this game is pretty good. Despite it being a mini (a medium clouded with shovelware) the game mechanics were thoughtfully developed and can provide some enjoyable moments though be warned, the zombies kill you pretty fast so make sure you don’t get careless. While there are a decent amount of guns, they don’t actually count as guns but rather more like upgrades. You only have one gun, your angelic pistol. When you buy the flamethrower or machine gun power, it simply fires whatever it’s supposed to, but no visual change on the actual gun. Upgrading the scythe proves to be initially problematic as well. You would think an upgrade called “scythe damage” would just make you do more damage per hit, but instead it simply adds more attacks to your combo…thus making you spend more time standing in one spot while you perform that combo. The combo is about the same speed of just spamming the regular attack, so it’s more or less a waste of an upgrade.
