Finally, we have a release date! Epic Games’s first game for the iOS devices, named “Infinity Blade”, will hit the App Store as a universal app in just 9 days! That is 9th of December for ya. The best thing is, the game is priced at only $5.99 on the US iTunes Store, a very unexpected low price as its console-quality graphical presentation and game-play is certainly a WOW factor here. Sadly, the game can only be play on the newer devices (specifically, the iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3rd and 4th generation), as the Unreal Engine 3 that powers the game is not supported by the older devices.
“Infinity Blade” is developed by Epic Games’s critically acclaimed studio, chAIR Entertainment, also the creator of Xbox LIVE Arcade game of the year “Undertow” and “Shadow Complex”. Epic Games is also the maker of Gears or War on the PC and the Xbox 360. This game would be their first attempt to bring Unreal Engine 3 on the Apple devices. As said by Epic Games President Dr. Michael Capps, “This is a testament to the sheer power of iOS devices as up until now, Unreal Engine 3 has typically been used to create high-end gaming experiences on game consoles and computers.”
I am really looking forward to play this on my iPhone 4. I know you are too! While we wait, check out the stunning debut trailer below!
(You can follow them on twitter (@InfinityBlade) or on Facebook (Infinity Blade) for any latest news about the game.)
December is near, which means Christmas is coming! The very nice peoples at Gameloft have decided to gives you some early Christmas presents during this month of celebration! Starting from December 1 (that’s tomorrow!), they will offer ONE surprise gift each day until Christmas day for their fans. This comes to a total of 24 presents for ya’all!
Here comes the best part, you can get stuff varies from a free game (for Apple portable devices, Android devices, or Facebook), some exclusive sneek peeks, crazy game discounts, cool goodies for their upcoming Christmas games, and special free in-game content. All you have to do is to follow them on twitter (@Gameloft) and wait for the special tweets! Don’t miss out this special giveaway!
Q&A (courtesy of Gameloft):
1.How can I participate? What do I have to do?
This is not a contest! There are no questions to answer and no lotteries to enter. You can grab a present once you see the Advent Calendar tweet of the day and time hasn’t run out yet. Just click on the link in the tweet to access your present.
2.Is there a limited supply of free presents you’re giving out?
No, there will be no limit to how many people can download or access the daily present. Just be quick!
3.Is Twitter the only way to hear about the daily gift? Is there anywhere else I can find out about the gift of the day?
We’ll only let you know what each daily gift is and how to access it on Twitter, because it allows for instant communication with our fans and because the availability of each present is limited. You may find news about it elsewhere on the web, but we can’t guarantee the gift will still be available when you see it.
4.How long will each gift be available?
All gifts will expire after 24 hours, so be quick!
5.I don’t have a Twitter account. What should I do?
We suggest you create one. It takes only a few seconds athttp://twitter.com/! Once you’re done and connected, go to http://twitter.com/gameloftand click on “Follow”. You’ll then receive all our tweets on the home page of your Twitter account. You can also download one of the many Twitter clients for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Android. Plenty of them are free and they allow you to receive tweets directly on your device.
Game Name: MotionSports – Play for Real
Platform(s): Xbox 360 – Kinect Required
Publisher(s): UBISOFT
Developer(s): UBISOFT
Genre(s): Sports
Release Date: November 10, 2010 (US) November 4, 2010 (EU)
Price: $89.99 AU
The Kinect has definitely turned some heads in the gaming community, and with its introduction to the world – a whole new demographic of gamers have emerged eager to try out and see what this motion, controller-less peripheral has to offer. With only a handful of launch titles, (all of which are quite basic) showcasing what the Kinect is capable of doing, newcomers can familiarise themselves with how to move, jump, kick, punch roll over, sit, play dead and whole lot of other fun and whacky things that they’d never thought of doing whist playing a video game! If you thought video games were bad for you , you won’t anymore.
UBISOFT’s MotionSports introduces you to six sports – some we’ve played to death on other consoles and some which I personally would never have imagined playing whilst standing in front of the tv. Each of the sporting challenges (I’d like to call them mini-games) don’t take very long to complete but do gradually get more challenging and a little frustrating at times – due to the unresponsive nature of your movements being captured onto the screen.
With Kinect titles you are the controller, so everything you do in front of the camera is relayed back into the game as quickly and as accurately as possible. I know that at times you wish the game would respond a little quicker to your movements such as ducking, jumping or punching , but something we all have to understand and appreciate is that even though the technology is amazing and truly revolutionary, it’s not perfect. Take for example stepping into the ring in for MotionSports Boxing – swinging at 100miles an hour will result in you simply wearing yourself out physically and you will probably only end up hitting your virtual opponent about 2-3 times if that. If you took a more conservative approach on the other hand, keeping your guard up and counter punching with jabs, a few wild left hooks and uppercuts – you will most likely achieve a far better result. It’s not how you’d expect to play a boxing game but due to the not so great motion tracking, you have to meet half way and improvise to get the results and the KO you need to unlock harder challengers, obtain high scores and medals and also build up your “fame”. “Fame” is and works similar to the Wii Sports professional ranking / grade system. The ranking (shown to you in a graph form) raises or falls according to how well you perform at the end of each challenge. In MotionSports, you start off as a local hero and by performing well, you can rise to a national star and then to an international/professional superstar.
The five other sporting challenges in MotionSports are : Soccer, Skiing, Hang Gliding, American Football and Horse Riding (similar to equestrian events you see in the Olympics). American football was a little disappointing – initially I thought I’d be playing a real game of football but this wasn’t the case. All you’re actually doing is running towards the goal line, ducking or jumping over tacklers with a pass or two thrown in. In the first basic challenge you run through a fairly simple looking obstacle course where you have to duck and jump over hurdles which in turn will represent opponents coming at you in the harder challengers. This sounds very simple, but it wasn’t – the game failed to register ducking under hurdles even though I was actually crouching as low as I could go without dropping to the floor, the jumping part worked fairly well most of the time, but the ducking had me frustrated as to why it was not registering my movements.
The Hang Gliding and the Horseback riding challenges we quite interesting and fun. I’ve never really seen either before in other games and I surprisingly handled both quite well, especially the hang gliding where you have to glide through the air using only your arm motions to lower (gain speed) and raise (gain altitude). You tilt your hands to move the glider left and right through gusts of air to reach a landing zone that looks like a giant dart board where you must land as close to the centre as possible to obtain the best result / score. Riding the horse was also very fun – a little challenging at first but once I got the hang of the controls for steering the horse and the motion for performing the jumps – it all felt very fluid and I was picking up some great diamond medals and unlocking the rest of the challenges in no time.
Just a note on the challenges – not all of them are available to you at the beginning of the game. You only get the basic challenge for all the six sports. There aren’t really any details on how to actually unlock them apart from just performing well in the previous challenges that you have unlocked. If you score well you earn gold or diamond medals and you may unlock the next challenge within that sport. This may not always happen but I could only assume this is the case as there are no actual guidelines explaining this.
Multiplayer mode is only available to you via split screen, there isn’t any online play so you won’t be able to punch some random on xbox live player in the head if you are boxing, which is quite disappointing – but you can do it split screen (which is better than nothing). Some games allow up to four players to participate and play challenges one after the other. This was cool but I found that Motionsports was constantly having problems working out which player/guest was on the screen. I also had to login and re-select my player profile (xbox profile) on several occasions when playing with other people.
As a launch title, UBISOFT’s MotionSports has provided us with a fair effort. It’s a little rough around the edges with its control system not registering specific movements on certain games. A lack of online multiplayer oprtions does kill the fun a little as you’re forced to play offline with friends or family that come to visit. Some of the sporting events are great fun and the ranking system ability and achievements will keep you busy for quite some time – especially if you want to become an international superstar.
Gameloft is set to venture into the RPG scene by introducing its first Japanese RPG title for the Apple portable devices several days ago. The name is Eternal Legacy, and it will be available soon on the App Store for the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad. As of now, we don’t have the release date yet, but we do have a teaser trailer for you to watch. The graphics looks stunning in the video in my opinion, as expected from Gameloft (remember Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus? They are THAT good :P). Do look forward to it; we will update any news about the game as soon as we get it. Stay tuned! (Astrian looks hot though, I love him already :D)
Two of the UK’s rising rappers, who have experienced a surge of popularity after emerging into the mainstream this year, have recently put definitive hip-hop game Def Jam Rapstar to the test in special play sessions in a secret location.
These road test videos are available to view now, and though both artists songs feature on the game so they may not be the most honest source in the world, they have both come out with positivity towards the title. There is also short interviews in the video with the rapstars, where they talk of how they think it will fare when it is released to the public.
They’re both interesting watches, getting a bit of time with the stars as well as another look at the game in action.
Holy Mullet! With SouthPeak’s Two Worlds II coming out in just a little over a month in the US it looks like Sordahon’s Journey may be coming to a close. With it nearing the end, what better way to finish other than with an 80’s style musical montage! Well if you can think of one keep it to yourself because that is exactly what happened.
You can catch it below but you better watch out because these are some serious tunes as Sordahon just wishes that he could be his own boss through a variety of different clips all to the song of a keyboardist with a piano-tie and a mullet. What more could you possibly ask for? Well first watch the video and then there will be more.
Now that you watched it and can’t get that music out of your head you can take a peak over at the new Two Worlds II website and there you can catch all of the latest information and videos involving the game. But that isn’t all considering there is also a section named Ask Sordahon where you can submit any question you like to the poor minion. But keep in mind that he is a bit irritable after dealing with his boss and everything else along his journey.
In the fight for network neutrality, Comcast has been cast as the bad guy. In another rather damning strike against them, Level 3 Communications said today that Comcast demanded a fee to “to transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content.” Evidently, this was in response to to Level 3 recently signing onto Netflix instant streaming.
However, Comcast responded with a verbal volley of their own, saying that Level 3 was trying to get a competitive advantage by suddenly sending more information onto Comcast’s network than it normally accepts. However, given Comcast’s recent underhanded actions, this seems difficult to believe.
Perhaps many people have grown soft over the years with games that are easy or give you a way to skip over parts of the game that are difficult. Sure this allows more people to easily access the game without worrying about a challenge but what if you like a bit of a challenge? Then you are in for a bit of luck.
Hajime Tabata, director for 3rd Birthday, decided to raise the difficulty level of the game. There isn’t any information about how easy it may have been in the first place but don’t expect any sort of cakewalk with your third dose of Parasite Eve. This was revealed on The 3rd Birthday’s twitter but don’t worry too much if you don’t like a challenge.
Only the gameplay was made more difficult. Hajime Tabata goes on to say that the actual controls for the game are very simple and anyone who has played an RPG before should easily be able to grasp the controls and assured fans that with a Japanese release date approaching the game’s homepage will be updated and a final trailer will be made. Now we just need to wait until early 2011 for the North American release!
Have you heard the saying, “a healthful heaping of downloadable content always keeps the sickness at bay.” Neither have I, but Ubisoft aims to try to take a variation of that and go mainstream with it by releasing some new exercise routines on Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. The packs that will be available in December for the Xbox 360 Kinect are:
“The ‘“Toned Body Program”’, to strengthen all your muscles and get a firmer body.”
‘“Cardio Boxing Platinum”’, a new advanced level of the Cardio-Boxing class.”
‘“Beach Body Workout”’, to get you in shape for bikini season!”
A second offering will include:
‘“New Year, New You”’, a specific program to get back in shape after Xmas and New Year’s celebrations.”
‘“Dance Workout: Bollywood”’, a high impact dance workout using popular Bollywood dance moves.”
According to Claudine Cézac, the game’s producer, fitness and health experts recommended this DLC be made.
She says, “When we started working on the development of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, we contacted several renowned fitness experts and trainers. Each trainer insisted on the fact that in order to keep people motivated, it would be important to consistently bring new varieties of exercise to the game. That’s why from the very start, we thought of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved as a comprehensive fitness program that players would be able to enrich at their will. There are many different ways to work out and get in shape, and that’s what we want to offer with the add-on content.”
Ubisoft makes quite a few games so there is obviously quite a few release dates for these games. Somebody call me Captain Obvious please. Like, right now.
But to get back to the main thrust of this post, here is the release dates for 3 of their new games. The most obvious and major one is right beneath you. Which one are you most excited about?
Prince of Persia Trilogy HD PS3 has a release date of November 25
That’s Hot: International Cricket Captain 2010 PC has a release date of November 25
Puzzler World 2011 DS has a release date of December 2
