Travis got our attention early june for Lord of the Rings Online becoming a free to play game in 2010. Well, since last week the game is already running the free-to-play account system, and with a good sense of humor Turbine shared a tv spot to highlight this new way to access Middle Earth.
You can see this funny tv spot right below. To start playing Lord of the Rings Online visit the official website to signup.
Here’s the up-to-date news on the release dates of all the upcoming titles from Ubisoft. As you can see the release of a couple of games has been knocked back a bit.
CHANGES:
Activision announced that they will be holding a blood drive in November. Participants are urged to bring “motorized death steeds of steel” to battle masses of undead. Blood Drive’s premise is simple: vehicular combat against zombies. Zombie frat boys, cops and strippers will be available to battle in the game’s six environments. Various four player multiplayer modes have also been revealed. It will be sold for $49.99 on Xbox 360 and PS3.
Grand Theft Auto – Chinatown Wars – HD iPAD
Developer: Rockstar Games
Platform: Apple iPAD
Released: 9 September
Price: $9.99
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars is back once again !! This time Rockstar games have released a HD version of the game for Apple’s iPAD, and let me tell you, if you haven’t already got a copy of this game. Click on the link just about that says BUY NOW. Let the 700mb download start and while you’re waiting for it to finish and install on your iPAD, keep reading this review anxiously waiting to get stuck into possibly one of the best games ever to hit any mobile portable device and certainly the iPAD so far this year.
Grand Theft Auto : Chinatown Wars is currently on the Nintendo DS, the Sony PSP and just recently the Apple iPhone. The iPhone version of Chinatown wars at the time was labelled the little brother of both the Nintendo DS / PSP versions. As people thought that the iPhone wasn’t capable of handling games of such depth, size and magnitude. This perception was pretty much shot down very quickly when Apple iPhone version made its way onto the App store. The iPhone version held its own and proved that it can hang with its bigger brothers on the NDS and PSP.
Just recently there’s a new big brother on the block, he’s bigger, wider, clearer, and in HD !! Enter Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars HD on the Apple iPAD. This is Rockstar Games’ improvement on what is already a fantastic title. With better visuals, clearer and smooth animation, explosions, improved controls, and playing it on a 1024×768 size screen makes the experience even more enjoyable.
If you’ve played the iPhone version you’d know that the controls were not perfect especially when driving and getting away from the police. The iPAD controls are much more accurate and precise and feel easier to use and less cluttered than on the iPhone version. As always the iPAD version has the best of both worlds. It contains tutorial elements that reference the PSP buttons and also cell shaded graphics then on the flipside the touch / stylus mini games from the DS, taking full advantage and pushing the iPAD to its limits.
As we all know there are no physical buttons or controls on the iPad, they are replaced by an onscreen virtual joystick. For newcomers, this will take time getting used to. The best thing about this iPad version of Chinatown wars is that with the larger screen the virtual controls feel easier to use and are much more responsive allowing you to run around, drive like a MAD MAN, shoot, punch, and performing those cool car-jacking mini games like a pro.
While travelling on foot, the control system is responsive and not at all sluggish. You have three types of actions you can perform: Punching, Fly Kick attack, and jumping and leaping over short fences. Pressing the top right button if you have collected a weapon will allow you to auto target on an enemy and with the same button you use to punch, you can shoot instead. The auto-aim works fairly well, if you want to switch between targets you will have to move and face that particular enemy. If you are familiar with the DS / PSP you can lock on to targets with the extra buttons but this is not an option on the iPad. But this is not a problem as the targeting system works quite well and enemies are not very strong and can be dispersed with a few bullets.
Jacking cars is also very simple when your close to a parked car or stopped car a car jack button appears in the middle of the screen down the bottom, pressing this will initiate the car-jacking where you will either throw the driver out of the car and enter it yourself or begin a randomly generated timed mini game that will get you to hotwire it by pressing specific actions/movements/gestures on the screen before the timer runs out and alarm goes off.
Once in car you have a choice of five radio stations, there are three buttons on the right that will allow you to accelerate, break/reverse and shoot out the window. There are two available steering styles. Analog : which is how you control Huang when you’re on foot, or a left/right two button control. Both are up to personal preference by default the left/right two button setup is available. If you don’t like it, jump into the system settings and change it to analog. I would recommend trying both and see which one best suite your gameplay style.
Now what’s Grand Theft Auto : Chinatown Wars all about you ask ? Well with the title Chinatown Wars the story focuses on an Asian feel as you play as Huang Lee, a son of a murdered Triad boss that comes to Liberty City to present his uncle with a family heirloom, but everything goes horribly wrong as soon as Huang steps foot on American soil, the family heirloom is stolen and Huang barely escapes with his life. It’s a great opening story. The game like every other GTA game comprises of missions, side missions, killing, stealing cars, a litte bit more killing, driving people around, and many other illegal activities which makes GTA such an enjoyable game.
One thing I must commend is the excellent assistance in getting players new to the genre up and running with a fantastic and very detailed tutorial missions that explain everything about how GTA : Chinatown Wars works and plays. From walking, to punching, to car-jacking to using the your emails and GPS. It’s perfect and I think more games should be taking notes on how Rockstar has done this.
Once the tutorial missions are out of the way then that’s when the fun really begins. As you all know in GTA you can do whatever you want. If you feel like driving around, killing innocent civilians, you can, you can meet up and do a bit of drug dealing with the local drug dealers, similar to the old classic dope wars game we all used to play when we were young, get tip offs from drugs dealers about whats going cheap buy all of the stash and then rush over to the other side of town and sell it at a high price !! make super big profits and be awarded for it. Just be careful to not get caught by the cops with the stash, if you do. BAM !! you lose it all.
Along with selling drugs, you can also try out some side missions as well such as the classic taxi, ambulance and also firefighter driving missions. There’s a truck load of other secret things to find. There are also lottery shops where you can try your luck with scratchie tickets, scratch and match to win big money. As in GTA IV you also meet random encounters on the streets who will ask you to do something for them. The amount of cool stuff in Chinatown Wars is EPIC and the best thing is it’s all available in the palm of your hand. You have all the freedom in the world to do whatever your heart desires. This is a living and breathing Liberty City the likes you have come to know and love.
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars HD is by far the biggest game available on the Apple iPad, to sum it up in one word it’s MASSIVE !! The features available are well polished; take for example the GPS system when driving works absolutely flawlessly as it guides you around the city to your next destination. Also the in-game email system and mobile phone messages are great. Missions get sent directly to your phone, characters notify you on what missions to take next and where the next major drug deal is happening so you can sell that cocain for top dollar 😉 Rockstar have done a fantastic job with re-creating this title for the iPad.
In closing Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars HD on the Apple iPad ran perfectly. There was no slowdown, no loss of framerate, for a game that is over 700mb uncompressed in size, everything loads up quickly, gameplay is smooth and crisp and very responsive. With hours of playtime expect to have your USB charger handy on numerous occasions whilst attempting to finish this game. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD is priced at $9.99 US which is a 1/3 of the price it sells for on both the Nintendo DS and PSP. It’s price for an Apple iTunes store application is a little higher than other apps, but look at the big picture, and what you’re paying for. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD has quality, fantastic gameplay, massive amount of game time. So I think the $9.99 price tag is nothing but well spent!!
Capsule Computers would like to give Grand Theft Auto : Chinatown Wars HD on iPad – 10 Capsules out of 10
If you’re a fan of the sandbox style open world crime games, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD is by far the best and only title available on the iPad at this time. The massive amount of missions, content, graphics, and gameplay will keep you busy for hours and hours.
Click on the BUY NOW at the top of this review. You will not be disappointed!!
Our senior editor here at Caspule Computers Travis Bruno, recently sat down with Steve Stamatiadis, Creative Director and creator of Blade Kitten over at Krome Studios and asked him some fantastic questions about the soon to be released BLADE KITTEN on XBLA, PS3 PSN, and PC due out in September (Yes anytime now). Hope you all enjoy the inteview as much as I did.
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1. What inspired you to begin writing about Kit Ballard and her adventures throughout the galaxy?
I thought it was time to sit down and put all of the half used, cool ideas I’ve come up with over the years and use them for niceness instead of evil. Oddly enough I found that a lot of the ideas dovetailed together to form this amazing universe that just clicked. This was around the time I was working on first TY the Tasmanian Tiger game. I was having a ball designing all the characters and world and decided to also put that energy towards my sci-fi magnum opus which quickly became Blade Kitten.
2. Was it difficult to convey your ideas for the prequel of the Blade Kitten comic into a video game format?
Not as much as I thought it was going to be. The series was always set up to work with the idea of using the universe for games, so that was easy enough. Making sure the storyline fit into the chronology, didn’t spoil the comic story and was still unique and entertaining was much harder. I’ve got this rough plan in my mind of what happens to Kit from start to finish – very rough, mostly key points and details with plenty of breathing room to add more.
3. As a reader of your comic series, do you have any hint as to when the comic storyline will continue from where it left off on chapter 14?
Yes I’m actually working away on it again right now. I’m trying to build up a bit of a run before we start running it again. Expect to see some of the characters from the game finally make an appearance in the comic.
4. For those who are not readers, could you explain a bit about who Kit is and what they should be expecting from her. Would gamers be able to enjoy the game if they have yet to read the comic from which it is based?
Kit is a Breaker, a kind of space bounty hunter. She’s also a Felion which is a fancy name for a cat girl. Together with her cute little sidekick Skiffy and a floating AI sword known as the Darque Blade she makes a living tracking down and bringing criminals back to justice. For the game she heads to a synthetic planetoid known as Hollow Wish but she runs into a rival who’s also after the same bounty so that’s where the fun starts.
The game has been set up as its own entity so you don’t need to have any knowledge of the comics to enjoy the story. If you have read any of the comics you’ll enjoy some of the setup for the later story and see some of the key early moments of Kit’s life. Best of all it doesn’t spoil the comics either and expands on some of the elements that have been hinted at previously and play a bigger role in future episodes. I’m pretty pleased I managed to do that – it wasn’t easy and it made my brain hurt a lot.
5. How much developmental leverage did you have as the game was being created? Were you able to have final say on every change that they made?
To be honest I was pretty much all powerful on this project since I was also the director on it. If it changed it was because I felt it needed to happen to make the game better. That said, the team were always great in pointing out things in the comic that I’d missed and they worked really hard to capture the feel of the comic. You couldn’t ask to work with a better team. They made my scribbles into an awesome game.
6. As this is a side scrolling platformer, do you think this genre will best capture and portray the world of Blade Kitten the best?
Originally the game also featured a variety of elements include 3D platforming and a vehicle section and some other elements but we decided to just focus on the 2D platforming because we felt it was just a stronger idea on its own and we wanted to make it play great.
A lot of the world really comes out in the story as told by the cinematics and the rest is detail in the backgrounds. But there’s a lot in there, more than you’ll see from most other platformers.
7. I know it may be a bit early to think of this, however if the game were to sell well would you be interested in making a sequel to Blade Kitten. If you happened to make a sequel, would you try to incorporate the comic’s storyline into the game itself, or leave it as a separate entity?
I’ve thought that I’d like to get to the comic story and then retell what’s there in a game and finish the story off in game form. That, or make it a TV series. No…a game is more fun to make.
8. Are there any interesting tid bits that were added in for fans of the comic to catch that others may not have as a reward for being a faithful follower?
There’s a few mentions here and there but I think the ones comic fans will love are some of the unlockable skins featuring characters from the comic.
9. Why did you design Kit Ballard to be part cat girl and part human, or should I say a Felion? Are cat girls an interest of yours, or is there another reason?
I actually have very little interest in catgirls as some sort of genre. I wanted to have a character that was an interesting alien but was still mostly human. So I went with a catgirl. It just game me the right kind of vivacious spirit I wanted the stories to project.
10. Finally how does it feel to finally be able to bring your creation into the main stream gaming world? Is the jump from a comic book to a video game a hard one for you? Or something you had been considering upon its creation?
It’s an awesome feeling to see it all in game, even after spending two years slogging away at it. The jump has been easy because the game is what Blade Kitten was always meant for. I think players will appreciate a game with a good story and a world that exists outside of the levels especially for a platformer. Everyone will get a chance when it comes out later this month.
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Capsule Computers would like to thank Steve Stamatiadis and his dedicated team over at KROME STUDIOS all the best of luck for Blade Kitten and we look forward to sharing our review of the game once its out. For now check out the Epic Story line trailer 🙂
Namco’s & Ninja Theory’s second video to their development diaries has now been released. This video the team talks about the way that teamwork between characters Monkey & Trip will effect the gameplay as well as some of the unique puzzle solving that will be involved. With that said, check out the new Diary #2 video below.
For anyone that missed it but just installed it without even thinking .. here is what you get when you upgrade to iOS 4.1 for your iPhone 4, 3Gs and iPod 2nd Generation devices. The BIG Boy here is Game Center. Apple’s answer to mobile social gaming with online multiplayer and achievements. At the moment it’s still very new but get in and start using it.
Check out the other updates further down.
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iOS 4.1 Software Update contains improvements, including the following:
• Game Center
– Send and receive friend requests
– Invite friends to multi-player games over the Internet
– Play multi-player games by auto-matching with other players
– View Leaderboards and Achievements
– Discover new games from friends
• High dynamic range (HDR) photos on iPhone 4
• Support for TV show rentals on iTunes
• Ability to upload HD videos to YouTube and MobileMe over Wi-Fi on iPhone 4
• Additional support for AVRCP-supported accessories, including next & previous track control
• FaceTime calling directly from Favorites
• Bug fixes, including:
– iPhone 4 proximity sensor performance
– iPhone 3G performance
– Nike+iPod fixes
– Bluetooth improvements
Products compatible with this software update:
• iPhone 4
• iPhone 3GS
• iPhone 3G
• iPod touch 2nd generation, or later
Game Center requires iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 2nd generation or later.
Electronic Arts has announced that they will be releasing a demo for EA SPORTS MMA on Xbox 360 and PS3. The demo will be released on September 28, 2010, about a month ahead of the games release date of October 19, 2010. The demo will include heavyweight champion, Alistair Overeem, and former professional wrestler, Bobby Lashley. The two middleweights in the demo include Jake Shields and Jason “Mayhem” Miller. The demo is refereed by Big John McCarthy, and fighter intros will be announced by Jimmy Lennon Jr. If players choose to share the demo online with their friends, they will unlock Randy Couture as a playable character in the full version of the game.
One really cool element in the full game that I’m looking forward to is the opportunity to have your online fight broadcast to gamers all around the world via your console. Once the player creates a fighter, produces a video and is noticed by an EA Sports promoter, they will be able to compete for real world prizes. In addition, your fight will feature live commentary.
Halo: Reach releases in about 2 days. I’m sure everyone is quite excited and can’t wait to get their hands on a game. A few of you may even be wondering where our review of the game is. Due to some “issues” we don’t have a review for you this week. I’m not pointed fingers, but if I had to I would be pointed at the guy who delivers my mail; I’m sure he is taking the next 3 days of if not more.
We will be having a review, it just won’t be anytime soon. Besides, Halo: Reach is a game that does not need a review. You are either buying it, being made to buy it by a friend who wants to play with you, or aren’t buying it at all.
If you are in that small percentage who aren’t going to buy the game, maybe you will enjoy the review when we do finally release it. The rest of you will already have been busy playing it for quite some time.
Anyway, I have one final video to share with you guys before the game officially releases in two days. I compiled this video after hearing “With My Mind” By Cold. Great song, that can be seen within the game “Psi Ops”. “Psi Ops” is actually a really good game, you should check it out on the original Xbox. (Not sure if it is a backwards compatible title)
Enjoy the video, which was compiled using a trailer, and some E3 footage. I didn’t really do much fiddling with the footage, just a bit of copying and pasting as well as some cutting in order to time a few things with the audio.
Tell me what you guys think, I quite like how it turned out myself.
Vampires Until Dawn
Developer: BeCrush
Platform: iPhone/iPod Touch
Released: 28 August
Price: $1.99
Story
The game starts with the death of Rachel Garlik, which triggers an enquiry from the police who find she has a mysterious gash in her neck. However, after a few months, the police investigation is closed, although there are other mysterious deaths in the area. Cleverly, this part of the story is all told in the initial cutscene through a number of newspaper cuttings. A mourning husband, Elia ( the character you play) then sets out to solve the mystery, but it isn’t long before his car is turned over and he is attacked by an army of the undead-Vampires.
Sound and Graphics
Both the sound and graphics look very promising as you start the game up. The cutscene you are greeted by when you press ‘play’ really gets your hopes up. However, this brilliance doesn’t last long, and before you know it, gone are the average music and the crisp cartoon graphics, as you are launched into the actual gameplay. Enter genric sound effects and grainy visuals, both of which are very sub-standard, making the game uneasy on the eyes and the ears.
Gameplay and Controls
On the other hand, it isn’t only the sound and graphics that disappoint when the playing starts; the gameplay is poor too. Shonky controls mean you never really feel in control of Elia,the on-screen analogue sticks are unresponsive and furthermore shouldn’t even be there if it’s to be controlled by touchscreen.If developers are just going to integrate buttons and control sticks on the screen then it may as well just be on a controller, which is why this game would benefit from a re-worked control scheme. There is a variety of different bad guys that come at you as the game progresses to keep your interest, as well as 3 weapons available for use: Starting gun with unlimited ammo, Crossbow and Sawn-off Shotgun.
Summary
In conclusion,Vampires Until Dawn looks promising from the beginning, but fails to live up to the high standards of the first cutscene. Aspects of this quality are evident elsewhere in the game, like the game map, but certainly not in the gameplay. The story is well layed out and cleverly told, it’s just a shame the grainy visuals and crummy sounds that follow disappoint . Overall, it’s okay for five minutes entertainment, but beyond this you’ll struggle to maintain interest.
