The Sims is back with a really different title this time!
EA Play Label of Electronic Arts today announced The Sims Medieval, a new series currently in development that places the popular Sims into the formula of the rpgs.
The Sims Medieval takes place in the Middle Ages, and for the first time players can create heroes, venture on quests, build and control a kingdom, and play with your favorite created hero. Fom Kings and Queens, to Knights and Wizards, Blacksmiths and Bards, the game provides a host of storytelling possibilities in the form of quests, from crafting a legendary sword to arranging a royal wedding, to protecting the kingdom from an evil sorcerer, to finding the fountain of youth. Every quest plays out differently depending on which character the player is controlling.
“The Middle Ages is a time of intrigue, legend, and excitement. It offers a perfect backdrop for a brand new series from The Sims studio due to the limitless stories that can be told. The Sims Medieval offers a new way for players to experience The Sims which we hope fans will enjoy, and it features gameplay that fans of strategy and role-playing games will find appealing such as controlling an entire kingdom and quest-based gameplay mechanics.” – Scott Evans, General Manager of The Sims Studio at EA
The Sims Medieval will be available in spring 2011 for PC and Mac.
Some people will include a whole bunch of paragraphs that they may or may not expect you to read before watching the video, but everyone knows that no one actually reads the description above or below the video. They just click play.
So have at it!
Mafia II is out on August 24th in the US and August 27th in the UK and Europe.
GameStop is hosting a Halo: Reach promotion after it closes Friday August 6th. The promotion will be at 1,100 stores around the United States. According the Gamestop’s Website the event will have a video featuring an MLG dude giving tips and tricks for Reach, as well a some supposedly new in-game footage. A raffle will also be held for a Legendary Edition of the game, if you win the game you won’t get it until the game is released on September 14th.
There will also be a “text-to-win sweepstakes” for a chance to win a life-sized Halo statue. This event begins Friday, August 6, at 9PM (local time) and lasts until about 10:30 (still local time). Check out gamestop’s event page to see if a store near you is holding this event.
Do you like free music? Well now you can get some free music! The Shank soundtrack sound good to you? Composed by Vincent De Vera and Jason Garner, you can get a download of the full Shank soundtrack for free, all you need to do is go over to the Shank Facebook page, log in and become a fan of the game.
Once 1,500 people or more sign up, developer Klei will return release a link to allow anyone to download the soundtrack for free. They have even supplied a sample of the music, courtesy of Klei – download it via this link. (Right click, and press “save as” to save it to your computer)
[UPDATE] The Facebook page has actually already achieved 1,500 fans; so everyone should be able to grab the full soundtrack once it is up.
Klei stated, “How’s this for some Shank fan-love – an exclusive track from Shank’s original score! The soundtrack for the game was scored by our friend and local Vancouver musician Vince De Vera, and since we’ve been asked about it countless times, we’re going to share his work with all of you. That’s not all… if we can get 1,500 people to show their love for Shank by joining our community here on Facebook, we’ll release the ENTIRE soundtrack for free… in all its DRM-free glory. If you’re excited about Shank, spread the love, and help unlock the full soundtrack for free, and remember that REVENGE CUTS DEEP August 24th!”
Ever get tired of the human race? Now is you chance to put all the humans in their place with some nice mythic flare with Gods Vs Humans for the Nintendo WiiWare download service. In this new strategy game, you embody major Gods from many different mythologies such as Scandinavian, Egyptian, Greco-Roman and Japanese. As a God, you have the power to rule them all, except for the cheeky ones that is. The point of the game is to stop some of the humans who are building a tower to confront you with your many powers.
You must have faith on your side as it is the main element that will give you strength. The player can also unlock powers depending on the capacity of your power gauge. It is automatically recharged by the respect gauge, which is like a barometer of the human mood. These two elements are essential to do battle with the humans.
There are plenty of other ancient gods and goddesses to unlock through the 60 levels offered by the solo Adventure mode. Each one of them has a special attack and generates basic powers in a different order, for a different way to play offering more replay value.
Here is a Preview playable divinities:
Name: Osiris
Mythology: Egyptian
Attributes: Farming and Resurrection
Special power: Nékhekh
Name: Jupiter
Mythology: Greco-Roman
Attributes: The King of Lightning
Special power: Olympian Lightning
Name: Odin
Mythology: Norse
Attributes: Poetry and Warriors
Special power: Asgard’s Brimstone
Name: Amaterasu
Mythology: Japanese
Attributes: The Sun
Special power: Solar Flare
Developer Zallag is really putting together an interesting title with Gods Vs Humans. The characters are all upbeat with a unique art style. There is no release date as of now but if that changes, we will let you know. You can however take a look at the trailer below to get a first look at the quirky new title coming soon to the WiiWare
Although an Eye Controller isn’t exactly the best form of control for a platformer, I can see this being used in the future for FPS and other games that actually require a lot of looking around.
The video explains how it all works, so you really should check it out. Enjoy the video.
What kind of video game do you think would benefit the best?
Can’t get enough zombie goodness in your life? Then if you are an Xbox Live subscriber than you are in luck as the first three episodes of Zombrex Dead Rising Sun on the Xbox Live marketplace now! Those who happen to love zombies, but don’t own a 360 are unfortunately going to wait an extra week before it can be seen online. We are introduced to the film made from Inafune-san’s mind and are only introduced slightly to the movie so far, but expect to see much more as they are released weekly after next week.
Warner Bros. has, this week, spilled the official title of the highly-anticipated sequel to last year’s Batman: Arkham Asylum. It has been titled Batman: Arkham City and has been slated for release during the fall of 2011 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
Look out for “a new all-star cast of classic characters and murderous villains from the Batman universe,” and all new gameplay as the Rocksteady Studios developed sequel sees Batman take to the streets of Arkham City, which has been transformed into a new maximum security prison for Gotham City’s criminal element.
It has already been let slip through gaffs committed by the voice actors playing the parts, that Two-Face, Talia al Ghul and Mr. Freeze will be three of the villains appearing in Batman: Arkham City.
In an interview, actor Maurice LaMarche revealed that he will be the voice of Mr. Freeze. Stanta Katic, who plays Det. Kate Beckett in Castle, posted on Twitter that she has recorded the character voice for Talia al Ghul, before quickly removing the tweet. And lastly, Kevin Conroy, voice-actor for Batman in Batman: The Animated Series, was apparently tricked during a panel interview into revealing that Two-Face will be appearing in Batman: Arkham City.
Print magazines are said to soon open the gates on the title, so we can expect to find out more within good time.
Runic Games today announced a sequel to the highly-acclaimed, action-RPG Torchlight, which was the debut game by the team of ex-Diablo staffers, who founded Runic Games in August 2008.
With no surprises, Torchlight won a good number of awards and turned out as one of the best PC games released in 2009, with a huge success on Steam as the main digital platform for it’s distribution.
For Torchlight II we can expect the higly wanted co-op mode, new classes, skills, overworld areas, and many more. The game’s main features are listed below:
Multi-player – Play with your friends over a local area network, or over the Internet. A free matchmaking peer-to-peer service lets you make new friends for exciting co-op play.
Customizable Characters – Players create and customize a character from one of four classes available and choose an animal companion. Through cosmetic, class, and gender choices, skill path decisions, and the treasures they acquire, each character can be custom-tailored to each player’s needs.
Moddability – Torchlight II will release with an updated version of TorchEd, the Torchlight editor. Players have the option to create their own mods, adding even more content to the world. You and your friends can download the same mod and play together!
New User Interface – Torchlight II boasts an entirely new, improved user interface, designed to be easier than ever for new players to pick up and play. Thanks to this intuitive interface, players have immediate access to a rich and varied world, with little experience necessary.
Overworld Areas – Torchlight II has large randomized overworld areas to explore with weather, time of day cycles, and random events that provide players with even more content to experience.
Random Dungeons – Delve into randomly generated dungeons within the game at any time for extra experience and rare loot. Dungeons in Torchlight II have even more branching paths to explore with friends filled with random events, rewards and dangers.
Retirement System – Once characters are sufficiently leveled up, they can “retire” and bestow specific benefits and perks onto new characters.
Pets – Players choose a pet to accompany them. Pets level up along with the player, and help in battle, learn spells, carry items, and perform a variety of support services.
Fishing – Fishing returns in the sequel! Players can take a break from the high-energy pace of adventuring to relax by one of the many fishing holes and see what they can catch. Fish have unique benefits for the player and pet, while a number of other rewards can also be discovered.
Some initial artworks:
Torchlight will be released in Spring 2011. The game is expected to be a huge hit again on digital platforms like Steam, as Runic Games already shared their intention of the same low priced product in mind.
The Art Academy series for the Nintendo DSiWare are known for putting that touch screen to use as you practice creating masterpieces on you DSi. Nintendo is now releasing a brand new version which will be a full game coming to the Nintendo DS this fall. Whether you a beginner or an expert, Art Academy can let you draw or paint whatever you please transforming the system into your very own canvas.
Here is an official Press Release from Nintendo explaining some of the features the game will have:
Whatever your ability, you’ll find the step-by-step approach to lessons easy to follow. Art Academy offers lessons and art materials to get you started on your initial artistic journey, as well as contain more advanced art courses for those more adventurous artists, wanting to take their art to the next level.
The Touch Screen on the range of Nintendo DS consoles enables you to effortlessly paint or draw with realistically behaving paints and pencils. The pencils come in three different grades of lead; 2B, HB, 2H and also enable you to draw in soft or hard lines to blend and layer your pencil mark. Learn to use the eraser function to create interesting effects, such as mark marking and, of course, unlike with a real life painting, should you make any mistakes, it can easily be easily erased without wasting any paper. The paint function behaves similar to acrylic paint and the paintbrush set comes in three round or flat brushes allowing you to paint in thick or thin lines simply using your Nintendo DS stylus.
Ten set of paint tubes make up the game’s basic paint palette and there are 20 empty spaces for you to mix your own original colours. You can also control the amount of paint on your brush to give different effects such as dry brushing, and the level of brush wetness which will affect the transparency of paint to allow for a variety of painting effects in your artwork. Zoom in to your masterpieces to perfect the finer details close up and why not take advantage of the grid function, to help you achieve the right scale and proportions.
A helpful tutor, Vince, is also on-hand to show you how to use the art materials and what to draw, as well as teaching you art theory and techniques to explore independently. Some lessons are inspired by work from famous artists such as Albrecht Dürer (German), Paul Cézanne (French), Leonardo da Vinci (Italian), Jan van Huysum (Dutch), John Constable (English) and many more will get your creative juices flowing.
Use the Free Paint mode to allow you to freestyle your artwork, letting your imagination run wild and check out the material library for a wide range of stock images to get you inspired. If you are a Nintendo DSi or Nintendo DSi XL owner, why not also use your built-in camera to capture images and redraw them at leisure. With such realistic artist training, you can use your Nintendo DSi & Nintendo DSi XL to help improve painting and drawing skills in real life!
The picture posted above was made with this game by Nintendo of America employee Krysta Yang which shows the depth you can bring to your own pieces of art with this new title. All 10 of the lessons and tools from Art Academy: First Semester and Art Academy: Second Semester will be packed in the game as well as the 10 Mini Lessons and more than 80 motifs that players can choose from to use as reference material when creating their art. Art Academy Releases at a great price of just 19.99 on October 25th of this year. Grab your paintbrush…or stylus and get ready for one of the most impressive art creators to hit a portable!
