Ubisoft announced that Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.2 is being developed by Ubisoft Bucharest. The title will launch in Spring 2010 on Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PlayStation®3 system, the Nintendo Wii system and Windows PC.
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 plungesfans into an explosive environment “Squirrels” where they can become elite aerial soldiers in control of the world’s most technologically advanced aircraft. The game will appeal to a wide array of gamers as players will have the chance to control exceptional pilots trained to use cutting edge technology in amazing aerial warfare missions.
“With over one million units sold worldwide, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. has become a very successful brand for Ubisoft,” stated Bogdan Bridinel, creative director at Ubisoft “This new H.A.W.X. game is directly inspired by Tom Clancy’s books, and it will enable fans to once again experience the excitement and intensity that established H.A.W.X. as a successful brand”
A Gamestop employee recently leaked a snapshot of the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood box art. Ubisoft followed up by confirming that it is in fact the next Assassin’s Creed game.
The Small text reads, “Live and breathe as Ezio, now a legendary master assassin, in his struggle against the Templar order. Lead your own brotherhood of Assassins and strike at the heart of the enemy: Rome. And for the first time, take part in an innovative multiplayer layer allowing you to embody an assassin of your choosing and define their killing style.”
This is supposedly the spin off that Ubisoft announced a while back. The tiny screenshots seen on the back of the placeholder art states “A never-before-seen online multiplayer experience” as well as the ability to “Lead your own brotherhood of assassins, as Ezio, and conquer Rome.”
There is also a pre-order bonus for an exclusive multiplayer character, most likely Altair but who knows.
A lot of the time, Indie games are forgotten due to lack of exposure and it is hard to compete with bigger titles. Everyone has to start off somewhere and shouldn’t be ignored because they aren’t published by a famous publisher or don’t have a three million dollar budget and a full team. Indie Spotlight is a feature that looks at an indie game and says what is good and what is bad about it. Indie Spotlight doesn’t give a numerical score to any indie game because they are in their own category.
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Ambient Water is developed by Yaystuff and when it comes to creating games that defy the traditional use of an entertainment system they know what they are doing. Ambient Water is an extremely simplistic game; less of a game actually and more of a calming sound library.
Professionals are always stating that calming sounds help you study, sleep, calm down, and preform many other functions. Ambient Water provides six soothing water based sounds that do exactly what the experts call for. The six water sounds found in Ambient Water are: Beach (Beach waves), Rain (Falling Rain), Stream (Bristling Stream), Docks (Boat Docks), Falls (Water Falls), and Under (Under Water). Each are accompanied by a single picture that represents the sound. You can select between any of the six on the fly by moving the joystick and pressing “A”; you don’t even have to open the visual menu if you know the order.
All the sounds are exactly what you would expect and they are all very calming. There are only a few things that bug me about them. For instance, The Beach Waves and Boat Docks feel empty without the seagulls in the background or an occasional boat horn. Though Beach Waves has seagulls in the background, they aren’t clear and almost not there. Rain has a nice thunder effect making it one of the best in my opinion. Stream and Under are both very nice as well and very calming.
My final remark has to do with the still images, it may have been nice for moving video. Could have seen the waves hitting the beach, rain actually rolling off the leaves, a deer walking onto the screen and drinking from the stream, the boats bobbing up and down with the waves, the falls actually falling, and fish going across the screen. In my opinion this would have been a nice touch, but it would have taken away from the effect of the calming ambient sounds and instead you would have been too distracted watching the deer or counting the different fish that appear.
Although listening to sounds may not be the conventional use for the Xbox 360, it certainly is a nice use while studying for a test or doing your homework. I was listening to the Rain sound during the writing of this spotlight and it is amazing how fast I finished. Usually I have my TV on or I write a bit between levels and during loading screens.
The first piece of DLC is called, “The Signal” and according to a countdown which currently says 27 days, it should becoming out around June 1st. The description on the first episode states that it “answers many of the questions the end of the game raised,” including “what happened to the writer after the dramatic events of Season One?” This is the same DLC that all new purchasers of the game will receive with their game.
The second DLC, that is slated simply as “coming soon”. This DLC is called “The Writer,” and is described as “Wake struggling to not lose himself in the torrent of nightmares that assault him.” This seems to be a DLC that takes place mid story rather then at the end. The current price for the second DLC is unknown.
Below is the list of achievements found in Alan Wake. A huge chunk of them are story related, while another huge chunk is for collecting achievements. The collecting achievements are not that difficult since the game keeps track of how many you have collected, and the episodic gameplay lets you jump to any level to collect on it. The levels are long, but luckily they are also split into sections for much more ease. The hardest achievement will be beating the game on Nightmare due to the enemies being stronger, but it is still manageable. Overall the achievement list is pretty good, and all of them are manageable.
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Nordic Walking -10G
Take a walk through the logging area, meet one of the quirky locals
Bright Falls Finest -20G
Call for help.
Boob Tube -5G
See what’s on TV.
Under a Thin Layer of Skin -10G
Defy the park ranger.
Park Ranger -15G
Enjoy the sounds and sights of Elderwood National Park.
Heavy Metal -10G
Survive the Bulldozer attack.
Iron Horse -10G
Encounter a steam engine.
Tornado Wrangler -20G
Defeat the Tornado.
The Lady of the Light -20G
Discover the secret she guards.
Gate Keeper -20G
Cut the power to the transformer yard.
Drink ‘Em Both Up -10G
Put de Lime in de coconut twice.
Gate Keeper -10G
Cut the power to the transformer yard.
Perchance to Dream -20G
Take a moment to reflect on past events.
Child of the Elder God -10G
Have a Rock’n’Roll moment without dropping to a low health state.
Medical Opinions -10G
Listen to Hartman’s Recordings.
Wheels Within Wheels -20G
Meet the kidnapper.
Departure -40G
Complete the game on Normal difficulty.
Hardboiled Writer -40G
Complete the game on hard difficulty.
Alan, Wake Up -50G
Complete the game on Nightmare difficulty.
If it Flies, it Burns -20G
Burn 1,000 birds.
They’re heeeeeere! -20G
Inanimate objects shouldn’t move of their own accord. Put a stop to this affront, oh, say, 20 times.
The Six-Gun Scribe -20G
Defeat 100 Taken with the revolver.
Taken Season -20G
Defeat 50 Taken with the hunting rifle.
It’s not just a Typewriter Brand -20G
Defeat 50 Taken with a shotgun.
Float Like a Butterfly -15G
Perform a cinematic dodge.
Back! Back, I Say! -10G
Save yourself with a flair.
Two for the Price of One -10G
Kill two Taken with a single shotgun blast.
Sound and Fury -10G
Kill four taken with a single flash bang.
Come One, Come All -10G
Kill four Taken with a single shot from the flare gun.
Collateral Carnage -20G
Defeat 20 Taken with indirect means.
Thunder and Lightning -20G
Defeat 50 Taken with flashbang grenades.
What Light Through Yonder Window -20G
Defeat 50 Taken with a flaregun, the way Shakespeare intended.
Missed by a Mile -25G
Perform a cinematic dodge 20 times.
Energized! -10G
Use 100 batteries.
Let there be Light -10G
Get a generator running.
Carny -10G
Knock over five can pyramids.
Meat the Deadline -30G
In “Mirror Peak,” make it from the Coal Mine Museum to Cauldron Lake in 30 minutes.
An Idyllic Small Town -30G
Make it through “Night Life in Bright Falls” in one go without dyeing or restarting even once.
Gunless Wonder -30G
Make it to Cauldron Lake without firing a single shot in “On the Road to Cauldron Lake”.
Right of Way -10G
Drive over 15 Taken.
KBF-FM -30G
Listen to all the Radio Shows.
Hypercaffeinated -30G
Discover all Coffee thermoses.
Damn Good Cup of Coffee -20G
Discover 25 Coffee Thermoses.
Collector’s Edition -50G
Find all of the manuscript pages in the game, including the ones in Nightmare mode.
Pick up after Yourself -30G
Find all manuscript pages in Normal mode.
Paging Mr. Wake -20G
Find 25 Manuscript pages.
Finders Keepers -20G
Discover five hidden chests.
Couch Potato -30G
Watch every single TV show.
Bright Falls Aficionado -20G
Absorb every bit of local history and culture.
Rockstar have announced that the Outlaws To The End Co-Op multiplayer Mission Pack will be made available FREE this June on both Xbox Live Marketplace & Playstation Network. From what we’ve heard this co-op mode adds an entire new dimention to Red Dead Redemption’s game play.
“Multiplayer in Red Dead Redemption offers players a whole new way to encounter the massive open world we’ve created, but we felt the experience would not be complete without co-op game play,” said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. “With these missions, we wanted to create new ways for players to share in the experience of engaging with this amazing landscape.”
One of three downloadable content packs, the ‘Outlaws To The End’ Co-Op Mission Pack features six all-new multiplayer missions full of outlaws, epic gunfights, and revolution for 2-4 players. The ‘Outlaws to the End’ Co-Op Mission Pack offers additional multiplayer XP rewards and brand new Achievements and Trophies to unlock. These six explosive and epic missions will play out across the game world, including:
“Walton’s Gold”
Walton’s Gang have taken control of a mining camp rich with gold. Fight through the camp and load your mine cart with as much gold as you can carry and get out as fast as you can – Walton’s boys have rigged the place to blow.
“The River”
Ride a raft down river, taking out rebel encampments along the way until you reach the rebel stronghold of Nosalida and a final epic battle for the town’s massive weapons caches. Watch out for Gatling gun-equipped enemy rafts.
“Ammunition”
The Mexican Army has the town of Tesoro Azul under siege. Storm the gates under heavy cannon, Gatling gun and sniper fire to destroy the Mexican artillery placements.
For more information jump on over to www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption for more information. Stay tuned for news about two additional downloadable content updates for release later this summer.
Over the past few days, Nintendo has been releasing a steady stream of videos involving Super Mario Galaxy 2 daily. For the most part they have been your standard gameplay videos with no real information being released or spoiled. That is until today’s video. In the video today, we are shown that Luigi will be back as a playable character in SMG2. However we do not know yet if he will be available from the get go or if he will need to be unlocked like in the first game after collecting 120 stars.
It does show Luigi collecting stars though and playing on a variety of different planets and areas so here is hoping that he will be a more readily available character choice throughout the game itself. Thankfully though it appears that he has left his trusty ghost collecting vacuum behind.
To see more of the videos released by Nintendo, you can follow them on youtube Here. Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be released on May 23rd in the United States on the Wii only, and then later during June for the rest of the world.
After the unexpected release of information by Xbox Live NewsBeat on the unannounced DarkSpawn Chronicles DLC for Dragon Age: Origins, Bioware themselves have established a website with information on the add-on. And with it they have also released full details on what the DLC will include, and for only 400 msp it is quite an interesting one.
According to the website you will now be in control of the actual Darkspawn during the final battle of Ferelden, and will change history as the human race and their allies are wiped from the face of the map. Here is a list of the features which will be in the DLC;
* A look at an alternate history: what if your character had died in the Joining ceremony, and the Grey Wardens marched under Alistair’s command instead?
* A standalone adventure in which you command genlocks, hurlocks, shrieks, and even the mighty ogres.
* Complete the module and unlock an epic Darkspawn item in DA:O and Awakening.
This DLC will be a stand alone one, and will not affect anything in the gameplay itself outside of put you behind the eyes of the enemy and strike down your old party members. This is a great little piece of DLC and it definitely is interesting. At only 400 MSP ($5) it is a steal considering the price of Bioware’s previous DLC releases for the title. What does everyone think about this? Wonder exactly how they are going to factor in various choices from the game as well as what that special item is.
Dragon Age: Origins’ Darkspawn Chronicles DLC will be available on May 18th for the 360 according to Xbox Live Newsbeat, and is set to be released on the PS3 and PC as well.