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| PC | Warner Bros. appoints head of digital gaming
May 26, 2010 at 5:52 PM
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| Publisher creates new executive position to oversee online and downloadable endeavors, names Turbine, Rocksteady, Midway acquisition lead to post. 
Last month, Warner Bros. showed its commitment to online gaming with the purchase of Turbine Entertainment, developer of Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons: Eberron Unlimited. Today, it made someone responsible for that commitment, as it appointed Jeff Junge to the newly created post of senior vice president of online games and digital games platforms for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. Previously, Junge was the senior vice president of business management for Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, a position in which he drove the company's strategy for mergers, acquisitions, and business partnerships. Junge led Warner Bros. purchases of Turbine, the bankrupt Midway Games, Rocksteady Studios, and Traveller's Tales parent TT Games (maker of the Lego Star Wars series), as well as the company's investment in the OnLive service. In the new role, Junge will oversee Turbine and the ongoing integration of TT Games into Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. He will also be responsible for the company's entire digital games business, reporting jointly to WBIE president Martin Tremblay and WBDD president Thomas Gewecke. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| Wii | Shippin' Out May 23-29: Super Mario Galaxy 2
May 26, 2010 at 4:54 PM
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| Nintendo's latest extraterrestrial platformer is the brightest star in a week featuring Blur, ModNation Racers, and UFC 2010 Undisputed. 
The flow of big-name game debuts in May reaches a crescendo this week as Nintendo releases the sequel to GameSpot's 2007 Game of the Year, two high-profile combat racing games see multiplatform launches, and THQ's mixed-martial arts franchise officially gets annualized. Nintendo leads the week's releases both literally and figuratively with the Sunday launch of Super Mario Galaxy 2. Picking up where the critically adored original left off, Super Mario Galaxy 2 sees the return of Yoshi, a wealth of new power-up suits, and dozens of challenging new levels. The Nintendo plumber's influence will be felt throughout the week, as Tuesday sees a one-two punch of combat racers that owe a debt to the seminal Super Nintendo spin-off Mario Kart. Activision's multiplatform racer Blur ditches the cuddly characters in favor of more realistic tracks, but there's no mistaking the assortment of power-ups and weapons strewn throughout the game's numerous courses. Meanwhile, Sony brings the Little Big Planet motto of "play, create, share" to the genre with ModNation Racers for the PSP and PlayStation 3. As the motto suggests, ModNation lets players build and customize racetracks, racers, and vehicles, as well as share them with others using the PlayStation Network. Finally, THQ rings the closing bell on the month's barrage of new releases with UFC Undisputed 2010. The publisher's first follow-up to last year's breakthrough hit will feature more than 100 league fighters, as well as commentary from ringside staples Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg. THQ has also introduced a new sway and posture system to enhance a player's ability to defend and deliver coups-de-grace attacks, as well as incorporated new moves from the sambo, karate, and Greco-Roman wrestling disciplines. For further details on the week's games, visit GameSpot's New Releases page. The full list of downloadable games on the PlayStation Store, Xbox Live Marketplace, and Wii Shop Channel will be revealed later in the week. Release dates are based on retailer listings and are subject to change. May 23, 2010
Super Mario Galaxy 2--WII--Nintendo May 24, 2010
Metal Torrent--DS--Nintendo
Art Style: light trax--WII--Nintendo
Manic Monkey Mayhem--WII--The Code Monkeys
May 25, 2010
Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force: Herbert's Revenge--DS--Disney Interactive
Dawn of Heroes--DS--Majesco Games
Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers--X360, Wii, PC, DS--Atari
Tetris Party Deluxe--Wii, DS--Majesco Games
Witch's Wish--DS--Natsume
Blur--PS3, X360, PC--Activision Blizzard
UFC 2010 Undisputed--X360, PS3--THQ
ModNation Racers--PS3, PSP--SCEA
City Builder--WII--Virtual Play Inc.
Hexyz Force--PSP--Atlus Co.
Monster Frenzy--DS--Zoo Games
Little Bears--DS--Zoo Games
Sherlock Holmes: The Silver Earrings--WII--Dreamcatcher
Let's Paint--WII--Zoo Games
Soldner-X 2: Final Prototype--PS3--EastAsiaSoft
Pirates PlundArrr--WII--Majesco Games
Colour Cross--DS--Zoo Games May 26, 2010
EVE Online: Tyrannis--PC--CCP Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| PC | BioWare adds Irish customer service center
May 26, 2010 at 4:36 PM
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| EA plans to open 200-staff-strong outfit in Galway next year to provide support for Star Wars: The Old Republic developer's games. 
BioWare intends to launch Star Wars: The Old Republic for the PC in spring 2011, and considering the hype surrounding the game, the EA-owned studio is going to need a few extra hands to help support its player base. Today, EA announced plans to open a new, BioWare-devoted support center in Galway, Ireland. Described as a European customer service and operations center, the Galway-based outfit is expected to create roughly 200 jobs when it opens its doors in 2011. EA noted that it selected the Galway location thanks to an investment by the Irish government through IDA Ireland. Ireland has stepped up its efforts to woo game makers to its shores within the past year. Last year, Scotland's Sunday Herald reported that the Irish government had begun actively courting UK companies, namely APB creator Realtime Worlds, which is headquartered in Dundee, Scotland. Though EA has not provided a specific launch date for its Star Wars massively multiplayer online role-playing game, it has begun accepting beta-test applications through its official Web site. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| THQ steps up developer outreach
May 26, 2010 at 11:33 AM
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| Publisher follows EA model with THQ Partners, offers worldwide publishing and distribution services to outside studios. 
US publisher-developer THQ today announced the creation of THQ Partners, a programme that will give access to THQ's distribution network to "select" partners. THQ, owner of the Saints Row and Red Faction franchises, has appointed Tim Walsh, formerly of in-game advertising firm IGA Worldwide, to head the new THQ Partners unit. Developers and publishers "who don't have the benefit of our extensive retail and online sales operations," will be targeted by the programme, according to Ian Curran, executive vice president of the firm's global publishing wing. Though initial details on the partnership programme are few, they suggest a plan akin to EA Partners, created by EA in 2003 to grow its business via co-publishing relationships with third-party developers. EA Partners has since brought Valve's Left 4 Dead series and Harmonix's Rock Band to market, and will publish the first title from Respawn Entertainment, the independent studio founded by Jason West and Vince Zampella after being fired from Activision-owned Infinity Ward. Yesterday, EA revealed the EA Partners scheme will be bringing a new property from Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. THQ, which published last year's 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and UFC Undisputed 2009, hopes its own partnership program will further bolster its bottom line. Early this month it posted a company loss of $9.6 million (£6.7 million), a significant improvement on last year's $387.7 million (£269.2 million) shortfall in the wake of the global economic crisis. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| Xbox 360 | Tom Clancy's HAWX 2: First Look
May 26, 2010 at 11:00 AM
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| Take to the skies once again in this follow-up to Ubisoft's aerial combat game. 
Fans of the original Tom Clancy's HAWX will be happy to know that much of what made the original game entertaining--fast-paced aerial combat--is still on display in HAWX 2, but the development team has made a number of improvements to deliver a more fleshed-out flying experience. We get the first taste of this in the first mission in the game, where we learn that the world is once again in the throes of political instability and nuclear weapons are missing from a Russian facility. The mission starts with a fully controllable F-16 takeoff sequence at a remote air base in the desert, and while you're heading toward the runway, you'll see little details that show how the base isn't just a static object. It's fully functional and mobilizing for the task at hand. Once you're in the sky, you fly over your first destination--in this case, a small village--to make sure that it's secure. Once that's done, you move on to a convoy and inspect it for similar reasons. This is all pretty simple, of course, but these quick jaunts are seemingly there to help you get accustomed to the way the game controls. However, things start to pick up when you come across another unidentified convoy and discover that it's hostile when an RPG zips out of one of the trucks, taking down one of the helicopters that also came to inspect the convoy. At this point, we learn about the two different attack methods. Obviously, you have access to guns on the aircraft, but there are also precision bombs and rockets. Precision bombs are excellent for when you need to hit specific ground targets while minimizing the collateral damage, whereas rockets are a good all-purpose weapon when the situation calls for mass destruction. As the mission continues, we learn that the a! ir base is under attack from a remote missile strike, and just as you're about to make your way back, one of these missiles clips your jet and sends it careening toward the ground. We then fast-forward to later in the game--this time a nighttime seek-and-destroy mission where you take off (once again, a manual takeoff) from a carrier in an F-35 stealth fighter and fly over a region of an African country. Since this is a nighttime mission, you can switch to night vision to get a better look at the targets, which happen to be some tankers floating off the coast. The trick here is that some of these tankers are friendly while some of them are hostile, but you'll know which are OK to fire on once you get them in your sites and assess the situation. When you decide that one of the tankers is an enemy, you can fire a precision bomb and take it out with ease, but once you take out the first target, antiair fire starts streaming from the coastline. There's nice subtle detail here--since the country you're flying over doesn't necessarily have the best defenses, particularly against stealth aircraft, the antiair fire tends to spring up in random directions. So w! hile this antiair fire won't necessarily fly directly at you, it's still wise to pay close attention so that you don't inadvertently turn into one of the streams. We didn't get to see the ending for this particular mission (though we're told that HAWX 2 will also feature manual landing on aircraft carriers), but we did get to see some dogfighting action. The development team behind HAWX 2 stated that it wants dogfighting to be a more visceral experience. The result of this seems to be that jets will be flying pretty close to each other when they're engaged--we saw plenty of jets using their flares to thwart missile attacks and perform a variety of maneuvers to evade enemy fire. Additionally, when other jets are controlled by the AI, they will often turn to face you in a game of chicken as a means of replicating human behavior in multiplayer situations. On top of that, the picture-in-picture feature will generally make it easier to track enemy jets, because you'll get a closer look at their maneuvers and get a better idea of how to engage them. It's worth mentioning that in full-on multiplayer, you can select from a variety of aircraft, all of which have different attributes. Also of note: You can play the entire single-player campaign cooperatively over the various online services for each platform (or through system link on the Xbox 360). We'll have more on HAWX 2, including more info on the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles that let you spy on enemy targets) missions, before its release this fall on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| Xbox 360 | Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 First Look
May 26, 2010 at 4:38 AM
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| New characters, a refined camera, and an extended story mode are just some of the new features in this intense versus battle game.
The Dragon Ball series remains one of the most popular mangas of all time. With Dragon Ball: Raging Blast, you were given the opportunity to take control of your favourite character and lay down ki-infused attacks on the opposition. For the upcoming sequel, Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2, developer Spike Co. Ltd has listened to fan feedback and has made a range of improvements. We sat down with the team to learn about some of the new features and get a brief look at the game in action. You take control of one of 90 characters from the Dragon Ball universe, 20 of whom are new to the series. The gameplay is standard fighter fare, albeit on a larger scale with heaps of Saiyan powers thrown in. This means you can engage in hand-to-hand combat in midair, fire off a bunch of kamehamehas, and transform into a super Saiyan. Each environment has destructible elements, so you can smash opponents into rocks and create huge craters in the earth using your powers. Controls remain largely the same, but they have been tweaked to make them easier for newcomers. The often-flaky camera from the previous game has also been reworked, with an emphasis on framing the action, keeping both your character and your opponent in view at all times. There will also be a new combo system, though no details on this were revealed. The story mode has been expanded, allowing you to play through some of your favourite battles from the anime, including famed fights against Vegeta and Freiza. The story is told entirely in battle, and Namco Bandai was keen to point out that there are no cutscenes to take you away from the action. The publisher also mentioned that there would be seven game modes in total, but they are being kept under wraps for the time being. Other improvements include more-detailed character design and additional unlockables. The original Japanese voices will also be included, and you can switch between them at any time. It's also promised that the game will run at a steady 60 frames per second throughout, which we saw for ourselves when we got a brief look at the game in action. Visually, the game differs little from its predecessor, though we could see additional detail in the hair and facial expressions of the characters. The over-the-top transformations and ki blasts were all present and correct, and the super Saiyan transformation remains as impressive looking as ever. Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 is due for release in the third quarter of this year. Namco Bandai has promised to show more of the game at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, so keep reading GameSpot for more in June. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| Xbox 360 | Crackdown 2 Hands-On
May 26, 2010 at 3:54 AM
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| We go on a murderous driving rampage and see a man about a beacon in our first hands-on with Ruffian's open-world action game. 
Ploughing through a horde of monsters in a pimped-out tank is a very satisfying experience. The roar of the engine, the sound of splattered guts, and the sight of gore flying through the air is not to be missed. But maybe you're not into roadkill. Don't worry, Crackdown 2 has you covered. Whether you're a fan of murderous rampages or prefer to glide effortlessly onto your enemies, its open-world gameplay allows you to play however you like. Fancy using a car as a giant slingshot? Want to beat monsters to death with a street lamp? The possibilities are endless. The story of Crackdown 2 takes place in Pacific City, the fictional metropolis that was featured in the original game. A dangerous virus has been released into the city, creating grotesque zombielike creatures known as "freaks." The city's law enforcement, the Agency, is unable to keep the problem under control. This has given rise to an underground vigilante resistance group that goes by the name Cell, which has taken matters into its own hands to tackle the freaks. Cell distrusts the Agency, which has led to a three-way power struggle between the two groups and the freaks. You play as a newly recruited agent tasked with destroying the freaks and restoring peace to the city. We joined the game as a fresh-faced recruit, and a training section took us through the basics of being an agent. We were guided through the training by the booming voice of the head of the Agency, who was quick to make fun of incorrect button presses or errors. His sarcastic tone follows you throughout the game as he guides you through the city, commenting on your progress and explaining missions. We learnt to shoot, jump, launch melee attacks, and throw grenades during the short tutorial. The grenade section in particular was a lot of fun. We were told to make our way to a large black room where a group of freaks were holed up inside a pen. We had to pick up grenades and practice throwing them into the pen, which blew the freaks up into a gooey mess. They constantly respawned, allowing us to keep hammering them and creating piles of dead bodies on the floor. The controls remain the same as in the previous game, so Crackdown veterans will have no trouble picking them up. We! were also taken through the Agent's regeneration ability. This was represented by a small bar and functions like a shield, allowing you to absorb a number of hits. If you stop taking hits, the bar goes back up, but if you take too many, it's game over. The training finished with us getting into a car, after which a helicopter picked us up and took us over the city to our first mission. We arrived at a Cell stronghold, an area filled with crates by the docks. Cell had stolen a prototype beacon, which was part of an Agency project known as Sunburst. The project's aim was to build a massive solar-powered energy weapon, which could take out all of the freaks in one fell swoop. With Cell in possession of the only prototype, it was the Agency's number-one priority to get it back. However, before we could call in air support to pick up the prototype, we had to secure the area. The entrance to the stronghold was surrounded by Cell members, all of whom were armed with guns. We set about taking them out, which gave us our first taste of combat. By default, you're armed with a standard-issue Agency rifle and armour. Though not massively powerful, the rifle does hold a reasonable amount of ammunition, and it reloads quickly. As you progress, you're able to upgrade your weapons and armour with much more powerful versions by levelling up your character. Each time you fire weapons, drive a vehicle, or launch melee attacks, you earn points. The more points you earn, the better you become at handling weapons, driving cars, or beating up people. When you level up a skill set, you are issued with new items from the Agency. A number of new weapons have been introduced, which include a UV shotgun, mag grenade, and wingsuit. The UV shotgun uses electromagnetic bursts to project a massive shockwave. It's particularly useful for ripping freaks apart in crowded areas because the blast does not affect humans. However, it does produce kinetic energy, which you can use to fling cars, lampposts, and other objects into enemies--freaks or otherwise. The mag grenade is a sticky remote-detonated explosive that you can use to tether objects together. You can throw one onto a lamppost, throw another onto a car, then rip up the lamppost, and use it as a giant flail. You can also create a giant slingshot by attaching grenades to opposing buildings. By attaching a grenade to a car, you can pull back on it and let it fly through hordes of enemies, creating a massive gooey mess. Finally, the wingsuit lets you glide, swoop, or dive bomb down from tall buildings. If you dive bomb straight down, you strike the ground with a massive thud, which creates a huge crater in the ground and destroys any enemies in the vicin! ity. To make full use of the wingsuit, you need to get up high. Like the first game, the verticality is as important as its horizontal size. At first, you can only jump a small distance, but by collecting agility orbs, you can leap to tremendous heights, scaling buildings and clinging onto window ledges. The orbs themselves are scattered across the city, usually in places that require a small amount of platforming to reach. There are also purple driving orbs that zoom around the city requiring you to chase them in a car. There are a range of vehicles you can drive, ranging from small civilian cars to armoured Cell trucks. As an agent, you have access to the best vehicles the game has to offer. There are standard vehicles, such as the supercar, truck, and agency buggy, as well as more pimped-out ones, such as the Agency helicopter or tank. The helicopter is armed with machine guns and rocket launchers, allowing you to rain down bullets on crowds of enemies. The tank, meanwhile, is! a heavily armoured four-wheeled behemoth, which is especially great for ploughing through freaks. The freaks themselves only emerge at night. Crackdown 2 employs a full day-and-night cycle as you play. Streets that once seemed safe are overrun with freaks at night, and we found driving through them was one of the most fun ways to spend our time in the game. Car handling is pretty forgiving, having an arcadelike feel, so we found it easy to stick to the road. This handling coupled with the splat sounds from running over a freak brought back memories of violent racer Carmageddeon. Each street had hundreds of freaks on it, which showed off the improved graphics engine that has been expanded to allow for more enemies onscreen at any one time. Fortunately, this hasn't affected the same huge draw distances that were present in the first game, allowing you to leap to the tops of buildings and spot agility orbs around the city. After taking out the Cell from our first mission, we spent some time free roaming around the city, checking out landmarks and causing chaos. You can take out common civilians or even fellow agents if you like, but you are penalised for doing so. The announcer warns you to back off, and if you continue to ignore his advice, he sends the law after you, which will relentlessly hunt you down until you're dead. After which, the announcer tells you he hopes you've "learnt your lesson." We sometimes ran into Cell-infested areas when driving around, which proved to be a costly mistake. As the most hated enemy of Cell, you will not be greeted with tea and biscuits when you stray onto its turf. Instead, we were met with streams of bullets and a dose of car shunting. Though we fought back, the sheer number of Cell units made it difficult to escape alive. Once we'd had enough of being pummelled, we took on some more missions. These are clearly marked on the minimap at the bottom of the ! screen, so they're easy to find. One mission required us to activate some absorption units at the top of a tall building. The building was heavily guarded by Cell, and we chose to sneak up the building via a set of platforms to launch a surprise grenade attack. Because the game is open world, you are free to tackle missions as you see fit, using whatever equipment you have at your disposal. Visually, the game is much like its predecessor. Characters and objects have a thick black line around them, but realistic-looking textures are used to give them a unique look. It's looking a little long in the tooth, but it does boast massive draw distances and large enemy numbers. As well as single-player, Ruffian Games has confirmed there will be four-player co-op, complete with seamless drop-in, drop-out support. There will also be 16-player deathmatch with a new mode called Rocket Tag, though we were unable to see these in action. Crackdown 2 is due for release on the Xbox 360 on July 9. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| PSP | Atari fiscal year ends $23.9 million in the red
May 25, 2010 at 7:46 PM
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| Publisher narrows net loss as revenues down more than 15 percent year-over-year, subscription and digital distribution sales now 11 percent of total business. 
One year ago, Atari reported a full-year net loss of more than $319 million on revenues of less than $193 million. The red ink was blamed on restructuring charges, and the publisher promised to focus on releasing fewer, more profitable games. Today, the publisher posted its results for the fiscal year ended March 31, and the numbers show the publisher has improved, but fallen short of a complete turn-around. For the full year, Atari posted revenues of €115.7 ($142.5 million), down more than 15 percent from the year before. As for why sales were down, the publisher pointed to its plan to release fewer games with a focus on more profitable titles. Of its reduced slate, Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Backyard Football 2010, Champions Online, and Star Trek Online were singled out as sales leaders. The latter two titles also helped drive expansion in Atari's online revenue, which consists of subscription fees and digital distribution sales. In the previous fiscal year, online revenues only accounted for 2 percent of Atari's cash flow, but the publisher's first two massively multiplayer offerings from its 2008 acquisition Cryptic Studios pushed that number to 11 percent of total sales. Unfortunately, Atari's plan couldn't produce a profitable year, as the publisher posted a 12-month net loss of €19.4 million ($23.9 million). The bulk of the work on the publisher's turn-around may be a thing of the past, as Atari actually posted a slim net profit of €3.8 million ($4.7 million) for the second half of its fiscal year. Atari expects its bottom line improvement to continue in the coming year due to a number of factors, specifically the fall launch of Test Drive Unlimited 2, next spring's The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and this year's Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers and Backyard Football. The publisher also is banking on strong performances from Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and PC downloadable games based on vintage Atari brands, as well as new casual and social online efforts. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| PlayStation 3 | Next Guitar Hero due Sept. 19 - Retail Radar
May 25, 2010 at 6:45 PM
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| Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock due out in three bundles in September according to Amazon and GameStop listings.
In February, Activision said it was throttling back on production of rhythm games for 2010, reducing the release slate to DJ Hero 2 and a single entry in the proper Guitar Hero line. Gamers might have assumed that latter effort would be Guitar Hero 6, but new product listings on GameStop and Amazon.com suggest otherwise. According to the retailers, Activision's next foray into the music-game genre will be titled Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock when it is released on September 19. Both outfits have listed three SKUs for Warriors of Rock. They include a Standard version ($60 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii), a Guitar Bundle ($100 for each of the three systems), and a Super Bundle ($180 across the board). Interestingly, the retailer listings suggest Activision has actually expanded its rhythm game plans from earlier this year. Activision Publishing president Michael Griffith told investors that 2010 would see fewer than 10 stock-keeping units (SKUs) in the Hero franchise, but the Warriors of Rock listings consist of nine SKUs on their own. Even if DJ Hero 2 is only available as a stand-alone game, that would put the SKU count at 12, assuming the record-scratching rhythm game comes out on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii. As for Warriors of Rock, the game's subtitle may give some indication as to the game's direction. In April, KISS frontman Gene Simmons proclaimed himself to be "the voice" of Guitar Hero 6, and with the term Warrior slapped on the game's box, his storied musical career fits snugly into that description. The name also calls to mind Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, the first entry in the series to feature celebrity likenesses in-game. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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