One of the most popular Sony franchises, God of War: Ghost of Sparta has just been announced for the PSP.  Not having really played any God of War with the exception of the God of War 3 demo for PS3, I know that these games have a reputation for quality gameplay and stellar production values.

The follow up to the Chains of Olympus PSP game, Ghost of Sparta will effectively tell the tale of how Kratos actually becomes the God of War.  Finally!  The new game will feature 25% more explorable territory, an all new weapons system, and bigger boss battles.

Expect more details to emerge soon, and Ghost of Sparta will probably see some show time and this year’s E3.

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With all the heat coming off the ridiculously over priced Stimulus Package Map Pack for Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2, it was apparently the perfect time for DICE to rise above their underdog status with a statement that should make all gamers happy.

DICE Senior Producer Patrick Bach said the following:

“We don’t ever want to charge for our maps and insisted to EA that this attitude was crucial when it came to keeping our community happy and playing together”

Sounds great to me.  I’m loving me some Rad Compnay 2 these days and might even go out and buy some Dr.Pepper and see if I can’t get some “free” DLC that way.  Also of other related news, IW is having a double EXP session in MW 2 around now, and a Squad Rush Mode has just been released for BC2.

Go play!!

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Sony Computer Entertainment has just announced that its motion controlling scenario titled Move is scheduled for a fall 2010 release.  Looking to give Microsoft’s Project Natal a run for its motion sensing money, Move will require you to also purchase the PlayStation Eye Camera for full compatibility.

Additionally, the motion controller, which looks like some sort of Killer Clowns From Outer Space device, will also come with a sub-controller similar to the Wii Nunchuk to help you navigate the 3rd dimension.  Using all 3 peripherals together will create a tight and precise representation in 3D space allowing for the gamer to be fully immersed while playing themselves in the game.  Bring it on Lawnmower Man!

The Playstation Move utilizes some advanced motion sensors that include:  a three-axis gyroscope, a three-axis accelerometer, and a terrestrial magnetic field sensor.  These words might not mean much to the gamer right now, but once people start busting a “Move” they could easily become everyday jargon.

The PlayStation Move motion controller employs action buttons, an analog trigger, force feed back, and visual feedback via the color changing sphere.  The Eye Camera will also detect the player’s voice and image for further immersion and augmentation.

Both controllers act like normal PS3 Gamepads that have lithium-ion rechargeable batteries and BlueTooth.  No price has been set as multiple packages are likely to emerge, but word has it that over 36 publishers have stated their support and there should be over 20 games at launch time this fall.

What do you think PS3 boys and girls?

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I glad this is finally happening.  Merging rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band comes the PowerGig: Rise of the Six String.  Using an actual six string guitar, PowerGig aims to teach its players some actual, tangible guitar tactics.  Making its initial appearance at this year’s GDC, PowerGig at first glance resembles what you’d see in a GH or RB game, but the technique has changed in that you’ll be making chord formations on the guitar and strumming them to score.

PowerGig will see more exposure at this year’s E3, and Seven54 Studios promises a full scale guitar (the current one is 2/3 scale) as well as a drum module.  No price or release date has been set but I’m sure this is the genre buster music gamers have been dreaming about.  Or not.  What do you think?

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While Mac’s may never be truly considered a formidable gaming platform, news from the Games Developers Conference has delivered word the gaming peripheral powerhouse Razer will make more than a concerted effort to support Mac gaming.

Making good on that statement, Razer today has issued a Mac driver for the Naga MMO gaming mouse.  So as it stands, all new Razer products will feature Mac drivers and throughout 2010 they will be updating existing products to be Mac compatible.

I’ve always liked Razer products but have owned a Mac, so it’s nice to see the support finally being initiated.

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Talk about counting your chickens.  Assassin’s Creed 2 hasn’t even seen release and we are already hearing about a 3rd installment.  Will that many people blindly purchase this game like the did 2 years ago?

Not to be a naysayer, I want Ass2 to be a quality game but I won’t believe it until I play it.  A German gaming show named PLAYD had Ubisoft’s Philippe Bergeron on the program who said in regards to a possible Assassin’s Creed 3 setting:

There are two things that come to mind: There is medieval Europe, which would be very interesting trying to play a King Arthur story line. Another one that is a personal favorite of a lot of people on the floor is feudal Japan, which is something that would be very interesting just culturally to discover and I think also to make players discover as well.

Huh.  I don’t know which one would be cooler.  What do you think?

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Coming off the unbridled success of Rare’s Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64, Perfect Dark was pretty much exactly what gamers wanted.  Then came the Xbox 360 launch title.  Not so much.

Arriving this winter will be an HD remake of the N64 classic for Xbox Live Arcade and these new screen shots really do look nice.  Upscaled to 1080p and running at 60 frames per second (FPS would have been a bad acronym choice given the context) this remake should be a great success on XBLA.

No word on exact release date but should we guess 1200 Microsoft Points?

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Beating the Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 Edition to market by about a week, Sony’s PS3 Slim packed with a 250GB hard drive will appear on retail shelves on November 3rd for $350.  This will be the largest console hard drive to date but not without its flaws perhaps.

As of now, you can’t download PS3 games to the hard drive, so one might ask why you would need all the extra space?  Even if you hoarded DLC from every single game I don’t think you amount to 250GB.

But like Sony always says when referring to the PS3, it’s future proof right?

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In an age where high-priced gaming peripheral bundles are becoming standardized purchases, Nintendo is set to release something huge.  Enter the Nintendo Wii CyberBike.

Packed with the new Wii game Cycling Sports, this might be the most expensive controller we’ve seen yet.  While no price has been determined it’s too bad Nintendo doesn’t release this for the holiday’s as it would be a great way to burn off some of those Christmas calories.  This bundle is set to release sometime in January of 2010.

The game itself has some environmental leanings as you try to clean up the earth controlling a variety of vehicles including a Gyrocopter.  The CyberBike has also been noted to control the Mario Cart game on the Wii.  Could we see this at some trendy LA gym in the future?

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Last year on November 19th, the Xbox 360 saw a major interface update in the form of “The New Xbox Experience.  This year’s most major update will contain Twitter, FaceBook, and Last.fm accessibility.

Sources indicate that the update will launch in the UK and US on November 17th.

With this update sure to be fun and synergistic, the question people are continuing to ask is where is the web browser at?

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Looks like perhaps EA wants to get in on this whole Modern Warfare madness.  Isn’t that what Battlefield: Bad Company is?  Good thing for EA that Activision doesn’t have an exclusive Modern Combat license right!

The rumblings going around consist of an ex-EA production intern from 2008 posting somewhere that he worked on a Medal of Honor: Modern Combat title doing some design and software engineering.  Blah.  Other rumor blurbs include a possible real life tie-in to the game via Operation Anaconda, which was an actual mission held in Afghanistan from back in 2002.

The only thing that is confirmed is that there is another “undefined” Medal of Honor game in the works according to EA CEO John Riccitiello.  The last game in the Medal of Honor series was Airborne from 2007.

All this makes sense, but we’ll have to wait and see what rises to the top.

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I really liked the first Dead Space.  I even watched the animated prequel on Blu-Ray.  It had decent pacing, some really cool and brutally violent weapons, and atmospheric graphics and sound design.  Most reviews I had read said it had taken the true survival horror reigns from RE5 which had somehow turned into an action game.  While I think I knew about an inherent sequel given the outcome of the original game, this is the first I’m hearing about it on the web.

This info was leaked though a LinkedIn Job Posting by Visceral Games looking for a lead combat designer.  Oops!  Apparently in the later stages of pre-production, the core team from the first game is working diligently to improve what was already an awesome game.  With the essential gameplay and navigational mechanics in place the game should start to see production in the coming months.  The game is being developed for the Xbox 360 and PS3.

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Lodging itself up in the PSN demos section is the new Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Multiplayer demo.  Encompassing 1.3Gb’s of hard drive space and arriving at 11 Am this morning (PST), the demo really lets you have it all.

Featuring 4 MP maps, 4 competitive modes, and 2 co-op modes, it’s way bigger than what even the beta had to offer.  It actually sounds a lot meatier than most demos you’d download.

The demo also lets you try Cinema mode which lets you view and share multiplayer replays.  The first Uncharted did not have any multiplayer so this is a significant step taken by developer Naughty Dog to bring Uncharted 2′s replay value through the roof.  Let us know what you think!

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I am beginning to loathe the words “Not Backwards Compatible.”  No PS3 Slim, no PSPgo, and now we have word that MicroSoft’s Project Natal will also not be backwards compatible.

The problem is that a simple patch issued is not enough to make already released games work with the Natal.  Developers would have to write some significant code in order for their games to be Natal compatible.  It may be safe to assume that developers will not see this as a worthwhile endeavor given the time any money it will cost to write the code.

Is this a big deal to anyone?  I have no interest playing already released games Natal style and think games created specifically for it will be the most entertaining.

Thoughts?

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My buddy really holds dear these certain games that he thinks are going to be awesome.  And often he is let down (Assassin’s Creed).  He became a bit worried when Ubisoft announced that Splinter Cell Conviction was delayed and believes that the game is going to be total crap.  I tried to explain to him that the developers were working hard to make the game the best it could be and the delays were merely going to make the game better in the long run.

At the Tokyo Game Show, Splinter Cell Conviction was shown with great conviction to how much better it’s looking these days.  Funny enough, while searching for this video I saw other SCC videos dating back to over two years ago.  Ugh.

Just missing this year’s holiday gaming extravaganza, Splinter Cell Conviction will see the light of retail shelves on the 23rd of February 2010.  I think this game is going to be awesome just like all the others have been.  Clock the video below.

]]> http://www.gadgetreview.com/2009/09/splinter-cell-conviction-gets-arrives-february-23rd-video.html/feed 0 http://www.gadgetreview.com/2009/09/the-word-is-no-modern-warfare-2-demo.html http://www.gadgetreview.com/2009/09/the-word-is-no-modern-warfare-2-demo.html#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:42:49 +0000 Jeff B http://www.gadgetreview.com/?p=36860

Not that I remember there being any other Call of Duty demos in previous years, IGN has just released word that there will be no Modern Warfare 2 demo this fall.  According to Infinity Ward, they will be spending every last moment perfecting what could possibly be the highest selling game of all time.

The developer will also not be participating in a public beta as well, citing the same reasons as above.  Do we care?  I think we pretty much know what the game is going to be like.  Modern Warfare 2 ships on November 10th for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

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PSP “Minis” in case you haven’t heard, is a downloadable games service for the soon to be released PSP Go using Sony’s PSN to navigate content.  Recently, a new “accelerated approvals process” has emerged but it requires that developers only submit games that are single-player only, have no multiplayer, no network connectivity, no 3rd party peripherals,  and no DLC.

Sounds kind of lame right?  Will this mean that the developers of these games will embrace a nonchalant perspective in order to channel games through this pipeline? I am really interested in the pricing structure of these games and what they even will look like.  Any thoughts?

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I just played Skate 2 for the first time and was super disappointed with all the frame rate hiccups.  It was almost unplayable.  Perhaps it was my archaic 20GB Xbox 360 from 2005 not being able to handle the game.

At any rate, I was pleasantly overjoyed when I found out that EA was going to release Skate 3 in May 2010.  Set in a entirely new city called “Port Carverton” the game will feature some Rodney Mullen inspired tricks like the “darkslide”, and the teaser trailer below eludes to some new type of team play.

Let’s just hope this version of the game runs like the 1st one.  Check out the video:

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My roommate logs a good 12 plus hours a day with his Xbox 360 on a dusty old 32″ Sony Trintron in standard definition.  Scoff!!  I would never do that to myself but there are plenty of fools that do.  Up until now, Microsoft has had the stringent policy of requiring all games to have a minimum resolution of 1280×720 (720p).

That was a good thing right?  In my eyes and I’m sure many others, yes.  I went out and bought a HD TV specifically for my Xbox 360.  According to Black Rock Studio’s David Jefferies, this is a good thing because “now we are free to make the trade-off between resolution and image quality as we see fit.”  I don’t really understand that sentence.  What I make of this is that while I have yet to see any related statistics is that most households still do not have HDTV so that is why Microsoft has dropped the requirement.  What I ask is, does it matter for the gamer who is playing in SD?

In any case, Halo 3 was the only game where the requirement was waived and know I no longer have to wonder why I thought that game didn’t look all that great in places.  I really hope that developers don’t pander to this resolution free-for-all as the Xbox 360 in my esteemed opinion, was always meant to be played in HD.

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Sweet.  We all knew the pressure was mounting.  Here we have visual evidence for a second time in regards to Xbox 360 price cuts.  Slated for release by the end of the week, the ad depicts the 60GB Pro system going down to $250 with a free controller and the 120GB Elite version going to $300.  Sounds good to me.  Expect to see the ads on Sunday, August 30th.

Now if only they would lower the price of the 120GB hard drive so I can ditch my OG 20GB one.  Anybody have a reference on how you’d transfer files from one Xbox hard drive to another?

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