Not too long from now, at a Media and Business Summit not all that far away, LucasArts may be announcing a new game in the Star Wars Battlefrontseries. Online shopping megalith Amazon.com has added listings for Star Wars Battlefront III ... for no less than six platforms. The game is available for pre-order and has what we can only imagine is a tentative March 15, 2009 release date.
A new game in the series is hardly surprising; after all, Battlefront is the best selling Star Wars video game franchise of all time. Reports of it being in development also popped up following LucasArts' recent layoffs, though the company would not comment on it or any other unannounced titles at the time.
Amazon has Battlefront III slated for availability on PS3, 360, Wii, PS2, PSP, and DS. If this holds true, it would certainly debunk an old rumor that the game might only hit Xbox 360. Now there's the matter of a developer. With Pandemic – the studio responsible for the first two games – now owned by EA, and internal development slowing down at LucasArts, a new hope must arise. Our best guess at the moment is the rebel forces at Rebellion, the UK-based studio responsible for the generally well received Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron on PSP.
Fans are already filling our need for more Metal Gear post-MGS4. Created by The Duo Group, "Cold Blooded" is an animated short in the vein of the Kojima Productions' Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel, with an almost story-board-like look and an intriguing twist for such a short ... short.
Now that we've watched it, we're more eager than ever to hear anything new on the Digital Graphic Novel treatment of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty that was announced last year. The last we'd heard, the comic book adaptation is being slightly tweaked in order to better jive with the plot-bombs dropped in MGS4, in which case we're willing to wait a little longer.
The word defining folks over at Merriam-Webster Inc. have added "Fanboy," along with 100 other words, to the newest edition of its Collegiate Dictionary*. Fanboy is actually one of the "oldest" of the "new" words, with its origins dating back to 1919. The wordsmiths define fanboy as a "boy who is an enthusiastic devotee, such as of comics or movies." Fanboys should feel free to write with self-righteous fury to MW and let them know it can also apply to video games ... tell them you'll never read their dictionary again if they don't correct this grievous oversight (also make an online petition).
This isn't the first time in recent memory some bit of gaming culture seeped its way into the good word book at Merriam-Webster; "w00t" became the company's word of the year in 2007. So, w00t to all the fanboys out there, the dictionary acknowledges your existence.
*OSX users will find the Dictionary widget, which uses The Oxford American Dictionary, already defines "fanboy." Merriam-Webster is a different company.
The PS2 and PSP versions of The Force Unleashed are close siblings, and I recently enjoyed playing nearly-finished editions of both. Each follows the same bounty-hunting apprentice story and settings as the 360/PS3 game, although specific level design occasionally differs. Unlike 360/PS3 game, the PSP version gets two-player duel-mode fights against a local gamer, and it also includes five "historical missions" pulled from the movies. The PS2 version includes the full camera control of the 360/PS3, but not those extras.
The PS2 and PSP games felt slightly scaled back from the 360/PS3, with fewer destructible objects or enemies in any one moment. But both maintained a fluid sense of battle, maintaining the visceral thrill of the Force powers. With the game's September 16 release, PS2 and PSP gamers will find a kinetic action title suited to their systems.
Listen, we're excited by this week's biggest new release Civilization Revolution, but it looks to us like it's going to play pretty fast and loose with the truth. How can we tell? Well, let's take a look at the box art. It looks fine, right? Until you realize that Napoleon is towering over Genghis Khan!
Napoloean, as the less educated among you (and Firaxis) perhaps do not know, was 2-feet, 4-inches tall, so the thought of him being taller than anyone, let alone some of history's greatest leaders, is an affront to logic itself. The only thing we can imagine is that Lincoln is on his knees and Napoleon is standing on a apple crate of some sort, in which case we can only suggest that Honest Abe needs new representation.
With the recent announcement and then following super double announcement of Square-Enix's plans to bring Chrono Trigger to this week's second place finisher, our minds began to to wander like a starry-eyed, formerly monastic governess, vacationing in the hills of Austria. If Squeenix can turn a 16-bit RPG from 1995 into a soon-to-be bestseller in 2008, what other 13-year-old franchises could we breathe new life into in order to turn a tidy profit?
We immediately thought of Pogs, which swept the nation like a plague of circular cardboard locusts in the middle of the last decade -- after all, the obsession with collection hasn't waned in the minds of our nation's youngsters. Unfortunately, Archibald von Pogstein passed away last year, taking the secrets of Pog synthesis with him. We then turned our minds to music, and naturally, TLC's "Waterfalls", the official HIV and gun violence-related slow jam of 1995, came to mind. The Joystiq crew gathered to perform a breathtaking cover of the R&B classic -- unfortunately, we lost the master recordings shortly before distribution.
We eventually settled on bringing back one of the top-grossing films of 1995, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Unfortunately, Mr. Carrey's reluctance to tarnish his new "serious" image by reprising his most beloved role brought the remake's production to a screeching halt. Instead, we're planning on making Ace Ventura quotes hilarious again by incessantly using them around friends and loved ones. We're sure we can find some way to parlay that into a get rich quick scheme -- aaalllllrighty then?
We would love to get excited for the upcoming video game adaptation of the sixth installment in J.K. Rowling's wildly successful series of books -- unfortunately, our ambitions of striding through Hogwarts' hallowed halls have been sullied by previous lackluster Harry Potter titles from Electronic Arts. To make sure Half Blood Prince is as faithful and entertaining as it can possibly be, we've written up a quick cheat sheet for the game's developers to inform them which elements from the source material should be included when the game hits store shelves in November.
Epic wizard duels -- Awesome.
Magical puzzles -- Entertaining.
Exciting quidditch matches -- Compelling, if handled properly.
Collecting "Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans", "Chocolate Frogs", "Fizzing Whizbees", or any other form of magical confection -- About as enjoyable as catching a faceful of Avada Kedavra.
While Japanese audiences will be playing Persona 4 this July, North American gamers won't have to wait long to wander the halls of Gekkoukan High. Atlus USA has taken time away from blowing things up with small explosives this holiday weekend to announce plans to bring Persona 4 to North America on December 9.
Sweetening the deal even further, the publisher also notes that each copy of the game will come bundled with a soundtrack CD featuring "select music" from the title, which represents the sixth in the role-playing series, and the latest to cling tightly to Sony's aging last-gen console. If, however, you're having trouble waiting until this holiday season to get your Persona fix, check out the game's English announcement trailer after the break.
Those who enjoyed the economics-meets-explosions gameplay of Pandemic Studios' Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction will no doubt get a kick out of the latest trailer for the title's upcoming sequel. The three ExOps personalities we came to know and love in the first Mercs are making a comeback, and in the above video, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames lead designer Scott Warner gives us a sneak peek at how these well-trained operatives, you know, operate.
The gameplay looks solid, but for those of us too busy to watch a five-minute video on a Saturday afternoon, we'll briefly break it down using A-Team archetypes: Jennifer Mui is Templeton "Faceman" Peck, Mattias Nilsson is "Howling Mad" Murdock, and Christopher Jacobs is an amalgam of John "Hannibal" Smith and B.A. Baracus -- only he doesn't pity fools. He hastily shuffles them off this mortal coil using their own grenades.
EA Sports has apologized for putting "The Soldier's Song," traditionally sung at United Ireland games, in place of Northern Ireland's national anthem, "God Save the Queen," in UEFA Euro 2008. Northern Ireland's Londonderry Sentinel reports fans were surprised to hear the anthem representing their country's victory in the game.
What we're surprised to hear is that it took until now for this faux pas to come out. UEFA Euro 2008released back in April. Was nobody playing as the Northern Irish team?
The Economic Times reports that Sony is preparing to launch a new "slimer, sleeker and more suave" version of the PlayStation 2 in the Indian and European markets by Diwali – the festival of light – scheduled for October 28 this year. In addition to the new Slimer™ look, ET reports "there will be no more external AC adapters" and the price will remain the same, Rs 6,990 ($162).
If you're wondering why Sony keeps pushing the PS2, we'd be quick to point out that it keeps selling. A Sony rep might tell you that it feels the "PS2 has the potential to penetrate further into the Indian and Russian markets" because "console gaming is in its nascent stage in India." Maybe true, Mr. Sony rep, but not so nascent as to be unable to enjoy the PS3! The same ET report also announces that Sony will be launching the PlayStation Network in India by the end of the fiscal year.
IT security firm Sophos reports that someone has been messing around with the official US PlayStation website. "Messing around" as in fitting its SingStar and God of War pages with fake ads that tried to make (and may have succeeded in making) visitors believe their computers were riddled with viruses.
Phobos says that the bogus pop-ups prompted those who saw them to purchase what turned out to be equally bogus anti-virus software. The "scareware" has since been exterminated by Sony's IT jockeys, but we can only wonder how many hapless gamers were drawn into the hacker's insidious ... web of lies before it was too late.
Eager bookworms visiting the Washington-Centerville Public Library in Centerville, Ohio, will face exposure to the new-fangled "video game" entertainment medium, as the library will now be loaning PS2, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 games. According to the Dayton Daily News, the library will carry two categories of games: Titles aimed at families, and ones aimed at players aged 10 and up (sans adult-only games). Each game will be available for one-week loan with the option of one renewal.
You can check for yourself which games are available in the library's online catalog, though the Dayton Daily News has gone and confirmed the presence of Guitar Hero, Kung-Fu Panda, Madden NFL 08 and, err, Iron Man. That one's probably meant to frighten the kids into reading books again.
Looks like Sony's planning to hog even more of your sweet, sweet download bandwidth via the PlayStation Store, if a rumor posted on the N4G forums is to be believed. According to the post, downloadable PS2 games will be announced at E3 next month and will appear on the store this summer.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is prominently featured in the "leaked" image; the other games we can make out are Fantavision, Red Faction, Ridge Racer V, Smuggler's Run, SSX, and ... well, we're not quite sure what that last one is. Keen-eyed readers to the comments page! the last one is The Bouncer. Thanks, readers!
The info supposedly originates from a Sony Europe insider, who informed the poster that the roll-out will actually occur in Europe before the rest of the world. (Which is contrary to Sony's usual M.O.) This rumor comes on the heels of an actual official announcement by Sony that it will finally introduce a movie / video download service for PS3 this summer. It seems like this summer will see the PS3 experience evolving quite a bit, especially if this rumor pans out.
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