This Week In New Releases [Week Of 20th February 2012]
We all need a gentle reminder from time to time. This Week In New Releases from New Rising Media aims to do just that – remind you of the biggest, best and hottest new media releases to look out for this week. From the latest big screen blockbusters, to this week's most anticipated Blu-Ray discs, via details of the next big triple-A videogame to reach consoles. This isn't a total run-down of everything new this week, though, these are carefully hand-picked for your viewing/playing pleasure entirely by us, enjoy.
Call Of Duty Is Coming To Vita This Autumn, Black Ops 2 Listed On Amazon
A game talked up to be a potential ‘system seller’ is one thrown around all too often for our liking. Sure, Resistance might well be an enjoyable, if slightly mediocre, Sony-exclusive first-person-shooter. But a system seller? LittleBigPlanet, though adored by us and many Sony fans alike, is unlikely to be considered in the same vein as God Of War, Gran Turismo or Uncharted when trying to summate what it is has allowed the PS3 to claw back Xbox 360’s early sales success. A ‘system seller’ by rights doesn’t come around too often, but when it does it can make all the difference in the world. Now confirmed for the autumn, Call of Duty’s debut on the Vita might well be (and we believe it definitely will be) Sony's crowning glory for its follow-up to the PlayStation Portable (PSP).
Pokemon Finally Enters The App Store, And Is Swiftly Removed...
Nintendo’s claims to the globally-recognised Pokémon gaming brand looked to be rocking as an unofficial Pokémon game was the first of its kind to enter Apple’s App Store for download onto iOS devices earlier this week. Titled Pokémon - Pocket Edition, little did purchasers of the $5 app know – described as “marking the Pokémon series’ glorious debut on the App Store [that] lets you verse and play as everyone’s favourite Pokémon, Pikachu, around awesome lands” – was nothing more than a scam and an illegitimate app that featured no actual gameplay, only screen captures of other Pokémon games.
An Interview With Pendulo Studios
“We make the kind of games that we’d love to play. They are small games, but crafted with passion and care, as if we were videogame artisans,” laughs Pendulo Studios’ writer Josué Monchan when asked to define what it is that makes Pendulo stand out from the crowd. “Paraphrasing Jane Austen,” he continues, “our games are just “the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush.”” As an introduction to the Madrid-based developer -– point-and-click adventure game auteurs and the minds behind the million-selling Runaway series and The Next BIG Thing – Monchan’s statement rings sincere and true.
Early Copies Of Mass Effect 3 To Be Launched Into Space
As anticipation for EA and Bioware’s epic conclusion to the Mass Effect saga balloons to atmospheric-breaking levels, EA is giving the chance to fans of the franchise to play the game more than a week early – but not in the way you’d have imagined.
An Interview With Platinum Games: The Team Behind Anarchy Reigns
Six years might be a relatively short space of time to you and me, but for Platinum Games that same amount of time has been nothing short of a whirlwind. Founded in August 2006 by former members of Capcom’s Clover Studio, Platinum has since been behind some of the most supremely assured, innovative and tantalisingly over-the-top games of recent years. A smorgasbord of titles over a diverse array of genres; rich in style, substance and, in the case of seductive shape-shifting witch Bayonetta, sex appeal. “In my mind we’ve been rushing full-bore since Platinum Games was founded, and I doubt that feeling will ever change,” executive director and producer Atsushi Inaba informs us, “From our very beginnings, our vision has been consistent: to deliver new, surprising experiences around the world.”
Top Games For Valentines Day. Are You Playing Your Love Games With Me?
Embracing that emphatic feeling to scream your love for someone from the rooftops is both lame, and will not score you anything within this wonderful planet. So we're here to assist with a cavalcade (three to be precise) of video games that are destined to spice up your chances and bring romance into the air.
This Week In New Releases [Week Of 13th February 2012]
We all need a gentle reminder from time to time. This Week In New Releases from New Rising Media aims to do just that – remind you of the biggest, best and hottest new media releases to look out for this week. From the latest big screen blockbusters, to this week's most anticipated Blu-Ray discs, via details of the next big triple-A videogame to reach consoles. This isn't a total run-down of everything new this week, though, these are carefully hand-picked for your viewing/playing pleasure entirely by us, enjoy.
Family Guy Online Receives Its Debut Trailer
20th Century Fox and Roadhouse Interactive have finally unveiled the first debut trailer for Family Guy Online; the browser-based, free-to-play MMO based on the popular TV show. The trailer, introduced by an ever-nonchalant Peter Griffin, comes in at a brief 54 seconds and reveals some of what we have in store; right from its distinctive, cel-shaded art style, to the loveable characters we’ll come to meet along the way (as well as avoid – even if it does come with free popsicles and back rubs!), via some crude, ill-judged humour for which the show has come to be reknowned.
Skyrim Gets A Hint Of Portal With 'Fall of the Space Core' Mod
To celebrate the release of Bethesda's new Skyrim Creation Kit, Valve have created a small mod which drops the Space Core from Portal 2 into the fantasy world of Dragon slaying and the taking of arrows to one's knee. It goes without saying, we love both Portal 2 and Skyrim; but at no point have we ever comprehended the Earth-shaking combination of the two.
This Week In New Releases [Week Of 6th February 2012]
We all need a gentle reminder from time to time. This Week In New Releases from New Rising Media aims to do just that – remind you of the biggest, best and hottest new media releases to look out for this week. From the latest big screen blockbusters, to this week's most anticipated Blu-Ray discs, via details of the next big triple-A videogame to reach consoles. This isn't a total run-down of everything new this week, though, these are carefully hand-picked for your viewing/playing pleasure entirely by us, enjoy.
Is This The Beginning Of The End For Videogames’ High Street Presence?
Questions are being raised this week about the future of GAME after a number of reports have arisen that indicates the specialist videogame high-street retailer is struggling to stock newer games following a number of its credit agencies withdrawing credit insurance on behalf of the chain. GAME is now having to pay for new stock of games up front if it chooses to sell them, something it has now had to rely on until now. There were serious concerns earlier this week that GAME would fail to have Friday’s triple-A releases (Final Fantasy XIII-2, Soul Calibur V, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection) on store shelves as a result, while concerns over the company’s long-term future meant Sony’s long-awaited portable successor to the PSP, the PlayStation Vita, was also rumoured to be following suit.
Editorial: Why Nintendo Would Be Wise To Re-Brand The Wii U
Wii U. To you and I, Wii U may just appear to be two meaningless, mono-syllabic terms seemingly conjured up from the most uncreative product marketers and head honchos at the games industry's most cherished company.
Capcom Typo Makes Its Way Onto Resident Evil: Revelations 3DS Cover
You spend millions upon millions of dollars developing a game, pump even more cash into marketing the game across the globe and pour wealth into publishing the title to reach store shelves. As far as monumental cock-ups in the history of game publication goes, accidentally spelling your own game title wrong on the spine of a retail cover is pretty high up there.
But that’s exactly what Capcom has managed to achieve with one of its biggest 3DS titles of the year, Resident Evil: Revelations.
Rumour: Production of Next Xbox Imminent, Dev Kits Expected By April
The successor to the Xbox 360 is strongly rumoured to be entering its manufacturing stages, according to reports. This comes a week after SemiAccurate’s Charlie Demerjian reported that 32-nanometer chips code-named ‘Oban’ will be powering Microsoft’s third gaming console and had been in production since “the final days of 2011”. According to Demerjian, Microsoft is planning to combine a Power PC central processor from IBM – and co-manufactured by GlobalFoundries - with the Radeon HD 7000-series GPU from AMD as the basis for the '720'.
Blizzard Auctions Off World of Warcraft Servers For Charity
In late 2010, Blizzard Entertainment recorded that it had over 12 million subscribers actively paying for fantasy MMO World of Warcraft. As of the end of September last year, the company reported its subscriber base had slumped to just over 10 million – though, we assure you, that is still a gargantuan number for online gaming.
The drop in players alerted the company that it would have to change tact going forward if it was to compete against free-to-play games of the same ilk; amending its seemingly age-old payment model to free-to-play (at least until level 20 in-game), while performance upgrades and expansions keep the game feeling fresh for existing players. The latter has resulted in Blizzard upgrading the game’s server hardware in order to improve the “gameplay experience” across the board, leaving the company’s much-cherished, ever-dependable older servers out in the cold. Or so you would have thought…
Minecraftians Remake Ocarina Of Time. The Best Minecraft Reimagining You’ve Ever Seen
As far as Minecraft remakes go, we’ve seen a mind-boggling number of blocky reinterpretations, from a complete remake of GTA V’s long-rumoured teaser trailer, to catchy chip-tune renditions of modern music. But in a project that has so far taken a whole 9 months to achieve, a few intrepid Minecraft players have done something truly incredible. Welcome to ‘Hyrulecraft’; an alarmingly faithful, to-scale reproduction of the world inhabited by Link in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Sega's return to the console business: urinal gaming makes a splash
The Dreamcast was awesome, and we were sad to see it disappear in the face of Sony's PS2. At this point, we thought that Sega was officially out of the business of making consoles: the flame had been extinguished...but no more. Introducing the "Toylet."
Remember the urinal gaming concept we found before? Turns out the guys at Sega fell in love with the concept, and created their own console to enter this clear market, full to the brim with credibility. Instructions are simple: pee to play the game.
US Military planning to crowdsource military software testing via computer games
The US Department of Defense are looking to crowdsource their military software testing by developing computer games surrounding it, according to a DARPA proposal.
The implementation is going to be a steep initial cost, $32 million dollars specifically; but on the long haul, the plan (officially titled Crowd Sourced Formal Verification) is for it to dramatically reduce the cost of the software verification process.