1P Start

I’m a huge fan of the Gran Turismo series of games, starting with the first version on the original Playstation, and the revolutionary 3 and 4 on the PS2. So as you’d expect, I can’t wait until the fifth game, and first on the PS3 gets released. Unfortunately I may have to wait some time.

SCEA associate producer Chris Hinojosa-Miranda spoke last week on the Official Playstation Blog about the series, and about a mixtape which they’d put together for the US version of GT5: Prologue.

In the comments under the article, a reader asked if it’s actually worth buying Prologue now, only to have to shell out more money for the full version of the game a few months later. This elicited the following response from Hinojosa-Miranda:

“GT5 is still about a year away. You should just decide now to buy it, enjoy it, go online and race against anyone and everyone, rank number one worldwide, get the girl (or guy) and become the most popular kid in town. The end.”

About a year away? Man, that’s disappointing, and I can’t really see why there’s that much of a delay between Prologue coming out (in Europe last week, and North America on April 17th) and the full version. What are they going to do in those 12 months?

Unless they are finally going to put car damage in to the game, something which the fans have been calling for right from day one.

(more…)

Hey cheap-asses, remember that the Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack is now free so don’t forget to download it as soon as you can. I’d love to tell you how great or bad they are because I am indeed a cheap ass. I would love to download the Heroic map pack today, but my XBox is still not back in my hands after it’s unfortunate bout of the red ring of suck.

(more…)

Well, not quite on its own, but it can at least be the catalyst for a new baby to make its way in to the world.

A couple have met over Xbox Live, fallen in love, married, and now had their first baby together.

I’m sure this kind of thing has happened in PC gaming before, and also virtual world games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, but I’ve never heard about it happening in quite the same way as this one occurred.

Stacy and Mike Figueroa met while playing Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Lockdown over the Xbox Live network. Hatred rather than love for each other was the first emotion to surface though, with the pair starting off as online enemies, in different factions of the game.

After months of shooting each other, they ended up becoming team-mates, and then a little after that, they fell in love.

(more…)

The Wii version of Rock Band has finally been confirmed as well as given a release date of June 22nd. The game will feature five more tracks than the current Rock Band, however the fact that Wii does not currently have downloadable content as of now should be enough to persuade buyers into rethinking their purchase or at least hold it off until the inclusion of this feature. Those five unannounced tracks have not been specified and I would not be surprised if they are songs already offered as DLC for the PS3 and Xbox 360 version of the game.

In an interesting twist, the Rock Band guitar will be a stand alone controller and not using the Wiimote to be plugged in it to work. Having played the Wii version of Guitar Hero III for almost a full day, the small details like hearing the guitar strings pluck when hitting a wrong note and being wireless right off the bat seemed like something EA/Harmonix would take advantage of on the Wii.

On top of the lack of downloadable content, other disadvantages include a lack of online play. The game is being ported by the same group that ported the Playstation 2 version of the game, so one can easily speculate that the game will also feature gimped versions of the world tour mode and character customizations.

I have no doubts that Rock Band on Wii will sell well, but had this version come along at the same time the 360 and PS3 versions of the game were out, I think it would have been a million times easier to look past the flaws that will come with the Wii edition and gobble this baby up (keeping in mind it would have been holiday season as well). I wish I knew who to blame for this lack of DLC and online play, but I hate EA way more than Nintendo, so I’ll say EA for now (as Smash Bros does have online play, so at the least Rock Band should of had that).

[Shacknews]

Full press release after the break:

(more…)

If you haven’t already taken a look at your profile on Xbox.com, you may want to log in just to feel the difference of a fast loading page, oh, it is sweet. Visually the profile pages are different as well, taking the full page down to just the necessities. I do miss seeing my last ten played games right away, but the little 5 last played games widget is decent enough, and honestly, log in and feel the swiftness of that loading! After that, you may accept this unannounced change rather quickly.

(Note: While writing this I loaded the page 4 more times, then on my laptop, and finally from my phone, just because I couldn’t believe the difference. It is like going from dial up to high speed all over again)

(more…)

Are you sitting comfortably? Then enjoy the following story of how one man managed to get back his stolen Xbox 360 by utilising the power of the Internet…

Jesse McPherson, a gamer from Philadelphia, returned from a trip to the SXSW festival on March 12th to discover his home had been broken in to, and a number of valuable belongings had been stolen.

The thief’s haul included a TV, a laptop, and his prized Xbox 360. Deciding not to take this lying down, McPherson leapt in to action, and started ringing around a number of local pawn shops to see if anyone had been trying to sell his good lately.

The first place he tried had indeed been the target for someone trying to sell a laptop with peculiarities very similar to his own. So he went down there, and got a few stills of the guy from the CCTV footage (as seen above).

He then called the police and explained the situation, but they weren’t really interested. His friends and co-workers meanwhile had rallied around to buy him a new Xbox 360. So McPherson recovered his Xbox Live account, and the first thing he finds on it is a voice message from a randomer.

It turns out to be the thief, who offers to sell him his own stolen Xbox back to him for a price. Again, the police were called, and again, they don’t get back to the victim of the crime… nice.

(more…)

This week’s DLC brings us a lot of Boston. In fact, it brings us more Boston than you can shove in your Cheetos stained face. There are six songs in total, bringing up the Boston total on Rock Band up to seven.

The songs will be 160 Microsoft Points ($1.99) each or as a whole pack for 800 Microsoft Points ($9.99).

* “More than a Feeling”
* “Peace of Mind”
* “Smokin”
* “Rock & Roll Band”
* “Something About You”
* “Hitch a Ride”

Now I’m sure that there are a lot of Boston fans out there that will get offended by this, but as much as their music was right for the time and dare I say pretty good, it all kind of sounds a like. You hear one Boston song, you’ve pretty heard much them all.

Anyway, when I hear Boston now it is almost impossible to separate it from the death of frontman Brad Delp. Poor Brad Delp killed himself by lighting two charcoal grills in his bathroom and letting the smoke kill him. His suicide note said that he was a, “lonely soul.” God damn, that’s depressing.

Videos and commentary after the break.

(more…)

In-Game advertising is slowly but surely becoming more and more used as a way of games developers making some extra money. Fine, no problem, the cost of developing games is increasing, and any way in which they can make some extra money to keep down costs is a good thing no?

The problem as I see it is that prices aren’t really dropping, and are instead forever going up, with each new generation of console seeing another level of price threshold being reached.

Plus there is the fact that developers are also eking as much money out of gamers by upping the amount of micro transactions being offered as downloadable content. So is this what the future holds?

The gamer has to pay top dollar to buy a game in the first place, then extra moolah for any new levels or characters or whatever. And then to top it all off, we have to put up with adverts in games which over time are sure to become more intrusive.

(more…)

Looking over this weeks releases, I noticed right away a few titles that need some love. Of course there is still some reoccurring franchises, such as Final Fantasy (PSP), Harvest Moon (DS), and even Ninja Gaiden (DS). Solid games in their own right, but they can wait, a new RPG is in town, Opoona (Wii), which has me curious as all hell how the game will play out with using only the nunchuck. Dark Sector is out on the big boy systems, having been announced way back in 2004, the game looks to bring some new elements to the third person action gunner genre, if anything, you can rest easy knowing they didn’t rush this title.

Onto the full list, as always, after the break:

(more…)

A couple of weeks ago, rumours were abound of a version of Guitar Hero being made for the Nintendo DS. They came about after Australia’s Office of Film & Literature Classification, gave Guitar Hero: On Tour a ‘G’ rating on March 4th, effectively letting the cat out of the bag.

Now, we have proof of the existence of the game after Activision officially announced the game through a press release.

The game is scheduled for release this summer, and will work by way of a new peripheral, called the Guitar Hero Guitar Grip, which slips over the back of your DS (as seen in the picture above) to turn it in to an electric guitar, as well as top selling portable games machine.

The game will also come with a Guitar Hero pick stylus enabling DS owners to strum their way to fame and fortune, at least in terms of a Guitar Hero career.

(more…)

This week’s ad serves as a delayed tribute to the late co-creator Gary Gygax. Yeah it really has nothing to do with the guy except for the fact that it’s a television commercial for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game found on the Intellevision, but without him there would have been no game based on the popular RPG to begin with. Or something, just go with me on this please?

(more…)

This week’s round of Rock Band songs brings a little Metal to the line up. Okay, not a little Metal… a shiat load of ultra hard core thrash metal under the guise of the “Earache Thrash Pack.” Here are the bands. Give yourself a cookie if you recognize any of these bands and an extra if you actually know the songs. Then give yourself a hug, because you probably hate your parents. Hey man, it’s all right. They can’t hurt you anymore.

* “Blinded by Fear” by At the Gates
* “DOA” by The Haunted
* “Thrasher” by Evile

They are available individually for $1.99 each (160 Microsoft Points) or $5.49 (440 points) as a bundle. They’re also master tracks, but I can’t imagine why any of these songs would necessitate the use of a cover band.

If you want to more about the songs and the bands that made them… uh famous… then check out Harmonix’s run down. Be sure to check out the videos after the break before you go, though!

(more…)

I know I can’t be the only person who has fallen prey to Call of Duty 4. Sometimes though, when you look past the huge amount of overhypeness (is that a word?!) that Halo 3 received, you still can find a solid shooter with a ton of still exclusive features, as well as it just being a very pretty game.

NeoGAF has started up a screenshot thread that has made me re-look at the beauty this game has. Using the capture mode that Bungie has provided (and still I wonder why it isn’t standard in all games now), gamers on GAF have shared both action packed and beautifully artistic screens, please take a gander at some of these pictures that borderline being called art, keep in mind as you take them all in, these are in game shots taken from players, not photoshoped/faked/etc. Start viewing after the break:

(more…)

While cruising around the web avoiding work, I ran across these really cool Lego statues that I thought you’d enjoy here. Plus I haven’t had any time to write anything of substance so enjoy a few pics of your favorite Nintendo characters formed out of Legos.

(more…)

No, there’s no plans on releasing a Rock Band keytar… sadly. BUT over on GameIndustry.biz there’s an interview with Harmonix that reveals that Harmonix is at least considering adding a keyboard to the mix of instruments in Rock Band for those who wish they could be a famous rock keyboard player like… that one guy.

(more…)