The Maw Preview

This will be a new game that will be available via the Xbox Live Arcade before the end of the year.  It’s basically a bit of a twist on a bunch of old platformer elements in a new way.  I couldn’t help but think of the first Oddworld games.  The player controls Frank.  Frank controls The Maw.  They are two aliens who are stranded on a pretty savage planet.  The Maw’s a little indestructible killing machine that is a bit chickenhearted.  Frank has him rigged up on a fancy leash, but he can only do so much with him.   Your goal will revolve around completing a level by convincing The Maw to overcome some challenge.  In general, you need to guide him to little animals he can eat to grow and gain special abilities.  It definitely sounds like an interesting concept that’s worth a second look when it comes out later.

Resistance: Retribution Preview

It looks like the PSP might finally get a good action game.  This spin-off from the Resistance series is due out next spring, but the early shots just look beautiful.  It’s amazing what the little handheld can do.  This obviously doesn’t matter if the gameplay’s awful, but Retribution seems to be pulling its own weight.  The game basically just sets up a story that lets you kill plenty of aliens and raid some Chimera Conversion Centers.  It should work fine as a plot device.  What’s cool is the way that the controls are intelligently divided.  You will automatically fire on any enemies once you center the target marker.  The only direct controls are for manual fire, movement, aiming, and switching to alternative fire modes.  They are also boasting a decent cover system, so it should have a nice tactical feel.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this will be a great title for the struggling handheld.

Rise of the Argonauts Preview

This looks like an incredibly fun game.  The game follows the struggles of Jason and his argonauts as they search for the Golden Fleece.  The big part is the combat, which is surprisingly brutal.  It will follow a more realistic style of combat where one’s position on the battlefield determines whether the slash is a decaptitating blow or a light scratch.  Reviews so far state that it has a visceral quality to it that is quite refreshing.  Throw in some great production values and level design to have one good action title.  Keep an eye out for more developments on this one later.

Spore: A Look at Space

There’s some new information about the role that space will play in the game.  Everyone interested in this game probably knows the basics.  You move through the stages from a single celled organism to a full-sized civilization.  The space stage was never well elaborated though, other than the fact that you could terraform planets and spread out more.  There’s finally some good news on that front.  Statements in recent interviews state that there will be a complex mission system for opening trade routes with new civilizations.  It will range from military operations to exploration and abductions.  The process sounds like a fun arcade-style addition to the end game that switches up the standard civilization parts before it.  There are also reports that 4 million stars will be in the game, so you’ll have a lot of exploration to kick start.

Spore: A Look at Space

There’s some new information about the role that space will play in the game.  Everyone interested in this game probably knows the basics.  You move through the stages from a single celled organism to a full-sized civilization.  The space stage was never well elaborated though, other than the fact that you could terraform planets and spread out more.  There’s finally some good news on that front.  Statements in recent interviews state that there will be a complex mission system for opening trade routes with new civilizations.  It will range from military operations to exploration and abductions.  The process sounds like a fun arcade-style addition to the end game that switches up the standard civilization parts before it.  There are also reports that 4 million stars will be in the game, so you’ll have a lot of exploration to kick start.

Godfather 2 Preview

This new game may actually be a pleasant surprise.  The development team has made several statements that they are moving away from being a GTA clone.  The focus is now shifting to a mixture of strategy and action.  They will be including total war screens as the “Don’s View” option.  You can then use this screen to carry out individual missions to harm rival families and earn rewards for your own.  It sounds like a really interesting concept that could be really cool if pulled off correctly.

Resistance 2 Preview

This sequel looks like it could really step up and be amazing.  The single player has been amped up a bit for more intense play, but they’re a little tight lipped about it for now.  The good news comes from the multiplayer arena.  There is a separate and full co-op campaign that can host up to eight players at a time.  That pales in comparison to the multiplayer, which promises up to 60 people in multi-level maps.  I hope that they can pull off Team Fortress’ success with the complex battlefields.

Games Con reveals 60GB Xbox Live Starter Pack

Microsoft's rumored Xbox Live Starter Pack has already turned up through a flyer advertising the bundle to guests at this week's Leipzig Games Convention, including members of NeoGAF's community. The pack is as predicted in earlier leaks and would include the 60GB hard drive otherwise available only with the new Xbox 360 Pro, an Xbox Live wired headset, and a three-month pass for Xbox Live Gold.

Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria Preview

While not as huge as the overwhelming favorite in the MMO world (WoW of course), The Lord of the Rings online has a pretty huge following and is know for nailing the atmosphere of the world of Tolkien’s imagining from the books. Apparently, this expansion is no exception. Your journey through the mines will take place after the fellowship stirred up some fighting in there (which leaves me wondering how your going to exit the damn place…), and is said to even include the Balrog. Interesting.

Playstation Spot Vid shows vids from DKΣ3713

Still kinda bummed out about the lack of anything tangible from Squares DKΣ3713 event? Well Cheer up, I got a video featuring all kinds of footage from the event. You get to see footage of Dissidia, Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, The 3rd Birthday (Parasite Eve 3), Final Fantasy Versus 13, Final Fantasy 13, Final Fantasy Agito 13, and Final Fantasy: Advent Children Complete. Now, to be honest, not too much of what is shown here is new, and you see the most out of Dissidia, but it’s something right?

Civilization IV: Colonization

There are some nice new screenshots and details released about this remake.  If you didn’t new, it is a re-envisioned gamed based on Sid Meier’s original Colonization.  It follows many visual aspects of the Civilization series, but it will be a stand-alone title.

The gameplay is effectively a really cool and well thought out expansion pack.  You play as one of the main nations colonizing the New World.  You’ll found your colony and do all the necessary build up.  This means exploring the countryside for reasons and Native American tribes.  Alliances and deals can be brokered with the tribes, but military might usually takes over at some point.

Positech Games reveals results of piracy survey

Cliff Harris, lead designer of Positech Games and semi-regular bit-tech.netcolumnist has been a busy boy lately. Not only has he been hard at work on the new Kudos 2 simulation game, but he's also been launching a survey into the causes of computer game piracy.

The question Cliff asked was simple; Why do people pirate my games? And yet the results that the indie developer recieved are not nearly as interesting as his own reaction to them as he takes the advice of the pirates on board and starts designing games with them in mind.

A Look at Overlord 2

Overlord and Overlord:Raising Hell were some of the most innovative games released last year.  If you ever wondered what a dark, fantasy version of Pikmin would be like, just look at Overlord.

I was personally a little worried.  The project for the sequel seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth until a peek at the features was just released.  I have to say it looks really good.  They really seem to be improving the minion play.  The team is already showing the minions fighting in a new arctic environment as well as riding a their own versions of wolves.  There are also plans for the little guys to use siege machines and even take to the sea in some naval battles.

Skate 2 Preview

There’s more information about the sequel to the popular skateboarding game.  Last year, Skate redefined what a skateboarding game should be.  It looks like the sequel will do even more.  They’ve added a ton of features to the buttons to compliment the flick controls from the last one.  You can now grab onto objects in the environments for handplants and it’s possible to take a foot off the board.  This all opens up a ton of more room for tricks, especially with the early screenshots of the environments.   This looks like another good one.

Legendary Preview

You get to shotgun werewolves and shoot rockets at griffins.  Do I honestly have to say anything else?  This looks like a really cool first-person shooter.  It’s basically the same as Call of Duty in it’s interface.  You’ll just be fighting hordes of mythical creatures instead of the usual Germans.  This really looks amazing with a good variety amongst the enemies.  Early reports are that you’ll actually have to alter your gameplay.  For example, you must blow a werewolf’s head off to kill it for good.  This isn’t just some cheap game, they really seem to be playing up the monsters.  I’m hoping this is as good as it looks when it’s released on September 30th.

The bit-tech Winter Games Preview 2008

The Winter Games PreviewThere are a lot of good games coming up this year. Maybe not as many as last year admittedly where we had massive hits like BioShock and The Orange Box and Mass Effect, all of which managed to make it into our Top Ten Game of 2007, but big nonetheless.

So, we’ve scrawled down this tidy little guide to the best games coming out in the madness of the pre-Christmas rush.

We’d love to say that this article is for you – that we’ve lovingly created this article so you can be fully prepared to spend your hard earned cash, but that would be a lie. The truth is that Joe is just awful at remembering release dates, so hopefully this should help keep him on track.

Weight room keeps Murray in shape for Games gold

Boosted by his Masters triumph, the world No 6 is banking on gym work to lift him to higher glory

By Paul Newman in BeijingTuesday, 5 August 2008

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II Preview

This was somewhat overlooked in the flurry of E3.  This sequel to the amazing RTS game last year is radically changing the formula for the game.  The focus is shifted toward a tactical environment with little to no base building.  You will instead controlling a group of units while following a free-form campaign.  The whole process basically follows like a series of quests that let you level up your squad, but failure is an option in all of them.  It’s possible to lose a lot of the extra missions without too much of a penalty.  I have to be honest and state that I’m unclear whether this was a good move or not.  I’ll keep a close eye on this one as it nears it’s release in Q2, 2009.

Atlus Officially Bringing Eternal Poison over to the States

You guys love Atlus and there unique style of games? Me too. So you’ll be happy to hear that they are bringing over yet another Strategy RPG to the states, and it, just like upcoming Persona 4, is still showing the PS2 some love. Every copy of the game will come with an extra CD with select music from the game on it. Collectors may want to look out for this one. A CG teaser trailer was released, which can be seen below. In it, it gives the release date as a not so bad 11/11/08. Screenshots can be seen at the source below.

Perfect Dark and Killer Instinct Probably coming to XBLA

So Rare has already disappointed us before, what with the Goldeneye “announcement” falling through and everything, but they might be trying to make up for it. gamefocus asked Phil Spencer, the general manager of Microsoft game studios if they would be bringing other old titles to the Xbox Live Arcade, besides Banjo-Kazooie, he responded:
“We do have the rights of the complete Rare catalogue (except GoldenEye 007). We’re studying all the possibilities to bring classic games from the past like Killer Instinct and Perfect Dark,” said Spencer.

John Carmack: Steve Jobs hates games

John Carmack, lord of the geeks and Technical Director at id Software, has spoken out against Apple's policy when it comes to gaming over the years in a recent interview. Carmack reckons that the reason Apple hasn't strayed much into the games market is primarily because of company CEO, Steve Jobs.

"The truth is Steve Jobs doesn't care about games. This is going to be one of those things that I say something in an interview and it gets fed back to him and I'm on his s***head list for a while on that, until he needs me to do something else there. But I think that that's my general opinion. He's not a gamer

Squares DKΣ3713 Coverage

So, it has come and passed, and still no FF7 Remake announcement has been made. Still that won’t kill the hopes of many clamoring fans (like myself, haha). Still, much has been announced and it seems that Square (or maybe just Nomura) is going to be showing the PSP a lot of love. Officially, Both “Final Fantasy Agito 13″ and “The 3rd Birthday” (Parasite Eve 3) are coming to the PSP. Oh and that “Big FF7 related announcement”? Final Fantasy Advent Children Complete is coming out, in Japan, in March of 2009. Included will be a demo for Final Fantasy 13, as well as HD versions of trailers for the Fabula Nova Crystallis games. Other small details were released such as the tenative release dates of the Upcoming Kingdom Hearts games (Birth By Sleep: 2009, 358/2 Days: Winter of 2008, Coded: Winter of 2008), Dissidia Being Released in December, With a Bungle Pack and it’s own potion, Kefka, and Sephiroth are both going to be playable in Dissidia, Final Fantasy 13 Will be coming to Eastern shores in 09, and the fact that Versus will be getting a simultaneous world wide release exclusively on the PS3.

IOC puts Beijing Games highlights on YouTube

BEIJING--Clips and highlights of Olympic events are to be made available on the video-sharing site YouTube, owned by Google, under an agreement with the International Olympic Committee, the IOC said in a statement.

Rage: Id’s New Game

This is a relatively interesting new title from Id.  Their new title is sort of like Fallout meets Mad Max.  Your character is an elite soldier sent forth by the remaining government of the world.  An asteroid wiped out most of the world, but a whole lot of mutants and hostile survivors made it through the nuclear winter.  You have to fight for order.  This doesn’t exactly break the mold for stories, but it looks like it should be a solid shooter that gives a cool experience. No luck on the release date though.  They aren’t saying a thing.

Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty

This should be a fun treat for fans of the series.  This isn’t a full sequel to Tools of Destruction.  Instead, it focuses on about 4 hours of solid platforming as Ratchet tries to find out what happened to Clank.  Clank’s absence means some serious changes for the gameplay.  More efforts have been put into acrobatics and wrench play.  The wrench now has the ability to act as a grappling hook or even a light gravity gun.  The best news is that it will be available for download through the PlayStation Network for $14.95 on August 21st.

A New Wolfenstein

This looks like a fairly interesting release from Id.  On the surface, it’s just another World War II shooter.  There’s the standard weapons and a bunch of tactical choices that are poor knock offs of Call of Duty.  The cool aspect is the use of the “veil.”  The story follows some Nazi scientists trying to break the veil and gain infinite power through an alternative dimension.  This matters to you, because you can already briefly cross it and utilize it’s power.  This is somewhat under wraps for now, but it looks like you can slow time, take shortcuts, and shoot giant explosive bees to kill soldiers.  I’m sold.  No release date though.