Video Games – Page 338

Holy Diver suits Batman! It’s the Bioshock Demo!

Bioshock

The summer is generally a boring time for gamers. We get one, maybe two good games that’ll last a week if we’re lucky. It’s not until the end of summer, nearly the start of fall that the good games start to come out. Coming next week we’re getting one of those great games… at least us 360 and PC gamers. Bioshock, the Sandbox First Person Shooter from the people that brought us Freedom Force, System Shock 2 and Swat 4, is being released on the 21st. The game takes place in a once Utopian underwater city in the 1960s, where now super powered druggies, little girls, and giant monsters in old fashion divers suits are out to kill you.

It all looks very awesome, and with many great features, but it’s more than a week away. WE CAN’T WAIT THAT LONG! Well now we won’t have to. Today Irrational Games (or now formally known as 2K Boston and 2K Australia) released a demo to this game on the Xbox Live Marketplace. How much of the game can you play? What abilities do you get? Are you going to crap your pants after a Big Daddy starts chasing after you? I don’t know, the game literally crashed all of Xbox Live, and the downloading is a bit slow. I’ll get more to you when I can, but try to download the demo ASAP, because it’s slower than… well something really slow.

[Via: Major Nelson]

Sierra and Radical working on PROTOTYPE

Prototype Preview

Sierra Entertainment will be releasing a new open-ended, do-anything sort of game next year, under development by the almighty Radical Entertainment, known for games like Scarface: The World is Yours and The Simpsons Hit & Run. The game is titled ‘PROTOTYPE’ (the caps are entirely intentional) and will be set in New York City.

The game will revolve around a man named Alex Mercer, who has had a disturbing past and is currently raging a war. Things go downhill and you find yourself wrapped up in a story full of deception, double-crossing, conspiracy and perhaps more video game clichés.

Mercer will have unique powers that allow him to change shape and morph into anyone who crosses his path, complete with skills and powers. While I wouldn’t the call the ability particularly innovative, I’d like to see it in a video game! This ability will be no doubt connected to Mercer’s shady past which he must uncover while saving the world. C’mon, when are there going to be more original plots?

But good plot or not, Kelly Zmak, president of Radical Entertainment made me happy with the following lines:

Radical Entertainment set out to create the most dynamic video game character ever imagined. From free-form movement to over-the-top combat action; PROTOTYPE can climb or wall-run across any surface, jump 30 stories high, and destroy anything that crosses his path. Our team at Radical has built upon the technology that drove our previous best-selling games and now has the freedom to dream big and imagine a powerful character in a sprawling city like New York, cloaked in a conspiracy and ripped from today’s headlines.

Sounds real sexy, doesn’t it? I just hope these uber abilities aren’t some lame stuff added near the end of the game for an hour. I hate it when they do that.

PROTOTYPE will be coming out for the Xbox 360, the PS3 and your good ol’ PC in the Summer of 2008. Watch for it, but first check out these screenies:

Unreal Wars: Episode II – The Epic Strikes Back

Gears of War

One of the more popular topics doing the rounds these days in the games industry is that of the ensuing Epic Games – Silicon Knights legal war. To summarize, Silicon Knights claims that Epic gave them a faulty engine, while they used a better (but same version) of the engine to make their shiny Gears of War. Epic has declared war and claims that Silicon Knights is just bitching and that they haven’t even paid Epic. You can find the complete details here, in the Stuffwelike Archives.

Epic’s lawyers have thrown a counter-motion against Silicon Knights, which reads:

Silicon Knights wants to take Epic’s Licensed Technology, pay nothing for it, and use it any way it pleases. Having exploited Epic’s intellectual property to its advantage, Silicon Knights now seeks to renege on its payment obligations under the License Agreement. It is Silicon Knights, not Epic, that has engaged in deceit, infringement of Epic’s intellectual property rights, breach of contract, and unfair business practices.

But what is most interesting is the way Epic slaps SK in the face by claiming that when the Unreal 3 engine was licensed, Epic gave no warranty. Silicon Knights demanded one, and didn’t get it. They (Denis Dyack, head of SK, to be specific) signed the License Agreement anyways (he must have skipped it, like the rest of us). The agreement reportedly reads:

[Epic does] not include any warranty that (i) the functions performed by the Unreal Engine… will meet [Silicon Knights’] requirements, nor (ii) that the operations of the Unreal Engine… will be bug free or error free in all circumstances, nor (iii) that any defects in the Unreal Engine… can or will be corrected.

If that is for real, Silicon Knights may have very well stepped on a minefield by shooting a lawsuit. If Epic wins, Silicon Knights will be forced to produce lots of money. We wonder where the Gears of War will turn now in this truly Epic conflict that is simply Too Human to be Unreal and Silicon…
I’d better leave now.

[Via Shacknews]

Free game, free prizes – what’s not to like?

Battle Ball is Mindwave Games’ first fully online multiplayer game that is reminiscent of Pong yet now in 3D. As far as gameplay goes the big twist is how easy it is to play the game. Control the paddle with your mouse and to hit the ball on a curve simply move the mouse quickly in some direction as you hit the ball.

Mindwave is giving gamers the ability to compete in this free game for tournament prizes. The first couple of prizes are Game Maker 7 software license plus “Game Maker’s Apprentice”, and Civilization IV. I’ve tried Battle Ball out and don’t worry because it doesn’t give you spyware or other crap. There really was no lag in matches either.

Kirby Zhang, the President of Mindwave Games says, “We hope to get sponsors at some point, but right now we’re buying the prize for our players. It’s really not that expensive compared to actually making this game.”

Free game, free prizes = no brainer. Download it now!

Don’t buy a Xbox 360!

Xbox 360 HDMI

Yes it’s true don’t because in the coming weeks Microsoft will be rolling out brand new Premium consoles that include HDMI outputs. Microsoft isn’t making a big deal over this because Microsoft will not be recalling the old Xbox 360 Premiums that are currently in stores to replace them with the new HDMI hardware. So if you can, wait a couple weeks or ideally a couple of months until more reports come flooding in across the net about the new HDMI Xbox 360 Premium units being available in stores! These new models will also include a 65nm processor aka the Xbox 360 will be quieter and will not run as hot as the current 90nm processors do.

Finish the fight. In a soda can.

Halo 3 Mountain Dew

Out now in stores is another ridiculous piece of Microsoft’s Halo 3 promotional merchandise – the official Halo 3 Mountain Dew “game fuel”! “Game Fuel?!” how much cheesier can you get?

Thew new citrus-cherry flavoured ‘Dew sports The Chief on the can, together with the Halo 3 logo. I don’t care about the drink itself (although I like Dew over all the other drinks out there), but this is going to be one hell of a collector’s item. Maybe years later you can tell your grandchildren that you actually had this awesome Master Chief soda can! That is, of course, if you haven’t sold it for a ridiculous price on eBay.

[Via Kotaku]