Late Night Consoling
I received a pleasantly surprising e-mail this afternoon inviting me to join the Resident Evil Outbreak online beta test. I've beta tested other PS2 online games before (I was on both EQOA betas, even if I never got around to playing them much) so I assume that's why I was in this pool. Anyway, assuming I make the final cut (the first 3,000 respondents will, so chances are that I'll get in) I'm looking forward to giving this a whirl. I've felt for a long time now that the Resident Evil franchise has been stuck in a loop, but this game got surprisingly good reviews in Japan when it was released, so who knows...it might be just what the franchise needs to get on its feet again.
| Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon Clarified It looks like there was some confusion last week about Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon. RPG Gamer has confirmed that this is not a wholly new game in the series, but is indeed a remake of the original Shining Force from the 16-bit days. There are some additions however, including three new characters and that dubious-sounding card-based battle system. Also, it would appear that the screenshots posted here on Friday were in fact from Shining Soul II, and not this game. For actual shots from Resurrection of the Dark Dragon head over to The Magic Box (although there's no gameplay shots there yet). Thanks to Amankhan for passing this along. |
| More GTA Trademark Madness Following up on another story from last week, IGN has dug up a few more trademark registrations from Rockstar parent company Take Two Interactive. So what's the latest? On top of the already-mentioned GTA5, GTA6 and GTA: San Andreas, there's now GTA: Sin City, GTA: Bogota and would you believe GTA: Tokyo? My guess is at least one of those most recent ones is fake (probably all three) and was done to throw off fans from guessing the real name of the game before it's announced. |
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| Square Abandons Chrono Break Trademark Sorry Chrono Trigger/Cross fans, Square Enix has abandoned their Chrono Break trademark. The possibility still exists of course for it to be made under a different name, but 1UP's story on this also cites sources within Square that tell them that a third game in the series has "never been seriously undertaken." |
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| EyeToy Video Conferencing? According to a rumor posted at the bottom of a news item at gamesindustry.biz, Sony is said to be, "encouraging the use of Eye Toy to enable video chat in games". Such functionality was suggested early in the development of Sony's hit add-on, but was dismissed for fears of abuse and well...porn, which is a particularly thorny issue considering the all-ages appeal of the EyeToy. If it does happen, there will have to be some major safeguards in place, because all it takes is one dirty old man exposing himself to a child to cast a sinister light on the whole thing. |
| PSP Price Hints Pretty much everyone's thoughts about those amazing specs on the PSP is that it will probably cost an arm and a leg...well, hints are being dropped that it may indeed require a second mortgage to pick up. Over at gamesindustry.biz is a report about the latest murmurs, and word is that Sony may sell this with the intention of making money on the hardware alone, which is a major change from the low-price-high-software-royalty model for the PS2 and other systems. So what's the latest price projection? Sony Europe president Chris Deering says that it's going to be, "closer to £200 than £300." Which puts closer to $300 than $450...but either one is going to price it alongside the big home consoles, and certainly not within the realm of the GBA. |
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| Darkwatch Announced Sammy Studios has taken the wraps off of the first game to be developed at their new studio here in the US. Called Darkwatch: Curse of the West, the game is a first person shooter for PS2 and Xbox that has a pretty unique premise: the game combines a vampiric horror story with the world of the old west. First looks at the game can be found at IGN and 1UP. |
| SimGage EA announced today plans to release The Sims Bustin' Out to Nokia's N-Gage cell-phone handheld system. The game will have exclusive objects (it's safe to assume there will be side talkin') and extra mini-games. |
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| New LucasArts Content on Xbox Live LucasArts has announced new downloadable content for two of their games. For Secret Weapons Over Normandy, the third free download contains one new plane, a new single player mission and a new skin for another plane. And the first new multiplayer mission for Armed & Dangerous has also been released. |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
| IGN has a hands-on look at the North American version of Phantasy Star Online Episode III: C.A.R.D. Revolution, |
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| New shots from Spy Fiction are up at GameSpot tonight and GameSpy has a new preview of Nightshade. |
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| GameSpot has a new preview of Silent Scope Complete and new shots from Star Wars: Republic Commando, IGN goes hands-on with the Xbox version of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow at CES, The Magic Box has new shots from Phantom Brave and Team Xbox has a hands-on look at Collin McRae Rally 04. |
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| New shots and movies from Metroid: Zero Mission are up at Pocket.IGN. |
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| IGN has new shots up from Hitman: Contracts (PS2, Xbox) and GameInformer goes hands-on with Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (PS2, Xbox). |
