Late Night Consoling
I've been sort of dividing my gameplay time between Fallout (and now Fallout 2) and Beyond Good & Evil, but I definitely am enjoying BG&E. One thing that I find to be really funny about the game is its soundtrack. I think I kind of dig it, but boy is it ever strange...I described it recently as "Bizarro world salsa" which is probably the closest anyone's going to get to pinning down an accurate description of it. No matter what, I think it's interesting that it's so hard to clasify...but then again, maybe that's just me, and I'm admittedly not up on my musical genres. Anyone else out there care to take a crack at it?
| Xbox "Tsunami" Features Revealed Microsoft has revealed some of the new features that will be rolled out in the next big Xbox Live update, currently known as "Tsunami." The four big features announced were all rumored, and they include better team management and user-created competitions, online storage and integration with the MSN Messenger. |
| Vis Goes BAM! BAM! Entertainment (who scores major points in my book for including a word in all caps and an exclamation point in their name), has announced that they have bought out Vis Entertainment, the developers of State of Emergency. This deal obviously means BAM! (love that name!) will be publishing the sequel to that game, which has been in development without a publisher after Rockstar Games decided to pass on it. |
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| If You Ruled the Gaming World... Microsoft has announced an odd sort of contest/survey, in which they have posted a questionnaire and are asking people to mail in a video tape of their responses or send them in by e-mail. There's no real prizes per se, but Microsoft will use this as market research, and if they really like your response, they'll fly to your house (which seems like a lot less fun than flying the winners to Microsoft if you ask me) to film you for a feature on Xbox.com. I'd enter, but I'm afraid my response would seem like those old videos of Mussolini pontificating. Either that, or Howard Dean. Either way, it'd be frightening to see me banging my fist as I yell out things like, "there will be more Panzer Dragoon! A real sequel to Final Fantasy VII! A new Zillion! And for god's sake, SHENMUE 3!!!!" |
| First US Final Fantasy Concert Announced Square Enix USA has announced the first Final Fantasy symphonic concert to be held in this country. The concert will be on Monday, May 10th (that's E3 week) at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Performing music from Nobuo Uematsu's library of Final Fantasy work will be the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. It should be a great show...alas, I almost certainly won't be able to make it. |
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| Xbox Price Cut? Nah, not yet. Various sources today (including the NY Post) said today that Microsoft would be dropping the price of the Xbox from its current $179 price down to $150 in April. While that may still happen (in fact it seems quite likely) Microsoft is still denying anything of the sort, and is probably waiting to see Sony drop their price first. |
| Acclaim Hemorrhaging Less Acclaim Entertainment announced today a $31 million loss for the nine-month period ending this past December. That's hardly anything to be thrilled about, but hey, it's $9 million less than the same amount from that period last year. Moving forward, Acclaim does actually have some big-name titles for the first time in a long while, including Alias and 100 Bullets, so hopefully they'll pull themselves out of this nose dive. |
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| Dark Odyssey Revealed (Or at least the title, anyway) 1UP is reporting that later this week, SCEA will unveil Dark Odyssey, the upcoming RPG from Dark Cloud developers Level 5. This is the game that was previously only known as "next RPG" when it was first announced on Level 5's web site. Judging from the title, it would seem that this is a third game in the Dark Cloud series. |
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| PS2 as Videophone? At an IPv6 summit, Sony apparently showed off one of those convergence concepts that nobody really needs (or wants for that matter): a PS2 videophone. This was purely a prototype, and it's doubtful such a product will ever make it to market. As for future implementations of the EyeToy in online gaming...that's already been hinted at, and will likely happen, despite the incredible possibilities for abuse. |
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| EA Licenses Fonix Voice Command Software In a similar vein to the above story (although much more practical), Electronic Arts has apparently licensed the Fonix voice command software. Fonix is part of Sony's PS2 middleware program, and its software recently powered the voice command functionality in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 for Xbox. |
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| La Pucelle: Tactics Coming to America Good news for fans of Disgaea: publisher Mastiff Games has announced that La Pucelle: Tactics, a strategy RPG from Disgaea developers Nippon Ichi, will be released domestically in early May of this year. Like Disgaea, retailers' supplies may be limited, so if you're planning on getting it, be sure to pre-order it. |
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| Misc. Interviews Computer and Video Games has conducted an interview with Frank J. Lafuente and Brandon Fish, the producer and lead designer on Acclaim's upcoming 100 Bullets (PS2, Xbox). Also, GameInformer's TOCA Race Driver 2 interview talks with Codemaster's Matthew White about this upcoming Xbox racer, and HomeLAN's Syphon Filter: the Omega Strain Q&A talks with John Garvin of SCEA about their upcoming PS2 title. |
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| New Releases This Week In stores this week are James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (GC, PS2, Xbox), MX Unleashed (PS2, Xbox) and Pitfall: The Last Expedition (GC, PS2, Xbox, GBA) for assorted platforms, and for PS2 are Rise to Honor and World Soccer Winning Eleven 7 International (just rolls off the tongue there, doesn't it?). |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
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| New shots and details from Mobile Suit Gundam: Soldier's Path are up at IGN. |
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| A new trailer from Way of the Samurai 2 is up at GameSpot and The Magic Box has new shots from Onimusha 3. |
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| GameSpot has posted a new preview of Colin McRae Rally 04 and CVG has new media from TOCA Race Driver 2 and Breakdown. |
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| A preview of Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green is online over at GameSpy. |
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| GameSpy has a preview of Fight Night 2004 (PS2, Xbox). |
