Video Games Daily News Digest

Sometimes a game developer will couch their announcements in order to see how well their product will sell. However, with possibly every gamer in the known universe salivating over November 10, Infinity Ward does not have this problem in the slightest with Modern Warfare 2. In fact, they are already planning future map packs and are announcing them on cans of energy drink(!).

Teaming up with the Monster Energy drink, Activision is bringing us Monster Assault Energy with theme giveaways, game offers, and the map packs we talked about to be released in Spring 2010. We just hope the taste will be gone by the time the map packs arrive. Prove us wrong, Monster - we dare you.

The Resident Evil 5 Alternate Edition announced at the Tokyo Game Show was a seemingly big exclusive for the PS3, featuring motion-controlled gameplay for the upcoming wand peripheral as well as a new playable sequence in the original Resident Evil mansion. But all that zombie-laced extra content may not be staying on the PS3 for long.

Dengenki Online reports that Capcom will be releasing the extra content, presumably the waggle-less mansion sequence, on the Xbox 360 “in a different format.” It doesn’t take half a brain (or an infection of the T-Virus) to figure out that the Xbox 360 will be seeing some new Resident Evil 5 content via DLC. The real question is when and how much. Capcom is keeping mum on the details for now, though.

As the center of power, biggest city and capitol of Ferelden, it’s safe to say players will be spending quite a bit of time in Denerim, seen in the video above, witnessing rile up speeches, catching pick pockets, the odd stabber, and taking in the lovely architecture. BioWare’s been revealing the different world locations of Dragon Age: Origins for a while now, check the game’s official site to catch up on ‘em all.

By the time I finished with Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, my left thumb felt like it was about to fall off. In fact, while playing through it, I frequently had to take breaks during long encounters to rest my aching D-pad hand. But through it all, I persisted. Yes, it’s my job, but also because while I felt I had seen most of what the game had to offer long before the end, I wanted to continue on for more selfish reasons — I wanted to know how the story ended.

Days’ story deals with the concept of souls (or in this case, hearts) and what exactly makes a person “real,” as seen, mostly, through Roxas’ point of view, as he works to understand who he is and where he came from. Regular Kingdom Hearts protagonist Sora is deep in a healing slumber after the events of Chain of Memories, with the witch Naminé working to put his memories back in place. Fans will recall playing as Roxas, Sora’s “Nobody” (a strong person with no heart), at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2, and Days will take you through most of the 358 days of Roxas’ life, from when he first joins Organization XIII leading up to the beginning of KH2.

BioWare is introducing Denerim today, the capital city of Ferelden and a place that’s “a key part to success in your mission to save the world against The Blight” in Dragon Age: Origins. There’s a video coming up shortly which will give a little more background on the place.

Activision is well-known/notorious for pumping out the sequels. Just look at the Guitar Hero and Call of Duty franchises. It might as well change the company name to Now That’s What I Call Games, Inc. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that the publisher is already looking towards a sequel for their upcoming rhythm game DJ Hero. According to GamesIndustry.biz, Activision-owned developer FreeStyleGames has already partnered up with an unidentified UK-based indie developer, presumably to work on the next DJ Hero. Meanwhile, the publisher itself has supposedly reached out to world-renowned and award-winning DJ Qbert for a potential roster spot. Activision was able to score top talent such as DJ Shadow, Grand Master Flash, and Daft Punk for their first DJ Hero foray, and there’s no doubt adding Qbert would be yet another coup for Bob-o’s burgeoning turntable-centric series.

DJ Hero comes out in North America on October 27 for the 360, PS3, PS2, and Wii.

If you haven’t played Sins of a Solar Empire in a while, you might want to keep an eye on the update that will be dropping soon. Ironclad has posted a massive list of balance changes over at the official forums, which they hope will bring every unit back “into the pool of viable tools.”

“Naturally, trying to figure exactly what those changes needed to be was not an easy problem but one of the best ways was to play the game against as many players as possible so we once again took to playing regularly on Ironclad Online,” wrote an Ironclad representative.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t use our real names because when we did in the past we were the targets of unreasonable unholy alliances. Such circumstances aren’t great for collecting data and analyzing strategies. Sorry for the smurfing but it was for a good cause.”

Existing somewhere between Nancy Drew and James Bond, MySims: Agents takes the superdeformed MySims characters and adds a heaping amount of intrigue (or as much intrigue as an E-rated game is legally allowed to contain). But while casting adorable MySims in a kid-friendly, superspy adventure is an idea filled with potential, the game suffers from the one thing a superspy shouldn’t have to endure — boring and repetitive cases.

Like any Sims game, you start by creating, outfitting, and naming your character (detective Blaze, at your service), who is quickly recruited as a Special Agent after solving a couple neighborhood mysteries. The best things the game has going for it are the peppy characters, story (which involves a race to find the powerful “Crown of Nightmares” before the head of the evil MorcuCorp), and safe-for-all-ages humor (which relies more on witty writing and good comic timing than simple slapstick mayhem). It’s a direction that respects the intelligence of the game’s younger, target demographic, but unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the puzzle-solving gameplay.

Sony has experienced a bit of a retailer backlash against the PSP Go. However, UK product manager Claire Backhouse told Gamesindustry.biz that they had expected worse.

“We were very aware of concerns when we went into it and I actually expected a lot more negative responses than we actually got,” she said.

“They were really quite fine with it. They see it as a way of getting people into the store because it’s new interest, a new product. And they’ve had such strong sales as well of PSP-3000 almost off the back of it.”

With the digital-only PSP Go releasing tomorrow in stores, anyone buying one will be held at the mercy of the PlayStation Store and what games it offers up for sale. NIS America is looking to take advantage of what might be the best opportunity to take place of the marketplace by re-releasing some of their old titles on the PlayStation Network and have a 50% sale on six games for the next week.

For one week, you’ll be able to buy the following games for between $4.99 and $9.99: Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?; Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light; Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness; Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This?; Dragoneer’s Aria; and Mana Khemia: Student Alliance.

And in a matter that is completely and utterly irrelevant to PSP Go owners, NIS America is asking the public for help deciding if one of their games — Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! — should be released on UMD. A poll has been posted on PlayStation.Blog with the “No” option currently pulling away with 60% of the responses. If you ever want to see Badman hit store shelves, do your part and get voting.

« Previous entries