Gallery: Warriors: Legends of Troy

Posted on January 8, 2011 by geelw

Koei Canada has been “quietly” working away on a very interesting twist to the long-running Sengoku Mousou franchise, Warriors: Legends of Troy, set to storm onto the PS3 and Xbox 360 across North America on March 8, 2011 (3/25/11 in the UK). On first glance, the game has the makings of the more familiar Dynasty Warriors series, a good thing for fans of the series who want more. However, the combination of Greek and Roman “historical” and mythological elements plus copious amounts of blood (and the Mature rating that comes with it) should give this one enough potential to draw in fans of everything from Spartan: Total Warrior, God of War, 300 and Showtime's awesomely gory Spartacus series. The grittier visual style here is in direct contrast to Omega Force's work (as you'll see in the latest Dynasty Warriors 7 screens), but this more realistic route fits the brutal hack & slash gameplay all the more.

Activision Wants You To Go To Hong Kong For Some True Crime…

Posted on January 7, 2011 by geelw

Nope, it’s NOT a contest with an amazing prize (although that would be really cool). It’s just the single screen shot sent along to promote True Crime: Hong Kong along with a lengthy game description. In a nutshell, the upcoming PS3 and Xbox 360 game will be the first open-world game set in Hong Kong, it will feature a ton of familiar HK talent doing voice-overs, over 100 songs, hand-to-hand combat inspired by HK and Hollywood action flicks, guns galore (Woo, Woo!), plenty of illegal activities to participate in and I’m sure, a Mature rating based on all the other info in the sell sheet. If anything, it should be a heck of a lot better than Stranglehold was. Developer UFG (United Front Games) has quite a task at hand here, so I’ll shut up until I get some hands-on time with the game…

Gallery: No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise

Posted on January 6, 2011 by geelw

Travis Touchdown is baaaaaaaaack (and so are the ladies!), and this time, they're coming to you on the PS3 (with Move controller support, so go buy one if you haven't yet). You all get one guess what this one's going to be rated (don't let that RP fool you one bit). I absolutely loved the first two Wii games (quirks and all), so it will be ridiculously interesting to see how the game turns out on a more powerful platform. So far, Santa Destroy and its denizens look pretty darn slick in HD, that's for sure. Go ogle the screens below the jump – I'm off to play some games… (edit! a few more screens added)

Review: Desktop Dungeons

Posted on January 4, 2011 by geelw

Platform: PC

Developer: QCF Design

Publisher: QCF Design

# of Players: 1

ESRB Rating: N/A

Official Site

Score: A+

I made a rather interesting “mistake” a few months back and I don't think I'll recover anytime soon, nor do I want to. I'd stopped playing Fallout: New Vegas while waiting for a patch to be released and one thing I did during that downtime was check out QCF Design's Desktop Dungeon, a free rogue-like RPG that condenses hours of gameplay into quick ten minute (or less) sessions. The “mistake” was downloading, then playing the game, thinking it would be yet another well-intentioned indie with a few too many charming flaws. Oops. That ten minute session (which was actually twelve, according to my PC clock) hooked me in and I've ended up finding a few minutes every other day or so to dive into DD for a quick session or eight. Best mistake I've ever made, but definitely very lousy for productivity, laundry and a few other non-Desktop Dungeons related things.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 Gallery: Atari & Eden Want To Keep You Indoors For A While…

Posted on December 26, 2010 by geelw

If you've never had the chance to play the original Test Drive Unlimited on the Xbox 360*, you missed out on one of the more addictive pure driving games on current generation consoles. While you could in tons of events in offline or through the innovative M.O.O.R. (Massively Open Online Racing) system, the real thrill (for me at least) came in hitting the road in any car and just driving around Oahu for hours. Uncovering every inch of highway for one of the tougher Achievements was a blast and it was pretty cool to see lots of people played the game in the same way. With Test Drive Unlimited 2 hitting PS3, PC and Xbox 360 on February 8, 2011, here's a look at some of Eden Games' nicely rendered cars from a few angles. I'll add older screens to this gallery sometime next week.

TDU2 takes place in Ibiza and an upgraded version of Oahu from the first game (accessible once you've “leveled” enough), so it's going to be a must-play for me, as I'm insanely curious to see what's new, what's changed and how well the overall game experience has turned out.

Phantom Brave: The Hermuda Triangle Coming to PSP

Posted on December 22, 2010 by geelw

I still have ringing in my ears and a mild headache from all that Hyperdimension Neptunia(aaa*cough!*) stuff yesterday, so I missed running this nice cover art and screens from NISA’s upcoming PSP strategy RPG. According to Amazon’s listing, the game will feature “new story chapters, characters, items, better graphics, and a revamped user interface”. In addition, the game is now “more user-friendly and packs more content for over 100 hours of game play”. March 18, 2011 is the release date (unless something changes). With UMD games looking as if they’re on the way out after next year, folks like me will be grabbing what great games we can, that’s for sure.

While the official website for the game is still in the works, the cover art and four screens are here for your approval. There are a bunch more shots from the game over at Amazon (in case you didn’t click that link above already), so go peek at those if this one’s up your alley… Back in a bit – the post office is calling me…

Why Killzone 3 Will Be A Blast, No Matter HOW You Play It

Posted on December 20, 2010 by geelw

Let's see now: so far, I've played demos of Killzone 3 in 3D with a Dual Shock 3, in regular HD with a Dual Shock 3, in HD with the Move/NaviCon combo and in HD with the upcoming Move Sharp Shooter peripheral and each time I'm floored by what Guerrilla can do with the PS3. Alright, Sony, you can stop now. I'm sold…AGAIN. Hell, I was sold months ago when I saw the E3 demo running in not quite fully optimized 3D because I “got” what the team at Guerrilla were trying to accomplish with the narrative (as well as all that wonderful tech they're wisely hoarding to themselves).

An updated demo of the game along with Sony's new Move Sharp Shooter attachment were drawing lots of attention at Sony's Holiday 2010 event last week and after watching a few editor types fumble away with the peripheral, I was wondering if this was yet another game that was going to be sunk by a well-intentioned but flawed one-use controller. Then I got the chance to try the thing out for myself and found out it's actually quite remarkable once you get a feel for the peripheral.

Mass Effect 2 PS3 Hands-On: BioWare, Beautiful & Brilliant

Posted on December 19, 2010 by geelw

PS3 owners may have missed out on the original Mass Effect, but the stellar sequel plus four DLC chapters and a little something extra (plus a LOT of something extra under the hood) is headed your way in a great standard edition pack that's bound to fly off store shelves faster than the new Normandy hits light speed. I had the opportunity to play a demo version of Mass Effect 2 and was immediately floored by the visual upgrade (thanks to what was recently revealed as the Mass Effect 3 engine), the tweaked puzzles and a few other niceties BioWare has seen fit to add. I'd have to safely say this is going to be the definitive console version of the game and even if you've played the Xbox 360 version, you might want to snap up a copy of this one, provided you also have a PS3 in the house.

Playstation Move Heroes Hands-On Update – Nihilistic Aims For The Core

Posted on December 19, 2010 by geelw

When last we saw Playstation Move Heroes (formerly known as Heroes on the Move) back in October, the demo build was indeed a lot of fun to play but there was obviously more coming in terms of levels, game modes and other features. Last week at Sony's Holiday 2010 event, Nihilistic's peppy Design Director Harley Baldwin White-Wiedow and SCEA's equally peppy Caley Roberts showed of the latest build which was more polished and quite packed to the rafters with many lovely and destructive things to do. Not content to shove out a simple Move-enabled mini-game cash-in for the younger set, Nihilistic is cooking up a solid, hugely fun (and funny) game any fans of Sony's mascot franchises will be proud to add to their collections.

Knights Contract Update: New Screens, Art, Release Date

Posted on December 18, 2010 by geelw

Namco Bandai's rather surreal fantasy/horror/action game hybrid has been on my radar pretty since its initial announcement and now, the Game Republic-developed title finally has a release date. February 22, 2011 is when you'll want to be lurking around your favorite game retailer (or creeping in to pick up your pre-ordered copy). The single-player PS3 and Xbox 360 game features Heinrich, an immortal executioner and Gretchen, a resurrected witch who acts as Heinrich's AI partner. Namco Bandai hopes that the mix of fantasy elements, high action sequences and M-rated gore coupled with the game's bizarre menagerie of monsters might lift a few of those lingering holiday blahs right out of your system.

Speaking of bizarre-looking monsters, more nice concept art images and renders of two bosses, Straeggle and Trude are below the jump along with some new screens featuring the pair of beastly beauties in action.