Archive for July 20th, 2008
Filed under: Sales, Promotional Consideration
This week’s installment of Promotional Consideration comes with an excellent award — a Circuit City deal for the Final Fantasy IV remake, which ships to stores next week. The electronics retailer is offering a $10 gift card with any purchase of the 3D RPG, on- and offline. Factor in free-shipping for orders totaling over $24, and this makes up for “the Square Enix tax,” that extra $10 the publisher often adds to its DS games.
Now that we’ve done our part to sell the game to you, let’s look at how Square Enix has been pushing Final Fantasy IV.
Continue reading Promotional Consideration: Circuit City savings with Cecil
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading July 20th, 2008
Filed under: Blu-ray
We’ve got a number of films on Blu-ray that group together nicely this week. Let’s check out what they are:
With the release of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, a trio of The Mummy movies are being made available on Blu-ray: The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and the The Scorpion King. We also have two 90s teen slasher horrors starring young starlets of the time, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend. The BBC High Definition Natural History Collection and Earth: The Biography both chronicle the natural wonders of our planet. The only true new release this week is 21, meaning it did not have a previous DVD release — a mediocre film about the illicit world of casino card-counting, it does administer to redeem itself a bit with the presence of the beautiful Kate Bosworth.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Continue Reading July 20th, 2008
Filed under: Polls and Surveys, Community
It’s over. E3 has come to an end and the Sony camp has stolen the show. To some people. To others, they did nothing. Still others claim their opinion lies somewhere in the middle. Today, the Poll Police are putting these different opinions to the test: will more people think back on E3 positively or negatively? How did you feel about this year’s E3 for Sony?
We looked back at everything that was announced or displayed at the Sony press conference and there actually was quite a bit worthwhile mentioned. However, did the Final Fantasy XIII announcement overshadow a smattering of decently good things? Were the Sony offerings not your cup of tea? Whatever your reason, it is justified simply because it is your opinion. That’s what matters. Our last poll relied on your opinions, too, and look how that turned out.
[Update: we had a snafu where two polls were displayed. The error has been corrected and we apologize for any inconvenience and confusion.]
Continue reading PS3 Poll Police: E3 is over. Was it good for you, too?
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Continue Reading July 20th, 2008
Filed under: Homebrew, Screens
We missed an awful lot of homebrew news this past week, what with the E3 Media & Business Summit demanding our complete attention, but we intend to amend all that over the next couple of days. First on our list: The Sonic 3D game project (no relation to the Sega hedgehog).
It’s difficult enough for commercial developers to create a honorable looking 3D game for the DS, imagine the challenges that come with homemade project! Admitting that he’s neither an animator or artist, programmer Ritz used textures and model data from BioWare PC RPG Neverwinter Nights to put together this demo. Despite the distance fog, we’re impressed with the smooth animation and the maneuverable camera!
According to Ritz, Sonic’s features include skeletal animation, static and dynamic point lights, shadow volumes, skyboxes, picking, gravity, and object and environment collision detection. He also hopes to eventually include an “interactive 3d map builder for easy world creation and object and creature placement.” Slick!
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading July 20th, 2008
Filed under: News
Okay, confession time: I never played Viva Piñata the first time around. The allure of festive animal husbandry was insufficient to entice me into the console purchase required. I’ve researched the original (by, uh, watching some YouTube videos and such), but I went into my quick demo of Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise without a real preconceived notion of how Viva Piñata is supposed to look or play.
How was this ever anything but a DS game? The tasks involved in playing Viva — watering and planting plants, clearing land, building structures for critters — make so much sense in the top-down perspective of Pocket Paradise that it’s hard to imagine this game in a different perspective on a different system. It would be so much harder, I think, to administer a large-scale garden in a more zoomed-in view. Having a larger, wider look at the goings-on in the garden makes the game seem more natural and easier.
Continue reading E308: Viva Pinata was an Xbox game?
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading July 20th, 2008
Filed under: News, Xbox Live Arcade
During Microsoft’s E3 press conference, the announcement of Portal: Still Alive caused OMG MEGATON waves of excitement throughout the fanboy nation. That was until we discovered it wasn’t a full fledged sequel and would instead be a re-release of the Portal game as experienced through the Orange Box with additional content. Soon, OXM confirmed the new content wouldn’t be story driven which was a bit of a bummer, but now we’re hearing from Valve’s Doug Lombardi that the addition content won’t even be original.
Lombardi informed GameSetWatch that Portal: Still Alive’s additional content will actually come from the fan created, fan tribute Portal: The Flash Version. Levels that can be experienced for free, online but now re-certified for inclusion on the 360 as part of Portal: Still Alive. It’s kinda sucky if you think about it, because the flash inspired levels will not feature any story elements or the iconic GLaDOS herself. Major bummer.
So, for those who have yet to experience Portal in all its portal creation glory, Portal: Still Alive looks to be a perfect purchase. It’ll be a stand alone XBLA download featuring all the original Portal content plus a few levels from Portal: The Flash Version all for a reasonable price. But for those who already own the Orange Box, Still Alive may not be worth the MS points. Unless, of course, achievements are the main draw or you don’t own a computer to play Portal: The Flash Version. If that’s the case, then how are you reading this? Public library computers?
[Via Joystiq]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading July 20th, 2008
Filed under: Peripherals
One of the most popular and best-reviewed PSP cases is the Playgear Pocket by Logitech. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit the PSP Slim & Lite. Logitech is about to change that with the launch of the PlayGear Pocket Slim next month. It seems to be the same exact case, except sized to fit the PSP-2000. It comes with a skin template that allows you to create your own custom skin. It is still made out of polycarbonate and you still don’t have to take it out of the case to use the PSP. It even fits the larger 2200 mAH extended-life battery.
It might a little less sturdy though, according to the Logitech site, the original case came with a 2 year warranty; this new one comes with only a 1 year warranty. Will you be picking this up when it launches in August for $14.99?
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading July 20th, 2008
Filed under: News
What’s a better incentive to create a level in LittleBigPlanet than good, hard cold cash? According to recent comments by David Reeves, president of SCEE, that’s what’s planned for the upcoming community-driven platformer. “What we’re trying to do with LittleBigPlanet is almost iTunes meets eBay in the sense that once an individual or a developer has qualified by producing certain levels or certain add-ons, they will then be able in the future to exchange these and make money out of them,” Reeves notes. “Eventually, it’s feasible that you might well see the first LittleBigPlanet millionaire!”
It appears that how much creators can charge for content is also user-determined. “Even if you charge less than one euro, it doesn’t take many downloads if you’ve got a really strong LittleBigPlanet level for people to be able to make money. It’s a great way for people to show others what they can do.” This may give aspiring level designers a chance to not only show off their creativity, but turn their skills into profit.
[Thanks, Alex H.!]
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Continue Reading July 20th, 2008
Filed under: PC, Strategy
Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization is an interesting title in its marketing and presentation. The Civ IV tag is put on the game to give an idea of what to expect for those who don’t remember the original Colonization, but the game is also clearly based on the Civilization IV engine and uses similar assets. Also, given some of the well-designed mods in Civ IV expansion, Beyond the Sword, we were wondering if Colonization would end up being a glorified mod or appear to be an actual new game? We still haven’t come to a conclusion on that question, but there’s a lot in this stand-alone product that certainly goes beyond what we’d call “a mod.”
For starters, and it really bites that we can’t show the UI or find videos, the interface and music are different from Civilization IV. Also, the graphics have been given a affable boost and, seeing them in person, it’s certainly noticeable. Senior Producer Jesse Smith also walked us through several other things that make Colonization different from Civ IV.
%Gallery-24746%
Continue reading Joystiq E3 eyes-on: Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization
Permalink | Email this | Comments
SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
Continue Reading July 20th, 2008
Filed under: Deals and Bargains
ZOMG! There’s deals to be dealt with, money to be saved, so why waste precious time, let’s just get to it!
This week, over at Best Buy, they’re offering RSV2 for $40, UT3, Quake Wars, Deadliest Catch (w00t!) and CoD4 GOTY for $50. And that’s about it. Sadly, Circuit City doesn’t have a darn thing to bid Xbox 360 fanboys either which is, uhh … sad? Now that we look at it, Target stores don’t even have any 360 deals, not a single copy of a game on sale. Another major bummer. You know, this has to be one of the worst Sunday deal roundups, like, EVAR! Who would have thought that getting RSV2 for $40 would be a deal highlight? Stupid retail conglomerates, don’t you know that all we want is money savings on 360 games and don’t care that you have popcorn makers on sale?
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading July 20th, 2008
Previous Posts
