Famitsu scans of Resident Evil 5 hit the internets today. No translation but some Japanese speaking dynamo has grabbed a few tidbits from the article:

- A new trailer will be shown in the very near future.
- For now, Famitsu will show images and some info from one part of that trailer. (intro paragraph written by Takeuchi)
- There’s a new female character, shown holding a shotgun and wearing a tank top and boots similar to the ones Jill wore in RE3.
- In addition to areas that make use of sunlight as a gameplay dynamic, there will be darker, shadow-filled areas as well, such as a cavern where Chris utilizes a flashlight. There will be an intense contrast between light and dark.
- Chris is shown using his knife, a sniper rifle above a bridge that’s above a river, and of course the handgun.
- A few pieces of artwork are shown, such Chris fighting villagers near a crashed helicopter, that same helicopter flying amidst a smoke-filled sky, and Chris witnessing the helicopter being shot down. There’s also some kind of garden in the cavern with a giant hole above it, allowing the sunlight in.
- Chris is shown holding a blond girl noticeably shorter than him in a building.
- A picture of a chainsaw and the right leg of its weilder is shown.
- Chris will be up against very powerful enemies once again, and this shot of some creature behind iron bars is reminiscent of Chris’s previous enemies, such as CODE: Veronica’s Nosferatu (although it was Claire who faced him) and the REmake’s Lisa Trevor.
Those two creatures were imprisoned at some point as well.

And here are the scans:

The zombies look more like zombies!

First off, F YEAH!

We got a small whiff of what Rare was cooking in their VIP barns when they showed a teaser for what looked like a new Banjo title around X06. Well now they’ve gone and given us a taste of Nuts & Bolts. Slowly, things have made themselves clearer in the past few days. Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts isn’t a racer as was speculated upon when two screenshots showed up on the internets depicting Banjo in a variety of vehicles. Actually, I think it would be more accurate to say that its not entirely a racer, but not entirely a platformer.

Now there are dozens of screenshots, an official press release, and even a video or two. According to Rare, they’ve gone and made a new type of game with Nuts & Bolts, some kind of a vehicular platforming adventure. Basically theres good old fashioned Banjo platforming with the addition of customizable vehicles that help you complete objectives in order to keep the ownership deeds to Spiral Mountain. I could go on about the new art style, incredible graphics, and the deep vehicle customization mechanic, but instead I’ll let the the screens and videos speak for themselves.

More here

Nuts & Bolts is set to ship this November.

Just a reminder that a new and extremely awesome Dragonball Z game is coming out in just a couple of weeks. Burst Limit does three things right so far and I haven’t even touched the game yet. First, it gets rid of the crazy long subtitles like Budokai, Tenkaichi, etc. Second, the graphics are the closest to watching an actual anime I have ever seen. Third, this:

There are some cool pre-order deals going down as well. I think I might go pre-order the PS3 version for the Blu-ray movie (DBZ in 1080p should rock my face off). Here are the details:

According to the new Game Informer article, the successor of Guitar Hero 3 will include:

- Create a song. Although these exclude vocals due to storage and possible copyright issues.
- You’ll be able to name your song as well as create album art. After you’ve done all that you can upload it to GH Tunes where anyone can download it.
- You’ll be limited to 5 songs at first. But depending on the ratings you get you’ll possibly be able to upload 10 or more.
- The song sharing mode will be in the Wii and PS2 versions also, but GI says it’s unlikely that it’ll be as robust as the PS3 and 360 versions.
- Drums, bass, vocals guitar
- Create a rocker
- Create a guitar and drums
- All songs will be master tracks
- They don’t want to discuss specifics on track listing out of fear of being scooped by the competition. However they confirmed 4 bands: Van Halen, The Eagles, Linkin Park and Sublime.
- A new guitar designed by Red Octane that includes a new input mechanic that’ll “impact the way you play GH in the future”.
- GI saw see through notes while playing that Neversoft said was the new input mechanic and that they were trying to patent.

Whoa, I didn’t expect a create-a-song option. The instruments were expected but all master tracks? That’s impressive.

Source

It’s a friday night, and you’re really bored of the games you have. You get in the car and drive over to Blockbuster, only to find that all of the games you would be interested in getting have all been rented out.

Well Blockbuster aims to change that with their new gaming initiative. The games section at Blockbusters across America is being expanded, with new options for getting your games. Not only will the stores be stocked with the latest game releases to rent, but the store will begin selling these games new as well. In addition to Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 games, Blockbuster will soon be adding Nintendo DS to the list of games you’ll be able to take out. As if that wasn’t convenient enough, you’ll be able to purchase consoles too. The store will have a special Playstation 3 bundle which will include:A 40 GB Sony PS3

• A PS3 Media Remote
• HDMI cables
• Spiderman 3 on Blu-Ray
• Transformers Game
• A 12 Week PS3/Blu-Ray rental card (one week free rental a week for 12 weeks)

Ubisoft Montreal has announced plans for a follow up on the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy, with a promise of a ‘new breed of gameplay’. If you recall the great Ubisoft leak of 2006 included art for a new Prince of Persia game. It had a unique look to it, which this announcement describes as a ‘brand-new illustrative art style’.

The game features a corrupted world that the prince will need to heal. It seems that the prince in this version isn’t the same prince from the Sands of Time trilogy. The story is less focused on reality, but more magical fantasy. When you “heal” parts of the world, the transformation occurs in real time (sky returns to normal color, plants regrow, etc.).

Some notable differences between this and the Sands of Time Trilogy, is the lack of time control. This was a big feature for the last games, and it will be interesting to see it go. The environments won’t be as linear, but instead more open organic, ala Zelda. It’s not as open world as Assassins Creed, but the paths will offer multiple options. As seen in leaked concept art, the prince has a Glove which allows him to slide along walls. He can use it for combat situations too. Ubisoft seems to be taking a different approach to combat as well. Instead of a room full of enemies to hack and slash to pieces, there will be fewer enemies and they will be more powerful leading to more interesting battles.

Ubisoft release a video on their site of one of their artists doing an exclusive illustration of the Prince. It can be viewed Here.

I’m interested in the new art style, and really can’t wait to go hands on with the new Prince of Persia this holiday season.

KLind

PS2 and Wii owners will be getting an expansion disc for Rock Band this July. Better than no DLC.

• 30 Seconds to Mars — “The Kill”
• All American Rejects — “Move Along”
• Blink – 182 — “All the Small Things”
• Boston — “More Than a Feeling”
• David Bowie — “Moonage Daydream”
• Faith No More — “We Care A Lot”
• Grateful Dead — “Truckin’”
• The Hives — “Die, All Right!”
• KISS — “Calling Dr. Love”
• Lynyrd Skynyrd — “Gimme’ Three Steps”
• Nine Inch Nails — “March of the Pigs”
• Oasis — “Live Forever”
• Paramore — “Crushcrushcrush”
• The Police — “Synchronicity II”
• Queens of the Stone Age — “Little Sister”
• Ramones — “Teenage Lobotomy”
• Smashing Pumpkins — “Siva”
• Stone Temple Pilots — “Interstate Love Song”
• Weezer — “Buddy Holly”
• Wolfmother — “Joker & the Thief”

Needs more Metal/Trash/Hard/Progressive Rock.

And here’s hoping for a Doolittle release.

Source

I’m usually not a fan of Xbox’s arcade game selection, and why waste precious Microsoft points on games when I can use them to buy more rock band songs? Ikaruga is the exception. It’s your everyday classic vertical shooter em’ up, with a big twist. Your ship can switch between two modes of “polarity” with inverting effects. Light polarity absorbs light based attacks and deals critical damage to dark enemies. Switching to dark polarity absorbs dark based attacks and deals critical damage to light enemies. The whole game is based around this concept of polarity.

This game is very simple, consisting of 3 buttons: fire, change polarity, and release a charged attack from absorbed attacks. While holding down fire and swerving around to avoid enemy fire seems simple enough, there’s another puzzle like twist to it. You can put together chains of 3 to gain a bonus to score. And with the the light and dark enemies scrambled together, this can quite the challenge to put together a respectable chain.

Ikaruga is insanely difficult no matter what difficulty you pick. The screen is littered with black and white dots, and you’re immune to half of them. Boss fights are over the top and very punishing if you making one wrong move, so fast reflexes are a must here. Two player co-op makes Ikaruga a little less daunting to attempt, but still challenging regardless.

There seems to be some lag issues in Ikaruga, but nothing game breaking. On certain occasions, like the explosion of a boss, the frame rate slows down to a crawl. It might be intentional, but it did stand out. And playing two player co-op over Xbox live often presents a delay in control, for example it may take a half a second for your ship to move left when you press left on the joystick. When this issue occurs depends on who you are playing with. However, there is no delay when playing a local or a system link match. What I also dislike is the fact you must play for extended periods of time to gain more continues. For every hour you invest into Ikaruga you gain another continue to use for a another attempt to run though the game.

Overall Ikaruga is a must have for fans of the shoot ‘em up genre. I recommend trying the trial version first for everyone else before considering purchasing. For me this was definitely worth 800 Microsoft points.

Rizer1

This next trick requires a volunteer from the audience. I want you to think of a number between 1 and 3. Is it 2? It is?! No, no my good man; I’m not a professional. I learned all I know about magic from the Masters of Illusion!

Masters of Illusion is a unique game for the Nintendo DS, that acts as your “lovely assistant” for preforming magic tricks. It’s a strange game where most of the action takes place when you’re not even holding the DS. The game uses all of the systems features in cool ways. As the title indicates the “Illusions” are taught to you before you preform them. While it is against the Magicians code for me to reveal how each trick works, I can reveal that some tricks use the DS Microphone, while others use secret button presses. If you don’t have an audience to preform tricks to, fear not! You can still don a Magicians tophat with single player tricks.

The game comes with a deck of cards which are used for certain tricks (both for Magic Show’s and Single Player tricks). The cards hold secrets of their own, which add’s another level to the magic. By performing tricks you gain magic points which are used to unlock more tricks.

I’ve enjoyed showing the tricks to people, and I’ve started taking my DS with me to places I normally wouldn’t should the chance to do some magic present itself. This game really shows how social a game (on a handheld no less) can be. I recommend checking it out if you want a reason to show your Nintendo DS off to people, or of course if you believe in magic in a young girls heart.

Check the Masters of Illusion’s site for more information!

KLind

The first of April is a day I usually dread. A plethora of stupidly false news stories pop up in hopes to fool people. This year there have been some truly fantastic offerings.

First up there’s a trailer for a proposed Zelda movie from IGN. It’s production value is surprisingly quite good.

You can check out their post about it here

Next up we have what appears to be a collaboration between Ubisoft and Konami:

The game itself is Metal Gear Solid 4, but the costume is that of Altair from Assassins Creed. It really shows off MGS4, which I am now in full hype mode for.

For more check out Joystiq’s list of the day’s events.

KLind