Buttonbasher

The first trailer for Call of Duty: World at War has been released. It shows some of the new features of the game such as flamethrowers, and some hand to hand combat. The game will center around the Pacific theater of World War II. Also new is a 4 player co-op (both split-screen and online).

Call of Duty: World at War will be released before the end of Activision’s 2009 fiscal year.

KLind

We’ve got some Gears stuff right here. A curiously large amount of Gears stuff I might add, especially since we are so close to E3.

First off we have an interview with Cliffy B or Cliff Bleszinski as he prefers to be called these days. Its entirely multiplayer related and full of awesome and win. Check it out over at GameVideos here

Then there’s some leaked footage (thanks to This Is Game) of what appears to be a multiplayer beta/demonstration somewhere in Korea.

UPDATE:: Cliffy B answers fan questions on the 1up Show here

Finally we have some screenshots, as before they are of the multiplayer flavor.

More after the break.

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If you aren’t already aware there’s a ton of content over at ResidentEvil.com including both trailers, screenshots, wallpapers, and other information. We’ve already posted some scans and such which can be found here. Any new content we find will be added to this post, with newer stuff being added at the top and older stuff just works its way down. We might be doing this with some other major titles so make sure to check back frequently.

Here’s the new Trailer:

And here are some fairly recent screenshots.

More screens after the break.

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This time in a foreign language! Note the flamethrower and riot shield looking thing.

TGFJF! (Thank God for Jeux France)

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.

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

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

While the exact terms are a bit sketchy, some very interesting material has “leaked” in regards to the next Sonic game. A few weeks ago, Sega trademarked Sonic Unleashed, which brought with it the usual “Should the franchise be put to an end” talk. Many gamers view the 3D Sonic games as bad, and think that Sonic should go back to 2D gameplay.

Shortly after the trademark scene, a whole boatload of images appeared online claiming to be from a new Sonic game (presumably Unleashed). They were said to have been found on a Sega FTP, but it’s still unclear where they truly originate from. Gamers response from the screens were mixed. But that all came to a screeching halt when a video showed up, showing off potentially the answers to gamers prayers:

It appears that the game may be rooted in 2D game play in a 3D world, aside from some 3D sections.

I enjoyed Sonic Adventure, but Adventure 2 didn’t quite do it for me. Sonic the Hedgehog (360/PS3) was what I thought I wanted, but there were a few to many flaws to get me sucked in. Sonic and the Secret Rings was a fun diversion, but this really seems the best route for the Sonic games. I’ve been a huge fan of the franchise as a whole (going so far as to owning many a copy of the comic books), and really think the future is looking up with this game, and the Sonic DS RPG. I eagerly await the official announcement which is expected at an upcoming Sega Gamers Day in May.

KLind