Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is a rail shooter. Enough said, I think. Rail shooters were fun when I was a kid in an arcade, but that’s because I liked shooting things from a first-person perspective. These days every other game is a kick-ass FPS that allows you to actually move your character around freely, effectively rendering rail shooters obsolete. One would think. But Capcom doesn’t agree, and thus the Wii has its very own stuck-on-a-track-with-zombies- marching-at-you shooter.
This week Yahtzee bends Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles over his knee and gives it something to cry about. Video after the jump.
Squad control, air drops, and mechs are getting us excited about Tiberium. A first person shooter with buttery-smooth looking gameplay and a lot of multiplayer online promise as the in the Command & Conquer line.
The trailer (after the jump) is early and probably doesn’t have finished graphics (at least I hope they’re not done). We hope they can polish those off by the Fall 2008 release date, but all the hard parts like gameplay and environment look great. Hold your breath for a squad control multiplayer feature … imagine having eight players and 32 real-time characters on the map at once.
The Turok demo is finally available in North America on XBox LIVE. It’s about time too. I’m all over some more playable dinosaur fighting action - but it will be nice to know if standing in a very short line (in about a week, man this demo is late!) for this game will be worth my $50. If not I’ll wait three days and pick it up at GameStop.
Thanks to someone for making this available in the US - but why did we need to wait? Download is 1.17 GB and Turok drops on 2/5/2008.
Actually it’s there, in Japan. They always gets the cool toys first … but we can spoil all the surprises by checking out footage like this Super Smash Bros Brawl opening cinematic video:
Get ready to brawl. The best game ever drops March 9th.
I’ll never understand why the media and gaming outsiders are surprised by anything that happens in-game or by the weird game-related incidents that happen out-of-game. Especially as games get better and move toward open world exploration and open-ended invention (like scripting new events and motions in Wow or Second Life) people are going to do everything in-game that they can do outside of it.
That’s why this list of the 6 most unusual online gaming incidents doesn’t surprise me at all. Kidnapping and real-world murder happen for all sorts of bent reasons. Why not for in-game “theft” or to steal an valuable game account ($8,000 is almost three times Brazilians’ average annual income of $2,830)?
As for the Belgian police investigating an in-game crime … the police make all sorts of dumb mistakes too. I can’t wait to see what happens when they have to take on the “virtual” Russian mafia or other international organized criminals. Keep checking Fark to see how that goes.
GameTap reports that Microsoft has gotten serious about staffing for the next Gears of War game. They’ve hired Kudo Tsunoda into the Xbox team, from his EA job as General Manager over Fight Night, Def Jam Icon, and anything out of EA Games’ Chicago studio.
Kudo is known for enjoying the spotlight (yeah that’s him with the tradeshow hottie in the pic). Expect to see him showing off plenty of demo screens and trailers once Gears gets off the ground, check his 1UP blog for those.
Got plans this weekend? Bored? Whether you’ve got anything to do this weekend or not, login to Xbox Live and download your free copy of Undertow. It’s the the holiday outage hug-and-makeup gift from Microsoft and the chance to get it free ends Sunday.
Rockstar Games gave a sneak peak to the elite of the new Grand Theft Auto yesterday and the internet is all abuzz with it’s fancy new bells and whistles. According to this article the new game features faster load times, a souped up physics system, and the ability to get totally freaking drunky pants. How drunk? Drunk enough to make the game shake and wobble like a fat guy singing Prince at a karaoke bar. Now that kids, is some good clean fun.
GTA IV has an expected release date of late April this year.
Developers at Nintendo and Sora get busy beating the pixels out of each other in the bestest, most unreleased game ever - Super Smash Bros. Brawl:
Looks ready for release to me. If it’s really not ready then maybe those developers could be nice to all of us and get back to fixing the problems instead of making preview videos.
… soon. Sorry to spoil the party. It’s still in beta-testing but we’re so happy to see it that we want an iPhone in our pockets right now.
For a small “donation” the developers will cut you into the beta testing. Maybe enough cash will motivate them to quit their day jobs and work faster than their planned “week or less” until release. In the meantime check the developers’ site for updates and other releases.
Far Cry 2 is months off but Ubisoft is already bragging about their new graphics engine. It really is the most phenomenal-looking, uh, grass I’ve ever seen in a game. The 45-seconds of scenery contains no gameplay though. Keep watching for more trailers as they finally add more huts, a lion or two, and maybe some playable characters for the October 31, 2008 release.
There must be more than 20 versions of Street Fighter II by now. If you’re hungry for some classic 2D fighting gameplay and managed to scoop up a Wii in the past year, then the new characters in Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers might be just different enough to make this interesting for a few days. Check the newest gameplay video below. Launched on Monday, sorry for the late news “it was a holiday.”
The newest Turok trailer is DULL! Gameplay looks smooth, but is a sniper video supposed to keep us interested?
Speaking of not intereting, the graphics don’t measure up to Gears of War either. When Turok launches on Feb 5, 2008 (PS3, Xbox 360, and PC) I’ll still be in line for it. Where else can you stab dinosaurs in the neck and also shoot at 16 other players at a time? If you’re in line with me (short line, huh?) hop on over the the Making of Turok videos at GameTrailers.com, part 1 and part 2 for better video coverage of what to expect.
Johnny Chung Lee is a smart, smart guy. He’s also got a heck of an imagination and some crazy homebrew skills. In the video below he shows how he’s hacked his Wii Remote to track hand and finger movements to make the on-screen display react to them. Looks a lot like the Minority Report interface to me - it’s also thousands cheaper than Microsoft’s glorified TablePC. Over on his project page he’s also got a Minority Report-like interface and a multi-user whiteboard project.
In case you’re thinking this is just as stupid as the PS3’s (barely) motion sensitive controllers, yes, I like the motion sensing features. For some reason I spent too much time in front of car wheel and flight simulation controllers as a kid - I couldn’t hold my controller still to save my life.
Yahtzee takes a look at PC game The Witcher this week, and his pain is our pleasure. The game is an action RPG with a complex story line and, from the sounds of it, unnecessary adult situations. If you think the phrase “unnecessary adult situations” is an oxymoron, well, maybe this is the game for you. Or maybe you should spend your money on a smoking jacket and a subscription to Jugs.
Also, stick around after the review for a little bonus “intro theater” starring the characters from the game and voiced by Yahtzee. Video after the jump.
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