[via YesButNoButYes]

The only thing I hate worse than movies based on video games, are video games based on movies.

So, I was a little freaked out by how excited I was by the trailer for Jumper, the game based on the movie and the teenybopper novel by Stephen Gould. I mean… if done right this game could really kick some serious ass, I totally wanna teleport someone into a shark tank… I mean, who doesn’t? Apparently the game follows the Jamie Bell character Griffin, who desperately wants to be a ballet dancer, but his father wants him to be a Boxer, blah, blah, blah… TELEPORTATION!

I should have stopped after watching the trailer, cause now I’ve gone and ruined the surprise for myself. This game looks like it might really suck, and gloriously so! Developed by Brash Entertainment, the same development powerhouse that brought the cinematic masterpiece Alvin and the Chipmunks to the PS2! Take a peek at these screens, the frosted side of me is holding out hope that they’re from the PS2 version and the 360 version will actually look like a next-gen game, but the wheaty side of me knows it isn’t true. It looks like they’ve just reused the graphics and combat engine that made Matrix: Path of Neo nearly unplayable.

Seems like the game relies upon Griffin’s teleportation skills which allow him to “jump within hand-to-hand combat range of an enemy to start dishing out devastating blows” using a “exciting and intense layered combo fighting system”, Griffin can also use finishing moves to “instantly teleport enemies to exotic perilous locations to finish them”. Meh.

Trailer after the jump.

I don’t know anything about the Highlander game, but I’m already disappointed.

Unlike its main characters the game won’t last very long. All the movie fans and immortality fanboys will push this up the top-seller lists for a week or two, followed by a mercifully quick drop off. That’s to be expected when a game is only good enough to put cutscenes and no real gameplay in the trailer. And the trailer quality looks bad. Someone get the guys at Eidos who put this together a copy of iMovie. While you’re at it ask them why they released it for Xbox 360, PC, and PS2. PS2, really! Sounds like a great plan with Sony killing off backward compatibility on the PS3.

Sony announced its North American sales figures for Black Friday through the end of the year, trumpeting 1.2 million in PS3 sales.

Buried in the news: The PS2s, the most popular video game console of all time, sold 1.3 million.

Comparative numbers for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 were not available, but last week the company announced the console had sold 17.7 million units worldwide since launching last year and is presumably still outselling its higher-priced rival. Sony has stated previously that its sold 5.6 million globally up until the end of September.

With Warner Bros. announcing last week that they will back Sony’s Blu-ray high-definition home video format, the sluggish PS3 sales arguably don’t even matter. The game system’s success at helping Sony deliver an apparent death blow to Toshiba’s HD DVD format is reason enough for the company to celebrate. And with Blu-ray production prices reportedly decreasing rapidly, Sony is well poised to rocket in sales should they be able to drop prices on their standalone Blu-ray players and Blu-ray embedded PS3s.

image: feelium81