The DLC Sale is the biggest highlight this week with some tasty reductions to content from Borderlands, Mafia II, GTAIV and Red Dead Redemption. Demos include Dungeon Hunter: Alliance, Gatling Gears, Star Raider, Homefront multiplayer and MotorStorm: Apocalypse. If you still have your PlayStation Plus subscription going or you bought Infamous 2 you’ll be glad to know that the Uncharted 3 Multiplayer beta is now live. I’ll presume you’ve just dashed off for that right away.
Not every game gets a news story for releasing box art images. But Batman: Arkham City is looking far too good to not share any news. Get ready to see these on shop shelves and covering any online retailer’s headers for months to come. October 21st is starting to feel that little bit closer now.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a look at some of the PSP’s Minis, mainly because of the PSN crisis and recently a lot of them looked like complete pump. There hasn’t exactly been a deluge of titles since PSN resumed normal service either. Two of the three games we’re looking at today come free with PlayStation Plus, which some gamers might still have as a part of their Welcome Back package.
Continue reading PSP Minis Roundup: A spinning octopus, block dropping and a Ninjamurai?
Fans of comics, games, sci-fi, manga, anime, movies and cosplay listen up. The MCM Comic Con is coming to Manchester on Saturday July 30th. The venue will be the spacious Manchester Central, which, used to be known as the G-MEX arena.
Our very own Tom Silkstone attended the London MCM Comic Con in May and had an awesome time. There were plenty of games there to play, panel discussions and Q&A meets. Take a look at his coverage to whet your appetite. See, worth a look for any gamer, even if you’re not particularly interested in comics.
Continue reading MCM Comic Con Coming To Manchester This Summer
Good news everyone, the promising PlayStation Move title, Sorcery, is still in development despite disappearing from our radars for almost a year. Hugo Bustillos, Sony’s UK PR Executive today confirmed to us: “Yes, Sorcery is still in development.”
There are no details on a release date as of yet, we imagine there’s still some time to go. The last sign of life we had from the developer, The Workshop, was a job listing at Game Guzzler for a UI (User Interface) Artist, posted back in May this year.
Fans of orc-hackery and deformed dice rejoice, Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale has finally been released on the PC platform a few weeks behind the release on PS3 and Xbox 360, which we reviewed here.
This hack and slash RPG takes place in the mythology of the Forgotten Realms. You must defend your homeland from Rezlus, the evil Zhentarim Cleric who is trying to resurrect the Black Lord Bane. To do this you’ll have to vanquish the legions of darkness from the Mines of Tethyamar and the Tower of the Void. Expect lots of stabby action supported by the usual fetch missions.
Continue reading Dungeon & Dragons: Daggerdale Now Released on PC
The Ape Escape games on PS1 and PS2 utilised the dual-analogue sticks of the controller to masterful effect, so it felt natural to be excited about how the PlayStation Move motion controller would add to the game’s experience.
The original games were action-packed platformers where you had to capture cheeky monkeys. The right stick controlled gadgets like nets, catapults and monkey detectors with fantastic efficiency. The logical step for the Move would have been to use the navigation stick or Dualshock to run around and the Move controller to swing your net and other gadgets.
Many console gamers have avoided this kind of game on facebook for years, but put a genre back onto consoles and I just can’t help but take a look. Akimi Village is a light-hearted building sim where you control a giant avatar, plodding around a floating island helping the Akimi recreate their world. The genre is almost non-existent on PSN, but XBLA regulars might remember NinjaBee’sKeflings’ games, which are very similar to this one.
Most of the land is shrouded in a dark cloud called ‘The Gloom.’ Any Akimi folk under this cloud are unable to work and you can’t build on the land either. You must plant healing acorns to clear the land of Gloom and liberate the wondering little dudes. These elusive acorns can only be earned by rebuilding the settlement.
The North American games press have just voted to bring us the nominations for their picks of E3 2011. Why should you care? Well, the winners will be the ones with that little E3 sticker on the game’s box come release day. It’s a mark of pride that few review quotations can come close too.
Sony and EA lead the way with 14 nominations each, which leaves Microsoft and Nintendo looking pretty miserable. Bioshock Infinite and Uncharted 3 proved to be the most popular games with four nominations each.
Check out the full list of nominees below and click any of the links to be whisked away to our E3 coverage of that title. Feel free to add your own picks of E3 to the comments section too.
Continue reading Best of E3: Game Critics Awards Nominations
A new compulsory firmware update greeted PS3 gamers today. The US PlayStation blog said: “With this minor update, system stability during use of PS3 format software and network services has been improved.”
Today’s PSN update is a little light on the new games front but the new village growing pursuits of Akimi Village could be interesting. We’re more than tempted to revisit the original American McGee’s Alice too; as we’re sure it’s better than the recent Alice: Madness Returns. Cheaper than forking out for the PC original on eBay too.
To celebrate Sonic’s 20th birthday (yes really) there’s a collection that features, Sonic 1 & 2, Sonic 4 Episode 1 and Sonic Adventure plus DX). Tomorrow will see the release of a new Sonic Generations demo, which we’re pretty psyched for after Matt’s hands-on preview at E3. DLC highlights include a new case for LA Noire and Killzone 3 maps.
After teasing fans on facebook for the last couple of days, Eastasiasoft and SideQuest Studios have finally released a batch of screens for their upcoming PS3 strategy RPG title, Rainbow Moon. A genre usually relegated to the PSP or DS looks set to come back in gorgeous fashion to the console market. No blocky sprites here, just wonderfully smooth and vibrant hand drawn-style visuals. There are no solid gameplay details to report as of yet, but we’re sure it will be different to the studios usual output of the Soldner-X side-scrolling shooter games. Expect a release towards the end of 2011.
If you’re still looking for something to buy this weekend, maybe this new trailer for Shadows of the Damned will tempt you. Any game that manages to get Suda 51 (Killer 7, No More Heroes) and Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Vanquish) together is always going to be worth a cautious look. Expect lots of monsters, chicks in leather, stylish combat and buckets of filthy humour stirred in amongst the giblets. Oh, and the hero is called Garcia Hotspur (Suda’s a Tottenham fan) and looks set to speak nothing but craptacularly cheesy lines, but you’ll love it. For an extensive hands-on look, you can read Felix’s enthusiastic musings about the madness here.
Our electrical star of Infamous, Cole MacGrath, begins the game with an encounter against ‘The Beast’ an almost god-like deity, hell bent on destroying everything. Cole is unable to stop the destruction of Empire City and is forced to retreat south to New Marais while he prepares himself for round two.
The city of New Marais is inspired by New Orleans, so the settings include recreations of the Latin Quarter, swamps, vault-packed graveyards and also the poorer areas of the city. After the eternally grey Empire City, the new setting is an inspired choice, especially the eerie swamps and the neon lights of the city’s nightlife district. The colours of some of the sunsets are real showstoppers too; seriously, you won’t see better skies anywhere else. The terrible real-life effects of Hurricane Katrina are also mirrored, as Cole arrives years after a flood, to find large areas still submerged with a few nods to the lack of government support New Orleans suffered. It feels tastefully done, as ignoring such an event when basing your location on New Orleans would have been insensitive.
Several core gamer titles have just been announced for the new Wii U console. Seasoned gamers, prepare to be very impressed. It would seem the extra analogue stick and familiar button options will allow Nintendo to keep up with the rival consoles.
Continue reading Core gamer titles announced for new Wii U console
Q-Games have today announced a new title from their beloved PixelJunk series. What we initially thought might be PJ Shooter 3, has since turned out to be a new IP, PixelJunk SideScroller.
These guys love giving us their take on multiple gaming genres and side-scrolling shooters should be a piece of cake for them. So expect lots of traditional side-scrolling blasting, going left to right and shooting forwards-only while moving around the 2D environment trying to back away from swarms of bullet patterns.
Well it’s nasty o’ clock here in the UK, but before we call it a night. Here are a mighty bunch of links to all our news coverage of the Sony Press Conference that’s just finished.
Look how many articles we’ve written since the Microsoft E3 press conference took place! Here’s a collection of the articles based on that conference to save you a lot of digging.
The big names are really starting to line up now for Sony’s little gem. Capcom just came onstage at Sony’s Press Conference to announce a PS Vita version of Street Fighter X Tekken. Also, as an exclusive to the console, Cole from the Infamous games will be available as a selectable character.
After Capcom’s success with Super Street Fighter IV 3D on the 3DS, we think this will be massive. We’ve just seen similar touch-screen activated combos and we presume the game will try and emulate SSFIV’s many online features.
More for you as soon as we have it.
This is what we’ve been waiting for. Uncharted on the newly christened handheld, PlayStation Vita. Uncharted: Golden Abyss is a full-on third-person action-adventure title that is going to be the hottest property on the new machine.
It’s ridiculously gorgeous. The shading effects and overall detail rival most early PS3 titles and instantly wipe away any thoughts of handheld games being incapable of competing with the big boys. Needless to say, the original PSP is going to dive-bomb out of existence now. This isn’t just huge for portable gaming, it’s huge full-stop.
Continue reading Sony E3 2011 Conference | Uncharted: Golden Abyss on PlayStation Vita
The No Sleep Gamer 