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   | Feb 5, 2007 Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, A PSP Hit In The Re-Making Following a couple of very well received (as usual) incarnations on Nintendo's DS handheld, the classic Castlevania series will make its PlayStation Portable debut towards the end of this year, with Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, says Konami. The 20-years old franchise is still just as successful as ever, so making the move to Sony's handheld platform was certainly bound to happen, sooner or later. And we have no doubt that the Wii will follow, albeit we're still nowhere near an official announcement in that regard. I'll refrain from calling this a "new" game, because The Dracula X Chronicles is actually a remake of the classic PC Engine title, Akumajo Dracula X: Chi no Rondo (Castlevania: Rondo of Blood). Even though the original game was never released outside of Japan, it is considered to be one of the best more-action-based games in the series. And giving it a 3D face-lift should be enough to rekindle the praises for this future PSP adaptation. In case "3D" sounds a bit worrying, rest assured that Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles will still keep a 2D perspective, as seen in these first local screenshots, and in this gameplay trailer from GameVideos. If the graphical enhancements still don't convince you, maybe this will:
You read that right, the PlayStation classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night will also be unlockable in the game, reportedly featuring "a reworked localization and slightly reworked graphics, making it the second forthcoming release of the game, alongside the Xbox Live Arcade Version also due soon" (story). Below you can read about the remake's scenario, with more details available in our Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles gamespace.
Feb 2, 2007 WoW: The Burning Crusade - Download It From The Official Website The fans cried, and the blues took note and, this time, they also took action. Perhaps too late, some of you might argue if you're still waiting to receive your World of Warcraft expansion, but let's not forget that Vivendi also needed to make some money first, from selling The Burning Crusade at retail. Anyway, the point is that the package can now be downloaded perfectly legally from the official WoW-Europe.com / WorldOfWarcraft.com website, given you already have a World of Warcraft account. You can find the download links in the Account section. The client is available both for PC and Mac, and at least on the European website, in any of the following languages: English, Deutsch, Français and Español. It's great that you can download not only the The Burning Crusade installer, but also the World of Warcraft installer, in case you no longer have the original discs at hand. Furthermore, you can also buy an Expansion Key online there, for upgrading your normal account to The Burning Crusade. The price for a key is 34.99 Euro, plus taxes - since the payment can only be made by credit card. In other WoW: Tuberculosis news, Blizzard announced that they will be spreading their outlandish sickness in Mainland China after having signed an agreement with The9 Limited, a leading online game operator in China. World of Warcraft is currently played in the territory by more than 3.5 million subscribers - accounting for almost half of the game's worldwide population! Here's a bit more from the announcement:
(N.B. Archive text, links removed) Feb 2, 2007 Warhammer: Mark of Chaos Multiplayer Demo Download You thought that the first single-player demo for the recent strategy game Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, weighing 1.2 GB, was insultingly huge? If so, then congratulations, you were right. And now for the one hundrend points question: what foul metaphors would you use to describe the same game's latest demo, this time multiplayer, and spreading over nearly 1.4 GB? Indeed, developers these days have gone completely nuts (or plain lazy). They can't even extract the minimun amount of data from their game necessary for a demo version. Let alone bother themselves with code optimizations and other archaic customs from the age of DOS! If you somehow manage to overlook this hardly negligible aspect, and of course if you don't already own the full version of Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, the peeps from Black Hole Entertainment and Namco Bandai now invite you try their strategy's multiplayer component as well, in a new demo available locally. It includes 3 tutorials and 4 maps (Balance of Chaos, Blood on the Snow, Castle of the Gods and General Conflict) playable in 3 battle modes: normal, reinforcements and siege. A faster way you could make an opinion about Warhammer: Mark of Chaos would be to watch some of the local trailers. Or, even faster, to take a look over our review from December. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Feb 2, 2007 Castlevania, Worms, Alien Hominid And More Coming To XBLA Things may have been quiet on the XBLA front lately, but Microsoft is still just as busy ligning-up more Arcade releases. Just this week, they announced 10 new Xbox Live Arcade games, including titles such as Castlevania, Worms, Alien Hominid, Luxor 2, Paperboy and more. The first one of them (it's still a surprise which one) will be released during February, on a Wednesday as usual, and the other 9 will follow in the coming weeks. Aside from the 10 titles listed below, Microsoft promises to bring even more gamelings to the service throughout 2007. Here they are then:
To date, Microsoft says that over 20 million games have been downloaded through Xbox Live Arcade, an impressive number any way you look at it. They also point out that some of the above titles will mark a first for the XBLA service - including the first TBS game (Worms), the first board game (Catan), and the first outdoor sports game (3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures). Oh, and Gamasutra also notes that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night will be "the first PlayStation game to hop formats to Microsoft's own". That's gotta be worth some extra (MS) points, right? (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Feb 1, 2007 Easy now, eaaasy, don't rush yourselves! If it's the Crysis beta you were getting ready to storm, you may stay calm for a while, because these "beta plans" ar more like "preparations for beta plans". From what Crytek's CEO Cevat Yerli said in an interview that will be published in full on CVG later this week, their shooter's multiplayer component "is progressing great" ("greater" than in Far Cry, we hope) and the devs have "some surprises here and there for our beloved fans". Ze Germans promissed that they would announce their plans for the Crysis public beta "soon" - meaning that the plans themselves will be set into motion afterwards; the beta registrations, later still; and the actual opening of the beta phase... who knows! There's no use to hurry anyway, since Windows Vista has just been released, and I wouldn't be surprised if the new operating system's installation will be a requirement for getting in the beta (at least for marketing, if not technical reasons). The game's final version should however support DirectX 9 (i.e. Windows XP) as well. Although most of today's graphic cards would bow down in shame anyway, with all the crazy effects employed by Crysis. But let's move on to Battlefield 2142: Northern Strike, because this beta looks a lot more tangible. From what EA announced a few days ago, we take it that the booster pack's multiplayer beta phase [registration process] has already begun, as fans can now sign-up on the Combat Testing website. Unlike most of their beta programs, this one will feature Ranked Servers, and stats won't be wiped. If you feel like giving it a try, check the above link. The release of BF 2142: Northern Strike is scheduled for March 2007. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Feb 1, 2007 At least for the time being, as in the first part of this year, the answer to the question in the title is a definite "no". So the real question is, when will the two next-gen consoles become cheaper? For the Xbox 360, it would be normal to finally see a price cut during 2007, since Microsoft's console has been on the market for over a year now, and by the end of 2006 they had shipped over 10 million units worldwide. Rumours about a cheaper Xbox 360 were also flying high last year, although Microsoft never really committed to cutting the price in the near future. Unfortunately, that's also the case nowdays, so the only ones who dare predict a price cut are the industry analysts (and various less-versed individuals). But anyway, if you're waiting for a significant reduction, you'd better have plenty of patience and/or tobacco, because a cheaper Xbox 360 is more likely to come along in the second half of this year. Ironically enough, even though Sony launched their console a year later, the price of the PlayStation 3 was reduced in Japan even before the launch, with around 20%. And they have already begun talking about a new price cut for the PS3, in a (desperate) attempt to stop their gaming division's massive losses, and to gain a larger market share. In a report issued today by the Associated Press, Takao Yuhara (Sony senior vice-president) is quoted as saying: "We may look at the price as part of our strategy to expand the market when the timing is right". The right time for a price cut would be the release of a phenomenal PlayStation 3 game, but I'll be damned if I can think of any such title planned in the near future. Maybe in autumn... Another factor that could bring us a cheaper (and cooler) PS3 is the replacement of the current 90nm Cell processors with newer, cheaper ones. As PSU informs us, Sony have just begun the production of 65nm Cell processors. Even if these won't be integrated in the first batch of PS3 units that will be launched in Europe on March 23, the change should become apparent later on this year. In any case, the analysts say that the console might get a price cut of over 150 Euro in a year, thus bringing the 60GB model down below the 450 Euro price point. Now we're talking... (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Feb 1, 2007 With no more solid plans announced for a future gaming console, by any of the "big three", we might as well turn our eyes over to smaller manufacturers of gaming platforms and try to guess what they have in store for our insatiable playfulness. One name that surely comes to mind when thinking about handheld gaming is Nokia, with their N-Gage platform. But what about Dell, could they also be thinking about tapping this increasingly popular market? Well, they might be. They just might... A couple of stories posted yesterday on Pocket Gamer and Engadget are speculating that both companies are indeed planning new gaming devices. For Nokia, that could either mean some sort of N-Gage 2; or, according to Pocket Gamer, more of a multimedia device than a dedicated gaming platform ("an iTunes / Xbox Live-style software solution and development framework targeting Nokia's smartphones", as they put it). Whatever it is, Nokia will reportedly announce it at this year's GDC (Games Developer Conference), which will be taking place during March 5-7, in San Francisco. Speaking to the Mobile Entertainment magazine, Nokia's head of games Jaakko Kaidesoja said a GDC unveiling of their new device was highly likely, however "there are no plans for new a N-Gage device at the moment", he added. Pretty confusing if you ask me. As for Dell, Engadget only has a very vague hint at an upcoming gaming device, based on a comment made by Dell's worldwide head of gaming, Abizar Vahkaria, in the PC Plus magazine:
That's all right Abizar, we can wait until tomorrow. Or... whenever. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Feb 1, 2007 Saints Row was the first rushed attempt at launching a Grand Theft Auto clone on the Xbox 360 last summer. But rushed as it may have been, Volition (Red Faction, The Punisher) and THQ's attempt was nevertheless a pretty successful one. The game has sold over 550,000 copies since its debut, and that's just in North America, and it received mostly favorable review scores (80+). In today's economy, it seems, that was just about enough to justify Saints Row's move onto Sony's next-gen console, in a new version confirmed by the publisher yesterday. According to THQ's announcement, Saints Row will thus also be released on the PlayStation 3 this spring, and the publisher already praises it as being the game that will mark "the first open world online experience available through the PlayStation Network". We have no doubt about that, as long as Crackdown (the other Xbox 360 game vaguely similar to GTA) remains an exclusive title for Microsoft's console, and until GTA IV there are still around nine months left.
That being said, and the above description copy-pasted, we wish PS3 fanboys an easy waiting, and may they have the monetary means to afford a PS3 at the end of March. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Feb 1, 2007 Universe at War: Earth Assault Is Petroglyph's Second RTS "The year is 2012, and humans have just found out that they're not alone in the galaxy. Not only are they not alone, but the new arrivals aren't friendly in the least. The invaders are not here to conquer - they're here to harvest. Massive walking machines consume plant, animal and mineral without distinction. Press gang-like hordes of invading ground troops herd humans into enormous mass drivers, launching them up to the invader's ships that orbit the planet, never to be seen again. Our game begins on the eve of the last day of human resistance... Or is it?" With these words, "design visionary" Adam Isgreen revealed the scenario on which Petrglyph's next strategy game will be based. The title is Universe at War: Earth Assault, and although it undeniably sounds "a bit" like Empire at War, the game itself is anything but Star Wars... Or is it? Well, it's not Star Wars per se, but it does involve several alien species, and they're all gathering on our blue little planet for a barbecue. Tiny, screaming, running humanlings are the day's specialty! What little we currently know about Universe at War is all thanks to a PC Zone article, published in the British magazine's March 2007 issue. Scans of the article along with the first screenshots can be found on the Petroglyph Fan Forums, and so far it sounds like a very... customizable RTS game. The very idea of customization is apparently the driving force behind UaW's gameplay systems, as PC Zone writes that "each unit will have several different uses on the battlefield. In addition, your walkers and vehicles will have numerous 'hard points' to slot enhancements into, while your production facilities will be upgradeable in many directions during battle. You'll also be able to steer your research tree between offensive, defensive and experimental technologies". There's more about the game in that article, but for now we'll just wait for the official announcement. Should be here any day now. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) |
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