Ah, the distinguished Game Developers Conference... now there's an event we won't be attending (although we might hold a prolongued "editorial" meeting at the local pub tonight). But no worries, that's why we have the internets, to bring us various stuff from this week's GDC 2008 in San Francisco. Such is this new pack of screenshots from Age of Conan issued by Funcom. I'd rather not comment on them, though - we might lose our last two Conan-fans readers who drive our earnings through the roof.

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Today we have the first screenshots from BioWare's most dubious project to date, that Sonic RPG for the Nintendo DS now officially known as Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, coming from SEGA during 2008. It doesn't look bad or anything, but I sure wish they had picked another franchise. No, not Mario!

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About time Square Enix did something other than good old Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts or Dragon Quest titles. Don't get me wrong, I am a HUGE fan of everything mentioned above, I, like any normal human being, have my periodical Tifa / Aeris / Yuna wet dreams, but playing the same games over and over again tends to get a bit boring after a while. Especially when you end up, like me, to get disgusted by almost every modern title and resort to the forever awesome SNES emulator and the bunch of cool JRPGs out there.

And so... Square is making yet another move on the RPG front, this time on Nintendo DS, with a new action RPG entitled The World Ends With You. We get to play the role of an underaged, unsociable and probably completely retarded when it comes to women kid which, caught in a modern-day Tokyo, receives a strange SMS - telling him “bye bye cruel world if you don't do my bidding”. Sounds interesting, sounds Japanese enough, but it also sounds rather costly, being priced at 39,99 USD. Here are some of the game's features:

- Distinctive modern art style created by a team of artists led by Tetsuya Nomura, world-renowned character designer of the upcoming FABULA NOVA CRYSTALLIS project which includes FINAL FANTASY XIII and FINAL FANTASY Versus XIII
- Innovative Stride-Cross Battle System allows players to control two characters simultaneously, unleashing special attacks with the stylus
- Collect a vast array of custom-designed pins, each with a powerful psychic ability that can be activated with the right touch or sound command
- Customize characters with Shibuya's coolest fashions and exchange items with other players via Mingle Mode
- Experience an amazing soundtrack combining a fusion of musical influences from hip-hop to rock to electronica
- Battle with up to three friends in Tin Pin Slammer, an exciting and fast-paced mini-game, via local wireless connection

And here is the press release, for your reading pleasure.

In a bit of a contradiction to this week's press release announcing the PC version of Mass Effect - which credits no other studio except BioWare - it appears that indie developer Demiurge Studios is actually the one doing the dirty work of porting this Xbox 360 RPG to PCs. As spotted on FiringSquad, the Massachusetts-based developer has revealed on its blog that it "began working with BioWare during the final stretch of development for the Xbox 360 version", adding gameplay and performance enhancements for the PC version. And they also let slip a few specific details.

"Mass Effect for the PC features a third command wheel so players can access squad members separately, a new inventory system, customized key mapping and a brand new minigame. Extra attention was focused on visuals, offering higher resolution graphics for an enhanced gaming experience for the PC."

Don't forget to check out the first screenshots from Mass Effect PC, if you haven't yet.

- The world of Fallout 3 will be much smaller than Oblivion, Bethesda's Pete Hines told some aussies, "but packed with stuff to do". Stuff to do is good, mkay.

- "For Sims 3 there will be new information soon", Sims Studio head Rod Humble let slip in a forum posting. And guess what: they are "actually launching less [Sims games] this year than last". Oh, and "the Sims Label was created to innovate, make original games and take creative risks". I loled.

- Aion: The Tower of Eternity is coming in 2008. How exactly is that a novelty, beats me!

- Naruto: Ninja Destiny went gold, and is now destined to launch on February 26 for the Nintendo DS. Naruto sucks dragon balls.

- April 22 was announced as the day Square Enix will release its new DS action-RPG set in modern-day Tokyo, The World Ends With You. No U.

- Unreal Engine 3 got licensed by yet another Korean developer - Dragonfly (Karma Online, Special Force), who will be using it to make a new... something, whatever.

Common cooking recipe no. 264: you take one spoon of rapable female angels, with wings that commonly refer to clothes begging to be teared off; then add a pinch of oversized, red devilish creatures, bent on destroying the world, using the utmost common sense; mix it all with some overused story concerning heroes, PvP, multiplayer only, and of course, so many genders one cannot possibly count. There you go, the perfect product for today’s trembling gaming industry.

British developer Brain Seal (if the seal is on their brain, or if the brain is a seal itself, I cannot possibly comprehend), launched the Masters of Belial official website, proudly announcing their intent to hit the market with this... action/strategy/RPG online game, set for release somewhere this year. It should be free, for starters, letting us enjoy some casual moments of ganking, griefing and other important parts of every PvP community, while future add-ons will be priced between 4.99 USD - 14.99 USD, depending on how crap the provided content will be. A beta is supposed to start next month.

I bet this will be better than Age of Conan.

- Red Faction 3 is no more... But relax, nothing is fu... cancelled, dude. They just renamed it to Red Faction: Guerilla, apparently.

- Likewise, the Aliens FPS announced by SEGA at the end of 2006 finally has a title - Aliens: Colonial Marines, "invading consoles and PCs in 2009". The devs from Gearbox had better make aliens playable as well, at the very least in an expansion. Or else!

- NCsoft has "something to announce - not only announce but to show - by the second half of this year"... their very first console (PS3?) MMO game. They're "pretty psyched" about it. I'm not. Not yet, anyway.

- Epic's CliffyB loses faith in PC games, thiking that "the PC is just in disarray". So right now they're focusing on making Gears of War 2 console games. Can't say I blame them.

- Speaking of Epic, their Unreal Engine 3 also got licensed by Korean MMO maker Devroot Studio, for a new game codenamed "BK Project". They're a division of SONOV Corporation, who made that MMO with hot chicks, Shaiya: Light and Darkness.

- The Xbox 360 fails at a rate of 16.4% (give or take), while only 3% of the PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles fail. Should be interesting to see some sales figures for Microsoft and Sony's consoles in actual working condition!

- Wii hacked once again (and once again without much use), this time through an exploit in The Legend of Zelda. Great, wake me up when there's something worth seeing.

- Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings for the DS is being released tomorrow in the UK (and presumably the rest of Europe). We got the latest trailer here, in case you missed it.

- The Witcher, CD Projekt's debut RPG, has sold over 600,000 copies in 3 months. They're still aiming for 1 million in the first year, and at this rate they're going to shatter it. Grats!

Well, gank me silly and call me a gnome! Plans for some kind of World of Warcraft mobile functionality really are underway over at Blizzard. Mind you, the idea of an actual WoW MMO on cell phones still sounds just as ludicrous as before, but that's not what they're aiming for at all. In fact, they don't seem to be aiming for anything in particular right now, just idly fiddling with a small team of mobile developers, to see what they can come up with. That, according to Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce, quoted in an MTV article yesterday:

"We want to look at the mobile devices as something we can use to enhance the experience of our existing games. So we're going to have to look at ways to use the mobile device to enhance their 'World of Warcraft' experience. We'll see what kind of applications we can come up with.

(...) So as an example, one thing I think would be really cool - and whether we're going to be able to do this, I don't know, but it would be really cool - is if we could have a client on your mobile device like [Google Chat] that hooks you into your guild chat in the game. That would be really cool. Or the ability to view your in-game mail or view your in-game auctions. We probably wouldn't allow you to actually buy or sell via the mobile device, but you could certainly monitor."

If there's no hope for buying / selling at the Auction House, then seriously, what's the point?

Great week so far, with plenty of games revealed out of the blue, like Red Alert 3, a new KotOR RPG or, by the way, a new Lord of the Rings game in the works at Pandemic (probably something more action this time). And the list goes on, as we learn from Eurogamer, with some new titles included in Atari's quarterly earnings report. And then some!

First off, there's a new expansion planned for Obisdian's RPG sequel, Neverwinter Nights 2. The second add-on should be relased between this April and March 2009; or to narrow that down a bit, let's assume it comes out in October - one year after the first expansion Mask of the Betrayer (which in turn came out one year after the original NWN 2).

Also during the next fiscal year, Atari intends to release a certain PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 game called Airborne Rangers. Right, like the classic "action simulation" game by MicroProse. That was two decades ago, so I don't think anyone would mind a shiny remake, or something.

There are several other gamelings listed in Eurogamer's story which don't sound worthy of our time, and they say Atari also has one or two "hardcore" projects which were not mentioned in the report. All of these will start getting proper announcements in the weeks to come, the publisher promised. Great, that should give me plenty of time to forget about this, and fake getting excited all over again.

While every game producer and their mother is dreaming a wet and juicy plan of becoming rich over night, eventually not investing absolutely no effort at all into this, some of the old big houses still hold up to their standards. And I’m talking big standards here, like BioWare and their flawless RPG history. As true as it may be that those brave descendants of Terrence and Philip have gotten themselves into a big brown pile of shit right now, being under the fine “tutelage” of Electronic Arts, we certainly CANNOT expect bad things from them. No, sir.

OK. Now, we all know that BioWare is developing a MMORPG at the moment. And that’s about it, no scoops regarding its story, universe, number of farming bots per server, or other insightful information has been leaked. Many of us suspected, initially, that it would be a Star Wars inspired MMO, based on the Knights of the Old Republic francise. Well... apparently not. According to EA’s analyst report, BioWare is kinda busy right now, with much stuff to do on their hands. Some Mass Effect for the PC, the yet unfinished Dragon Age, the said MMORPG and, the nicest thing I’ve heard recently, a new Knights of the Old Republic title.

Rumor as it may be (yet), we can just hope it is another single-player role-playing game. Other internet sources are busy right now trying to get a confirmation from EA, and while they are at it, we’re just gonna rape Bastila one more time, for old times’ sake.



Kotaku scoop.