Final Fantasy XIII-2, New Versus XIII Trailer, More...

Sure enough, Square Enix has officially announced the Final Fantasy XIII-2 sequel today at its "1st Production Department Premiere" event, confirming last week's rumor. But perhaps of more interest seems to have been the new Final Fantasy Versus XIII trailer that was shown there. You can watch it here in a low-quality Ustream version, for now, until a HD version is released next week.



Aside from these two titles, other topics discussed at Square's event included the game formerly known as Final Fantasy Agito XIII (now called Final Fantasy Type-0), the game formerly known as Kingdom Hearts 3D (now called Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance), and the game still known as Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy. A bit more about each of them, below. (...)

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The game formerly known as ArcaniA: A Gothic Tale has been revealing itself quite nicely over the last few days, first with a batch of screenshots (included way down below), followed this week by a couple of trailers and a high-res cover art. It's been a pretty long time since we've seen Gothic 4 in motion, and although I wouldn't call these trailers impecable, they are impressive enough to make fans forget - if only for a couple of minutes - that the series' original developer Piranha Bytes was abandoned by JoWooD, in favor of another team from Spellbound.



ArcaniA: Gothic 4 is currently planned for release in Fall 2010, on the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. The story resumes 10 years after the end of Gothic 3, in a slightly changed world: the Southern Islands have become embroiled in a grueling conflict, and set the stage for the player to brave countless adventures in the guise of a nameless hero. Old acquaintances and new faces will aid the hero or attempt to thwart his efforts throughout his epic journey. Especially the members of the fairer sex will play a more important role. Who knows maybe the women will make the hero's life a little more (...)

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Several years ago (back when we were still posting on this website), it would've been a fitting way to start an article about Star Wolves by writing how underrated it was, how unique of a space-RPG gameplay it offered. But by now, the same can hardly be said about its latest sequel, Star Wolves 3, anymore. Or maybe that's just my EVE Online addiction talking... Anyway, the Russian publisher 1C Company is pushing on with the series, and today announced an upcoming expansion pack called Star Wolves 3: Ashes of Victory.



Developed by the same vodka-drenched bunch from Elite Games Team, the expansion is currently set for a Q3 2010 release. Among its advertised features, there will be improved graphics, a large-scale scenario covering more than 110 solar systems, "thoroughly re-worked" tactical and role-playing systems (a hint at how terribly flawed said systems were in the first place?), new NPCs, new factions, new ships, weapons, equipment, (...)

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I came. Then I heard the soundtrack from Dragon Age: Origins' otherwise kick-ass E3 2009 trailer, and went numb again.

 (...)

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Because you can't have an MMO in this day and age without expanding it during the first few months after release (and bug-fixing it throughout its entire lifetime), Warhammer Online, too, is set to receive its first live expansion soon enough. Titled "Call to Arms", it will be rolled out - for free - in early March, and will be running through the beginning of June. At which point, presumingly, another one of these "live expansions" might follow.



Copy-pasting from GOA's announcement, Call to Arms will introduce an array of new content for WAR players, including two highly anticipated new careers - the Orc Choppa and the Dwarf Slayer - and a new dungeon zone called "Land of the Dead", set in the desert realm of the Tomb Kings. It will also include 3 in-game live events, a new Realm vs. Realm (RvR) Scenario, added functionality to the Realm Wars section of the WAR website, the opening of the official WAR Forums, and a new free trial version of the game.

In the announcement, Mark Jacobs from Mythic refers to this huge new Tomb Kings dungeon as a "spiritual successor to the Dark Age of Camelot dungeon, Darkness Fall", and restates their commitment to keep on delivering a massive amount of free content "now and in the future".

Below you'll find the full schedule of the Call to Arms live expansion, (...)

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A couple of months - hopefully no more - after its Japanese and North American releases next month (on February 19 and 24, respectively), Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope will also be released in Europe and other PAL territories. In a super-standard press release today, the European branch of Square Enix promised to release this Xbox 360 RPG prequel in spring 2009, though they have yet to pinpoint a more precise date.



They did however come well prepared for the occasion, unloading this plump piece of artwork above, along with plenty of screenshots that you can see below - granted they're still from the Japanese version. There was also that new Star Ocean 4 trailer we posted a few days ago, and updated yesterday with a high-res version. Yeah, it's no Final Fantasy XIII, but it'll have to do, for now. (...)

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More stuff concerning Fallout 3 and it's soon-to-be Japanese release – and it doesn't look that good for our loli-loving friends out there. Especially not the ones who expected to enjoy he full gore compendium that is Fallout 3.

Several things will be missing, such as certain quests, or certain monsters (Ghouls come to mind), while the name of mobs and weapons have been... modified to respect Japan's rules in this area of expertise. Also, be prepared to experience less blood when you brutally convert an enemy into several little pieces of fresh meat.

Source.

We all know that Hellgate: London was an incredible success. As in, it was an incredible success at FAILING in the biggest of ways possible. Flagship Studio went down the drain, and along with it, the rights for this would-be game came into the pockets of HanbitSoft. Well, more exactly, Hanbit owns the IP and the distribution rights outside US and EU (Namco still holds distribution rights in ze States).

Hanbit has been trying too hard to keep this game alive (it's like trying to keep a 120 years old senior alive using medical equipment from WW II), so they announced an expansion, also testing the grounds for a possibility for it to be launched in US. Namco said "go fuck yourselves, take your shit elsewhere".

And, if that was not enough, Namco plans to shut down all Hellgate London servers in the US and EU early next year. For good (and thank God). What a joke way to end this joke of a game. Thanks Shack for the scoop.

If you were anything like us (which, I hope for your sake, you are not), you would be extremely aroused to hear that the infamous King's Bounty, the TBS/RPG/Adventure/Thing from Katauri is about to receive an expansion.



For starters, let's just say that King's Bounty is the king and queen of awesomeness since Heroes 3 hit the shelves. Second, it is worth to mention (for all you lolicons out there), that this time around, you will spank Princess Amelie in a brand new (and possibly dangerous) land, called Teany, while she will do this, and that, and various other things (to herself, hopefully).

Although the official website is in Russian, I was able to steam up some of the features King's Bounty: Princess will hold (clickie to continue): (...)

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What a time I found for quitting WoW... again! Not only is the Lich King unleashing his Wrath in less than a month, but today the big-bad patch 3.0(.2) is being deployed, giving players a taste of things - and inevitable patch-fixing patches - to come.

As any WoW player and his lolpet knows by now, this latest major update is called "Echoes of Doom" and brings more changes and additions than you can read while downloading it; no matter how bad your connection, or how huge the patch. And it's HUGE, like 1.6 GB worth of porn downloads. Not to mention the patch notes are longer than a Wednesday morning maintenance; and we've all had those... So you might want to start reading those official patch notes for v3.0.2 right away.

You won't be seeing this screen for much longer.

Below I'll only slap the "General" section of said patch notes - should be enough to get you through a pack of cigs. So enjoy the read, and I'll see you in-game. Oh... wait... wasn't I quitting WoW? Again? (...)

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