Poor Jimi, he must be twisting and puffing in his grave right about now, to see what became of his musical legacy. As it turns out on CBC News (via Eurogamer), two of his songs - "The Wind Cries Mary" and a live version of "Purple Haze" - will be playable in the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour game, when it's released this autumn. And more will be added through downloads at a later time.

On the other hand, it was about time! Having several Guitar Hero games without the legendary Jimi Hendrix was a bit of a paradox. Even though, as EG points out, a cover of "Spanish Castle Magic" was previously featured in the series' first installment, and Guitar Hero III also had an avatar which looked a lot like him. Now, at last, he's officially denigrated.


Hey Joe, where you goin' with that Guitar Hero peripheral in your hand

Star Ocean 4 - the RPG sequel surprisingly previewed by Square Enix last Christmas - will be released (exclusively?) for the Xbox 360 console in 2009. According to Famitsu, the announcement was made at a recent Microsoft event in Japan, although some speculate that a delayed and enhanced PS3 version is all but inevitable - much like with Tales of Vesperia, another awesome looking Xbox 360 RPG confirmed for the PS3.

Following the event, Square Enix producer Yoshinori Yamagishi did make a comment regarding the game's exclusivity, but a clear conclusion is nowhere to be found at this time:

"We cannot announce anything on that. We can say that it will be released first [on the Xbox 360]. Whether we'll release it on the PS3 is undecided. We may release it, we may not."

The complete title of the game will be Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope, and the story will take place a few hundred years before the first Star Ocean. Below we posted some new high-res screenshots, and of course we couldn't miss this cool new trailer. Make sure you don't, either!

As I have stated before, along side good ol’ Uwe Boll, Jack Thompson is one of my favorite characters related to the gaming industry. He is a fascinating man, with strong, yet terribly unnatural beliefs, who still thinks, after years of practice, that all the world spins around his misconceptions. Well, too bad for him, it seems.

Game Politics, a website that also loves Jack Thompson almost as much as we do, tells us the story of a Florida Judge who decided to… recommend Mr. Thompson as guilty for no less than 27 counts of misconduct. In other words, if the Florida Supreme Court is sane enough to say yes, Jack is screwed. Initially, there were 31 such counts, most of them (21, to be more precise) are related to his infamous epic-fail crusade against Rockstar and Grand Theft Auto, while others hint at his (again failed) attempt to “convict” Bully of being a major suck-ass game.

I guess it all started with that kid who went rampage and Starfire-critted two police officers and one dispacher, an indeed sad event followed by a lawsuit, in which Thompson represented the victims’ families. The kid was playing, amongst other games, GTA, and Jack quickly assumed that this here title, and only this, is the sole unquestionable reason for the murders.

We are passionately awaiting to see the results of such great events. Hell, we should probably start to write a script for a Jack Thompson-inspired soap opera - until then, we’ll leave him in his medicine’s care.

As we like to say, when we are actually sober and NOT disregarding other people’s opinions, “tastes may vary”. And they may vary a lot. Styles vary, also. Big time. So I tend to find it a bit strange when two big bad ass producers, like Bethesda Softworks, and the younger, much fresher, not yet infested with the “my idea is better than yours” syndrome, Splash Damage, decide to join forces, in an attempt to… well, to do some stuff. What stuff, we have yet to discover. They probably don’t have a clue about it, either.

It’s useless to mention what Bethesda is famous for, but I will restate what it will be Infamous for. Fallout 3. The game that, according to my awesome Nostradamic predictions, will suck so much ass that even the greatest ass sucker in the world will have to bow down and let others do his job. As for Splash Splashidy Splashie, their recent title, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, along side with their very deep friendship with id Studios, says it all.

They obviously intend to do some serious business regarding the gaming industry, but the actual details regarding their future project will not be revealed as soon as it may seem. Let’s just hope for something big, something nasty, and for the love of God, please, no more Oblivion crap. Fallout 3: Oblivion Copycat is enough to fail for ten years to come, already.

Arigatou, 1UP.

The first gameplay footage from the Gears of War 2 campaign was revealed this week, and for the past couple of days, Microsoft has been shoving more materials down our throat. It may sound like a lot, but in fact it's just a bunch of uber-high-res screenshots issued yesterday, and today they re-released the Gears of War 2 'assault' trailer, but without Cliff Bleszinski's commentary. In case you can't make out anything during the intense non-stop action, here's what the trailer is all about, in CliffyB's own words:

"The Locust are back, and they're meaner than ever. And they brought with them a force that can essentially sink entire cities; and it's not just a little emergence hole, it's an entire city going down at once. So humanity's back is against the wall, and we need to strike back against these guys. So the way that we do that is by taking these trucks called Derricks, and we tow these devices called Grind Lifts into Locust-occupied cities. The COG guys get in the Grind Lifts, they barrel down into the depths of the underground, and they fight back against these bad guys."

Both the trailer and the screenshots below are taken from the same level, called "Assault" (the third chapter), from the first act in the single-player campaign.

Despite the usual trend when it comes to recent games, it seems that Prey 2, along with all those asshole-like doors and… wall grafitti, will not come to all the consoles and their mother, when it will eventually ship. More exactly, the guys at Radar Group stated that the sequel to the 2008’s would-be-shooter will find its way to the PC and Microsoft’s X360. So no PS3, at least for a while, though it is hard to believe that such a title would not take advantage of some sales boost with Sony’s console being so overrated.

Details on Prey 2, Earth No More, Incarnate and other two “unknown” projects can be very well spotted on Radar’s website, along with Casey Linch’s statement on The Game Reviews, according to which the game’s developer is still Human Head.

Well, if you are interested in a FPS that denies you DEATH in any possible way, Prey may be a thing for you. And I bet that Prey 2, too.

A rather pretentious title, for what really looks more like a Half-Life 2 MOD. Nevertheless, the recently announced third-person shooter Salvation (anti-rhymes with Damnation, but not to be confused with Dark Salvation) is being developed as a full-fledged PC and Xbox 360 game powered by Valve's Source engine, by some novice Ukranian studio Black Wing Foundation, "in cooperation with N-Game Studios" - cause it's so damn hard to make a generic shooter all by yourself these days.

The world of Salvation is described as a near-future cybernetic dystopia, inspired by the likes of "1984", "Brand New World" and "Us", with a dramatic story spanning seven episodes (17 missions), from Tokyo to London, which goes something like this. (...)

 Continue reading 'Salvation, Cybernetic Dystopian Shooter'...

Old news are best served with a bit of catch-up, and so we return to some of the stories we missed a few days ago due to excessive WoW'ing *cough* various reasons. Having successfully tackled the sci-fi and fantasy RPG sub-genres (and post-apocalyptic, if we think about their good ol' days at Black Isle), the dudes from Obsidian Entertainment (KotOR 2, NWN 2) are finally trying their hand at their first original IP. They call it Alpha Protocol, "a thrilling new espionage role-playing game set in the modern world", which CEO Feargus Urquhart also says will blend "Obsidian's knack for intricate stories, engrossing characters, and significant character advancement with fast-paced modern combat". (...)

 Continue reading 'Alpha Protocol Is Obsidian's New Spy RPG'...

I can almost hear Stephane Grappelli's jazzy violin already...

We all know RPGs are almost on the brink of extinction – and I mean true RPGs, deep story, memorable characters, rapeable Ladies Aribeth, and stuff like that, not some junk food hack and slash that mindlessly (though sometimes, pretty addictive) set you up in a dungeon crawling with sponge blobs, pink rabid bunnies or giant weeds that seem to have an issue with your well being.

The last really good one to hit the market was Bioware’s Mass Effect (and we are still waiting for that PC “port” to make us drool even more), amongst others. As much as we have enjoyed it, we just couldn’t stop that saliva coming out when we heard Greg Zeschuk, BioWare’s general manager, bragging on the MTV channel about how great Mass Effect 2 will be.

First of all, we’ll have more side quests. More and better, he says. Quests that are actually worth doing, not just skip them for that main plot that needs solving RIGHT NOW.

"Side quests can sometimes be left on the side, so to speak. Pardon the pun. But a lot of times it's even just getting that whole game done, that whole first shot [that is important]. We look at Mass Effect 2 as incredibly exciting. Just the amount of effort and knowledge and know-how that went into building the technology for the first one is huge, and [we now have] the chance to actually make things a little bit richer."

Secondly, we’ll get the same treatment here as we’ve got in most BioWare/Black Isle sequels, more exactly an enhanced world, the solving of various technical issues that may (or may not) appear at some point or the other, basically, a truly revamped content that will make the player have an instant erection. What can I say, words are good, they have always been. Hopefully, this is not some media bullshit.

Gamespot scoop.