Primal Wireless Headset for Xbox 360

Rude Gameware wants to be strong with Xbox 360 gamers with the release of their new gaming wireless headset. The Primal Wireless Headset has a range of over 25′ feet with a wireless mic.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Confirmed by Ubisoft

Ubisoft has confirmed to IGN the title of the next Assassin's Creed game.

A purported GameStop reservation placeholder card for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has been leaked early by an employee. Ubisoft said the image below is authentic and that they'll have more information next week.

The game will be released this fall for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The details listed on the back of the card align with what Ubisoft has already confirmed, such as the inclusion of Ezio and the location, Rome.

"Live and breathe as Ezio, now a legendary master assassin, in his struggle against the Templar order. Lead your own brotherhood of Assassins and strike at the heart of the enemy. Rome," the card says, according to Kotaku.

"And for the first time, take part in an innovative multiplayer layer allowing you to embody an assassin of your choosing and define their killing style. A never-before-seen online multiplayer experience. Lead your own brotherhood of assassins, as Ezio, and conquer Rome."

Pre-ordering the game at GameStop will give you an exclusive multiplayer character. No details on who that might be. It's expected Ubisoft will announce its fiscal quarterly results later this month.


Via IGN

Mass Effect 2 Announced

We all knew this was coming ever since we got to know that BioWare decided to give Mass Effect the trilogy treatment but now it’s official and here’s what you can expect from this upcoming sci-fi action RPG:

In this dark second chapter, Saren’s evil army of Geth soldiers has just been defeated, and humans, still struggling to make their mark on the galactic stage, are now faced with an even greater peril...
Information seems a bit scarce right now but you can head on over to the official site for a teaser trailer.
Mass Effect 2 will release for the Xbox360 and PC in 2010

World of Warcraft is as addictive as cocaine

The computer game World of Warcraft is the most dangerous game on the market with a high risk of addiction, according to a new report from a Swedish youth organization

The Youth Care Foundation (Stiftelsen Ungdomsvård), which works to advocate active alternatives to gaming, described the game as "the cocaine of the computer games world".
The foundation's report is as yet unpublished and is based on the experiences of gamers and their parents who have been in contact with the group.
"There is not a single case of game addiction that we have worked with in which World of Warcraft has not played a part," according to Sven Rollenhagen at the foundation to the newspaper Metro.
World of Warcraft is an online fantasy game, which according to the Game Over treatment centre in Linköping in central Sweden are the types of games which carry the highest risk of addiction.
The Local reported in November 2008 that a boy in Laholm, southern Sweden had been admitted to hospital after collapsing following a 20-hour World of Warcraft binge.
The foundation, founded in 1991, works with all types of addiction and since 2007 this has included computer games. The group runs the help website spelfritt.se.
Of the 2,000 calls received by the foundation in 2007, 170 concerned computer games, Metro reports.

 

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Need For Speed: World Online Interface Revealed

Here is a preview screen shot from Need For Speed: World Online. Also, there is a bit more info from the producer of NFSWO.

Click to enlarge

“Key to the concept of NFS World Online is the user interface which has been built from the ground up to take advantage of the PC architecture. Instead of a traditional console view of a game, we’re using a user-selectable gadget interface designed specifically for the PC. The system allows the gamer to choose which components of the interface they want to add to their game. The gadgets are really flexible and offer a wide range of display options: docked/undocked, floating in the game window or just sitting outside of the game space.

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Street Fighter IV Review

With a lineage like Street Fighter IV's, the thick cloud of anticipation that's been looming over it since its announcement is all but expected. With the numerous successful sub-series and cross-overs the franchise has spawned, there's been a whole lot of hope and skepticism alike amongst fans. Will the franchise harness the pace of the Alpha series, or will it be the boring sloth fest that EX was?

As you might know, Street Fighter IV moved away from the traditional sprite-based 2D art style and found its way into the arms of 3D cel-shaded character design with full 3D backdrops. It made a lot of us leer and sneer at it, since the last 3D transition of the series - Street Fighter EX - failed miserably. The biggest flaws in EX were that it was painfully slow, and the fact that you could sidestep almost every special attack (since the game played out on a three dimensional plane) made it the least tactical of the lot.

Thankfully though, Capcom hasn't made the same mistake a second time; so while Street Fighter IV is in 3D, all combat takes place on a 2D plane. It pretty much sticks to what worked best for the franchise, so all you skeptics and purists can breathe a sigh of relief. If you're looking for the blazing pace of the Alpha series though, you'll be a little disappointed.

Street Fighter IV has shed the insane pace that the Alpha series popularized, and has instead stuck to the Street Fighter II pace. While I loved the pace of Alpha, this change works incredibly well for SFIV since there are so many layers of tact introduced, that it would be close to impossible for all but the elite to play the game without button mashing if the pace was any faster.

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23 Memorable Deaths in Gaming

Kicking the bucket, biting the dust, getting moved into ‘upper, upper management’, the big game over, getting married to OJ – whichever morbid euphemism you choose to use, they all boil down to the same universal truth: death is unavoidable, and it sucks arse.
As gamers, we have a much more intimate relationship with the Grim Reaper when compared to our non-gaming cousins, because virtual death is always just around the next corner. For the most part this makes some among of us blasé towards the concept of carking it; but every once in a while we experience a truly unique shafting, a beautiful death, that will stick around in our memory longer than it probably should…
Spoiler warning: if you haven’t played the game through yet, don’t read about it.
DEATH BY WTF? (Shocking)
Game: Silent Hill
Type: Shocking
Event: Dying right at the beginning of a game can be an artsy experience, or it can give you a heart attack – either way. This is especially true if the death involves flailing about in the dark amidst inescapable barbed wire, with rotting corpses on gurneys and skinless mole people slashing at your nether region with rusty razor blades.

 

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Is Microsoft Giving up on Console Visual Superiority?

When it comes to pushing what is possible on a console, it seems as of late that Microsoft has 'taken the back foot' so to speak, the titles that are making huge waves in the gaming industry in terms of console technology are mainly PS3 exclusives.

Now before the Xbox 360 fanboys out there chew up this article and spit it out, hear me out...

Earlier in the life cycle of the Xbox 360, there were games released that were praised and adored for the technology and visuals they brought to gaming, one of which was 'Gears of War', this highly intense Third Person shooter was epic in every sense of the word, no pun intended.

'Gears of War' was THE game to own an Xbox 360 for, with Xbox 360 owners using it as a  tool for arguments against PS3 users, who argued their system was more "powerful"

Everything from the games' graphics to it's cover-centric gameplay was brilliant, and indeed one of the many reasons the original 'Gears of War' was hyped for, was it's visuals. However after the release of the sequel, 'Gears of War 2', which saw noticeable visual improvements to the first, the Xbox 360 has wittered out of the race to console visual superiority.

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F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin SP Demo Impressions

Anyone who knows me well enough knows how obsessed I am with F.E.A.R., a game I’ve played multiple times since its release in 2005. A slew of sequels sporting the F.E.A.R. name were released subsequently but none of them impressed as much as the original game since they weren’t being developed by Monolith. And then I heard the rights to the F.E.A.R. franchise had passed back to them and they would be the ones working on a full fledged sequel. Tears of happiness flowed.
Last week (or was it the week before that?) they were generous enough to release a single player demo that allowed us to sample nearly two levels of slow mo horrific action and for some reason it was somewhat of a downer.

Having played the first F.E.A.R. game on the PC I went straight up for the PC demo (demo is out on PSN and XBL as well) and nearly one and a half gigs later, I was ready to kick some undead kid arse. The demo started off from where F.E.A.R. ended so the city (where F.E.A.R. took place) has been devastated, Alma and her minions are free in the city once again and you play as one Michael Beckett who’s supposed to snuff her out once and for all.
As far as atmosphere is concerned the demo delivers. The first level took place in an abandoned school of sorts and had a good amount of scares to keep you on the edge of the seat but when it came down to the action I was pretty disappointed.

Now one of F.E.A.R.’s main draws (for me) was the over the top, John Woo inspired action. The exaggerated rag doll physics that kicked in as and when you decimated a soldier in slow motion with a shotgun or the way body parts flew all over the place never got old. In F.E.A.R. 2, it’s all gone. Shoot a solider in slow mo and he just slumps down or just slumps back minutely. Decapitation was pretty disappointing as well. Also environmental destruction has been scaled down to a certain extent and I never felt that wanton sense of satisfaction shooting up an empty room or lobbing a nade into it.
What irritated me further was the fact that weapons sounded like cheap fire crackers; something that’s a huge turn off in first person shooters. The shotgun from F.E.A.R sounded like one and packed a mean audio punch when fired. Nothing of the sort here.
And then there was the much hyped Mech section where you pilot a Mech and go to town on a bunch of soldiers and other Mechs and for some reason I nearly fell asleep during that sequence. It was that uninspiring!

And that one word pretty much summed up my feelings for the demo – Uninspiring. Sure it looked good and was creepy enough but it lacked the visceral gameplay that made me fall in love with F.E.A.R. nearly three years ago. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its covers so I’m going to try and apply that proverb over here by not judging the game too harshly based on this demo.
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin releases for the PC, Xbox360 and PS3 on the 13th of February 2009.

Starcraft II Lego Creations

Remember back in the day before there were fancy video games, computers, TV, and more MP3 players than you could imagine; with the only source of entertainment being two rocks? I don’t either but that doesn’t stop how awesome Lego’s have always been.

For anyone with unfamiliar (for what ever reason) with Lego’s they are merely small plastic blocks that are able to be used to create things. This could range from a space ship, a castle, a life sized person, it all depended on your imagination ( To be more accurate how many blocks and how much time you had) on what you created. Yes indeed these were a wonderful children’s toy and still is today. The average focused age group does not stop some though, and this is where this fellow comes in.

“Pepa Quin” as he is called on flickr, has created a few fairly decent Starcraft II themed vehicles and otherwise. This includes Terran Marines, Immortal, Banshee, and a Hellion.

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MSI announces new HD 4870 cards

MSI has announced two new cards in its HD 4870 lineup, the R4870-MD512 and R4870-MD1G. Both cards are based on well known RV770 chip and both of them are cooled by a impressive looking dual-slot cooler.
Both cards are working at reference 750MHz for the core while the memory is clocked 3,600MHz. The memory amount depends on the model, 512MB and 1GB are possible in GDDR5, and it comes paired up with a standard 256-bit memory interface. These two new cards feature a HDMI, D-Sub and Dual Link DVI outputs, as well as SSC's (Solid State Choke) and solid cap capacitors.
The most interesting part is the non-reference cooler which lower the cards average temperature by 20°C if compared to the reference cooler. The 9cm fan gives much more airflow while lowering the noise. The fan spins at 2800rpm should provide 56 CFM of airflow while it produces 33.75 dBA of noise.
According to our sources, MSI's new HD 4870 with a 9cm fan and dual heatpipes heats up to 44°C in idle mode and to 66°C under full load which is a great result considering the fact that the reference card can heat up to around 80°C under load. We hope that we will have a chance to try one of these to make sure that these temperatures are for real.
The cards should be available soon, while the price is still unknown. We only think that the cards comes way to late to make any difference especially as some other companies have done this a few month before.

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Guinness World Records 2009 Gamer's Edition Launches Today

The launch of Guinness World Records 2009 Gamer Edition is upon us, as Guinness World Records today release this year’s edition of the highly respected publication.

To celebrate the UK launch of the new edition, motoring inventor Edd China will unveil his latest creation on four wheels - the Fastest Mobile Gaming Rig on 11th February. Complete with all three Current-Generation consoles and monitors, this unique piece of mobile furniture will tour the streets of London with three gamers onboard after setting a speed record on the A40. 

Also in celebration of launch, the world's Youngest Professional Gamer, Lil Poison (aka Victor De Leon III), is due to visit London for the very first time on 9th February. 10-year old, Long Island (NY) native, Lil Poison, claimed the title after signing with MLG recruiters as a Pro Gamer at the age of six.

Guinness World Records is the universally recognized authority on record-breaking achievement. First published in 1955, the annual Guinness World Records book is published in more than one-hundred countries and twenty-five languages and is one of the highest-selling books under copyright of all time with more than three million copies sold annually across the globe. Guinness World Records also annually publishes the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition; a records book devoted solely to the world of videogaming and High Score record achievements, and this year’s edition couldn’t come with any higher recommendation.

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Mirror's Edge Hacked to Offer 3rd Person View

Earlier on in the week during my Mirror's Edge review, I had bet my entire salary that someone would be working out on a third person mod for Mirror’s Edge and while this isn’t exactly what I had in mind, a member on the Mirror’s Edge forums has tweaked the game’s camera to sport a third person view.

It’s not perfect and the animations look kinda robotic but it’s a start I guess. Here’s how you can tweak Faith’s perspective:

Go to "DocumentsEA GamesMirror's EdgeTdGameConfig" open the file "TDInput" with notepad. Add this line to the "bindings" list:
Bindings=(Name="F4",Command="FreeFlightCamera",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Then press F4 a few times.
Via On-Mirror’s Edge.

World of Warcraft is being Considered a Religion?

According to Dutch university graduate Theo Zijderveld, WoW could be considered a religion as it meets the four dimensions required to constitute one by French sociologist Danil Hervieu-Lger's: Community, ethics, culture and emotion.
There is certainly a healthy WoW community, the rules could be considered ethics, the Warcraft Mythos or Lore is the culture and the emotion is the feeling we get from playing WoW.
"You have to level up as a way of self-realization. It can be very spiritual," said Zijderveld. He concludes "In the Western world where the grand narrative has largely disappeared, virtual worlds can mediate the search for identity and spirituality. "
Read his full write-up in the subject here.

Limited edition GTA IV Microsoft Points card revealed

Play.com has revealed a special Microsoft Points card worth 1600 Microsoft Points will be released next month. The Points card, printed with a Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost & Damned design will be a limited edition, released on Friday 13th February 2009.

If it looked anything like the above, you'd be lost and damned!

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Final Fantasy VII PS3 Set To Boost Japanese Sales Massively

Earlier this week it was announced that there would be a special edition Playstation 3 coming out in conjunction with Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete on Blu-ray. The package features a PS3, Advent Children Complete and the Final Fantasy XIII demo.
Since it went on sale on the Japanese Amazon, it's jumped up to #2 on the "Best Sellers" list, with Advent Children Complete holding the #1 spot. It's jumped straight in ahead of Dragon Quest IX, which is coming out in a couple of months for the Wii, so that should give an indication as tothe popularity of this item.
Due to the limited availability, Amazon are only going to allow customers to pre-order the item at specific times. It's unsure if they will inform people beforehand, or if consumers will just have to get lucky when looking at the page. For the moment though, it's not possible to pre-order the bundle from Amazon, and they have not announced the frequency of their sales windows, or how long the windows will stay open for.
One thing is for sure though, this could seriously shift a lot of systems for Sony. Looking at how successful the Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and Dissidia: Final Fantasy special edition PSPs were can give some indication as to the potential effect this could have long-term for the PS3 as well. This, combined with the scheduled PS3 releases in Q1/Q2 could definitely kick-start the PS3 in Japan.

source

What would happen if Mass Effect came to the PS3?

I have been hearing rumors lately that Mass Effect could be coming to the PS3. This rumor isn’t necessarily a new one, but it has been resurfacing as of late. I believe there is a good chance it could make its way on to a Blu Ray disc. Let’s say that Mass Effect was coming to the PS3 this year. What would happen in the month of its release?

EA would make money
Well that’s an easy one to foretell. Mass Effect sold over 2 million copies, which is very good for a new IP. In my opinion if Mass Effect was released on the PS3 it would either match that or sell more than 2 million. Want to know why? That’s because I’m sure there are PS3 fan boys that would swoop this game up in a heartbeat. I’m sure EA knows that they can introduce a fairly new IP to a new audience, and make money doing it. They should ship ME (Mass Effect) with the Bring Down the Sky DLC, patches and bug fixes, and some other new additions.  Don’t just port the game, utilize the Blu Ray and make it a bargain at $60.

 

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Microsoft Sued Over Xbox 360 Disc-Scratching

Microsoft has been targeted in a class-action lawsuit by angry consumers who have had their game discs scratched by their Xbox 360 consoles.

The Xbox 360, when tilted, causes the game disc to collide with parts inside the disc drive, which produce the deep circular scratches on the game disc.

The class-action lawsuit claims that Microsoft knew of the issue before-hand, and could have easily solved it by adopting a slot-loading disc drive like the ones found on the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii.

“Because these greater gyroscopic forces are combined with both a weak magnetic force for holding the disc in place, and a tray-loaded design that can be oriented vertically, uncoupling of a disc during normal console use was a predictable result,” the lawsuit reads.

During a deposition, a Microsoft employee said that the Xbox team knew of the issue prior to launch, but did not resolve the issue.

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GTA IV Sequel This Year?

Shacknews reports that according to Game Informer's latest issue, that we might just see a GTA sequel this year. Here are the details:

"We're not talking about new DLC or a collection of previously available DLC, we're talking about a full retail game
We expect this title to follow the suit of previous GTAs and use a subtitle such as GTA: San Andreas, etc. Tokyo might be a possible setting for the game, but details are non-existent at this time."

This could be the treatment they gave GTA 3, where they released Vice City soon after its release. If that's the case, let's hope that its better than GTA IV, like it was in the case of GTA 3 and Vice City!

Guitar Hero: Metallica in May

The upcoming (and possibly biggest) Guitar Hero game we spoke about in our upcoming party games of 2009 feature is confirmed for a May 09 European release, pushing it to Q2 2009 slot unlike what was speculated. The game will feature four player support, including a vocalist, two guitarists and a drummer.

The Metallica flavor will be spilled over to everything, including the special powers which will be named 'Fade to Black', 'Ride the Lightning' and 'Trapped under Ice'. The game will be released on the Xbox360, PS3, Wii and PS2.