In more movie-game news, THQ today announced the official game based on Pixar’s upcoming film Up, developed by Heavy Iron Studios (Wall-E, Ratatouille).

The game will feature playable versions of all four characters from the movie and will offer two-player co-op, as well as a four-player multiplayer aerial combat mode.

A demo accompanied the official announcement. It can be downloaded from major download sites.

Up is due out alongside the movie this May on PC, PSP, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and DS.

Seeing as how the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie is due out this summer, a movie tie-in is no surprise. However, it won’t be a big, retail release, but will be released through PlayStation Network and Xbox Live for the respective platforms.

This comes from a notice included in Star Trek Blu-rays found by Trekmovie. Dubbed Star Trek D.A.C., the game is being developed by Naked Sky Entertainment who previously worked on Roboblitz (PC, Xbox 360).

While no official details are available, Kotaku notes that studio employees list an “unannounced PSN/XBLA title” on their resumes, indicating a downloadable console release.

I doubt it’ll come as a surprise to anyone that Lionhead is planning on developing a third Fable game. Their first two forays into the land of Albion have been extremely successful. What is somewhat surprising is that development might be underway already. It’s only the most tentative of leads, but BBC presenter Jonathan Ross said in his Twitter account last night that he’d been asked to do voice work for Fable III.

This could be a bit premature however, possibly nothing more than a ‘would you consider doing voices for Fable III’ that was blown out of proportion: Ross has updated his Twitter account including ‘apologizing to Peter Molyneux’ with the other items on his to-do list. It could be that Ross got an annoyed call from Lionhead this morning because Peter Molyneux didn’t want it known they were already working on the game.

Thus far Capcom has been dodging any specifics on a Wii port of Resident Evil 5 and when recently asked about it they said that soon Wii owners would be ‘very happy’. An advertisement in Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu has shown a new title for the Wii in the Resident Evil series. The title is Biohazard (the Japanese name for the Resident Evil series) The Darkside Chronicles.

There’s not much information to go on from the screenshots in the advertisement, but it looks like Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield will be the main characters, which hints that it might be set in the timeline of Resident Evil 2, with players fighting hordes of zombies in Raccoon City. One of the pictures shows some shambling zombies, which is no surprise, but closer inspection reveals a red crosshair in the shot, suggesting that this could be another on-rails shooter in the same vein as Umbrella Chronicles especially since both titles have the word ‘chronicles’ in the title.

Is this really the announcement that’s going to make Wii owners happy? Maybe, but I doubt it’s going to please hardcore fans of the survival horror series.

Bible Fight Review–Dare I Say “Of Biblical Proportions”?
Death Vs. Monstars Review–Arena Blasting Fun For All
Iron Man Game Review–Solid Enough But Lacking Polish
GTA 4 sales hit 13 million
BioShock 2 “Big Sister” revealed
Terminator Salvation shooter coming to iPhone
Nintendo denies Wii MotionPlus delay
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The Secret World to be Revealed
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GamePro Launches Publishing Label
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New Anti-Drug Ads Focus On Gaming Skills
Microsoft Being Sued Over Xbox Live Chat
Wii Motion Plus Not In The Conduit
Portal Defenders Review–More Surprises Than It Should Have
Infinite Undiscovery Review–One Worth Discovering…But Not Infinitely.
Rihanna’s Revenge Game Review–Major Social Commentary
RE5 Mercenaries-mode going online

Claimed to be more than just a video game store, Gamer Doc is showing great strides as an entertainment center, featuring “Gamer Centers” for Xbox 360(R), PlayStation3(R) and Wii(R), making it easy for customers to find the games, consoles and accessories they are looking for. Gamer Doc also sells flat-panel HD monitors and cables, offers console and disc repairs, and the knowledgeable staff can show customers how to hook-up their systems for optimum game play.

Designed to provide an enjoyable shopping experience for everyone, Gamer Doc customers who know what they want can come in and buy, rent, sell, pre-order or trade-in games, drop off a console or game for repair, and be in and out of the store quickly, while those who are new to gaming or want to browse, can take their time and have all of their questions answered.

“Our franchisees are very excited to be part of the video game industry, which continues to experience robust sales even in this sluggish economy,” Belanger said. “More and more consumers of all ages, from kids to parents to senior citizens, are choosing video games as the best value and the most fun for their entertainment dollar.”

(Source) Press

If you thought the only place to play Bible Fight was on Adult Swim, you’re about to be amazed—it’s just made its way to Kongregate.

There’s actually a plot to this, and it’s pretty interesting.  Basically, it supposes that God Almighty called a tournament of Bible characters together to see which one was strongest.  You’ll be able to take on the role of first woman Eve, shepherd and plague broker Moses, flood survivor Noah, immaculate conceptor Mary, ultimate evil Satan, or even the Son of God Himself, Jesus Christ.  And the six of them will brawl for supremacy in the pages of Bible Fight.

This is also one of those games that’s really only fun in concept—a surprisingly large percentage of the fights can be beaten by virtue of excellent timing of button presses.  But it’s the idea of watching Moses take on Noah that’s actually kind of fun.  The graphics are clean, the sound is fair enough for a flash game and you’ll likely enjoy the quick action.  But it really doesn’t have a lot of leverage here, and those quick to cry “blasphemy!” should likely look away.

Sometimes it really amazes me how the simplest games can be the most challenging and downright addicting.  This is the case with a game I found over at Newgrounds–a diabolical little shooter frenzy called Death Vs. Monstars.  And no, that’s not a misspelling.

An “arena shooting game”, you play as Death, in this case represented by a small floating skull that fires little spheres of energy on a regular basis in whatever direction his target reticle is pointed.  You’ll fly Death around, trying avoid the monsters and in turn blasting them off the map.  It’s a lot harder than it sounds, believe me–especially as wave after wave of enemies fills up the screen and flies at you while you’re firing in what amounts to a cone configuration about sixteen degrees outward in one direction.

It’s a clever little game, make no mistake on that one.  There’s lots of enemies and tons of power-ups, so you’ll likely have lots of fun playing with this casual shooting experience.  I sure did, even if the difficulty was enough to make me understand why people throw their controllers sometimes.

Games that have been converted from movies have gotten a bad rap over the years, and in all honesty, this bad reputation is mostly deserved.  We’ve all tried the horrific adaptation of some movie or another, and got fed up with shoddy controls and lousy graphics and weak storylines.

But I think I may have found one that at least manages to not be a complete loss–the adaptation of Iron Man.

In Iron Man, you’ll play as the Robert Downey Jr. version of Tony Stark, a wisecracking ladies’ man, who creates a suit of futuristic armor powered by his pacemaker.  For those among you who think I’m being too glib, you’ll have to admit, I’m not really THAT far off.  He’ll confront a panoply of enemies, most of which are identifiable from the comics, as he takes Stark Industries from a gigantic arms dealership on into the future, a move resisted by many of his current clients.

When I picked this game up, I admit I had something of a mixed reaction. One, I was operating under years of horrible movie to game translations that haven’t gone well in years.  You know the saying, once bitten, twice shy?  Well, I’ve been bitten by game translations a whole lot more than once.  I’ve been bitten more times than a twelve-foot hoagie at a Super Bowl party.  But at the same time, I got reason to hope right off the bat.  See, the Iron Man game was made by Sega.  I have a very good experience with Sega, mostly because I stay away from Sonic the Hedgehog games like the plague.  So I’ve got great memories of Crazy Taxi and House of the Dead and a whole legion of killer Sega games.

I was hoping for the best and fearing for the worst when I put this in, and what I got was actually something in between.  What I got was a surprisingly simple game–you could almost call it STARK, no pun intended but it’s there anyway–I ran around, I flew, I blasted stuff.  Clearly this wasn’t going to win any prizes for deep and complex gameplay.  The graphics and sound were serviceable, if again, a bit minimalist.  And even the story isn’t a terribly far cry from the original movie storyline with a few interesting curlicues added on for effect.
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Take Two has announced that sales of the popular and critically acclaimed Grand Theft Auto 4 have surpassed 13 million copies sold worldwide.

Take Two also revealed that worldwide, the sales of GTA 4 are evenly distributed between the PS3 and Xbox 360, whereas in the US, where it has sold 5.5 million copies, the Xbox 360 version leads the PS3 by over a million games.

Take Two did not reveal how many copies of the “Lost and Damned” expansion were sold, but analysts have estimated that over a million have already been sold, and that it will sell another million by the end of October, when Take Two’s fiscal year runs out.