Ah, Rock Band, how I love thee! But I love Lego even more! And so, it is with great pleasure that I report on a mishap by Harmonix henchman Dan Teasdale who accidentally confirmed the existence of LEGO Rock Band during his GDC presentation.

The criminal in question – the attached slide – lists the game for release later this year. Apparently, the PDF was “sent for speech approval” and not the version that was actually showed during his GDC speech.

It appears that the game is scheduled for release sometime between the upcoming Beatles and the PSP Rock Band game.

Teasdale – you sure screwed up, man!

Legendary game developer Yu Suzuki – the man behind such famous franchises as Virtua Fighter and Shenmue – has “retired” from his high-level R&D job at Sega.

He has been forced to step down from his creative role in R&D, but will still work in the company as a manager for Sega’s AM Plus – an arcade division, which has so far released Psy Phi and Sega Race TV in Japan.

While the man had his share of hits, he also had blunders mostly in the form of the expensive-to-make Shenmue games. Today is a sad day at Sega and gaming in general.

The success of the Wii and co-op games hearkens back to rare older games that were focused on a multiplayer experience. One of the most successful of these was the Worms series where players could control teams of earthworms hell-bent on destroying one another via arrays of weapons ranging from mundane machine guns to outlandish banana grenades and exploding sheep.

Over the years there’s been sequels and remakes, with a remake of Worms having launched on Xbox Live Arcade just over two years ago. The game is demonstrating incredible staying power, having been in the top five weekly sales even now. It’s just been launched for download to your PS3 via the Playstation Network. The game takes advantage of the full graphics power, putting out the retooled images at a full 1080p and giving you and up to three friends a great view of the mayhem.

For $12.99 the game is available currently in the USA, with it launching for 7.99 pounds or 9.99 euros over Easter. It features the same classic gameplay with all sorts of new bells and whistles including a wide array of team voices, an improved physics engine and four new weapons including the Holy Hand Grenade and Concrete Donkey.

Capcom today announced that the Versus multiplayer mode DLC for Resident Evil 5 will be released tomorrow on PS3 and Xbox 360.

The DLC will add online 1v1 and 2v2 in two new modes. First up is “Slayer’s Rule”, a simple mode where teams compete to kill the zombies. Second is “Survivor’s Rule”, a mode where players hunt each other.

It will cost 400 points ($5) despite the anger and fury it incited in fans.

Lionhead has released some fresh information from “See the Future”, the next batch of Fable 2 DLC which Molyneaux teased about a while back.

Not exactly a look at Fable 3, the DLC will have players saving Albion or leading it to ruin, whichever rocks your boat. Whatever you do, you’ll receive a vision of Albion’s future. which may or may not be Fable 3.

There will be two new major quests as well as new items, clothing, hairstyles, and you can even teach your old dog new tricks. Here’s the deal:

The Ghosts of the Snowglobe Quest: Holding a disturbing secret, the small model village inside it was once a real town in Albion. The people who once inhabited it are now ghosts condemned to endless torment until the shadowy threat that cursed them is defeated.

The Cursed Knight Quest: Forever banished to a land beyond the dead, the Cursed Knight awaits a hero who has the strength and will to dress up in convincing costumes, even imitating a hobbe or balverine, to save him from his fate.

The Colosseum: The Colosseum puts even the Crucible to shame. Only the greatest heroes have triumphed here. Players’ abilities will be put to the test to prove themselves in combat once and for all, to win the ultimate in prizes.

The DLC is slated to hit Xbox Live next month for 560 Microsoft points ($7).

Though culturally Canada and the United States are similar in many ways, the province of Quebec is very different, to the point where there is a near-continuous discussion of the province seceding from the country. Much of this has to do with the language. While it’s rare nowadays to find someone in the province who doesn’t speak English, French is still the official language.

Recently the province passed a law that seems aimed at keeping French in use. The law bans the sale of any English-only video game if a French version is available. Those in the industry don’t seem happy about this law, citing the fact that very few gamers are adverse to playing games in English as well as the loss of sales due to delays in getting international versions of the titles since translations require time and more bug checking.

Ultimately this will likely only hurt the economy of Quebec since circumventing this law would be quite simple. Driving over the border to another province or purchasing an English version on eBay are simple means of avoiding this regulation.

German developer Crytek has filed new trademarks, which could lead to new IPs developed by the studio. The new trademarks are “GFACE”, “CARVATAR” and “KINGDOMS”.

Last month it was revealed that Crytek, alongside EA, had filed to trademark “WARFACE” as well.

Usually developers file trademarks very early in the development process, sometimes even years, so it might be a while until we hear more about the unannounced projects from Crytek.

Picking up from the success that they had from their Nintendo DS version, Meteos Wars focuses on a different game console in the Xbox 360. Gameplay is simple. If you are familiar with Tetris, they are practically similar.

Blocks fall from the sky ala Tetris, and in turn must be matched in vertical or horizontal lines of three. Once a match is made, the triplet will be boosted back into space where it belongs. However, it’s not always that simple; as gravity is your enemy. If your group of blocks is too heavy to make its way back into the heavens, it will steadily descend back into your original pile of blocks. That’s when you will need to match more in order to keep it aloft.

However, the correct blocks will not always be available to match. You can accelerate the speed of the falling squares, but beware – if one line reaches the top of the game board, an alarm will sound. If you cannot reduce the line’s height in a timely fashion, it’s game over! Paired with these harrowing rules, you’re also in a close match with an AI (or human, if you’re in multiplayer) opponent who is trying to clear their board in the same manner.

(Source) Video Game Generation

You know how I’m constantly railing against games that are all gameplay and no story?  How I wish, sometimes, plots would get deeper and richer and more fully realized? Well, today, I’ve seen the other end of the spectrum, and its name is Zoids Assault.

An extremely rare and hard to find title from the boys at Atlus, who for some reason don’t seem to be putting out a lot of product these days, Zoids Assault is a long and involved story, which is in turn part of a much longer and much more involved story, about two major nations at war.  The Guylos Empire and the Republic of Helic have been at each others’ throats for years, and this time around, we focus on two smaller appendages of these great bodies politic, Maroll and Jamil.  One of Marill’s military bases explodes under mysterious circumstances—which is odd enough by itself; explosions don’t tend to be mysterious, ever, they tend to be big, loud, and, in wartime, part of a series—and thus two covert operations teams are sent into their rival Jamil’s territory in response.  They’re probably on their way to do some damage in the best loud, grotesque military fashion available, but we’ll never know exactly what they were doing.  But what’s going on right now, with a cold war brewing between Maroll and Jamil, is irrevocably linked to events that happened around the end of the full shooting war between the Guylos Empire and the Republic of Helic, ten years prior.
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There is a new game console set to hit the market and it goes by the name of EVO Smart Console. The EVO Smart Console will be powered by an AMD Athlon 2.4GHz processor, and will be accompanied by a Fedora-based Linux distro. The open-source console will give you game play, Internet access, VoIP communications and HD video playback all in one box.

It should work with Envizions “cloud” computing service, where users can pick up Amiga-based games and a video on demand service where you can choose from over 10,000 titles. The beta shipment for developers will begins next week with approximately 100 units. More systems will be released later.

Specs:

• AMD Athlon 64×2 5600 2.4GHz processor
• ATI HD 3200 graphics processor
• 2GB DDR2 RAM
• Supports H.264 VC1
• MPEG2 video codecs
• DVI and HDMI connectivity
• 120GB hard drive
• CD/DVD ROM
• Integrated biometric scanner

You can pre-order the EVO Smart console for $380.

(Source) Linuxdevices via Slippery Brick