If you haven’t heard about Avatar, the 3D CGI extravaganza of a movie by James Cameron, well, you’ve been living under a rock, in which case, you don’t really read game reviews. Maybe you’re a bug, or an insect of some sort. As it is with all blockbuster movies, a game tie-in was released as well, and when Avatar The Game was unveiled at E3, it was James Cameron himself who unveiled it, saying that he was excited and proud of the game. Well, now it’s here, and does Cameron still have something to be excited and proud of when it comes to Avatar? He sure does, as long as it’s the movie.
From the get go, Avatar is a action game much like others, but it’s not exactly a game interpretation of the movie, rather, it’s a prequel to the film, and features an all new character, Ryder. It’s still set on Pandora, and is, for the most part, a third person shooter much like Mass Effect and Gears of War. Although, don’t expect the same comparison when it comes to gameplay. The story revolves around a fight between the Na’vi and the Humans, who seek a precious mineral on the planet. It’s then up to you to decide whether you’d help the humans get the mineral, or the Na’vi defend it against the humans. Despite the straightforward setup, the story is rather incoherent and has a number of gaps which prevent the player from truly immersing themselves into the game. Read the rest of Avatar review
It was widely expected that Final Fantasy XII was going to be a huge deal in Japan, but the game has appeared to be even bigger than that, as it has broken the Japanese sales records by selling over 1.5 million units during its first week, according to Media Create, which tracks these kinds of things. We previously reported that the game sold 1 million copies during it’s first day as well — another record.
If that’s not all, the game boosted PS3 sales over 200% during the week. Don’t expect any slowdowns any time soon for FF XIII.
As a nice gesture for the holidays, Valve has released the Left 4 Dead 2 Software Development Kit, poised to make lots of L4D devs grinding at their computers over the holiday to create new mods.
The new SDK includes all the bells and whistles that were featured in Left 4 Dead 2, from the new characters to the new and improved AI Director.
Several games are known for having the “double XP” weekend, where, just for a weekend, players will get double up on XP in the game. While Uncharted 2 doesn’t have XP, instead, cash, it’s called double cash weekend, and you better take advantage of it, because cash in Uncharted 2 is used to buy new weapons and upgrades.
It seems like everyone is branching out into LEGO games in order to just that younger fan base of gamers who don’t rely on fancy graphics and gory gameplay to satisfy their gaming needs, and the LEGO Star Wars and other franchises have been quite successful, rendering their characters and worlds into LEGO characters instead of something that resembles real people. And now the time has come to Rock Band, with the aptly titled LEGO Rock Band. And yes, it’s exactly what you might expect from it.
Besides Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Batman — all action games — LEGO Rock Band is on the easy side of gameplay. It feature the tried and tested formula from Rock Band and other rhythm games, and includes LEGO characters, which can be highly customized, but still, of course, they’re plastic LEGOs. The game has a great feel of LEGOs, and you’ll be seeing the famous blocks everywhere, from sets, to menus and animations. However, one thing becomes clear very early on: if you’ve played and/or own Rock Band, there’s nothing new in the LEGO version. The gameplay is almost identical, so is the system, the challenges and virtually everything else. Before starting a game, you can chose to play a shorter version of the song, if you easily get tired from hitting notes constantly for 4+ minutes on some of the songs — which does get tedious after all. However, don’t expect a slimmed down, alternate edition of the songs, rather, most of them just end quite abruptly. Read the rest of the LEGO Rock Band review
If you haven’t played Call of Duty World At War, and we really see no reason why you should now that Modern Warfare 2 is out, you might be interested in picking up the new map pack bundle alongside the game.
The bundle features the three previously released bundles and all 9 maps, including the zombie mode as well. The pack is available now and retails for $25 — just $5 less than if you’d buy them individually. We kinda expected a better deal than that.
Just like EA did with the NFL license, getting exclusive game right for years (for a cool billion dollars), THQ has extended its license deal with the WWE — World Wrestling Entertainment — giving THQ exclusive rights for the wrestling franchise for another 8 years.
The deal however, wasn’t struck in friendship, bur rather, in a court settlement which saw THQ pay WWE $33 million over the next 4 years to settle a license dispute which the two companies have been battling in court for the past year.
Activision has released a patch for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Modern Warfare 2, which fixes the infamous infinite ammo glitch which you can see in the video above. The patch also includes weapons balances and a few other fixes.
Bayonetta has been receiving lots of news coverage over the past few months, and every bit of information and media that was released helped build some solid hype for the game. Does it live up to it all? Surprisingly, it lives to to most of the hype, but more importantly, it’s just a fun game to be playing.
It’s very difficult to explain Bayonetta, you’d rather wanna see it for yourself, kinda like the good ‘ol Tim Burton movies. In essence, in Bayonetta, you play as a witch who can, among other things, summon demons and creatures from her spiraling black hair, which serves as a portal to hell. Think that’s over the top? We barely just got started on how weird, surreal and flat out over the top Bayonetta is. The story, what of it we could understand is as follows: between two clans of witches which stand for the opposite powers, and, as one might expect, they’re in an all out war against each other. The story isn’t clear and most of it doesn’t make sense, but luckily, the gameplay and the sheer weirdness of the world of Bayonetta makes up for it. Read the rest of the Bayonetta review
The long awaited ArmA 2 patch 1.05 has finally been released, after undergoing beta testing for the past few weeks. The patch includes a number of fixes and a new campaign add-on. The full changes/additions:
Free bonus campaign Eagle Wing
Free bonus helicopter addon AH-64D
New Warfare multiplayer mode When Diplomacy Fails, including 3-sides and support for diplomacy between factions
Major AI tweaking and balancing (better combat cooperation, better situational awareness, new Suppressive fire command)
Significant performance improvements, especially in large cities
Fixed compatibility problems under Windows Vista and Windows 7 x64 with 8 GB and more RAM
Grass now provides concealment also in distance
Improved hit detection and damage system
Improved object visibility and less significant objects popping in distance
Improved mouse input handling
Spatial sound improvements
Automatic launching of user made addons (units, missions etc.) via “pbo” file association with the game
Possibility to switch between windowed and fullscreen mode at any time in game menus using Alt + Enter or through video options
If you haven’t heard about Avatar, the 3D CGI extravaganza of a movie by James Cameron, well, you’ve been living under a rock, in which case, you don’t really read game reviews. Maybe you’re a bug, or an insect of some sort. As it is with all blockbuster movies, a game tie-in was released as well, and when Avatar The Game was unveiled at E3, it was James Cameron himself who unveiled it, saying that he was excited and proud of the game. Well, now it’s here, and does Cameron still have something to be excited and proud of when it comes to Avatar? He sure does, as long as it’s the movie. 
As a nice gesture for the holidays, Valve has 
It seems like everyone is branching out into LEGO games in order to just that younger fan base of gamers who don’t rely on fancy graphics and gory gameplay to satisfy their gaming needs, and the LEGO Star Wars and other franchises have been quite successful, rendering their characters and worlds into LEGO characters instead of something that resembles real people. And now the time has come to Rock Band, with the aptly titled LEGO Rock Band. And yes, it’s exactly what you might expect from it.
Just like EA did with the NFL license, getting exclusive game right for years (for a cool billion dollars), THQ has 
Bayonetta has been receiving lots of news coverage over the past few months, and every bit of information and media that was released helped build some solid hype for the game. Does it live up to it all? Surprisingly, it lives to to most of the hype, but more importantly, it’s just a fun game to be playing.
The long awaited ArmA 2 patch 1.05 has finally been released, after undergoing beta testing for the past few weeks. The patch includes a number of fixes and a new campaign add-on. The full changes/additions: