Today is April Fool’s Day, as you’re sure to know, so you’re going to have to bear with us as we sort through what’s fake and what’s not. A seemingly legit story has just appeared that focuses on the hit indie title Magicka. If you play and/or follow the game you’re sure to know that there has been an add-on for the game hilariously dubbed Magicka: Vietnam.
Well, what once seemed like a joke seems to soon be becoming a reality as it was just made known that Magicka: Vietnam will be available come April 12th for just $4.99. We’ll keep you posted with further information.
Valve is one of the more iconic game companies on the market today releasing heavy hitting titles like Half-Life, Counter-Strike and more recently, Portal. If you’ve been following this innovative puzzler you’ll probably know that the game’s sequel is due out for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Mac/PC on April 19th. If you just don’t want to wait a minute longer you’re in luck as Valve has just released a single player demo for the game. According to Valve, this demo includes the first 4 levels but is a “bit rough around the edges”. The best part? The download clocks in at just 975.7 GB. That way, if you start the download now it will be done just in time for Portal 58 in year 2050.
At ease, Solders! It is our duty to inform you that the recent hat sale on Team Fortress 2 has raised over $300,000 to charity supporting the relief in Japan, after the recent earthquake and tsunami. Said game offered three new hats, retailing at $7.99, $19.99 or $99.99, of which all proceeds went to the relief in Japan. In one week, $300,000 was raised. The hats in question — The Humanitarian’s Hachimaki, Benefactor’s Kanmuri and Magnanimous Monarch, as seen above — will be available for purchase until April 4. So get off your behind, play some Team Fortress 2, buy some hats and help the folks in Japan. And do some pushups. End of message.
Back in the early 1980s, Rally fans were introduced to Group B rally class, where cars had huge amounts of power, even by today’s standards. But they had none of the safety features nor advanced technology, which meant that there were a lot of crashes and fatalities, and Group B rally was quickly banned. However, rally fans remember its infamy and with Dirt 3, they’ll be able to relive those crazy Group B racing moments, as Dirt 3 will feature Group B rally — the first rally game to do so.
Dirt 3 is the third installment in Codemasters’ rally series reboot, after Colin McRae rally ended its reign. Dirt 3 is set for release May 24 on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. For the first time, “Colin McRae” has been removed from the title, so the game is simply called Dirt 3. In addition to Rally, the game will support motorcross, buggies and truck racing as well.
Sony has shut down three SOE — Sony Online Entertainment — studios located in Denver, Seattle and Tucson. On top of that, half of the workforce in the Austin studio has been laid off as well. And on top of that, Sony Online Entertainment headquarters in San Diego have seen big layoffs as well. In all, one third of all SOE employees have been let go.
So far only SOE Seattle has been working on a somewhat big title: The Agency, while the other studios were doing minor games like Legends Of Norrath and PoxNora. The remaining workforce is working on the next EverQuest game, and a PlanetSide sequel. SOE has made notable titles like EverQuest, DC Universe Online, The Matrix Online, and Star Wars Galaxies.
Whenever a video game developer treads in sketchy waters it’s inevitable that they are going to cause some controversy. If you’ve seen pretty much any information regarding Duke Nukem Forever you’ll know that the game includes material that is definitely some reason for controversy. In fact, it seems that the game has caused so much controversy that a group of people have seen reason to petition Walmart to not sell the game.
The basis of this petition rests on the fact that Duke Nukem Forever is a “sexist” game pointing mainly towards its ‘Capture the Babe’ gametype. Shelby Knox, a petitioner, had this to say:
“In this disturbing version of ‘capture the flag’ the player is tasked with kidnapping a woman from his enemy’s base, throwing her over his shoulder, and carrying her back to his base to share the spoils.”
While I definitely see where Knox is coming from petitioning Walmart to not sell the game is, in my opinion, a bit far. If Knox doesn’t like the game, I’d say the logical step would be to not buy the game herself.
What do you think? Should Duke Nukem Forever be boycotted?
As we’ve told you numerous times in the past Mojang Specifications Minecraft has become one of the most popular independently developed games of all time. Not only did it start out being developed by a single man who goes by the alias Notch but it didn’t and still doesn’t have a publisher instead being offered directly through the site. Pretty amazing and the fact that the game has over a million purchases adds to that even more.
Well, if you’re an avid Minecraft player you may be wondering when the next major update will be coming to the game. Well, it was just made known today that the update including both achievements and wolves (both of which we told you about before) will be coming to the game sometime this week. As usual, the update will be free provided you’ve already purchased the game.
We’ll let you know when we know of an exact release date.
Available on the Android Market for quite some time was a PlayStation emulator. Quite obviously, this application allowed consumers to download PlayStation ROMs (games) and then play them on their phone essentially turning it into a portable PlayStation 1. The only problem? Google has just pulled the application from the Android Market saying nothing more than that they remove applications that go against their policies. But what was the application pulled after being on the Android Market for so long?
Many have hypothesized that the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is to blame. If you’ve been following this device you’ll already know what it is but if not it’s essentially a typical smartphone with a slide-out gamepad complete with d-pay, touch sensitive analog stocks and face buttons. Sony is going to be backing the Xperia Play pretty heavily with some specialized games – probably some of which were available for free with the above mentioned PlayStation emulator.
On that note, anyone looking to grab an Xperia Play?
In this day and age gamers are doing everything they can to gain an edge over one another. Unfortunately many times this means cheating in one form or another be it exploiting an in game glitch or using a modified console. In first person shooter games in particular this seems to happen more often than not and Crytek’s recently released Crysis 2 seems to be no different.
Luckily, Crytek seems to be jumping on this problem sooner rather than later releasing a statement today that they are doing what they can to not only eliminate the exploits that give some gamers an unfair advantage while also penalizing the players that actually choose to utilize these exploits.
So folks, in a nutshell, don’t cheat on Crysis 2 or else Crytek will find you and it won’t be pretty.
Each home video game console has its fair share of exclusives with some having harder hitting ones that others. The Sony PlayStation 3 is no different as the console has hard hitting franchise like Killzone, Uncharted, SOCOM and more. Another franchise that has long been favored by gamers is the God of War series. If you haven’t played the game you’re essentially just hacking and slashing your way through wave after wave of baddies in an epicly badass fashions.
However, while the core gameplay featured in God of War is quite entertaining there is no online multiplayer provided – or any online experience at all for that matter. But, it seems that this all may change as it was recently noted that the developers of the God of War franchise have begun looking for an online engineer who’s duties will including working on matchmaking, in-game chatting and more.
So, while this doesn’t actually confirm that the God of War series will be making a jump online it sure does seem very likely. We’ll keep you posted.
