COUNTDOWN TO BRüTALITY
The primary reason I’m excited for Spike TV’s forthcoming Video Game Awards show? Even apart from the fact that I returned to serve as one of its judges, the ceremony will include the first new look in over a year at DoubleFine’s black metal adventure Brütal Legend, the sophomore game from the studio behind Psychonauts, headed by former LucasArts designer Tim Schafer.
That year long wait has been a tumultuous one: as with the Ghostbusters game, the Vivendi/Activision merger put the future of the game in some jeopardy, and its new publisher is still not yet known. Schafer went so far as to devise an encoded threat level system to let people know where the game stands, which he’s just raised to Haunted Sandalwood, or “omg I think there may be some news this month,” which we’re going to go ahead and guess will come alongside the new video.
Jack Black — who plays Brütal Legend‘s hessian lead — will host the awards show, which will also see appearances by Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, Cliff Bleszinski, Fallout 3 producer Todd Howard, and LittleBigPlanet‘s Alex Evans. Spike TV will air the show live Sunday, December 14 At 9:00 PM ET.
See more posts about: Brütal Legend, Double Fine, Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
HOW EVERGREEN, CITY 17
Gamasutra notes that Game Informer magazine has run life to date retail sales for Valve’s Half-Life franchise, and even not counting units sold through its Steam service (keeping those figures traditionally tightly held), the numbers are duly impressive:
Half-Life – 9.3 million
Half-Life: Opposing Force – 1.1 million
Half-Life: Blue Shift – 800,000Counter-Strike – 4.2 million
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero – 2.9 million
Counter Strike: Source – 2.1 million
Counter-Strike [Xbox] – 1.5 millionHalf-Life 2 – 6.5 million
Half-Life 2: Episode One – 1.4 millionThe Orange Box – 3 million
Left 4 Dead – 3.6-3.9 million (projected)
As Gamasutra points out, while the figures on their face would suggest a downward trend in sales for each new volume of the game, the 2004 release of Half-Life 2 was the first to be released simultaneously at retail and via Steam.
Analysis: Valve’s Lifetime Retail Sales For Half-Life, Counter-Strike Franchises [Gamasutra]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
QU’EST-CE QUE C’EST BANJO?
Submitted without a trace of irony, the latest viral video for the recently released Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (and by proxy its just-released Xbox Live Arcade remake counterpart).
Apart from the honestly amusing Jinjo postcard, in keeping with Rare tradition, the video does contain hints of cute industry in-jokes (Kazooie apparently off taking part in a Women in Games conference), which carry through in the game itself, as with Humba’s continual references to her all-girl clan the ‘Hag Trolls,’ a play on Ubisoft’s Frag Dolls. The game always reserves its sharpest barbs for itself, though, from its very opening act, which sets you on a trademark ‘collect-a-thon’ before reeling you back in and starting the game proper.
An Eiffel of Banjo [YouTube]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
GHOSTBUSTERS: THE GAME: THE NEW TRAILER
Just as we said we hadn’t seen near enough of the Ghostbusters game yet, Atari delivers, with digital Bill Murray looking so much more spritely than we’ve seen him in his last howevermany sad sack films.
YouTube – Ghostbusters: The Video Game – Atari Live Trailer
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
LITTLEBIGPLANET’S ALEX EVANS MAKING WIRED STORE APPEARANCE
If you’re in NYC for Blip Fest or otherwise, it’s not too late to sign up to see Media Molecule founder and LittleBigPlanet programming lead Alex Evans at the Wired Store on December 4th, where, if you’re lucky, he’ll show off his demonstration video of the 2D prototype that sold the game to Sony.
Little known fact you can impress him by knowing: prior to his work with Bullfrog/Lionhead, Evans was a demoscene coder by the name of Statix, and, as his newer moniker Bluespoon, did generative visuals for the 2004 Squarepusher and Jamie Lidell tour with London Sinfonietta. No joke!
Meet LittleBigPlanet Maker Alex Evans at Wired Store Thursday
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
BECAUSE HE COULD PART DEUX: THE ORIGINATOR’S NEW PORTABLE XBOX 360 EXPERIENCE
Following on Technabob’s Atari 2600 gently crammed in a Sega Game Gear shell, Ben Heck — the grandfather of all bizarro and beautiful gaming hardware hacks — has revealed his latest: a new revision of his laptop Xbox 360s. This time Heck notes:
It differs from my past Xbox 360 laptops in several ways:
* Removable standard Xbox 360 hard drive for easy profile/data swapping
* Both memory card slots accessible, same reason.
* No keyboard! Really, they have those chat pads, what’s the point? (Besides looking cool)
* Simplified layout of ports and buttons.
* Internal wi-fi module, no external antenna. Antenna is strung out inside unit like other consoles/laptops.
* Beveled edges! Countersunk screws!
The unit’s also got a built in Live Vision camera, an easy access panel to the 360’s hard drive, and as usual, is completely desirable for all its impractical manufacturing.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
GIMME GIMME GIMME SINGSTAR ABBA
The main reason I’m happy to see today’s release of SingStar ABBA: they were (I’m man enough to admit) my first musical love (at 3!), and I’ve secretly been waiting my whole life for a valid excuse to recreate a performance as epic as Partridge’s above from the comfort of my own bedroom.
SingStar ABBA [PlayStation.com]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
A FELYNE OF YOUR VERY OWN
Capcom’s biggest ongoing error in judgment? Not realizing that Monster Hunter‘s Felynes make up about 75 percent of the game’s total charm (It’s a cat! Who carries in its paws a stick with an even bigger paw hand-sewn on the end!), and basically ache for a spin-off game of their own. You’ve given them their own brand of ramen, Capcom, peek over at Majesco’s success and give us a Wii/DS cooking game of their own — even Disgaea‘s bit-part self-destructive Prinny d00ds got their own game.
In a show of self-solidarity, then, I note that import house NCSX is taking pre-orders for two new Merarou and Airou Felyne toys, which, even at five times the cost of the crossover toys created by razor-toothed designer Touma, should probably be purchased en masse if only to prove to the developer just what it’s been sitting on all this time.
NCSX Import Video Games & Toys: Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G Airu DX – Import Preorder
See more posts about: felyne, Monster Hunter, Offworld Originals
HEAVY RAIN’S CAGE ON THE CASE FOR NORMALITY
The most heartening part of 1up’s new interview with Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain director David Cage isn’t the part where he notes that they’ve entirely reworked the quick-time-event mechanics or the fact that the taxidermist scene shown off so far was created solely for demonstration and hasn’t given away any of the story itself.
It’s that he makes the case that Rain will be more about the banal complexities of real life, compared to Indigo‘s ‘fantastic’ final third:
We tend to believe in our industry that we need to tell simplistic or spectacular stories, where the hero saves the world, destroys evil, or has supernatural powers. This is because the videogame, as a medium, has been too immature to tell complex and subtle stories. I made this mistake myself at the end of [Indigo Prophecy], where I felt my story needed something spectacular because all I had so far was normal people leading a normal life. I realized that the “normal” part was the one that worked the best, and that it wasn’t necessary to save the world to tell something exciting anymore. Heavy Rain will be about normal people in real life, and I believe it’ll be much more emotionally involving, as gamers will easily relate to the situations and characters. This is a new approach. In Heavy Rain, you won’t be a superhero or a gangster. You’ll just be someone real.
That’s something we would happily like to see far more of.
Exclusive Heavy Rain Developer Interview
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
NONFINITE’S DIY GAME BOY LED LIGHT KITS
Though Game Boy musicians prefer older model handhelds for their cleaner audio, it comes at the cost of visual clarity: the un-backlit portables aren’t exactly conducive to low-light club situations.
Via Tiny Cartridge, though, we see that ‘Nonfinite’ has hacked together a super sexy LED-lit solution in the whole spectrum of colors that he’ll be selling (both pre-modded and in kit form) at this weekend’s Blip Fest. You can also find the same on at his site, for both music making, and as Cartridge puts it, evil sessions of Game Boy classics.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
