Most Recent: PS3

Call of Juarez: The Cartel trailer rides into town

Posted on March 6, 2011 by John Scalzo

While Techland blew everyone away with their Dead Island trailer a few weeks ago, the developer is also hard at work on Call of Juarez: The Cartel for Ubisoft. The Cartel brings the Call of Juarez series into the present day with a gangland tale of drugs set amidst the franchise’s familar western trappings.

In fact, the game begins with the creation of a posse (including Ben McCall, a descendant of Ray McCall from the original Call of Juarez) that plans to hunt down the drugrunners that are terrorizing the US.

The third Call of Juarez will include three-player co-op throughout a “deep and gritty storyline” that touches down in Los Angeles, Arizona, New Mexico and Juarez. A variety of missions (including punitive raids, witness protection, undercover stings and car chases) will keep things interesting on the dusty trail along with a “twist” to the co-op that Ubisoft plans to reveal soon. If I had to guess, I’d say that’s a very big hint that one of the law enforcement agents will secretly have been working for the cartel the entire time.

But I don’t know for sure. However, I do know that Ubisoft plans to reveal more about the game’s multiplayer modes in the near future and plans to release Call of Juarez: The Cartel this Summer for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360 | Tagged

New Releases: Dragon Age II, MLB 11: The Show, MLB 2K11, More

Posted on March 5, 2011 by John Scalzo

One of 2011’s biggest releases will be hitting stores this week. Players will be able to return to the magical land of Thedas as BioWare is bringing Dragon Age II to the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

If you prefer the smell of peanuts and Crackerjack to the smell of sliced and diced dragon meat, you might want to consider this week’s double play combo of baseball games. 2K Sports will release its multiplatform Major League Baseball 2K11 on the DS, PC, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii and Xbox 360 while Sony is bringing its PlayStation-exclusive MLB 11: The Show to the PS2, PS3 and PSP.

Also available this week will be the Dynasty Warriors spinoff Warriors: Legends of Troy (PS3, Xbox 360) and a new Sims 3 expansion, The Sims 3: Barnacle Bay (PC).

The full list of the rest of this week’s new releases can be found after the break. (more…)

Posted in DS, News, PC, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360 | Tagged , ,

SOCOM 4 multiplayer beta details emerge, new Bomb Squad mode announced

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Mike Gutierrez

It’s the event you may have bought a copy of Killzone 3 just to get in on: the SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals beta has been officially detailed. A new phase will begin every week starting March 15th, when a small private group of individuals contacted by Zipper or Sony will be invited. Next week, PlayStation Plus subscribers will get their chance at the tactical gameplay, followed by owners of beta codes given out with new copies of Killzone 3. On April 5, the beta will be open to all PlayStation Network users. All four phases will be cumulative, so if you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, you can play in the other phases up until the servers are taken down on April 13.

Players will be able to check out two maps (Port Authority and Assault & Battery) while playing in all four game modes: Suppression, Last Defense, Uplink, and the newly announced Bomb Squad. In Bomb Squad, the Spec Ops team escorts a heavily armored, yet indispensable technician from bomb site to bomb site as he attempts to defuse explosives before the Insurgent team can stop him.

This does seem a little cheap – Killzone 3 purchasers getting in on the second to last phase when that was such a big part of the advertising for the game. Not to mention if you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber who could’ve gotten into it anyway without a purchase. Chris Roper from Zipper explains the phasing is so they can gradually introduce a greater amount of players in each phase as a lot of people bought Killzone 3. I’m inclined to believe him, and hope the beta works out for the team when SOCOM 4 is released on April 19 for the PlayStation 3.

Posted in News, PS3 | Tagged ,

Extended Prototype 2 trailer adds in some dev commentary

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Mike Gutierrez

GDC is ending today (but PAX is coming up!) and Radical Entertainment released an extended clip of the announcement trailer for Prototype 2. It’s mostly the same stuff we saw at the VGAs, but the most notable part is the developer commentary. It’s almost kind of depressing, where one of the lead designers proclaims how he’s not making the game for himself, he’s making this game for three, four, five million people and wants to know how to make it for them.

I guess the sentiment’s appropriate for GDC, since everyone there is asking the same question, but I would hate to play in an industry where that’s how game developers go about their job. In fact, the team in the Killzone 3 special features stated that it’s a culmination of all the cool ideas they personally wished were in games, and that turned out pretty well. We’ll have to see how the different approaches work out for each studio with the incoming NPD report for February and when Prototype 2 ships sometime in 2012.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops is the best-selling PS3 game of all time

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Mike Gutierrez

Relying on data from the NPD Group, Chart-Track, and GfK, Activision announced today that Call of Duty: Black Ops is the highest selling game on Sony’s PlayStation 3 since the console launched in 2006. The PS3 is in its fifth year on the market, and CoDBlOps managed to accomplish this feat in less than four months. The announcement came with the arrival of the First Strike DLC map pack on the PlayStation Store this week.

We recently compared the game with its immediate predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, and came out with Black Ops as the superior game. While Call of Duty isn’t necessarily the greatest series in the world, it’s nice to see Black Ops surpass the records of the last one.

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Mortal Kombat introduces the Challenge Tower, wants you to cry

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Mike Gutierrez

The newest feature revealed by NetherRealm Studios for the upcoming Mortal Kombat is the Challenge Tower. We could make a news post detailing all the insane scenarios shown and described in the trailer above (Test Your Might, Test Your Sight, etc), but you really should just see it for yourself. My favorite is when Mileena offers Scorpion a Teddy Bear, which he refuses. Frustrated at how long she spent making it, the two have no choice but to battle it out.

Mortal Kombat will be available for the PS3 and Xbox 360 on April 19, with a PlayStation Plus-exclusive demo planned for March 8.

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Resistance 3 multiplayer detailed at GDC, beta coming soon

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Mike Gutierrez

Insomniac made waves at GDC today when they shed some light on the multiplayer for the latest installment of their alternate history, sci-fi shooter series, Resistance 3. Probably the biggest change is the reduced scale. Resistance: Fall of Man wowed players at the time with up to forty players per game at a constant frame rate, and Resistance 2 upped that to 60. Things are being considerably toned down and focused now, as the third game will have intimate, 16-player battles. Insomniac made this decision from fan feedback and seeing just how fun the gameplay was on the smaller maps.

Another big feature will be loadout customization, where players can spend unlock points to develop their repertoire. The defining aspect of the progression system seems to be the abilities, and they come in four flavors. The first two are Abilities (Support and Tactical), which allow you to distribute ammo, enhance your team’s radar, or dash really quick to get out of a tight spot. The second set are Attributes, which come in Personal and Combat flavors. These appear to be your standard perks like faster reloading, but also really interesting options like having the series’ trademark leapers burst from your corpse upon death.

I got a lot out of Resistance 2, it was worth much more than the $60 price tag if you ask me, but it hasn’t aged considerably well in this age of shooters, and I’m glad the match sizes will be more personable. I’m worried they may be missing the point on the progression system, though. Call of Duty popularized the mechanic, but they always made the abilities you earn at high levels a lot harder to effectively utilize than the all-purpose abilities you start out with. Having players augment them as they gain experience may be a little hard to balance. In any case, we’ll be looking out for Resistance 3 when it launches on PlayStation 3 on September 6 later this year.

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Mortal Kombat demo coming to PlayStation Plus next Tuesday

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Mike Gutierrez

Sony’s been trying really hard to get you to jump in on their subscription-based service PlayStation Plus, and today they deliver another enticing offer in that effort. Mortal Kombat will arrive on the PlayStation Store next Tuesday, March 8 for Plus subscribers only. Regular PSN users will get a chance to download it a week later. The game will be compatible with Automatic Download, so make sure you turn the feature on so your PS3 can achieve sentience and download it on its own.

The demo features Sub-Zero, Johnny Cage, Mileena, and Sub-Zero as they battle it out on two ultra-vintage stages: The Pit and The Living Forest. You can get in on these fights with both single player and one-on-one Versus modes. And, of course, Fatalities and the new X-Ray Mode are included. Finally, for all you affluent technophiles, yes, the demo will support 3D.

The PlayStation Blog invites players to experience the joy of over-gory Fatalities, which it calls “once-controversial.” I’m not so sure about that. Seeing Kung Lao pull his victims legs-first towards his spinning razor hat to be dissected like some horrible biology experiment is an image I simply can’t get out of my head. Maybe listening to the iconic theatrical theme song of the series will help me stay sane until Mortal Kombat releases for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on April 19. I hope.

WB Games has said that the Mortal Kombat demo will be released on the Xbox Live Marketplace at a later date.

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