Square Enix’s E3 2012 lineup features Tomb Raider, Hitman, Sleeping Dogs, a lot more

Posted on May 30, 2012 by John Scalzo

Square Enix is using this year’s E3 Expo to show off all the shiny new toys it acquired from Eidos and Activision over the last few years.

Those toys include the rebooted Tomb Raider; Hitman: Absolution, Agent 47’s next mission; and Sleeping Dogs, the Activision open-world game that was previously known as True Crime: Hong Kong.

Also on hand will be a slew of handheld titles (correction… 3DS titles) including Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, Heroes of Ruin, and Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. A new Final Fantasy game for iOS and Android, Final Fantasy Dimensions, will also make its debut at this year’s big show.

Finally, the publisher plans to showcase Quantum Conundrum, one of my favorite games from PAX East.

Hit the jump for Square Enix’s complete E3 lineup.

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XBLA Today: Mad Riders, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage

Posted on May 30, 2012 by John Scalzo

It’s Wednesday and three new games have been added to the Xbox Live Arcade today. The lone new title this week is Mad Riders, an off-road racer from Dead Island developer Techland. It’s been priced at 800 Microsoft Points ($10) and promises 45 “stunning” tracks:

Mad Riders is an adrenaline-fueled off-road arcade racing game, that will let you perform amazing aerial stunts and race on over 45 stunning tracks from all over the world, at breathtaking speeds.

Also available this week are two Sega collections from the Genesis era: the Golden Axe Collection and the Streets of Rage Collection. Both compilations also carry a price of 800 Microsoft Points ($10) each.

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Doom 3: BFG Edition coming to PC, PS3, Xbox 360

Posted on May 30, 2012 by John Scalzo

While the development of Doom 4 continues to be ignored by Bethesda, the publisher has announced that id Software plans to go backward before they go forward with Doom 3: BFG Edition. The remastered game will be available for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 this Fall.

The BFG Edition brings together almost every piece of Doom content every released by id including Doom 3, the Resurrection of Evil expansion, and a new set of levels known as “The Lost Mission.” The collection also includes Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth in their original hellish glory.

You could easily call the BFG Edition the ultimate edition of Doom 3 as it’ll also include “support for 3D TVs, 5.1 surround sound, improved rendering and lighting, Achievements, Trophies, and a new check point save system.” According to Bethesda, the controls have been fine-tuned to make Doom 3 a better experience on consoles. And for PC gamers, Carmack is promising that the DFG Edition will be compatible with “head-mounted displays.”

As part of that fine-tuning process, id is also adding an “armor-mounted flashlight” so players can wield a gun and shine a flashlight at the same time. It only took about a decade.

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Resistance: Burning Skies, Pure Chess, more added to PS Store

Posted on May 30, 2012 by John Scalzo

Sony has performed their weekly update on the PlayStation Store and added a pair of new Vita games, a pair of new PSN games, and a pair of new full PS3 games.

This week’s Vita update features Sony’s new FPS for the handheld, Resistance: Burning Skies. Also available is a chess simulator, Pure Chess.

And speaking of Pure Chess, the game is also available on the PSN. Both versions include PS3/Vita cross-platform play, but sadly, each version of the game is a separate download. So if you want it on both the PSN and the Vita, you’ll have to buy it twice. If you’d prefer something a little less cerebral in your PSN downloads, also new is the off-road racer Mad Riders.

On the PS3 Full Game front, Sony has added Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Rayman Origins to the store this week.

Finally, there’s more Rayman in the PS2 Classics section as Rayman Arena has also been added as well as a Vita demo of Gravity Rush.

Hit the jump for a complete rundown on all of these titles, and head over to the PlayStation Blog for a look at this week’s new game add-ons.

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Snapshot puzzling its way onto PSN, Vita this Fall

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Andrew Rainnie

Indie developer Retro Affect have announced that their debut game, Snapshot, a 2D platform-puzzler, will be heading to the PlayStation Network and PS Vita this Fall, and will handily feature cross-platform saves. Nominated for an IGF Award back in 2009, developers Kyle Pulver and David Carrigg have since been expanding and polishing the game for a console release.

In what sounds like a simple yet brilliant idea, the game features an amnesiac robot named Picon on an adventure to discover his origins. He has in his possession a powerful camera that can take photos of the surrounding landscape, and to paste that photo elsewhere. Players will then be able to manipulate the photographs in order to overcome obstacles or solve puzzles.

As Retro Affect told the PlayStation Blog, “Our goal is to make awesome games that resonate with the feel of classic gaming flavor, but with a splash of something fresh.” With the current Fall schedule oversaturated by sequels and first-person shooters, Snapshot could very well follow in the footsteps of Journey, offering something fun and unique.

Retro Affect have plans to push the game onto Windows PC, Mac OSX, and Linux after the release on Sony’s systems.

Posted in News, PC, PS3, Vita |

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate outed by Nintendo Power

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Andrew Rainnie

After last month’s tease, Nintendo Power has finally revealed their exclusive first look at the new entry into the Castlevania franchise. With an overly long subtitle, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate is a sequel to the 2010 reboot of the franchise that launched on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Best of all, Mirror of Fate is being developed by the same studio, Spanish-based Mercury Steam.

Little else is known thus far, although it has been revealed that the main protagonist is not Gabriel Belmont from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, but rather a veritable Belmont Bunch. Mirror of Fate will feature four protagonists including Simon Belmont, the original vampire killer, and Trevor Belmont, who first appeared in Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse on the NES. The remaining two characters have yet to be revealed.

As the original Belmont, we all know Simon’s story. Wielding the “Vampire Killer” whip, he stormed Castlevania and whupped Dracula. But he was not alone. In the NES timeline, Trevor was the first Belmont to defeat Dracula. However, as this new entry is set in the reimagined universe, it remains to be seen how Simon or Trevor will fit into the new history.

In addition to the return of the Belmonts, Mirror of Fate will be a return to the “Metroidvania” style of play the franchise made famous. The game will focus more on exploration than combat with a 2.5D view throughout most of the game. But there will be plenty of fighting as Trevor will wield the Combat Cross and various magical spells while Simon cracks his whip and brings back other NES items like throwing axes and holy water.

Given the end scenes of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, it would be a safe bet that they’ll be meeting Gabriel soon enough. More information will undoubtedly be revealed at Konami’s pre-E3 event tomorrow.

[Source: Nintendo Power via Go Nintendo, About]

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DeadSpace.com confirms Dead Space 3 with hidden text, graphic novel-style trailer

Posted on May 30, 2012 by John Scalzo

A few weeks ago, EA revealed that a new entry in the Dead Space series will be released during the company’s current fiscal year (which ends March 31, 2013). Today, the publisher revealed a new teaser trailer for the game and confirmed that it’s definitely Dead Space 3.

While the trailer (which you can find above) doesn’t come out and say it belongs to Dead Space 3, the source code of DeadSpace.com is littered with hidden text revealing the title as well as confirmaing the existence of a co-op mode. But one thing EA is willing to publicly show us is the first details of the game’s plot, which do not include everyone’s favorite necromorph hunter, Isaac Clarke:

While patrolling the planet Uxor, Earthgov Sergeant John Carver witnesses an attack on the Marker Site he guards which changes his life forever. John must now fight his way through a colony now in complete chaos as he begins to discover how important he is in fighting the Necromorph plague.

This is just the start of John Carver’s saga in the Dead Space Universe.

A countdown clock on the site further confirms that Dead Space 3 will receive a proper debut during next week’s E3 Expo.

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No Metro: Last Light for Wii U… yet

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Andrew Rainnie

Despite being one of the games featured on the Wii U third-party showreel video at Nintendo’s E3 press conference last year, Metro: Last Light has been demoted to “no longer confirmed” for the new system. The news comes from Mark Madsen, global brand manager at financially troubled developer THQ:

“As we got along in the development process, we just really wanted to focus on what we knew, focus on PS3, 360 and PC… The verdict is out on what we can do to maximise the code for the Wii U, and we’ll see [what happens].”

Set to unveil the Wii U at E3 in less than a week, the news comes as a small blow to Nintendo (but it doesn’t completely shut the door on Metrod: Last Light coming to the Wii U). The announcement also poses more questions about the diminishing third-party publisher and makes us ask if other THQ titles due to launch on the Wii U, such as Darksiders II, will ever see the light of day.

[Source: Digital Spy]

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