Random News – 23/07/08

With the World Youth Day having recently drawn to a close in Sydney, how fitting is it to find out that the Spore creator demo has created more creatures than known species on Earth. One must wonder if this figure still bares true if all the X-rated creations are omitted. Check out the above creations and more from Spore Illustrated.

Could it be? A card which can finally play Crysis on high settings? TUL Corporation's PCS HD4850 is the world's first 2GB onboard memory graphics card.

TV's favourite profanity dishing (*ah hem*) chef, Gordon Ramsay is coming to a Wii, PC, Nintendo DS or PC near you. That's right Hell's Kitchen: the video game will be be smashing your swear jar in September this year.

A recent study of 1200 households in the US has revealed that roughly 40% of gamers are Female! Other interesting statistics from the ESA survey (Entertainment Software Association) revealed were that the average age of gamers has risen to 35, 38% of American homes have alteast one console and that 1 in 4 gamers is over 50! 

iPhone as powerful as a Sega Dreamcast

Apparently the iPhone is as powerful as what some would consider the greatest console ever – the Nintendo Wii Sega Dreamcast. The 3G iPhone has an underclocked CPU speed of 412MHz (down from 620MHz) and uses a variant of the PowerVR chip which is a descendant of the Dreamcast's GPU.

The CPU in the Sega Dreamcast was only a mere 200MHz however if you remember back to 1999/2000, it was more than adequate to drive one of the highest rating games to date: Soulcalibur.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic to go MMO

EA has confirmed that the upcoming and in development – Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic will in fact be an MMO title to compete with the likes of the all-ruling World of Warcraft.

This is not the first Star Wars MMO title, the gaming public may remember (or rather, love to forget) Sony's Star War Galaxies which was released in 2003 with a promising game mechanic and strong subscription base, however suffered a humugnous blow in 2005 with the essentially what was a redesign of the game's structure in attempt to attract a broader player base (read: 15 year old boys). As a result, this triggered a mass exodus of the original subscriber base to leave SWG with a beaten and tattered subscription base of around 100,000 – with less than 20,000 active players.

The original KotOR producer – BioWare is working on the title, other games that BioWare have produced include Mass Effect (and its upcoming sequels) and the Neverwinter Nights series. With that in mind, its safe to say that KotOR is in relatively safe and experienced hands. 

Street Fighter IV [E3 2008]

I'll admit that I've never been much of a 2D fighter fan, well I guess that statement is half true I did love me some (super) Street Fighter II action on my friend's SNES – but after the introduction of the 3D modelled fighting games,  Tekken and Virtua Fighter bared privilege to my adolescent gold coins. However, I must say the upcoming Street Fighter IV (minus the weird voice movements) is looking mind-blowingly bad ass.

The characters are rendered in 3D however the game sees fighters battle it out in the 2D standard making the experience what has been coined out to be a 2.5D effect (amazingly, yes there is a Wikipedia article on this.) The game is set to be closest to a Street Fighter II experience with elements of previous Street Fighters introduced such as the super and ultra moves.

In terms of story line, it has been noted that Street Fighter IV will take place between numbers II and III. The arcade version of the game will premier throughout Japanese arcades later this month with a release on PS3, Xbox 360 and the PC(!!!) late 2008/early 2009.

Below is the trailer released by Capcom for E3 2008.

Wolfenstein is back yet again! [E3 2008]

It's been just a tad over 16 years since the original Wolfenstein 3D graced our 286's (or the strongly recommended 386.) Back in 2001 Return to Castle Wolfenstein saw the FPS revived with Quake 3's id Tech 3 engine which offered a single player campaign but this was greatly over-shadowed by its own popular class based multiplayer which has been heralded as an iconic pioneer for class based multiplayers. Fast forward to E3 2008 and Wolfenstein is set to be revisited once again. Not too many details are out just yet, but it has been confirmed that Wolfenstein will be make for the 360, PS3 and PC.

Players are set to reprise the role of William BJ Blaskowitz in yet another occult-dabbling Nazi blasting setting.  The game will be set in a "sandbox" style environment, with different areas unlocked progressively thus promoting a more non-linear plot and game experience. The latest Wolfenstein will also see the popular class based multiplayer return with a variety of super natural and the traditional weapon cache from the past titles.

To top it off, the below brand spanking new trailer was released for E3 2008.

Upcoming Xbox Live update [E3 2008]

Microsoft have announced a complete revamp of the Xbox 360 Dashboard interface which will see Microsoft completely overhauling the interface to include some top notch additions.

Some of the major upcoming features include:

Ability to play from the 360's hard drive:
This will involve copying purchased games onto the 360's hard drive in an attempt to greatly improve load times.

Access to the Live Marketplace through the web:
Users with an Xbox live account will be able to browse Xbox.com and download content automatically to their 360 console. Very similar system to Foxtel IQ/TiVo access over the net, an excellent addition to the procrastination pool.

Live Party System:
This feature allows Xbox Live revellers can now group up with up to 8 people to play multiplayer games together, watch movies off Netflix (US' largest online DVD rental service) together, and share photo albums together. This feature provides you with further reason to not leave the house any time soon (given you have a 360).

Xbox Live Primetime:
A game show style network which allows users to participate for the chance to win some real prizes.

Player Avatars:
Xbox Live users currently were depicted by a predefined image, the Player Avatars will allow users to create a 3D representation of themselves that you can design and dress yourself!

This and more is said to be coming as an update before the end of 2008.

[Source: Shacknews] 
[Source: GameSpot] 

Final Fantasy XIII coming to both PS3 and Xbox 360 [E3 2008]

Did you buy a PS3 just for Final Fantasy XIII? If so, you best look away now.

Last night at the Microsoft E3 2008 conference, Square Enix's Yoichi Wada announced that Sony's exclusive money printing RPG franchise Final Fantasy (85 million units sold world wide to date), would be releasing its 13th instalment on both the PS3 and the Xbox 360. The release of FFXIII will be simultaneous for North America and Europe.

Along with this stellar announcement, the below FFXIII trailer was also showcased for E3 2008.

[Source: Reuters]

Max Payne – movie trailer

There has been quite a few movie adaptations of games over the years with the Resident Evil series being the most notable one (3 movies so far now). The FPS game Max Payne by Rockstar Games is the latest game to have a movie adaptation made.

The game Max Payne was the story of a drug enforcement officer who fights to bring to justice those behind the conspiracy that led to his family being slain, set against the backdrop of a cold, harsh winter.

The movie is starring Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne and the first movie trailer is now out. Watch the trailer from Youtube below:

After very much enjoying the two Max Payne games, this is definitely one that I’ll be going to see. I’m curious as to whether they will somehow include the drug hallucination scenes within the movie, which along with the strong storyline really did make for a rather compelling game (not to mention the whole “bullet-time” thing the game had).

Max Payne is due for release on October the 16th in Australia according to IMDB.

Random News

• US Company Touchtown Inc is reportedly making a DDR-like game specifically for seniors. 
• GamerGirl.com has compiled a list detailing 7 things that gamers can learn through video games. 
• In what we're sure will be one of several future hack/mods of the Wii Fit board, the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence has managed to modify the recently popular  Wii peripheral to control movement in everyone's most hated and loved MMORPG – World of Warcraft.
• It seems after everyone has exhausted their pornographically inspired Spore creations, the community has now moved forward to a some what more family friendly source of inspiration: the enemies of Mario.
• The term 'fanboy' has firmly cemented itself into the English language with a recent addition to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
• Lego and classic video games, a match made in heaven.

TF2′s Heavy class to receive next unlockable content

A post up on the TF2's official blog has announced that the next class to receive the make over unlockable treatment will be the mini-gun wielding Heavy class. The team at Valve have opened up the unlockable's design process a bit and have documented some of the design issues faced by Valve's team when considering the Heavy's weapon/class update.

No ETA on when this new content will be made live, again also no word on when such content updates will be made available for the Xbox 360 and PS3 market who are yet to receive any content updates for TF2.

[Source: Steam]