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Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace (Full Screen)
Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace (Widescreen)
Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones (Full Screen)
Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones (Widescreen)
The Best of the New Scooby-Doo Movies
The Dust Factory
The Final Cut
The Flintstones: The Complete Third Season
The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries: Season One
The Man Called Flintstone
The Mary Tyler Moore Show: The Best of Season 1
The Pretender: Season 1
Volcano High
Movies - Now Showing:
Ice Princess
Melinda and Melinda
Milk and Honey
Steamboy
The Ring Two
Movies - Opening Friday March 25th:
A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
D.E.B.S.
Guess Who
Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
The PSP enters the North American market this week, and boy the hype train has come to town - advertisements, general press reviews (most saying it's a great gaming system presuming you avoid light sources - would it really have been that hard to implement a transreflective screen, as enjoyed on PDAs for years, especially considering your Clie experience Sony? - or UMD movies), and grey market imports are everywhere to be found as the March 24th release rapidly approaches. Most online retailers are sold out, so your only hope of picking up a system is to queue outside your local games retailer, early.
Sony is also backing the Playstation 2 strongly this week with the release of God of War, a game so good that you should apparently buy the console just to play it. IGN awarded it a 9.8, with the GameRankings average agreeing on such a lofty score. EA releases TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, a 9.0 rated game by IGN, which appears to excel in multiplayer, but not single player. John Romero played a part in the development of NARC, but as of yet there's no reviews, so be careful before splashing out money blindly.
PC software is mostly re-releases and compilations (chance of MXO bombing > high), while t'other console publishers avoid releasing anything of quality that might be lost by the PSP hype tsunami… Star Wars DVDs are probably the highlight of the week there, while the March 25th movie A League of Ordinary Gentlemen might be interesting, seeing how it's the brainchild of two former Microsoft executives.
What will you be spending your money on in the week ahead?
[Boomtown] The Middle Eastern faction in the game - would you call that a liberation army or a terror-organization, and what have your thoughts been on this sensitive subject?
[DICE] The Middle Easter Coalition is a regular army organization. It is just like the Chinese or US armies in Battlefield 2. We are sensitive to the current climate. BF is not about making a political statement, it's about providing an enjoyable experience.
[Boomtown] Will there be per pixel hit detection? It was mentioned very early in development, and I have not heard anything since. It would suck if we had the old hit boxes, where you can't even shoot through someone's legs...
[DICE] You can shoot through people's legs. We have spent considerable cycles on improving the 'thru the gun' experience, e.g. shooting a rifle in-game.
T. One thing I got mixed feedback from was the economic system you discussed involving micro transactions. Some of our readers wanted to know if content will be tradable between users as in games like The Sims, "oh he's got a couch that I like," or RPG items like body armor?
J. Great idea! Right now we're in a kind of a "play it by ear" phase. Step 1, let's create the channels where the game creators can offer... Well, Let's talk about Halo - who would have known what a hit it became? We launched it on the Xbox, most people were skeptical and some did not think it was going to do really well. Six months after we shipped Halo, it was impossible for us to take the community feedback that said, "wow, those warthogs were really fun. We would like to go and have more vehicles like that," and go create more vehicles like warthogs and sell them online. So let's break down that barrier; let's create the opportunity for the developer to have an ongoing dialogue with the customer.
Better be cheap though J., or CliffyB is gonna come after you!
In Other News...06:34 am
- Andrew Burnes
- In-House: In Other News...(2 comments)
Yeah so Rob was kinda right. It's also finally warm after months of snow, so I needed to get out and have some fun - you can all understand that, can't you?
So as I'm a rambling idiot who'd like to get back out in the sun, refer to yesterday's ION for your question related stuff.
Videogames need to be CHEAPER! They need to get down to the $19.99 price point you fucking morons! Damn. I do decently here at my job and fifty bucks is still too much of a barrier for me to spend as an impulse buy on a game. But... twenty! Sign me up! Perhaps if we focused on figuring out ways of growing our audience and making our games more accessible we'd sell more units and finally arrive at the magical new price point instead of shooting ourselves in the damned foot by RAISING PRICES?
In sort of related news, FilePlanet has some Counter-Strike: Source packs you can download.
Knights of the Old Republic 2 Tweak Guide11:30 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Role-Playing(0 comments)
Tweakguides kicked up a modest little tweak guide for Knights of the Old Republic 2: "Aside from detailed descriptions of all the in-game settings and their performance impacts, it covers all the working advanced .ini tweaks for KOTOR 2, as well as a range of troubleshooting tips which should help you get more out of the game. Hopefully LucasArts will release a patch shortly to fix up the faults in the game which can't be tweaked away."
The AI of the team mates is impressive in the build as well. If you give them a command and they sense danger, they will turn around and take the threat out before continuing. SWAT 4 is not the babysitters club and this is a huge positive to the game. In a nod to Rainbow you can also divide the teams into elements, red and blue to move into rooms from two sides. You can view the team's location by cameras in their helmet which is updated in real time, and you can also get updates and give commands to a number of snipers positioned. It really does offer the most fully fledged SWAT experience thus far. Via the mouse you can command them to charge into rooms, throw gas, look under doors, set charges etc. The process is right click on object, select from list and watch. Irrational has also included the SWAT 3 HUD for those who wish to use commands that SWAT teams use such as 343 etc.
Ask SOE11:24 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: MMOG(0 comments)
The EverQuest 2 Vault is sporting a new edition of its Ask SOE where they quiz Sony Online Entertainment about stuff in EverQuest 2. Topics include: more additions to the quest journal, crafting, the Trial of the Isle, character transfers, and higher level content.
For those who haven't played The Longest Journey, the premise is that the Earth we know is actually only half the story of the universe. Our scientific Earth's true name is Stark, and its reality is mirrored in another dimension by a magical Earth called Arcadia. The game concerns a young woman named April Ryan who lives on Stark in the 23rd century. When a disaster throws the balance between the scientific and magical Earths out of whack, it's up to April to step in and restore equilibrium between the two universes.
The name really says it all. Those that pop into this post apocalyptic setting will find an arsenal of weapons to attach to a lot full of cars of every shape and size. Like other MMOs, they'll get to wander around the world, accept quests from people that need help, and then rumble out into the world to destroy things in order to complete these quests.
The world that Auto Assault takes place in is the shadowy future humankind has made for itself with the degradation of the planet. After seeing all hope was lost for reclamation of a pure environment to live in, humanity decided to the burn and cleanse the surface. Before the ensuing cataclysm, humans buried themselves in bunkers far beneath the Earth's surface and hunkered down for a couple of centuries before popping their heads up like so many groundhogs.
It looks like Monolith might have held their cards too close to their chest before and during beta, resulting in an underwhelming test arena and a mere murmur of buzz. But if what they spoke of is any indication of the future, the live game will be a much more complex and lively environment. Who wouldn't want to run into Morpheus and be tapped for a cool quest to kill a bad guy--a bad guy who stayed dead? Chadwick also gave us several teasers, framing the rogue AI like the Oracle and the Merovingian as the equivalent of Roman deities--neither good nor evil, but very powerful and capable of widespread control over many elements of the game, from the rising of the sun to the clouds in the sky. It sounds like there's a lot more potential in the game than we were aware of, and I'm looking forward to checking out the real deal.
This was my first time playing Jade Empire, so while I knew about the combat system I had yet to throw any punches. I immediately noticed that the most impressive aspect of battle is how it is both deep and accessible. First off, there are three meters that players must keep their eyes on. These are health, chi, and focus and they appear as red, blue, and yellow bars at the top of left corner of the screen.
While health is self explanatory, chi can be used to power up a deadly chi strike or restore health by pressing the white button. Both of these actions will deplete the blue meter. The Y button enters into Focus Mode, which slows down time for all but yourself. X and A are mapped to your basic and strong attacks, B is used to block, and B in conjunction with the analogue stick is used to dodge. This sends your character vaulting over enemies, rolling across the floor, or back flipping out of harm's way. The dodge animations are so enjoyable that it is difficult to resist bouncing your hero around the screen continuously.
In Other News...10:35 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- In-House: In Other News...(9 comments)
Good morning lovelies! Or afternoon / evening depending on your location. Not sure where Andy is off to; my bet is he's out indulging in some Crazy European Sex(tm) and was too busy to do his Saturday update. My brain is still a bit numb from sleeping 12 hours, but lets see what we can wrangle together as far as news is concerned. Today's question is: Suggestions for next week's poll? Ideas not used may be used as questions of the day instead.
