Leading video game developer BioWare, a studio of Electronic Arts Inc., confirmed today that Dragon Age 2 is in development at BioWare’s Edmonton-based studio. Dragon Age 2 is the sequel to the triple-platinum-selling Dragon Age: Origins which was named “RPG of the Year” in 2009 by Game Informer, G4, IGN, and SpikeTV. With Dragon Age 2, the world’s preeminent RPG developer is revolutionizing the genre again, infusing the universe with more action. The new game is scheduled for release in March of 2011 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.
Dragon Age 2 thrusts players into the role of Hawke, a penniless refugee who rises to power to become the single most important character in the world of Dragon Age. Known to be a survivor of the Blight and the Champion of Kirkwall, the legend around Hawke’s rise to power is shrouded in myth and rumor. Dragon Age 2 traces the rise to power of Hawke, a survivor of the Blight and a hero who will transform the face of the Dragon Age universe forever. Featuring an all-new story spanning 10 years, players will help tell that tale by making tough moral choices, gathering the deadliest of allies, amassing fame and fortune, and sealing their place in history. The way you play will write the story of how the world is changed forever.
Today Ubisoft announced that Racquet Sports, the multisport game that includes tennis, ping-pong, badminton, squash and beach tennis, is coming to the PlayStation 3 with PlayStation Move support in Fall 2010. Racquet Sports delivers an engaging and interactive experience for experts and newcomers. Racquet Sports offers unprecedented realism and pinpoint gameplay mechanics, bringing every serve, swing and backhand to life while replicating the sporting experience in the comfort of the living room.
Racquet Sports engages players in 30 rich graphical environments in iconic locations inspired by real-world landmarks, including the beach of Copacabana, the foot of Mount Fuji and the skyline of Dubai. The playing fields come to life with animated backgrounds, dynamic sound mixes and day and night environments.Players have the option to perform with eleven different athletes, each having a distinct personality and flair. Each athlete is customizable with a total of over 30 outfits, 30 hairstyles and 15 different racquets available in the game.The multiplayer feature in Racquet Sports allows up to four players to play together cooperatively or to compete against each other. Racquet Sports and the PlayStation Move motion controller combine highly precise and intuitive motion control with the full PlayStation 3 system HD gaming experience to create the most accurate, responsive and ultra-sensory gaming experience that will allow players to pull the game out of the TV and into the living room. For more information, please visit: www.racquetsportsgame.com
Today Ubisoft announced its 2010 Games for Everyone lineup in North America in coordination with a Holiday preview event in New York City. Ubisoft’s Games for Everyone titles allow players to express their creativity, explore, socialize and share while being fun, interactive, accessible and easy to play.
The Imagine brand, the No. 1 games for girls brand on the Nintendo DS, is a full range of video games that offer fun activities dedicated to fulfilling tween girls’ aspirations. The Petz franchise, the No. 1 pet-simulation handheld brand, allows young players to care for and bond with their virtual “Petz,” while Style Lab allows young girls to create and share their jewelry and clothing designs online with friends and then purchase them to wear in real life.
Imagine Fashion Stylist: Nintendo DS
Live the thrilling life of a fashion stylist. Express your creativity by finding the perfect outfits for your clients based on their specific requests and styles, whether preppy or elegant. Plus, run the greatest fashion mall in town by opening glamorous boutiques, working with celebrities, and organizing fashion shows. The game launches November 2, 2010.
Imagine Resort Owner: Nintendo DS
Manage a beachfront resort on a magnificent tropical island and expand it into a luxury vacation spot! Customize the park and beach with exotic landscaping, build facilities to offer fantastic activities, like water-skiing, beach volley, paragliding and more! Provide guests with the most amazing vacation experience ever.
Petz Fantasy: Nintendo DS
Petz, the No. 1 handheld pet-simulation brand in 2009, is introducing a new nurturing experience with an all-new type of pet: fantasy petz! For the first time ever, discover and take care of your very own fantasy petz. Enter a world of fantasy where you discover mysterious eggs that hatch into cute fantasy creatures in Petz Fantasy™ Sunshine Magic and Petz Fantasy Moonlight Magic. Each fantasy creature has its own personality, surprising reactions and magical powers. Help them grow by caring for them, feeding them, and teaching them. Train them in their new magical powers. The game will launch this Holiday 2010.
Petz Nursery 2: Nintendo DS
Players care for a variety of all-new baby animals ranging from puppies to polar bear cubs and even penguins! Take care of all your baby petz and help them grow. As newborns, your baby petz will need to be fed a bottle, picked up and played with, and eventually taught to crawl. When night comes, help them fall asleep by rocking them or singing them a lullaby. Also, for the first time, take care of two animals at the same time, watch them play together, react to one another and even try to eat each other’s food! From newborns to babies, these cute animals will surprise players with their clumsy and funny personalities. The game will be in stores on November 2, 2010.
Style Lab Fashion Design: Nintendo DS
The Style Lab brand brings you another innovative game-to-reality title, Style Lab Fashion Design! Now players can not only design their own fashions in the game, but they can wear them in real life too! Develop your own distinct style of customized clothing and accessories, share them with friends via your own web gallery, then wear your own unique fashions! The game will be available Fall 2010.
505 Games today announced a global agreement with Russian developer Biart Studio LLC, to publish Deep Black on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Set to release in Q1 2011, the unique underwater setting of Deep Black combines action-packed battles with an immersive story line that blends science-fiction, espionage and bio-terror. Realistic underwater physics add intensity to this third-person action thriller.
With the majority of the gameplay taking place below the water’s surface, action-adventure fans will need to master new skills to fight hostile enemies and infiltrate enemy bases. Players will take to the murky depths armed with equipment ranging from specialized underwater jet packs with integrated harpoons, mini submersibles and other high-tech equipment to battle their submerged enemies.
Red Dead Redemption is due for some DLC lovin’, with that said Rockstar has decided to give it plenty. Rockstar has announced 4 DLC packs in it’s line up for Red Dead Redemption.
Legends and Killers Pack New active map locations, characters and more:
Release date: beginning of August 2010
9 new multiplayer map locations — more than doubling the amount of territories in the multiplayer competitive modes
8 new multiplayer characters — play as characters from Red Dead Revolver
Introducing a new projectile weapon: the Tomahawk, with corresponding challenges for single-player and multiplayer gameplay
New achievements and trophies
Pricing: $9.99 (PlayStation Network), 800 Microsoft Points (Xbox LIVE).
Liars and Cheats Pack:
Release date: TBC
Attack and Defend multiplayer competitive mode and challenges
New multiplayer horse races, complete with mounted combat
Play as the heroes and villains of Red Dead Redemption, as well as 8 additional multiplayer characters
Multiplayer versions of Liars Dice and Poker from the single-player game
Introducing a new weapon: the Explosive Rifle, with associated challenges available in single-player and multiplayer gameplay
New achievements and trophies
Pricing: $9.99 (PlayStation Network), 800 Microsoft Points (Xbox LIVE).
In celebration of the Modern Warfare 2 Resurgence Map Pack being widely available we thought we could give a code away to our readers. The Modern Warfare 2 Resurgence Map Pack code we have is for the Xbox 360 and it currently retails for $15. The most unique map in the pack is definitely the circus stage, all you guys have to do is tell us what kind of stage would you like to see on the next Modern Warfare 2 Map Pack.
You only have until 8PM EST Friday to enter, all you have to do is answer the question in this post. We will then close the giveaway and pick one lucky random winner.
In a recent interview Jean-Francois Boivin told Eurogamer that after Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood there most likely wont be another release of a Assassins Creed game until after 2k11. Fearing for franchise fatigue after the release of multiple Assassin’s Creed games. After the release of Assassin’s Creed 2, there will be a total of 5 Assassin’s Creed games released by the end of this year.
Boivin also stated that Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood will also be the end of Enzio’s story. With that said Boivin lead on to telling us that the next story is already lined up, they know the time and the place of where everything will happen. The only thing left is Boivin and his Assassin’s team is to get the green light to start further progression with the new game by Ubisoft. Not that Boivin thinks that time off is a bad idea, he believes that time off is a good thing. Time off will give his creative team time to come up with new ideas to put into future games.
After the events of Dead Space and before Dead Space 2 a Necromorph outbreak occurs – but how did the events unfold? Visceral Games will be releasing a whole new chapter to the series named Dead Space Ignition. It’ll take place on the Sprawl and challenges players to survive the initial Necromorph outbreak. Dead Space Ignition will be available in Fall 2010 for Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network.
The game will have an interactive comic-style to it and is only the first of many other game extensions that they have planned for the launch of Dead Space 2. Dead Space Ignition will also feature three unique hacking mini games; Hardware Crack, Trace Route and System Override. This will also be a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type narrative, allowing players to survive the Necromorph outbreak in multiple ways. Finally the game offers four unique endings and upon completion of each one, players will be rewarded with unlocks including an exclusive suit, all of which can be used by Isaac Clarke in Dead Space 2 when the game releases on Jan 25, 2011. We’ll be keeping our ears out for more on this in the coming months.
Have you ever wondered if digital distribution would really take off? When all forms of physical media would be virtually gone? Well the creators over at Onlive have taken that step and have gone beyond, right now! Onlive is a cloud based gaming service which will allow any PC or MAC to play high end PC titles. The service is made up of multiple data centers (High End PC’s) that will allow you to play one of the selected games remotely. It requires (as of now) an online connection … and thats pretty much it. We got a behind the scenes look at what could possibly be the future of gaming.
What I first noticed was the little box that was hooked up to an HDTV that we were playing on and the wireless controller that looked similar to an Xbox 360 controller. This was the companies Micro Console which they plan to release later this year. The Micro Console is basically made up of some computer chips that will simply draw the net connection of the service over to us. The overview menu of the service had different elements to it, all of which was streaming video feeds of sorts. Much like Xbox Live the service layouts a marketplace to purchase games, games you own, friends list that can be created, and games coming soon. Where it differs from everything else is the windows that say Arena and brag clips.
The Arena is a live Massive Spectating view into the entire OnLive services games that people are playing. It simultaneously streams players gameplay in realtime which you can then dive into and spectate it at full screen. Nothing has ever been done like this in the past and you can even rate clips or friend someone. This is honestly one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen before and it does it so effortlessly, jumping in and out of clips takes no time. The Brag Clips section is also unique and will provide hours of entertainment once enough people really get the service going. These are clips that players have/will create, which will allow you to snip a 10 second clip of anything you were playing, on the fly. We’ve already witnessed tons of videos of players doing ridiculous and sometimes obscure moments they’ve had within a game.
Now the bread and butter of the service is without a doubt the gameplay and it delivers. We simply went into one of the games listed (Splinter Cell Conviction to be exact) and fired up the game. It took no time to load it was in 720p HD, 60 FPS and it looked almost perfect. Between the controller and the TV there was no noticeable lag what so ever and it worked great. What we are a little skeptical about is if it can achieve the perfect picture fidelity we get from consoles and higher end PC’s. What we mean by this is we’ve noticed that when you are playing or not playing a game the picture looks to be slightly grainy, like a streamed video and thats just it, its because it is streamed. It’s obvious that the more your connection hinders the quality will take a hit but what would be the perfect connection? Now with that said it is almost perfect and we’ll be looking to see if the service finds ways in perfecting it.
The games in themselves would always be up to date because patches will be done on the back end. Possibilities for map packs as well will be done in a similar fashion, letting players simply buy the unlock for it to be used. The thing I was most excited about was the fact that the software itself was MAC supported out the gate. All titles available for this aren’t even heard of for Mac but now it is. Making cross-play not an issue.
All in all everything worked exactly how it was suppose to. No lag, great picture quality, sound, unique menus and more. The service is in it’s beta stages right now and supports both MAC and PC. While it doesn’t support Wifi as of yet, it plans too. Can you imagine the future possibilities of the service? Taking something as small as a netbook to a hotel with a wired ethernet connection or possibly Wifi and firing up one of the most hardware intensive games like Crysis 2 in a snap! We can. Future implementations within TV’s, where all you do is plug in a USB controller? We believe this will undoubtedly be some part of the future of gaming and what we’ve witnessed is just the stepping stone of what’s in the pipeline for Onlive.
Looks like Activision has pulled a fast one on us and decided to drop the resurgence map pack for the Playstation 3 and PC. It’s been about a month since Activision released the resurgence map pack for Modern Warefare 2. If you gamers have been living in the closet closed off to the outside world for the past couple of months then you’re probably going to want to hear what the new maps there’s going to be available for play.
Vacant — the wide open Russian office complex from CoD4
Strike — the urban town surrounded by hotels from CoD4
Carnival — an abandoned carnival area with a Ferris wheel, fun house and other attractions
Trailer Park — full of “super tight corridors” and featuring a pool (“Mobile Estates,” Bowling calls it)
Fuel — a “sniper haven” based in and around an oil refinery
Now that Playstation 3 gamers and PC gamers can catch up to the Xbox 360 gamers, its time for everyone to enjoy the fun house.
