Fans of the Sci-Fi channel's Battlestar Galactica should recognize the woman on the right as Katee Sackhoff, who stars as Starbuck on the show. The picture is snipped from a short video playing now on the Resistance 2 promotional/viral/ARG (alternate reality game) site Project Abraham, and shows Sackhoff appearing to be very concerned about the fate of a soldier having some medical trouble, presumably related to the Chimeran menace that threatens humanity in the game. It doesn't appear to be going so well - when your heart beat turns into Morse code, I don't know that there's a lot that the doctors can do for you.
We'll have to wait and see if this turns into anything more than a cool cameo for the actress, or if her involvement goes any deeper than the marketing. Sharp eared Halo 3 players have heard her as a space marine in that game, so she's not averse to time behind the microphone, but Insomniac has been pretty stingy with plot details, let alone new characters or the actors voicing them.
For the curious or those unwilling to play along with the ARG, the code at the end of the video spells "blackout," which when added to the original URL takes you to this page, which you can peruse at your leisure but appears to be the end of the line (for now).
The GayGamer.net Podcast #27 is here! Join Fruit Brute and Tiny Dancer as we celebrate our two year anniversary and chat the news of the week. This week we talk about the PS3 2.40 firmware, Metal Gear Solid 4, Diablo III, Chrono Trigger and much, much more!
We're always looking for reader questions to answer on the show so if you have a query for the crew that you'd like answered or would just like to suggest a topic for discussion, send it here with the subject line "Podcast Question."
If this pantheon of video game violence doesn't inspire you to incite a multitude of small explosives abuses over the course of this upcoming Fourth of July holiday weekend, then I'm not sure what will.
The worth of any Mega Man is weighted directly in the quality of the evil robot masters produced by Dr. Wily. I mean, really, Centaur Man? Dust Man?
As news regarding Keiji Inafune's planned retro throwback Mega Man 9 started hitting the web, gamers wondered where the great ship Mega would be steering. Oil Man, Subprime Mortgage Man and Fair-Trade Coffee Man would be far too relevant for todays aging gamers, so it is good to see Capcom and company maintain a certain amount of levity in their robot enemies without being overly silly.
Galaxy Man
Plug Man
Hornet Man
Jewel Man
Magma Man
Concrete Man
Tornado Man
Splash Woman
Yes, you read that right: Splash Woman. How positively progressive, Inafune.
I've got some gameplay video here from the upcoming Silent Hill: Homecoming that came all the way from Russia (hence the Russian voiceover and subtitles) just for your enjoyment. There's some footage of what would likely be the beginning of the game where the trucker drops Alex off in Silent Hill. Unfortunately, since it's Silent Hill, the hot army vet being picked up by a trucker bear doesn't lead to what you'd hope for... it just leads to fog and monsters and blood and death.
It's still just a beta version, so it doesn't look as fantastic as you might hope. On-screen prompts are PlayStation buttons, so it must be the PS3 version of the game. The outside fog looks great, but the indoor scenes are a little too brightly-lit for a Silent Hill game. Hopefully as the graphics are refined, they'll add some more detailed textures and some more dramatic lighting. The character animations are also kind of stiff, especially when running or fighting. I'm still hopeful they'll work out all the kinks and scare the pants off of me when it comes out!
As a Mac user, I've always been a little jealous of all the games PC owners get to play. Macs may be more reliable and have a more intuitive interface, but as far as gaming, they kind of suck. But now Ubisoft has announced a partnership with TransGaming that will release several of their titles on the Mac.
"To expand our business position and serve the growing Mac gaming community, additional key titles will follow later this year, including several day-and-date releases this Fall," said Jay Cohen, senior vice president of publishing at Ubisoft.
Yeah, unfortunately, the first titles released under this agreement are going to be Catz, Dogz and CSI: Hard Evidenz... sorry, Evidence. Yeah, thanks, but I'll hold out for something a little less... casual, maybe. But it's a good start, and I appreciate the effort!
BioShock's PS3 development is being offloaded a bit, what with 2K Marin working overtime on the sequel and 2K Boston working on a secret game (that some suggest might be related somehow to X-Com). Luckily 2K has handed BioShock over to some very trustworthy hands - Digital Extremes, developer of the first-ever announced "next-gen" game, Dark Sector, which was in development back when we called the 360 the "Xbox 2."
"By partnering with Digital Extremes, 2K Games is delivering a fully optimized experience that takes advantage of the PLAYSTATION 3 system hardware," said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. "Bringing Digital Extremes on board allows us to continue to deliver the best experience possible to our fans."
"When 2K approached us to assist with development on BioShock for the PLAYSTATION 3 system, it was a no-brainer," said James Schmalz, CEO and founder of Digital Extremes. "You really can't ask for a more exciting, technically impressive world to work in than Rapture, and the incredible knowledge and talent between the 2K studios and our team at Digital Extremes is unprecedented. The collaboration on this project will make the PLAYSTATION 3 system sing with Big Daddy goodness and Little Sister 'thank you's'."
There were some elements of Dark Sector that in fact reminded me of BioShock, and the Digital Extremes folk clearly take the time to make sure their work is properly finished and well-polished. I'd still die to know what extras they'll work into the game, but I'd bet my eye teeth that it will include some new plasmids, which is what sets my mouth a-drooling.
Well, we're getting closer. Blizzard announced today they are taking signups for the Wrath of the Lich King beta. Instead of randomly selecting people from their playerbase, they will have a drawing from the accounts who sign up as interested in the beta. Those who want to see the next expansion before it hits can opt-in here.
They haven't announced when the beta will actually start of course.
Hopefully, most of you downloaded the 2.40 PS3 patch before Sony took it down for repairs. I know I sure did! Anyway, I've been unfortunate enough to not really be able to enjoy the trophy system just yet, and it is looking like adding new trophies to old games is low on the priority list for a number of game studios.
Infinitiy Ward and and 2K have both stated out right that they will not be adding trophy support for their back logged titles; Call of Duty 4 and Civilization Revolution respectively. Insomniac went on record with their major titles as well:
currently, there are no plans to add trophies to [Resistance 1] and [Ratchet & Clank: Future Tools]. Right now, our No. 1 focus is finishing [Resistance 2] and making it the best game possible.
So those of you chomping at the bit to get your platinum trophy for those titles will just have to move along, because it isn't happenin'.
I have absolutely no illusions about why the Army creates video games. They are trying to drum up recruits. Glorifying war is really about the only way they can do it, especially with the US troops over seas, it's hard to say that they are not going to throw you on the first flight to the middle east.
The presence of Army created video games has evolved past simple first person shooters. I've been to a couple of shows where they have setup Exhibits where people can hop into a war simulator, and people are really beginning to object. At Wisconsin's Summerfest, protesters objected to the fact that the simulators were allowing children were able to sit in the cabin of a Humvee and fire shots at virtual people.
Under the combat scenario initially presented in the game, fest-goers as young as 13 could hop into a Humvee simulator and fire machine guns at near life-size human likenesses on a computer screen.
According to a description of the game on the Army's Web site, an Army ground task force attempts to rescue trapped aid workers and refugees in the imaginary city of "Nradreg" from a "well-armed genocidal faction."
The spirit of the even does seem in contradiction with the spirit of Summerfest. As a result of the protest the human targets were replaced with inanimate objects.
On Tuesday, July 1st, the Independent Games Festival officially opened their doors for submissions for next year's festival that will be happening next March. Submissions will be taken from now until November, so all you independent game makers out there need to start cracking that whip and letting us see just what you are made of inside (I hear it's a mixture of sugar and spice along with snakes, snails and puppy dog tails). At the beginning of next year they'll select some finalists, and those people will be contending for over $50k in prizes and a $20k grand prize. As usually they have both a student and a main competition categories so that the guys just starting out don't have to go up against some of the industry vets.
Speaking of Industry vets, one of the new judges this year is Kyle Gabler, one of the co-creators of World of Goo and one of the nominations for our New Next Now Best Upcoming Gay Gaming Industry Professional Award (try saying that ten times fast) LoGo had last month. So he'll be judging entries along with a slew of other judges such as N'Gai Croal, Chris Kohler, and Stephen Totilo. Along with new judges, they've also added a new Innovation Award to the show. This new award is "intended to honor abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development, allowing more esoteric 'art games' to compete on their own terms alongside longer-form indie titles." Seems like they are trying to help encourage games like Passage and The Marriage to make an appearance in the festival too.
I've really enjoyed all the entries I've seen in the past and hope that some of our readers out there are planning on submitting a few of their own games to the festival. If you do submit something, please feel more than free to let us know by email and we'll see if we can alert our readers to what you've created. The starting pistol has been fired, now hop to it everyone.
The interwebs are abuzz over the possibility of leaked song lists for Rock Band 2. First there was the discovery of this list of songs, gleaned from video footage of the new title on G4tv:
Chop Suey - System of a Down
Give It Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Everlong - Foo Fighters
Kids in America - Kim Wilde
Ace of Spades - Motorhead
Hello There - Cheap Trick
Then, website Scorehero.com posted list of songs that apparently wasn't quite ready for public consumption. But, thanks to the incestuous quality of the interwebs, the list was spread and posted all over the place before it was yanked down for Scorehero due to NDA restrictions. And no Here they are, ready for your perusal...
"One Step Closer" by Linkin Park
"Peace Sells" by Megadeth
"Testify" by Rage Against The Machine
"American Woman" by The Guess Who
"White Wedding" by Billy Idol
"You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morrisette
"Aqua Lung" by Jethro Tull
"Bad Reputation" by Joan Jett
"Drain You" by Nirvana
"Man in the Box" by Alice In Chains
"Spoonman" by Soundgarden
"We Got The Beat" by the Go-Gos
Looks like a pretty good line up! Of course, this is still all rumor at this point, but we'll keep our eyes peeled for any new information and bring it you you as soon as we can.
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