On Gear Live: Samsung S95C: The OLED TV You Can’t Afford (to Ignore!)

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Devil May Cry 4

Capcom today released a horde of screen shots for their upcoming, newly multiplatform title, Devil May Cry 4. For fans of the series, there’s a ton to be gleaned from the over fifty new screens released, including shots of playable characters Nero and Dante and their custom attacks. Also featured are two boss stages featuring the demons Frost and Belial in ice and a bunch of environmental shots from the ice and fort city stages along with some concept art. The screen shots seem a little uneven, though, probably representative of the early stage of development; the fort city renders look good, and hopefully the action will live up to past installments.

Read More | Game Watch

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Assassins Kickin' it Old Skool

Looks like Assassin’s Creed may be taking a chunk of time out of your beginnig-of-quarter studying schedule, for all you gamer-students out there. If Amazon.com‘s listing is correct, the game will be launching on September 25th this year. Currently, you can pre-order the Ubisoft game for either Xbox 360 or the Playstation 3, from Amazon’s website, for $59.99. Interestingly, there’s also an Assassin’s Creed DS listing over at Amazon, but we’re not going to give that too much credibility.

Personally, I can’t wait to see if there’s any difference between the 360 and PS3 versions of the title. Given that the game was one of the most visually impressive demonstrations of the PS3 hardware, it’ll be interesting to see how the worst-kept non-exclusivity secret in gaming plays on supposedly inferior hardware.

Read More | Amazon.com

Halo 2 Vista

So, Halo 2 for Windows Vista is launching on May 8, 2007, and we have been able to spend some time reviewing the title. Since everyone is familiar with Halo 2, we felt a full review wasn’t in order. Instead, we wanted to clue you in on the ten best improvements we experienced while reviewing the game. These ten features raise the bar for Halo as a whole, and may be a foreshadowing of things to come in Halo 3:

Achievements: If you are looking for something fun that adds another level of fun and challenge to the Halo 2 world, this is it. We have said it before, and we will say it again - Microsoft hit a gold mine with the notion of achievements. No sooner than when we finished a multiplayer deathmatch did we rack up a total of three achievements. Meleeing five people from behind (and thusly earning the Ninja achievement) was nice, but Meleeing someone who already had the Ninja achievement (and thus earning the Flaming Ninja achievement) was even better. We have the achievement to prove it. For those wondering, yes, the achievements you earn in Halo 2 for Vista (or any other Games for Windows game) is counted towards your Xbox Gamerscore.

Click to continue reading Top Ten Improvements in Halo 2 for Windows Vista


Latest Gear Live Videos

LairWith the PlayStation 3 exclusive title, Lair shipping in July, Factor 5 seems to be hitting up the press with their alpha-soon-to-be-beta build of the game to show off their progress. Factor 5 president Julian Eggebrecht spoke with Dean Takahashi from Mercury News about the game, and the development process for the PlayStation 3. Like most of the development interviews, the talk ranges from the background of the company to the specific goals of the game under discussion, and then usually to a comparison of the technology and the development process for the various consoles. Eggebrecht’s insights into the PlayStation 3 development cycle versus the Xbox 360 are interesting, and may point to why so many of the PlayStation 3 ports of Xbox 360 games are lacking. Eggebrecht claims that developers will “have a hard time if you port without having a PS 3 game in mind when you created the 360 version. That is where a lot of complaints are coming from.” The better path, according to Factor 5, is going from the PlayStation 3 to the Xbox 360, not that Lair will be coming to the Xbox 360 any time soon; Eggbrecht considers themselves lucky that they “didn’t have to think about the 360 at all.” The interview continues into some deeper discussion into the relatively memory limited consoles, at least compared to their PC counterparts and the interview overall is an interesting look into the development of a title that exists on so many different scales.

Read More | Mercury News

Boom Boom Rocket

Bizarre Creation’s latest Xbox Live Arcade title hits the Marketplace tomorrow; Boom Boom Rocket will sell for 800 Microsoft Points ($10). The game features Bizarre’s particle effects as fireworks layered over a 3D cityscape. Combining fireworks, classical music, and cityscapes will certainly draw comparisons to the PS2 title Fantavision, but hopefully this, combined with music/rhythm gameplay, will be an original enough creation to set it apart. Certainly Bizarre Creations is familiar with remixing order gameplay styles to create something new; Geometry Wars still stands as a unique mix of classic arcade archetypes.

Read More | Gamerscoreblog

Nintendo’s Super Paper Mario ships today, and so far the game is tacking up a 90% overall rating on Gamerankings.com. From some of the major game sites, 1up rated the release an 8.0, citing the title’s relative lack of depth compared to its Paper Mario siblings, tacked-on Wiimote controls, and some slowdown evidenced in gameplay. IGN rated slightly higher at 8.9, feeling that the platformer and RPG merger was more successful and that the Wiimote controls felt appropriate for the game, but they felt the amount of writing in the game disrupted the flow, and the 3D elements seemed barren compared to the lushness of the 2D world. Nintendo has also kicked off marketing the game with a “Wii Would Like To Play” TV commercial, shown above.
Read More | 1up

Read More | IGN

Warhawk The nature of the Warhawk release for the PlayStation 3 has been elusive, to say the least. 1up was one of the first sites to report that the game would be heading to the PlayStation Network, and would not be a retail disc. Now, according to information they received from Sony Computer Entertainment America, the game is actually going to be heading to both Blu-Ray and the PlayStation Network. No clarification was given, but 1up speculates that there will be content differences between the formats, with the possibility of additional downloadable content to even out the releases. Even with this, though, it would see that either way would result in a less than satisfactory experience for each format. Either the Blu-Ray disc ends up being vastly underutilized, or the end user finds himself downloading tons and tons of content to keep up with their physical media brethren. It will be interesting to see how Sony handles this, if the rumors are true.

Read More | 1up

Resident Evil 4IGN reports on the latest issue of Famitsu, which has a new spread on Biohazard 4: Wii Edition. The US version was previously hinted at via an accidental leak on the Gamestop website for June; these new details assure gamers that the title is real. The Famitsu article details the new Wiimote functionality in the game. Gamers will use the Wiimote for cursor aiming, the B trigger and a shake of the Wiimote allows the user to reload, and motion-sensitive actions are used for close up attacking. Other features in the Wii version include new beginner-friendly difficulty settings and the additional content from the PS2 release. Finally, for those looking for insight into the upcoming Umbrella Chronicles Wii release, there will be a game trailer included on the disc.

Read More | IGN

NiGHTS Journey Of DreamsSega of Europe offered some tantalizing new details about the upcoming NiGHTS: Journey Of Dreams earlier; the updates seem to have gone missing from Sega’s site, but Sega Nerds has a summary of the new features, including “Persona” masks that allow NiGHTS to morph into a dragon, dolphin or rocket, seven dream worlds, and utilization of the Wii Connect 24 service to exchange items and adjust the environment based on the Forecast channel. It definitely sounds like Sega is focusing on using the Wii featureset to the fullest; hopefully the game can live up to the nostalgic memories gamers have of the original.

Read More | Sega Nerds

TSK Tsk! Naughty Japanese! Add some more fuel to the ethics in video games fire… Remember those somewhat subversive DS advertisers in your local mall? The ones that consisted of cute girls wearing shirts proclaiming that “Touching is Good”? Well, the DS has just taken the pervyness to the next level, courtesy of SNK. In a new Japan-only game Doji Doji Majo Saiban (roughly translated as Exciting Witch Trial) you’re encouraged to find out whether or well-endowed nubile girls are witches or not. We’ll let you guess how you find out… or you could click this link(somewhat NSFW) and skip some of the guesswork.

We can only guess that this game is NEVER going to make it stateside… I think several public interest groups’ collective heads would explode. So all you folks interested in the “artistic style” and “dialog” in this game are going to be stuck importing and learning Japanese for now.

Read More | DokiMajo.com

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