Oooh, cinematicy.

It was a Diablo 3 announcement. Well, probably best not to listen to me ever again. To sum up, Diablo 3 is coming out, it looks a lot like Diablo 2 and if you care about Diablo right about now you will be going mental with joy. If you don't, you'll probably be feeling a wee bit disappointed. Still, Blizzard make awesome games, so expect Diablo 3 to carry on that tradition. The game was demoed at the Worldwide Invitational in Paris this morning, and pics, videos and all sorts of other things can be found right here. Fingers crossed for a Lost Vikings redux next.

In other Blizzard news, the company have introduced a new security device for World of Warcraft, a sort of key chain that creates a user specific code every time you log into the game, meaning only someone with the key chain can access your profile. It's an extra level of security over the usual Username and Password but, inevitably, you have to pay for the device. Whether or not it'll catch on remains to be seen, but a move towards physical security devices for use on the internet is an intriguing one.

Another rune has emerged from the ice in this ongoing and frankly ludicrous story, and this is the best one yet. In the top right corner of the image, you can now clearly see a ;) smiley. Utter genius. Blizzard, my metaphorical hat is off. Well and truly.

Expect whatever is to be announced to be announced within the next two days, and don't be too surprised if it's something to do with Wrath of the Lich King.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix has opened its Beta doors and can now be played by anyone who downloaded the new Commando game from Xbox Live. The game, with the single least memorable title since records began, is a rehashing of the classic Street Fighter 2 Turbo, with new sprites drawn by Udon, who's pretty good at the old artwork malarkey, having done an awful lot of work on the Street Fighter comics.

Only Ken and Ryu are playable at the moment, but quite frankly, why would you want to play as anyone else? The game's looking good, and if you were me, then you would be excited.

Source Totally360.com

Far be it from me to point out quite how simple it is to get gamers riled up, but Blizzard, creators of Diablo, World of Warcraft and Starcraft have made the internet go INSANE by posting a picture of some ice on the front page of their website.

You can go and look at it if you CLICK HERE

Apparently there are runes in the ice, representing the three different games mentioned above. Such teasing has whipped fanboys and girls into a frenzy of postulating, rumour mongering and making things up.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with gaining publicity for the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational which is happening this weekend in Paris. Oh my no. Still, you can bet your bottom dollar that something is going to be announced over the weekend, and that when it is, vast swathes of people will be disappointed that Justice League Task Force isn't getting a next gen revamp.

Stay tuned for more developments in the Blizzard ice picture rune story as and when we get them.

Source IGN

Two gobbets of Spore news today, firstly EA and Maxis have announced that alongside the regular, common or garden version of the game, they'll also be releasing a "Galactic Edition", chock full of extra features, in a nicer box, shinier and with more coolitude. Expect Art, videos, and other "backstage" kinds of things, and will set UK buyers back an extra fiver, which isn't too bad at all really.

The second, and probably more important bit of news is that the sporepedia, mentioned in a newspost below, now houses over one million creatures. That's right, in a week, 1,000,000 affronts to nature have been created in bedrooms and lounges around the world, uploaded and shared with a by now no doubt terrified populous.

Hats off for the marketing strategy EA, you've got people talking, blogging and generally getting excited over Spore, whilst creating an online community that must by now rival most other games based ones out there. You can get hold of Spore on PC, Mac and DS on September the 5th.

Valve, champions of PC gaming the world over, bastions of digital community and creators of ingenious trailers have launched a blog for their stand out title, Team Fortress 2. Interesting things to read are promised, so be on the look out for big funnies alongside a glimpse into the work that goes into creating and sustaining a computer game.

Valve are doing one of the best support jobs I've ever seen on Team Fortress 2, even now, months after its initial release they're supporting it to the hilt, with interesting and useful DLC, alongside constant weighing and balancing of the gameplay experience.

If your eyes work, you can read the blog by clicking here.

Source Game Bump

First impressions; very pretty, but World War 2 meh. That's not to disparage the actual war itself, but you can't fall out of bed nowadays without being speared on the digital bayonet of a 39-45 rehashing. The whole thing started off quite noble, using the medium as a way of keeping history alive and interesting, but in the end, videogames are about entertainment, and there are only so many times you can feel the authentic recoil on a Lee Enfield No.I Mk.III before it stops being entertaining. Waiting and seeing is, as per usual, our only option.

Spore Creature Creator is now up for download from Spore.com. Essentially it's the character creation part of the upcoming Spore game, released early as a bit of a teaser for anyone who's interested. Creatures can be created (obviously), and then shared, uploaded to YouTube or put onto the sporepedia, a database of the creations.

It's a community focused move by EA, allowing people to try out one of the most important features of an upcoming game and then building a website around them. As well as sharing the product of their imagination around the globe, any of the creatures created can be put into the full version of the game, released on the 5th of September.

If you're interested, click on over to Spore.com and find out more.

Call of Duty: World at War, the sequel to the critically acclaimed, massive commercial success that was Call of Duty 4, will be revealed to the world via the medium of Xbox 360 on the 21st of June. And that's pretty much all that the minimalist press release from Microsoft actually says.

As reported somewhere further down the blog, CoD 5 will take the series old school, with the campaign set in the heady days of World War 2, and the 360 will be the "lead console". It seems that "lead console" means "console that CoD 4 was played on the most."

Still, I'll be waiting with semi baited breath by my big white box when the 21st rolls around, or rather, by the big white box downstairs, because that one's hooked up to a bigger TV. Cynics will be able to download it from YouTube around 4 minutes after release.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed will be accompanied by a Graphic Novel (a big comic, not a Novel with lots of sex and violence), and a novelisation on August the 22nd. Which is frankly dull and uninspiring news, but it means if you don't like video games (why are you reading this) you can find out what happens without picking up a joypad.

LucasArts, along with parent company Lucas Film are old hats at the merchandise game, so expect the books to be of at least a passable standard, but far less exciting than actually playing the game.

Source DigitalBattle.com

Legendary English video game pioneers, David and Richard Darling, have been given CBEs. The Darlings set up Codemasters in their bedroom back in the days when you could start video games companies in your bedroom and turned it into one of the leading independently owned software houses in the world.

A long time ago, when games came on tapes and screamed at you for twenty minutes before they loaded, the Codemasters label was always a sign of quality, and that's a trend that's continued to this day, even though the Darlings sold their stake in the company in 2007. It's great to see the industry that we all know and love honoured in this way, and whether or not you agree with the honours system in the UK, I can think of no one better to receive such an award.

My only regret is I never stuck to my guns and learned C+, could have been me up there. Well, it could have if they gave out awards for making shoddy breakout clones on ZX Spectrums anyway.

Source bbc.co.uk

Labels: Dissidia, Final Fantasy, Infinite Undiscovery, Microsoft, PS3, RPG, Square Enix, Star Ocean, The Last Remnant, tri-Ace, Wii, Xbox 360

Massive rumours are kind of like massive lies, by which I mean they're probably not true. Anyway, far be it from me to be tempered by the truth, rumours abound that Metal Gear Solid, the seminal Tactical Espionage Action game, is heading to Xbox Live.

Now, I'm going to be cautious about saying anything about this, because if you ask me that sounds more like a lie than a rumour, but if it's true, then yay. Metal Gear Solid is the best of the series by a long shot, even though it is essentially just a tarted up Pac-Man.

Source Jolt.co.uk

Call of Duty 5 now has a swish title, and is being developed with the Xbox 360 as its "lead platform", which in development speak means "the 360 is easier to develop for so don't blame us when the other versions don't look as good."

The game, developed by Treyarch, creators of the underwhelming Call of Duty 3, returns the series to its original stomping ground of the Second World War, or WWII. Players will be either an American or a Russian soldier, fighting the Japanese or the Germans. Mad props to Treyarch for actually acknowledging that the Russians were involved in the Second World War, but still, do we really need another shooter set in that era? I've played so many they all just blur into one.

Source VGGEN.com

...that is, well, it's A question. To be honest, I'm pretty sure it's not THE question. Either way, the answer may be coming our way sooner than expected. Leaking sources have claimed that tomorrow, an hour before the start of the WWDC (the World Wide Developers Conference) Microsoft will announce that an Xbox 360 with an internal Blu Ray drive will be available for purchase before Christmas for less than the Elite retails for now.

Listen carefully. That's the sound of no one really caring.

Let me put it this way: did you buy your 360, PS3, Wii, PSP etc because of the format of storage it used or the kind of visual media you could watch on it, or did you buy it because you wanted to play games?

And yes, you can blather on about how larger space on a disc will allow game makers to create more immersive experiences for 360 users, but look at the PS3: it has a built in Blu Ray drive and a slew of dull and uninspiring games that nobody really wants to play. Like Haze.

The greatest innovations of the last five years of console development have been the hard drive, wireless controllers and motion control. None of which have anything to do with the disc you insert into the gaping maw of your grey/black/white/see through box.

In the end, the inclusion of a Blu Ray drive in the 360 has nothing to do with the quality of games that we can expect to play. It's a broadening of the market, the creation of an entry level all in one box that doesn't just appeal to gamers, but also to the kind of people who won't buy a console if the colour clashes with their TV. You can pick up the HD-DVD add on for the 360 now for around twenty pounds, and HD-DVD titles are retailing for about half the price of standard-D-DVDs nowadays, which means you can watch Hi-Def films for dirt cheap anyway. True, you won't be able to sell them on when you're finished with them, but I've yet to met anyone who does that anyway.

You can read the original leakage here

Source Crunchgear

Now, I remember when fighters used to have stories that made sense. You know, not sense sense, but a bit of sense. Like Ken and Ryu being friends, and the scar on Sagat's chest, and parts of Tekken, and, oh, I don't know, maybe Battle Arena Toshinden read like Iain Banks at his best. Such concepts of narrative now seem to be condemned to the "nice idea, but nobody buys this crap for money" pile in developer's conference rooms.

Furthering this trend we have the announcement from Namco that alongside Yoda and Darth Vader, the latest installment of the Soul Calibur series will also feature... "the secret apprentice" from forthcoming Star Wars 'em up The Force Unleashed. So that's cool and all, but, he doesn't even have a name. "Cervantes, versus, the Secret Apprentice from the forthcoming LucasArts title The Force Unleashed." Doesn't really have a ring to it does it?

Despite my cynicism about most things, I must admit, the screenshots of Vader and Yoda look pretty cool, and controlling a muppet on speed while he wafts about a lazer sword has always been an ambition of mine.

BUT.

And as you can see, that is a big but. The last Star Wars fighting game, Masters of The Teras Kasi was horrible beyond words, and whilst the Soul Calibur series has its own pedigree, I can't help but shudder at the sight of Star Wars characters involved in one on one brawls. It was that bad.

Plus, this guy can bring a Star Destroyer down on his own, what good's a pointy stick going to be against that?

Source Xboxic.com

Ninja Gaiden 2, the highly anticipated ninja 'em up from Tecmo has arrived on Xbox Live.

Really, after reading that, you should have just run to the Xbox and started the download. For those of you who need swaying, the demo features 3/4 of the first level, or chapters as they're called nowadays, 4 weapons, 2 ninpo powers and is expected to last around 30 minutes. Plus you get to play on the "now officially less hard" normal difficulty setting.

Still here? Ninja Gaiden 2 is released on the sixth of June, which is Friday.