NFS Hot Pursuit looks a bit nicer than the old one

How lazy are they that they couldn't think of a new name? Hot Pursuit 2? No they already made that, too. Nothing wrong with Hot Pursuit 3 though. It's like movie makers. You can't just remake something and give it exactly the same name! Hot Pursuit 2010? No sorry that's really lame.

Anyway, it looks pretty good, albeit a bit like Burnout Paradise crossed with Test Drive Unlimited with an added police mode.

EDIT: This is a much nicer version of the first part of the video:





Apologies (on someone else's behalf) for crappy sound but it is the best video.

It's made by the Burnout Paradise guys, which might explain the rather stark similarities in ridiculously over the top crashes, so hopefully it will actually be half decent. The crashing-until-the-other-car-is-buggered looks excellently reminiscent of Chase HQ, which is pretty much one of my favourite games ever.

gamehounds

A very sad BBC article about PCZone

Good times.

You may have to read the article to understand the basis for that hilarious animal cruelty...

Sales of the magazine started a slow decline, old staff started to drift away and puerile humour was no longer in vogue.
In 2004 the magazine was sold to Future Publishing, who imposed stricter budgetary controls, brought in new staff and redesigned the magazine.

"The closure of PC Zone is the end of an era," said Mr Brooker.

Puerile humour will always be in vogue. Took me a few times to spell it, mind.

Damn you all to hell, Future Publishing.

bbc

Goldeneye on Wii is going to be shit

I was excited! Maybe you were excited too! I tried to make you excited! How could you not be? Goldeneye, possibly the best fps on console and definitely the best four player split screen fps ever, revamped for a modern (well, -ish) console! Yes! Yes! YES!

Well, I was wrong. By all accounts it appears that this is actually going to be a steaming pile of turd.

Eurocom have been big fans of Bond for many years, and we were privileged to develop 'The World is Not Enough' on the N64, followed by our work on 'Nightfire' (Gamecube, PS2, Xbox) and then later by 'Quantum of Solace' (PS2). After our work on 'Quantum', we began to talk with Activision, and the licensors Danjaq, about a new Bond game development. It was during those discussions that the idea of reinterpreting the film GoldenEye on the Wii came about.
The first thing we need to point out is that we're approaching this with a fresh perspective. As such, the main beats of the storyline remain, as well as most of the iconic movie settings you'd hope to see.
We're basing it in the world of Daniel Craig's Bond, rather than Pierce Brosnan's Bond and this means a grittier, more cinematic feel with large explosive set pieces and more emphasis on Bond's physical strength.
It also has to stand alongside other contemporary first person shooters - it's a new, fresh game in it's own right.

So.. it's made by the team that made all the rubbish Bond games, and it's an entirely new game based on the Goldeneye movie but with the wrong Bond in it.

Idiots. If they just remade Goldeneye N64 scene for scene with sexy graphics they'd make billions. Sigh.
Release it on XBL you bastards!

officialnintendomagazine

Give the people what they want.

Ok so here's more tits.

Actually, credit where it's due, this is a really nicely put together video.
It's probably one button in Apple iYoutube or whatever, but still it's nice.

Comic Con Booth Whores

Now now, don't be upset. I'm using the word 'whore' in it's truest sense, selling your body for money. Nothing wrong with that now. These girls are basically human billboards.



To all those 'booth babes' who are actually massive fans of the things written in big letters across their tits, I am willing to retract the statement. But, again, it's nothing to be ashamed of, ladies. If I had massive tits I'd get some corporate sponsorship for those puppies.

Street Fighter X Tekken !?

This actually is a bit exciting, provided you're about as old as I am and spent all your pocket money as a kid on a slightly broken Street Fighter 2 arcade machine.

Yoshinori Ono from Capcom and Katsuhiro Harada from Namco played against each other in a quick match. During gameplay, Ryu called in Chun Li to help him out and Kazuya called in Nina Williams for a ridiculous team-up attack. They fought on a futuristic battlefield with giant mechs roaming in the background. The game was running on a PlayStation 3. Visually, it looked very similar to Street Fighter IV with 2D gameplay and 3D rendered character models.

Street Fighter X Tekken is being developed for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. When will it be out? Capcom says "not for a while." Namco also said it is creating its own version of the game, Tekken X Street Fighter, but details on that aren't available at this time.

What's that last bit all about?

More Street Fighter x Tekken Videos

Trailer's a bit shit though, innit...

uk.xbox360.ign / pics

Halo: Reach has a forklift in it

Yep, this is today's exciting news. Lap it up.

A Bungie representative told IGN that originally the forklift had the ability to raise and lower, but that feature got cut because it was just too crazy and pointless.

That's right folks, it doesn't even work. Excited yet?

uk.xbox360.ign

Starcraft 2 is not exciting

Yes it's called Starcraft 2, not Starcraft II. We finally got rid of those pesky Romans years ago, why honour them by using their silly number system?

Anyway, I remember Starcraft fondly. It was good fun. Not amazing, but good fun. Clicking on those little dudes, sending them off to their death and then being raped by annoying little reptile type monster things. Good stuff.

But somehow the PR machine at Blizzard has the world foaming at the mouth for the sequel. No surprise, these people are clearly masters of mind control (see World of Warcraft for details), but c'mon... really?

They release exciting trailers like this...



.. but don't let it fool you! It's still just a top-down fake 3D 2D C&C'em up. Really, it looks like... Starcraft! With sharper graphics! Shocking.



Don't believe the hype!

Unless you're Korean. In which case this is like crack for you. I know you can't resist buying it. Get help.

Valve giving away their new game 'Alien Swarm'

It looks kinda like a cross between a top-down Left4Dead and the old classic Alien Breed games.

There's plenty more videos to check on the site, in case you're not sure if you want to download it. However, it's FREE so there's not much to complain about. I guess they want to up the numbers of people playing on Steam.

store.steampowered

No more PCZone!

super lo-res logo

What the cock? PCZone is being cancelled!

I always bought this magazine until the internet made it easy for me to get all the information for free and much more quickly. Why on Earth would they possibly think about cancelling it?

If you are/were a PCZone lover/reader/hater then you have an opportunity to have an effect on the final episode, be it with an article or a mention or with a personal insult in reply to your retarded letter.

You can do it by looking here.

It went downhill when they dumped Culky anyway.

Brooker had this to say: "PC Zone was a cross between Viz and Which? magazine. It never took anything too seriously, least of all itself. It was also where I learned to write, so if you hate my flippant, manic-depressive 'style', blame PC Zone.

"Often the reviews were quite long: you'd have to write four or five pages on Tomb Raider, say, which offered plenty of scope for going off on tangents or penning lengthy nonsensical screeds. There was an attitude of 'anything goes provided it's funny'. It was as much comedy mag as games mag.

"I guess its demise is inevitable. Actually, I'm impressed it lasted as long as it did, given the dominance of consoles, and the sheer wealth of reviews and so forth you can find for free online. The mag itself may have died, but the general tone and character of PC Zone lives on in British gaming sites and forums, and in Ben Croshaw's Zero Punctuation pieces and the like."

guardian

New Xbox reviewed

The shiny new xbox comes out tomorrow somewhere (perhaps even here?), so here's CVG's review of it.

Speaking to Microsoft reps at the unboxing event, we were told repeatedly that the firm believes this is the best console it's ever made. We make them right. This is the solid, polished machine it should have been to begin with. If PS3 had one undeniable advantage over 360 in the past it was in the hardware stakes, but MS has truly stepped up its game.

We want one. You should too.

cvg

How the 3DS works

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Stereoscopic 3D has been around for a very long time. Many of us had toys that used the effect when we were kids in the form of a View-Master. The way the 3D works is that two nearly identical images are presented, one to each eye. Your brain combines the images into a single image, which creates depth in the single image. The reason the depth effect works is because each image is slightly different from a perspective standpoint, and when the image is fused in your brain, both perspectives are preserved, making the scene look alive.


Below I have a good example piece. To make it work you’ll have to cross your eyes until you see a 3rd image between the two. Focus on that 3rd (middle) image and it should come into focus. You may have to get closer to your monitor (10 to 12 inches) to make it work. If you do it correctly, the image should clarify and show depth to it. Try it now.

I may, possibly, have used a different example image.

stupidgamer

Ok I think I have to buy Red Dead Redemption

I hate admitting that popular games might actually be good, and I hate agreeing with RICHARD about anything, but the hype and the chatter has all gotten too much now. I need to play.



No-one seems to remember Red Dead Revolver though. Maybe I'll pick that up and dust off the ol' PS2...



Oh, praps the 360 would play the old xbox version?

Pro Evo 2011 looks... I dunno, pretty?

I love Pro Evo. No matter how much better FIFA might get, I'll always claim Pro Evo is superior. But I still play '08 because I absolutely hated the shit they changed with '09 and '10.

This video for '11 looks pretty slick, but I can't tell how much is game options/settings and how much is video frill (I think it's mostly the latter).

Have a look courtesy of gamespot.

More games need big heads

I was reading some IGN (yes I was bored) and came across this marvellous looking gem called 'Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2010'.



As with all crazy games like this it seems to have some form of Pokemon esque boring conversation pieces, although this might be the team talk or something. The next bewildering part is probably a lot less bewildering if you understand Japanese. Plus I think this is an old crusty PS2 version or something.

Anyway, it made me think. Big heads are, obviously, the most heart-warmingly hilarious thing in the world. So why are they so horrifically underused? The best we get is 'big head mode', which of course you have played in Goldeneye.



Sorry about the Scottish twats (thanks for the video guys!)

Super Mario Crossover

I just spent ages looking for a NES on ebay so I could play super mario bros, then I found this. It's a pretty awesome remake. Plus you can play as the dude from Contra... complete with gun.

PS it takes AGES to load, and then when it has it takes AGES to load AGAIN for some reason. But it's worth it. To be this good takes ages!

AAAH HE SAID IT!

SuperMarioBrothers.org

PS Move much better video

Those crazy japanese marketing people have come up trumps.
Don't forget the strapu!

PS Move FAQ

Since I devoted a few posts to Kinect, it only seems fair to take a look at the daft looking stupid coloured balls of Playstation Move.

The PlayStation Move is coming to a PS3 near you, and it's bringing a brand new way to play. The next sword fighting game you play might require you to get off the couch and pick up your weapon, and a future level you dive into in LittleBigPlanet might need you to rotate the world with your hands.


We at IGN aren't going to abandon you as motion makes its way to the masses. Here, we've gathered the most common PlayStation Move questions and paired them with the answers we know. As we get more and more information, we'll update this FAQ.

I can't tell if their 'FAQ' is wrong/rubbish or if specs have changed, since both these Sony videos have two silly little balls on the controllers but the article says only one hand gets one. Maybe it's just because the video is 100% faked and the marketing company making it wasn't briefed properly.



Apparently the future of video games unavoidably involves looking like a twat.

uk.ps3.ign

'New interface' coming to XBL

Not so much a total overhaul (a la 'NXE') but basically it seems just a new Arcade browser.

There are over 250 games available on the Xbox Live Arcade, and more come out every week. It's easy to find new titles, but browsing the XBLA library to find something to play isn't fun, and older content is hardly featured. Microsoft is going to try to fix that with the Destination Arcade visual browser, launching next week.

Major Nelson has the scoop. "Destination Arcade will allow you to discover new games and content you enjoy through an easy-to-use visual browser. You’ll have the ability to sort by price, community rating, and more! Also, stay up to date on the latest arcade releases through a news feed and also find out what games your friends like and recommend."

There's a brief little look at it in this video, I hope you can stomach the boredom of the voiceover. Video should start at the relevant point (1:01).

arstechnica

Vanquish looks fun

It's as if SEGA made Gears of War. Wait. It basically is SEGA making Gears of War, but complete with all the stupid effects and jetpackiness you would expect from those lovely folk.

In Vanquish, the story is set in the near future. Russia and the United States are vying for ownership of the world’s fast-depleting energy resources and the US has constructed a space station in order to harness energy from the sun. Russian forces capture this space station and divert its harvested solar energy into a blast wave that destroys San Francisco, aiming to force the US into a total and unconditional surrender. In response, the US tasks its armed forces with recapturing the space station before the Russians can annihilate their next target – New York. The player will take control of Sam, a government agent kitted out with a futuristic battlesuit.

Blimey. Bullet time looks fun. It's still basically Gears though, innit?

gameranx

14 Saturn games UGO want to see again

Seems UGO are excited about the Saturn back catalogue too. They made some good suggestions as to what they think should be re-released onto XBL and PSN, including the amazing Fighters Megamix! You could play as the damn Daytona car. How good?



And Radiant Silvergun for those of you who like having their EYES BURNED OUT.



UGO

Am I doing it right?

I'm trying...

xkcd

"Hottest girls playing video games"

Spreading this does make me feel a little bit dirty. I'm certain I'll get over it though.

PUNCHAFISH.COM (really?) introduces the Top 10: Hottest girls playing video games!
Rather amusing in it's ridiculousness, although I can't say that I didn't enjoy it just a little.

The girl playing counter-strike with no mouse is pretty amazing (wow!). And it should come as no surprise that all of these girls (and all girls everywhere, right?) play their games in some varying state of undress.



That's number 10 that is. Sets the bar.



She's number 7. Quite a lot of missed gates, disappointing.

I think perhaps the count-down is backwards, or number 1 is the author's girlfriend/wife. You'll understand if you bother to look at them all.

Anyway, pretty daft but gotta be a good crowd puller. Well done punchafish!

punchafish

Console wars 2010 style

It used to be so simple. You chose one, then had a fight with anyone at school who chose otherwise. Unless you were a dick you chose Megadrive (or Genesis if you were geographically challenged). DKC was pretty good though... oooh and mario kart...

Anyway Gamesradar has pit the modern day big hitters (MS, Sony, Ninty and 'PC') up against one another. Guess what, the PC wins! Oh wait, I mean SPOILER ALERT: the PC wins!



That's the new fallout that is, which will be sexier on the PC. It'll still be fucking annoying when you're lost in the desert with only a shitty gun with 3 bullets and some fat bastard animal that keeps killing you because you replaced your really comfy quicksave with the one you made 10 seconds ago when it spots you walking by. Definitely. But the graphics will be nicer.

Since when is 'PC' a console, though?

gamesradar

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

Force Unleashed passed me by, I'll be honest (the last Star Wars game I really got into was X-Wing vs Tie Fighter... maybe Dark Forces...) but apparently a lot of you fans were a little disappointed by it.

Well, this sequel certainly looks pretty "kick-ass" and according to IGN it looks like it will play that way too.

Combat is designed to be flexible, so Starkiller can combine powers in a variety of ways. The Lightning Grenade, for instance, allows him to Force Grip an enemy, charge him with lightning and then throw him at other enemies for explosive results. Lightsaber attacks and Force powers can also be combined, so players can do things like charge up their lightsaber with lightning for extra attack power.

Shiny!

We mentioned earlier that the team sees this game as its Empire Strikes Back, and this is a theme that Blackman returns to a number of times. "Not only is it the second in what we hope to be a saga," he says, "but it also is a much darker story, just like Empire Strikes Back is a darker story than A New Hope, and it's a much more personal story – Starkiller's on this quest to be re-united with Juno and figure out who he is, much the same as Empire Strikes back is a more personal, character-driven movie than the first Star Wars." Here's hoping LucasArts delivers on The Force Unleashed's full potential second time around.

Lovely closing paragraph. Nice work.

uk.xbox360.ign

Nintendo 3DS: Your Questions Answered

Thanks, IGN!

The way the 3D screens work, it's sending independent views of the action to each of your eyes. It definitely has to be held straight in front of you for it to work, so no looking on at an angle. The screen must also be held at a specific distance from the eyes and pretty straight on otherwise the two screens won't merge and you'll just see double images. 

Coming soon, the new 3DS Head Stabiliser.

Anyway, hasn't this all been done before?



ds.IGN

Guy puts a camera in his eye

Eyeborg Phase II from eyeborg on Vimeo

At face value this is a pretty cool idea. So far it doesn't look as if it works very well though.
Plus, as much as I wish I was in awe of this guy, he seems to be a bit of a tit. I guess 'Canadian film-maker' (especially the second part) should have been a clue.

Still, kinda funky.

boingboing

Not just Dreamcast, Saturn coming to XBL/PSN too?!

After finding out that Dreamcast back titles could be on the way, it seems maybe some Saturn classics could come too!

"When you look globally the Genesis and Dreamcast are well known," explained SEGA's Yosuke Okunari to Japanese site Impress Watch (translated, as ever, by Andriasang).


"But Saturn is unknown. During that period, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were a success overseas, but to be honest Saturn was not a success. Because of this, we decided on Dreamcast.


"What we announced this time is a project where we will have consecutive releases of titles that were debuted on Dreamcast. Separate from this, we're of course thinking about ports of Saturn games. It's the same as how SEGA Ages and Virtual Console were separate existences. It's not that we have no intention of porting Saturn titles, so please share your requests."

NiGHTS!!!

And I guess stuff like Panzer Dragoon, and the million beat 'em ups that were out on Saturn.

eurogamer