Another Gaming Blog

It’s Labour Day! Apparently! I don’t know – it’s some kind of US holiday. Nevertheless, it’s given Microsoft a reason to discount a few Xbox Live Arcade titles from 12pm Sunday to 11:59pm the next night.

The titles you can get for a discount are Gauntlet and Dig Dug (200 points down from 400), and Small Arms and Zuma Deluxe (400 points down from 800).

Happy Labour Day all!

There's lots out today, much to the chagrin of anybody who doled out their life savings for an Xbox 360 Elite last week. For those who did, have some money left, and have an interest in American football, the 360's version of Madden NFL 2008 is amongst the latest releases. It's the definitive version - offering the best graphics, online system, and control system (the Wii version's controls simply aren't up to casual or irregular play).

Speaking of the Wii, anybody who likes a bit of SingStar but hasn't been able to pick up a version lately - Boogie is for you. It does what it says on the tin well - makes you boogie along and sing.

Meanwhile, PS3 owners with a high-speed broadband connection can download WarHawk before its released in the shops in late September. It's good and simple combat flight-sim fun.

To round all this off nicely, Sam and Max: Season One (PC) is getting a full retail release. Anybody who likes their games with a pinch of funny should pick this up without waivering, and I feel that I don't really need to mention this to point 'n' click adventure fans, as you'll undoubtedly already know of the excellence that is the Sam and Max series.

Hit the jump to see the full list of games that will be gracing us with their presence this week.

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THQ have revealed today that a new Worms game will be heading to the Wii.

Dubbed A Space Oddity, the game will take on a deep science fiction feel, apparently inspired by some old classics. The game will feature a full single player mode, some minigames, and an online multiplayer mode that can have to four people ninja roping about the place at once.

Worms is destined for release in Spring of 2008.

EA have announced today that casual gamer and chav favourite Need For Speed will have its new iteration released on 1 November.

It’ll be the usual blend of racing, modification, and gangsta, with shinier cars than the last version. ProStreet will also be released on pretty much every platform, so you won’t have to worry about not being able to buy your chosen console’s version.

Also on the cards is EA Playground for the Wii, which has been given a 2 November release date. It’s a cutesy minigame-athon designed to make everybody remember their younger days, and for young ones themselves to just giggle at.

Developer SouthPeak has today announced the new release date for big ol’ RPG Two Worlds.

The game has now been “exhaustively balanced and bug-tested, meaning that UK players will get the very best experience possible”. Well, good.

Two World will hit the shelves on 7 September.

It's Microsoft's week this week, as Europe sees the release of the Xbox 360 Elite. Sporting a 120GB Hard Disk Drive (also sold seperately), a HDMI port, and a black paint job. It's worth your money if you're the type of gamer who downloads something from the Marketplace and/or Arcade every other day, and has a top of the range HDTV that's begging to make use of its HDMI option as much as possible. Otherwise, stick with the Premium.

Software-wise, much acclaimed shooter BioShock (360) is released, and anticipated RPG Blue Dragon (360) has also flown West. Both are worth your money, especially if you're a fan of either genre.

Hit the jump to see the full list of games that will be gracing us with their presence this week.

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Having been given an AO (Adults Only) rating previously, Rockstar’s controversial title Manhunt 2 has been toned down and re-submitted to the ESRB.

As Nintendo and Sony won’t allow AO rated games on their consoles, and most retailers won’t stock AO material, Rockstar had effectively had their game banned in the States as well as in the UK. Now, however, the game has been changed and re-evaluated to earn itself an M (Mature) rating.

This means that Manhunt 2 will now have nothing in its way to go on sale, and so will hit American shelves on 31 October.

The next Project Gotham Racing game will fall into eagerly waiting fans’ hands on 12 October, it has been announced.

Big Things that have been implemented for the new title include plenty of weather effects, and how they will affect the feel of your drive, and motorbikes. Neither of which seem particular exciting or new to me, but has seemed to have caused a lot of anticipation nonetheless.

Roll on 12 October, then.

Ah, there’s nothing quite like the smell of a new MGS4 trailer in the morning. Especially when it shows you plenty of new bosses that Snake will have to face up to.

The trailer, nicknamed ‘Beauty and the Beast’, gives fans the first peek at some extremely creepy looking metallic baddies, all of which seem to take inspiration from previous bosses in the series…

Take a look after the jump.

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I'm not sure I could get used to this way of doing things as, once again, Nintendo has announced a release date for a blockbuster Mario title in amongst a heap of other trash. Where's the fanfare?

Anyway - to the point. Super Mario Galaxy on 16 November. This year. I needn't say anymore.

Other notable Wii releases include Harvest Moon: Magical Melody on 19 October, Endless Ocean on 9 November, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles on 30 November, NiGHTS: Journey Into Dreams in 'November', and finally Pokémon Battle Revolution and Zack & Wiki: Quest For Barbaros' Treasure on 7 December. Pokémon in time for Christmas being the big surprise, here.

You can hit the jump to see the Winter release list in full.

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The special Spartan-coloured 360 revealed by Peter Moore during the Microsoft E3 conference has today been fully detailed.

It will be your basic Premium package with a few differences. Obviously, you’ve got the special green and gold colours, but also in the package you’ve got a HDMI port and a Play & Charge Kit, and Halo 3 gamer pictures and themes readily downloaded on your hard drive.

It’ll launch on 26 September alongside that game, and will retail at £279.99. Whether the added bits and bobs is worth an extra £30 is, of course, yours to decide.

Harmonix chap Alex Rigopulos took to the stage at Leipzig today to announce that Rock Band has been delayed to 2008 (boo!), will now also be released for the PS2 (yay?), and that ten new tracks can be revealed to us (hurrah!).

You can see which tracks those are after ye olde jumpe.

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Sony’s second Leipzig announcement today was the PSP’s multimedia option – the new PSP Go! brand.

PSP Go! will take the form of three new services – Go! Video, Go! Messenger, and Go! Explore.

The first – Video – will be helped out by Sky and will be a downloadable service allowing punters to download the most popular shows from assorted Sky channels.

Messenger is fairly more self-explanatory, giving users the chance to IM their friends using an on-screen keyboard (to be provided in a new firmware upgrade), or voice/video-chat if the appropriate accessory is connected to the PSP. The service will also receive backing from communication giant BT.

Go! Explore will be a GPS service, available to residents of the UK, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Scandinavia. Co-providers TeleAtlas and NavNGo will keep churning out updated 3D maps, language support and other such directional gubbins over the PlayStation Network to ensure that no PSP owner ever gets lost again. In the countries mapped out, at least, anyway.

Everyone’s least favourite monkey (or MUNKEH if you’re that fat bloke off the old PG Tips adverts) will be included in Super Smash Bros Brawl, according to the latest Dojo update.

What the hell’s a Dojo update, you ask? Well the Super Smash Bros: Dojo is the Brawl website. Check it out every day for more than character, item, stage, and game updates.

Leipzig gave Sony a chance to unveil more multimedia options for the PS3 and PSP today – the PS3’s option being PlayTV.

Think Sky+ (Or TiVO for my American friends) for your PS3, basically, which means that you’ll be able to set up various TV programmes to record from a seven-day guide. When they’re on, you can either be out enjoying a cold one or watching a completely different channel.

It’s set for release in 2008 for an as yet unannounced price.

Following a recent American price-drop, Microsoft have confirmed that they will now also be dropping the price of all three packages round these parts.

The Core unit will go down to £179.99, the Premium will drop to £249.99, and the Elite will become £299.99.

Microsoft also took the time out to announce that a new, standalone 120GB hard-drive (just in case you don’t want to buy an Elite) will set you back £129.99. In which case it’s probably worth buying an Elite after all.

The Brawl website gave its readers a further insight into its Adventure Mode today by detailing The Subspace Emissary.

"The Subspace Emissary storyline introduces a force of formless enemies called the Subspace Army. They are ruled by their commander, the Ancient Minister.

"The enemy’s primary offensive strength is in creatures called the Primid. They come in many variations. Their objective is to cut apart the world and carry it into Subspace. They use what are called Subspace Bombs to do so. When a Subspace Bomb explodes, a section of the world gets excised and swallowed by Subspace.

"This is a new, never-before-seen form of aggression... but now is no time to stop and stare. Everyone, everywhere, is beginning to move against it."

Including you! Or else you'll be missing out a large portion of the game. You can hit the jump to see the trailer accompanying this update.

Another update that shouldn't be passed by is the replacement for trophies - stickers. "Yes, the ones you slap on your notebook or skateboard or whatever. Stickers." explains game creator Masahiro Sakurai. They'll apparently be easier to collect than trophies were, and you'll be able to create your own pages with stickers you've collected on.

You can easily see Sora Ltd absolutely mining the back catalogue of Nintendo with this sticker album idea. If they don't, I will eat my hat.

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Well. What a boring way to end a boring week.

There's really nothing to buy.

Save your money, folks.

Hit the jump to see the few games that will be 'gracing' us with their presence this week.

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There was a question for philosophical fans of Super Smash Bros: Melee. Peach would pull out a turnip from underneath her skirt and then lob it at foe – where exactly would she keep all those turnips?

This question will continue into Brawl, as Peach has today been announced as a playable character.

I reckon she has never-ending pockets in her pants, personally.

Here’s an announcement that was quite unexpected. A Pokémon Trainer, who can swap between Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard, will be a playable Brawl character.

The Trainer will stand in the distance, and at the touch of a button can cycle and change out the Pokémon in the order mentioned above.

Switching between your Pokémon won’t change their fatigue levels or your damage meter though, so you won’t need to worry about people being cheating little weasels by changing out at the last second.

Not much in the way of releases this week, but for those who never bought the DS version, Trauma Center: Second Opinion (Wii) is an absolute must. It's highly atmospheric, entertaining, with a swift difficulty level to ensure you're still challenged. For those with the DS version, there's still new content here, ranging from the small inclusions of new surgical tools, to the larger changes such as new levels. Just buy it, really.

Hit the jump to see the full list of games that will be gracing us with their presence this week.

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Activion’s latest foray into the Call of Duty series has been dated for European release on 9 November.

Sub-titled Modern Warfare, it’ll be the first CoD title that won’t be World War II bound. Or, indeed, as fishy (see what I did there? CoD? Fishy? Ah, I’m wasted on you).

Details of a Halo 3-style multiplayer beta are also expected soon.

505 Games has revealed today that Cooking Mama 2 is in the works for the Wii and DS and will definitely be coming to Europe.

The new titles will feature new recipes, new minigames, and a new multiplayer mode. Whether it will make up for the original’s shortcomings remains to be seen though – namely, whether measuring an exact amount of rice over and over to make a slightly different recipe can be changed so that’s it actually entertaining.

Nintendo’s Japanese division has unveiled an interesting new trinket for the DS – a Slide Sensor that clips onto the bottom of the handheld.

Alongside the announcement is a game that comes bundled with and fully utilises the sensor – Slide Adventure: Mag Kid. It follows the adventure of a robot who has to fix itself up using its enemies nuts and bolts, also going through a number of minigames as it does so.

It will retail for 5,400 Yen, which converts to about £24. There currently doesn’t seem to be any plans for a release outside of Japan, though, and it’s not unheard of to not see all Nintendo peripherals make their way into all three major territories – see the GBA’s e-Card Reader for an example.

A recent impromptu interview with a Free Radical script-writer Rob Yescombe has confirmed that TimeSplitters 4 is definitely in development.

It’s still apparently “very early on” with no key platforms yet being developed for, but Yescombe could detail that the game would poke fun at fellow videogames rather than movies again.

With any luck, Free Radical will be making a more fleshed-out announcement soon.

Turning on your Wii today will earn you a loving message from Nintendo, telling you that you’ll be wanting to go to your Wii’s option screen to go perform a system update.

Version 3.0 of the new firmware includes the following changes:

• Digital clock added to the Wii Menu.
• Forecast Channel now displays the current condition (cloudy, raining) directly in the Wii Menu.
• News Channel can now show two scrolling headlines at a time in the Wii Menu.
• Message Board now has the “Today’s Accomplishments” message.
• Address Book entries can now be shifted around using A+B but only to empty spaces.
• Calendar in Message Board no longer shows “Today’s Accomplishments”.
• Scrolling messages in the Message Board now uses a different sound.

Downloading the update will also renovate the Wii Shop Channel, giving it the following paint-job licks:

• New welcome screen detailing four recommended titles and the points they cost.
• “Titles You’ve Downloaded” moved to the main shop menu.
• Popular Titles.
• Search for a title.
• Search by Category.
• System shows the different systems and how many titles have been released under each.
• Publisher showing different publishers and amount of titles released.
• Genre.

Microsoft has announced that, effective tomorrow, the price of all three of the Xbox 360 packages will be dropped.

The Core unit will go down to $279.99, the Premium will drop to $349.99, and the Elite will become $449.99.

Not bad savings for the time being, but a word on a European price drop would be nice too…

At the recent QuakeCon, a press conference revealed to all attendees that Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will be hitting Europe on 28 September, a few days earlier than the US release on 2 October.

Other announcements included Quake Arena Arcade, a new Live Arcade title based on Quake 3 Arena, and Quake Zero, an intriguing-sounding PC web-browser FPS.

And just so you know – the number of times Quake is mentioned in this news piece is six. If that isn’t enough Quake for you, I don’t know what is.

Seven.

WoW fans rejoice! You’ve got yet more addictive MMORPG action coming soon in the northern continent of Northrend. Wherever that may be.

The new Wrath of the Lich King expansion will bring to the table a new Death Knight hero class, new arenas, new weapons, new hairstyles (er…), a level-cap raise from 70 to 80, and much more besides.

Blizzard also announced that integrated voice communication and guild banks will be introduced to Warcraft through a steady flow of patches and updates.

All in all, the addiction that is WoW isn’t likely to die down too soon.

If you're throwing a party soon, or just enjoying cracking people's wine glasses, today sees SingStar 90's (PS2) being released. It's one of those games that are best enjoyed with, or at least around, other people.

Other than that, the week is full of crap. Move along.

Hit the jump to see the full list of games that will be gracing us with their presence this week.

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The announcement nobody wanted to happen has happened. Massive sighs all around – GTA IV will not meet its original promised release date in October.

It will, instead, be pushed all the way back to a simple “2008” date, although Take Two analysts have suggested that February is a likely month to now see Niko Bellic let loose. They also made their apologies and hoped that no inconvenience has been caused etc etc.

Rather a well quality controlled game than a disappointing buggy mess though, eh?

Engage! Make it so! Go to warp! Are all things you’ll be able to shout at your TV Picard-stylee when Conquest hits the shelves.

Taking an RTS slant, you’ll be able to manage any of the Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Dominion or Breen groups while you do the usual Command & Conquer style stuff of kicking ass.

I’m a bit of a Star Trek-lite kind of person, so I’ll just pretend that I understand what a group of Cardassians are and what they look like and be on my merry way. Next news item please!

Every so often you'll find that companies have to let go of some of their older game servers to make way for the new (or to get some budget cuts in). Hell, even one day you'll find that World Of Warcraft will have to be turned off.

EA is no different, and on 1 September most pre-07 sports titles (and MVP 07 NCAA Baseball) will be culled so that their shiny new '08 versions can occupy the most flat space. A few more will be turned off on 1 November - mostly Need For Speed ones in what is a likely indication of a ProStreet release period.

For a full list of the server shutdowns, just hit the jump.

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These days whenever a new SingStar is announced, another new Buzz! game is likely to follow. Without wishing to disappoint, Sony has stepped up to the plate and revealed Buzz!: The Hollywood Quiz.

As you can probably garner from the title, this version of Buzz! will set out to quiz you on Hollywood and all that is celebrity with over 5,000 questions and 100 film clips, sound bites, and photos.

It’s expected for release in October of this year, so you won’t have long to wait.

We have another entry into the SingStar series incoming, courtesy of Sony.

Announced today, SingStar: Rock Ballads will allow karaoke fans to warble their way through thirty tracks, including the modern likes of Avril Lavigne?s I?m With You and the classics that come from Toto with Africa.

Rock Ballads is expected in September for the PS2, and you can see all of the tracks that will be on offer after the jump.

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‘Ike’? I’m not entirely sure when people started calling Fire Emblem’s Marth ‘Ike’, but apparently the Wii’s Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance has a bit of a doppelganger design going on, hence the name.

The announcement of Mar– sorry, Ike, is also a good indication that fellow Fire Emblem character Roy will soon join the line-up.

Ah, Square Enix. They’re treating the DS well with their RPG selection, and this trend will continue following the announcement of three new remakes.

Dragon Quest IV through VI – or four through six to the roman numeral impaired – are likely to get the same kind of spit, polish and spiffy new box-art that Final Fantasy III got (and IV will get). As these three DQ titles haven’t previously been released in Europe, let’s all hope that they will receive the FF3 treatment and get a release over ‘ere.

Dragon Quest fans can also look forward to the exclusive ninth instalment in the form of Defenders Of The Sky later next year.