Giant Bomb Video Game News

Electronic Arts did a bit of financial reporting this morning for the third quarter of its current fiscal year, which translates into "Q4 2009" in man years. The past performance bit of the release isn't all that exciting, as it really only tells you things like "hey, Dragon Age: Origins did A-OK" or something like that. But the look ahead at the future--even though it's accompanied by a fat "this list is subject to change" warning--is a bit more interesting.
 


Some notes:

- Keep in mind that, again, they're talking in businessman-speak for this stuff, so Fiscal Q1 2011 actually means Q2 2010, which begins on April 1.

- That means we can expect to see Medal of Honor sometime between July and September.

- Crysis 2 is scheduled to hit sometime in the fourth quarter of 2010.

- There are two unnamed Need For Speed games on the schedule, one for Q4 2010 and another for Q1 2011. The Q4 2010 game is Criterion's, while the 2011 release is a simulation-oriented game. Shift 2, perhaps?

- There's a new Dragon Age release due during the first quarter of 2011. Think that'll be an all-new sequel, or something more like the expansion pack already planned for release this March?

- "Shooter from Epic TBA" pretty much has to be the game from People Can Fly that EA announced as an EA Partners deal awhile back.

- Dead Space 2 is listed as coming to both console and handheld, but EA counts phones in the "handheld" category. My guess is that this is an iPhone game, not a DS/PSP release.

- While you might see "Fighting Title TBA" and think that EA's making, like, a fighting game, keep in mind that it's tagged as coming from the EA Sports label. Maybe a new Fight Night? It'd be way too soon for an MMA sequel, since that's due out during the previous quarter.

- Battlefield 3 isn't specifically mentioned anywhere on this list. The closest thing on here that fits is "Action Title TBA" on Q1 2011 (Q4, fiscal), but that footnote pegs it as a downloadable game, not a full release. Maybe BF3 is further out than I thought? Considering DICE is already working on a game that ships in Q3 of this year (Medal of Honor), I guess it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that BF3's not mentioned here.

- Though not on the list, the call also brought word that something "far-reaching" from the Mass Effect universe was in the works. That sounds like more than just a sequel to me.

LucasArts has announced that Traveller's Tales is developing a third game in the successful LEGO Star Wars line. This year's outer space block mash-up will be known as LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars.

As you might have guessed from the title, the game is based on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, which currently airs on Cartoon Network. The game will take from both seasons of the show and will include additional battle modes, the ability to command squads, and additional attacks and moves.

The game is in development for the Wii, DS, PSP, Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. It's scheduled to be released in the fall of 2010.    

Microsoft has stated its intent to discontinue Xbox Live service on the original Xbox console on April 15, 2010. The announcement comes in the form of a blog post addressed to Live members from Xbox Live's general manager, Marc Whitten. 

This move will extend to Xbox 360 owners, as well, meaning that original Xbox games that run via the 360's backwards compatibility feature as well as digitally downloaded Xbox Originals will also stop functioning online on 4/15. Offline play in games for the original Xbox should continue without issue, so feel free to break out that copy of Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus that I know you're sitting on.

The reasoning behind this move hasn't been completely spelled out, but the gist of it's right here:

To reach our aspiration, we need to make changes to the service that are incompatible with our original Xbox v1 games. We will contact the Xbox LIVE members directly impacted by this change and if this includes you, I encourage you to check your LIVE messages and associated e-mail account over the coming weeks for more details and opportunities. We view you as a partner in this process.

 
Whitten goes on to say that more details will be available "soon." Last year, Patrick Klepek over at G4 reported that continuing support for Halo 2--by far the most popular online game for the original Xbox--was preventing Microsoft from raising the limit on Xbox Live friend lists. Microsoft hasn't confirmed whether or not this is, in fact, the case. Currently, the list is capped at 100, as it has been since the service's launch back in 2002.

I don't think I've touched a game for the original Xbox since 2006. How about you?

Around three or four homepage designs back, we used to keep better tabs of what the most popular database pages were by slapping them right on the homepage. After hard science showed that no one was actually clicking on any of that stuff, we cut it.

(Though before we go much further, I agree with you that we should probably bring it back in some form, just not necessarily on the homepage.)

As I was sifting through the growing Quick Look Thread over on NeoGAF, a dude named Karram reminded me that we used to have all that stuff. While I'm not enough of a database query man to actually build a page that automatically does this, it did get me thinking about alternate ways to get that information together.

So I started digging through the traffic logs and pulled together this list of the ten most-visited character pages on Giant Bomb for the month of January.

1. Miranda Lawson
2. Bayonetta
3. John "Soap" MacTavish
4. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya
5. Subject Zero
6. Taokaka
7. Captain Price
8. Mad Moxxi
9. Death (Darksiders)
10. Jill Valentine

I guess I'm not surprised that Miranda's done so well for herself, though I did think that the boss man, Commander Shepard, would make the list.

So I'll put it to you guys--I know this list stuff is pretty fluffy, but I'm genuinely interested in knowing what you guys are looking at, and I'm willing to bet that some portion of you are, as well. So what do you think? Should I keep digging and do something similar for concept pages and some of the other types of entries in our database? Or should I drop it and keep this stuff to myself, only stopping to look at it in the dead of night, when I'm at my loneliest?

I'd say that I'm currently around two-thirds of the way through Mass Effect 2, but to some extent, I'm guessing. Along the way, I've found myself wondering about the different choices I made, both here and in the first game. If you're wondering about those, or if you're looking for a hand on any of the game's missions, a team of Giant Bomb users have put together a pretty sweet guide for the game.

Lies, MasterOfPenguins_Zell, macandcheese, Llama, and WallacetheGreat are listed as its creators, and we just sort of wanted to say "hey, nice work!"

Hey, nice work!

Actually, now that I glance through it, I can see that this will be really helpful for finding those random planets that you can actually land on. I haven't run into any of those yet and I've been mining quite a bit.
 
So check out this rad Mass Effect 2 Walkthrough right neeeeeow. Oh, unless you're all worried about spoilers and stuff. It does, after all, tell you most of what's going to happen in the game. Fair warning, people.

The Behemoth, the team behind things like Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers, has revealed the name of its upcoming game, which until now has been referred to only as "Game 3."

The game will be called BattleBlock Theater. Here's a trailer!

  
I'm still not entirely sure what this game is going to be, really. Looks neat, though. Here's the information released along with the above video.

Having shipwrecked on a mysterious island you find yourself both betrayed by your best friend Hatty and captured by the locals. All of this is happening while being forced into deadly performances. This however, is just the start of your problems.

BattleBlock Theater is our upcoming third title for the Xbox Live Arcade. Website to follow in the next few days and as we inch closer to the release of the title we’ll be unfolding more of the story online.

I hate it when Hatty betrays me. That jerk.

Having already developed two first-person shooters under the Aliens Vs. Predator name--once on the Atari Jaguar, and once on the PC--UK developer Rebellion Games has a well-established history with this movie monster mash-up franchise. So who better to spearhead another revival than a developer that obviously understands the importance of both balancing and differentiating Aliens, Predators, and the seemingly hapless space marines stuck in betwixt? Sega, which is publishing Rebellion's next AVP title, held an Xbox 360 multiplayer event earlier this week where we were able to refamiliarize ourselves with the three iconic factions and check out some of the gameplay modes that capitalize on their uniqueness.
 
If you're familiar with Rebellion's previous forays into the realm of Alien-on-Predator-on-Space-Marine violence, you probably already have at least some sense of the rock-paper-scissors dynamic inherent to AVP, and it seems to still be one of the defining characteristics here. When playing as a Predator, you've got a menagerie of gadgets to fell your enemies with, including a cloaking device that makes it easy to get the drop and a shoulder-mounted plasma cannon that packs a lot of punch, though at the cost of a relatively slow firing rate. As such, I found that, when playing as a Predator, the regular and heavy melee attacks were the most effective way to take down an enemy, particularly when the cloaking device is active. There were several other gadgets that I didn't manage to figure out how to use during my time with the game, leaving me with the impression that this is the most technically complicated class of the three.
 
Predators have the freshest gear, but it's the Aliens that boast the best mobility in the game. The default movement speed is impressive, and since they don't use any conventional weapons, it's also critical in getting up close to your enemies for claw swipe and tail attacks. Both the Alien and the Predator have suitably grisly execution moves they can perform on enemies caught unawares. Aliens can also prove difficult to draw a bead on, since they can effortlessly climb on virtually any surface in the game, transitioning from one surface to another with a quick tug on the right trigger. Since they play so fast and loose with gravity, I found it easy to get disoriented when playing as the Alien, though if you get too turned around, you can reorient yourself to the ground, also performed with the right trigger. It felt like Aliens really excelled when operating in small, loosely organized packs, swarming on enemies like the horrible space insects they are.
 
The big surprise for me was how enjoyable the space marine ended up being, and not just because the default player model looks like a lean and grizzled Brian Doyle Murray. Within the Aliens universe, being a space marine is tantamount to being hamburger ceviche, but they can hold their own quite well in AVP. He plays like a pretty standard, armed with an assault rifle and a pistol by default, and he can also pick up other Earth-man weapons like shotguns and flamethrowers. (Quick aside: flamethrowers in games are never as much fun to use as you'd hope, and this one still suffers from reach issues, but it's undeniably satisfying to watch an Alien writhe and scream while engulfed in flames.) Even though the marine represents the most traditional first-person shooter experience, the bizarre abilities of his enemies gives it enough of a twist. Also, the assault rifle holds massive 100-bullet clips, which really facilitates some proper Bill-Paxton-style space marine freak-outs.
 
We played a few rounds of standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, and control-point modes before jumping into some of the gameplay types that more specifically capitalize on the factions of AVP. In one mode, everyone starts as a space marine, and then one player is picked at random to play as the Predator. The goals are to kill as many marines as you can when you're the Predator, and to hunt down the Predator when playing as a marine, which will then turn you into the Predator. Similarly, there's another mode where everyone starts as a marine, and one player is chosen to play as an Alien. In this mode, though, any marines felled by the Alien are then turned into Aliens themselves the next time they spawn, with the overall goal of surviving as a marine for as long as you can. These modes might sound pretty familiar in description, but the actual dynamics give each their own distinct feel.
 
The game seems to be doing a good job of capturing the little touches associated with the franchise--the look of the Predator's heads-up display, the wall-eyed perspective of the Alien, and the compressed sound of the space marine's assault rifle. After spending a few hours murdering other members of the press, we got to spend some time chatting with Rebellion's Tim Jones, project lead for Aliens Vs. Predator, about the game, Rebellion's history with the franchise, and his own extraterrestrial exterminating prowess.
 

Done with Bayonetta yet? PlatinumGames hopes so, because they've already revealed their next big action game, Vanquish. This one comes from Shinji Mikami, whose pedigree boasts no less than "creator of Resident Evil." So you'll probably want to pay attention to this.
 
 
   
 
No real info about the game yet, including what platform(s) it will appear on, but then you may be too busy looking at the large-scale orbital destruction of San Francisco to care. I'm also kind of excited to see some live-action footage of real actors in this clip. Despite the great work with motion-captured CG characters in games like Uncharted 2 recently, I think there's still room for real footage in game cinematics if it's used tastefully.
 
Does this pique your interest in any way? And does it remind you of anything?

Rockstar issued a press release this evening officially announcing plans to deliver The Lost and Damned as well as The Ballad of Gay Tony--the two downloadable add-ons for Grand Theft Auto IV--to the PlayStation 3 and PC on March 30.

The two episodes will available in two different ways, much like they are on the Xbox 360. GTA IV owners can opt to download the episodes individually from the PlayStation Network or the Games for Windows Live Marketplace. Users looking for a standalone package can grab Episodes of Liberty City, which collates the two installments on one disc. Given current prices for the 360 versions of this content, it seems likely that the individual episodes will run $20 and the Episodes disc will go for $39.99.

The release also mentions that PC players will receive an "advanced video editor" with these add-ons, but it isn't clear if this means that it's advanced beyond the video editor that's already included with GTA IV on the PC, or if Rockstar is just claiming that its existing editor is, you know, advanced.

Hey, quick reminder for all of you television owners out there. I'll be on GameTrailers TV tonight. It airs on Spike TV at 12:30AM, though with cable being cable, you should check your local listings. With my DirecTV dish, I get the east coast feed of Spike, so I'll get the show at 9:30.

I'll be discussing the "Most Anticipated Games of 2010" with the show's host, Geoff Keighley. Admittedly, the games I brought to the table are probably the most common picks in the world for this category, but then, I tend to favor games that I know next to nothing about or games that are coming out so soon that I can practically taste them.

I don't want to get too much into the segment before it airs, since I don't want to spoil it. But I'll certainly have more to say on the topic tomorrow, so come back to the site for that. Here's a promo for the show, but I should warn you... I'm not actually in the promo.