Yes, motorcycles in Azeroth. One half of the octopus on a motorbike Druid form is complete! This and many other revelations came to us this week at WoW Insider as the Wrath of the Lich King beta opened up, and all kinds of Death Knight and Northrend news and information came falling out. Here's our most popular posts from the last seven days, with lots of new info about the reason you'll be playing WoW again this winter.
You make your way down the hallway in City 17, and push open the door into the bright sunlight reflected off of concrete. A Combine soldier stands before you, so you life your semiautomatic weapon, and as you pull the trigger and fire, the gun recoils in your hand. Another Combine stands across the viaduct, and when he fires at you, you feel the bullet strike you from the left, so you turn, and feel the gun jump in your hand again as you take him out.
That's the ideal experience with Novint's Falcon controller. The controller itself is about an eight inch orb that sits on your table, with a three-inch sphere sitting on the end of three arms coming off of it -- like a Soviet satellite sticking out of the globe. The idea is that you push the little sphere around to move your cursor, and the three arms provide resistance against whatever you bump up against. We got to use the controller at E3, and the verdict is that while it does provide a nice experience, the costs might be a little overwhelming for most players. More after the jump.
With the App Store open for business, games are finally headed to Apple's iPhone, and the unit's multitouch interface, accelerometer, and built-in mic and speaker make it perfect for gaming. THQ Wireless is one of the many companies getting ready to try and cash in on the first generation of the App Store -- after making games for a lot of other mobile devices, Director of Global Production Brad Pitser is excited about finally releasing software for the iPhone.
Joystiq got to play two different games in THQ's demo at E3. De Blob is a handheld adaptation of the Wii game, and uses the accelerometer in the iPhone and iPod touch to do a little light platform puzzling. And Force Unleashed attempts to recreate the upcoming Star Wars action title, by using a touchscreen gesture system to try and make you feel like a Jedi. impressions of both are after the break.
Thanks to the dedicated blogging of the folks at Behemoth, we pretty much knew everything there was to know about Castle Crashers coming into E3 -- it's the followup to Alien Hominid, a game that started out on Newgrounds, and ended up on the XBLA. It's got tons of playable characters, lots of "animal orbs" you can recruit to fight with you, and a great art style and a sly sense of humor. In fact, the only thing we didn't know about it was probably the most important thing: how it actually played.
After playing it with Microsoft Director of Digitally Distributed Content Scott Austin here at E3, we can safely say it's going to be one of the biggest XBLA titles of this year (it's due out before September 21st). Castle Crashers is crazy good button mashing fun, and we can't wait to lay down our hard-earned Microsoft Points for it.
Bad news for Freezepop fans (like us here at Joystiq) -- the synthpop trio, of which Kasson Crooker, Senior Producer at Rock Band creators Harmonix, is a member, does not have a song in their latest game, Rock Band 2. And that's a shame -- they've had a new song on the disc in every Harmonix game since FreQuency (including Phase, their iPod game), which makes this the first Harmonix game without a new Freezepop tune.
Shocked at this revelation, we confronted Harmonix at the Rock Band event this evening, and they confirmed that yes, there is no Freezepop song on the disc in RB2. The reason given to us was that Freezepop hasn't recorded any new music lately, and that they didn't have anything new to put out. But our source at Harmonix did say to look out for some Freezepop DLC -- they may be planning, we were told, a two or three-song downloadable pack of "sweet and cold and fruity and plastic-y" music.
There's a rub, though: there is a new Freezepop song in the recently released Guitar Hero: On Tour DS game. Guitar Hero, as you may know, was originally created by Harmonix, but since GH3 has been owned by Activision and developed by Neversoft. Are Liz Enthusiasm and her two compadres jumping ship?
Update: Commenter skie reads Liz' livejournal. Apparently the band never got paid for any of their songs in the Harmonix games since Guitar Hero, but they did get paid for the GH:OT appearance. They say they want to open themselves up to as many different fans as possible, and that means showing up in other companies' games.
Some would say Geometry Wars Retro Evolved was Xbox 360's best launch game -- it beat early hyped games like Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2, and Kameo to win the heart of 360 early adopters, despite the fact that it was 2D and a cheap XBLA version of a game that had previously been included with Project Gotham Racing 2. It held the record for a long time as the system's most-downloaded game, and that title was well-deserved, considering that a lot of $60 games haven't held a candle to the kind of frantic fun you can find pushing that little red ship around the board.
Now Bizarre Creations is attempting to follow up with Geometry Wars 2, and after our playthrough at E3, we're sold. Not only has the developer filled out the game with multiplayer and co-op modes, but Bizarre has figured out a way to make the super simple, yet extremely fun gameplay go deeper than ever before.
Scott Austin, Microsoft Director of Digitally Distributed Games, tells us that there are talks in progress with "a potential partner who has lots of board game IP." He says that XBLA's boardgames are considered evergreen content by Microsoft -- games like Catan and Carcassone sell well all the time -- and that Microsoft is definitely looking to include more traditional board games in the Arcade. They expect the same kind of evergreen popularity for their Xbox Live Primetime service, which will combine online gaming on XBL with a television-style format.
We asked Austin if the potential partner in question was a maker of more complex board games -- a D&D-esque board game like BattleLoreor Runebound would likely work very well on Xbox Live -- but he was not forthcoming. For all we know a deal is being struck with a more traditional board game maker like Parker Brothers. Either way, fans of board games on Xbox Live will definitely have more to look forward to.
Update: The relationship between potential board game content and the Xbox Live Primetime service was clarified.
During an E3 appointment today, we confronted Scott Austin, Director of Digitally Distributed Games for Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade, about two controversial XBLA topics: delistings and delays.
Austin was dodgy, unfortunately. When asked when games might start disappearing from the service, he stayed mum, only saying that Microsoft wanted to "keep evolving and improving [its] content." We also asked for comment on the unofficial list of games that met the criteria for delisting, and he agreed that the list is accurate according to the criteria.
We also talked to Austin about the delays that Microsoft has made in releasing content, and he told us that Microsoft runs a very stringent QA process in addition to any processes the developers run for themselves. The largest part of these delays, he said, is "making sure the games we release are high quality" -- Microsoft runs every game through for bugs, and will then send back to the developers any game that has issues. When pressed for a percentage of games that are sent back for bugs, Austin told he us didn't have that information.
Scorpion vs. Batman. Catwoman vs. Subzero. These aren't exactly matchups players have always dreamed of, but Midway is going to do their best to cram two disparate universes into one with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, the very first Mortal Kombat game on the next-gen systems. Here at E3, Joystiq got to sit down with Brian Lebaron, senior designer for the game, and we talked about why it's OK to set the Flash on fire, why Bizarro probably won't be in the game, and what Midway is doing to Toasty uppercut the fighting genre.
After the break, find our hands on with the game, as well as details from our chat with Lebaron. When MK vs. DC comes out, you'll finally be able to find out whether Liu Kang's kicks can catch the Flash in the jaw.
We'll make a promise to you: not once in this preview will we reference the "Things that occur in Vegas" advertising slogan that seems to pop up every time someone mentions the mecca of mischievousness in the middle of Nevada. Except for that one time. No more.
This is Vegas is a game dreamed up by an assistant. Senior Associate Producer Trevor Ellington told us the real story behind the Sin City-based open-world humor game: an executive assistant at Midway came up with the idea of a game that replicated all of the wild fun to be had in Vegas, and thus was born TiV. During the demo we saw here at E3, the game presented four various scenarios: Fight, Party, Game, Drive, but by the time the game is released in 2009, they'll all be melded into what's supposed to be a sandbox of a good time.
Vin Diesel's gaming company, Tigon Studios, is trying to make good with Wheelman, a Driver-esque, open world action/driving experience due out from Midway. There were a few... interesting innovations in the game (instead of stopping your car to steal other vehicles, you can now hijack any car on the road while in motion), but this was mostly a case of "we saw it being played so you don't have to."
Still, Producer Pall Palsson was kind enough to show us what his team has been up to lately, so check after the break to see both what Wheelman has to offer, and what it doesn't (hint: realistic physics).
Kratos is going to kick some Ancient Greek ass on the PS3. Sony just showed a CGI trailer confirming that its popular action series is coming to the monolithic console. God of War 3 will be released sometime "after this holiday season," so don't expect it until at least next year.
Sony will sell the PSP in a new "Entertainment Pack" -- for $199, they'll include a silver slim PSP, Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters, a 1gb memory stick, a voucher for Echochrome, and a copy of National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets. Yeah, we know, the Nicholas Cage blockbuster really makes it.
If you haven't grabbed a PSP yet, this could be just the deal you've been waiting for. Sony says it'll be in stores this fall.
Sony has announced that they are willing to carry all studios' video content on their PSN video delivery service -- they'll be hosting standard and high definition videos from anyone who wants to sell them. Video will be available for both sale and rental, and will be portable -- you'll be able to buy it on a PS3, download it to the PSP, and have it live on both devices at the same time.
Prices are said to be $2.99 for an SD rental, and $5.99 for an HD download. Purchase price is $14.99 for SD movies, and it's unclear yet whether HD content will be sold for purchase. The video store will look much like the game store, and will be available tonight on PSN.
The newest iteration in the terrific Ratchet and Clank series is going for quality over quantity -- Sony has announced that the game will release for $15 on the PSN sometime this summer, and will feature "a shorter game at a lower price." The game will describe what happens to Clank after the end of Ratchet and Clank: Future, and will serve as a "great introduction to what R&C is all about."
No official date yet ("just this summer"), but looks like some good and cheap Ratchet and Clank fun.
_thumbnail.jpg "i am 8-bit: 2008")
