The Oddworld series is coming back, folks, but probably not in a way you or I expected it to. Just Add Water, the studio behind Gravity Crash, has announced that an enhanced remake of Oddworld Inhabitant's critically-acclaimed and award-winning title Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is currently in development for PlayStation 3.
The remake, which is set for release next Easter as a digital download via PSN, will be "faithful to the original moolah-chasing epic" while featuring welcome enhancements such as 720p visuals, detailed characters, normal mapping, self-shadowing, re-mastered dialogue, support for PlayStation Move and additional bonus material which is "still to be revealed". In short, it looks like the people at Just Add Water have worked closely enough with Oddworld founders Lorne Lanning and Sherry McKenna to meet or even exceed any expectations fans might have from such a project.
“Since word got out that we’ve been working with Oddworld Inhabitants there have been many rumours circulating about what we’re working on," said Stewart Gilray, managing director of Just Add Water. "Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath is the first project in what we believe will be a long and fruitful relationship. Having the chance to update this great title and release it on PS3 is just a brilliant opportunity, not least for us, but for the fans too.”
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, originally released in 2005 to much critical acclaim, is a third-person action-adventure which lets players step into the world of Oddworld as the Stranger, a bounty hunter tracking down outlaws for moolah. The titled gained a number of awards from the press soon after its release, after which it reserved itself a spot on a lot of annual 'Top 10' lists.
But is this the Oddworld title @AbeMudokon teased us about? I don't think so. Well, it better not be. The only real argument I have is that the @AbeMudokon Twitter account belongs to Oddworld Inhabitants, and that's only a logical conclusion on my part. The new Oddworld website is still "coming soon", so we'll just have to cross our fingers if we want to see Abe again. And that, we do.
Telltale Games, those guys and gals responsible for glorifying LucasArts titles such as Sam & Max and Monkey Island, have confirmed a new episodic adventure coming very soon; and if you couldn't have guessed from the title or image, it's Back to the Future.
Nothing storyline or plot based has been confirmed yet, but going by the art style, one might safely assume that this may be on the level of the traditional graphic adventure we've come to know and love from Telltale Games.
Christopher Lloyd will devote his voice to the character 'Doc' Emmett Brown and Bob Gale, the original screen-play writer for all three films is also on board and working with Telltale.
The first episode in a five part download for XBLA and PSN will be available this winter to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the DVD and Blu-ray boxsets. Going by previous Telltale games which include re-makes of Monkey Islands 1 and 2, Back to the Future is sure to be a hit with me particularly! Great Scott!
In late 2009, Epic Games showed that their highly popular Unreal Engine can run incredibly well on the iPhone. Fast forward to the present day where Apple have held their latest press conference featuring Project Sword, a game powered by the Unreal Engine and developed by Chair. The team that brought us the awesome Shadow Complex has been hard at work making what looks to be a multiplayer game utilising the newly announced Game Centre, a kind of matchmaking service for online iPhone and iPod games. Project Sword is based in medieval times with beefy great Knights beating the crap out of each other with some rather impressive graphics. That may actually be an understatement as Pocket Gamer use the word "astounding" to describe them. The game will come with at least two control schemes; one for the casual types who can drag moves onto their character and another that has gamers swiping fingers on screen to initiate attacks.
Information is still thin on the blood-stained ground at the moment but we do know that Project Sword will be out in time for Christmas to bring a little festive cheer by way of brutal combat.
BioWare's upcoming Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC for Mass Effect 2 is already one full of interest with its re-introduction of Liara T'Soni as a ass-kicking character and said interest piques even further with the add-on's trailer. It features both Commander Shepard and old flame Liara (depending on how you played Mass Effect 1 of course) in a romantic predicament with the full intent to tease. Those not bothered with the soap-operatic love story are equally served a meaty bit of combat and vehicular segments that should hopefully justify the 800 MS Point (£6.85/€9.60/$10) price tag.
I should reserve my excitement for the DLC until September 7th when its released but the idea of revisiting the story of Shepard and Liara that seemed dropped from Mass Effect 2 due to technicalities is hard not to care about.
September 9. That's the date that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will be on the iTunes App Store for £5.99. Except that it'll be the HD version, with renovated HD iPad graphics and the ability to have your own music play on the car radio. I haven't played any of Chinatown Wars, but I will be investing in it for my iPad because I think big is better. (In most things. I mean, I wouldn't want, like, a really big thumb or something. That would be awkward while playing games.)
Holmes had Moriarty, the Doctor has the Master and Lara Croft has... Well, over the years Lara has been her own worst enemy, with Eidos and Crystal Dynamics bringing out less-than-supreme titles that were fraught with bugs and over seemingly before they started and with very little replayability. But with this summer's release of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light came the scent of change in the air. This downloadable game, available now on XBLA for 1,200 Microsoft points and coming September 28 on PSN and PC for probably about a tenner, takes your third person perspective to the extreme, giving you a fairly fixed isometric-style angle on the action. And my word, there's a lot of action: somewhere deep in Mesoamerica, as Lara, you meet a man called Totec, your new best bud. With Totec, you can now play two-player co-op (Gauntlet meets Tomb Raider) either locally or online (from September 28) and share the fast and furious pace of Guardian of Light with a friend or enthusiastic relative. Gone are the back-and-forth puzzles that have you collecting keys, bars of lead or what-not, Guardian of Light has a down'n'dirty feel to it, stripping away the tit-and-arse-gazing acrobatics that drew some of Lara's audience in and replacing it with a twinstick shooter-style fury where wave after wave of critter will try to slow you (or indeed, you both) down in your simple A-to-B mission.
Somewhere amongst the mess of bodies, exploding toxic gas plants, spiders, lava and spellcasting lizard-men (copied and pasted from Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II, by the looks of it) there is a faint storyline about a displeased god called Xolotl, who generally tries not very convincingly to kill poor Lara and Totec at every available opportunity. Or at least he would if I were playing him. Instead, he makes some dodgy remark about how he hopes Lara lives to see his amazing victory and then runs away from her, like a seven-year-old playing kiss-chase. But really, who cares about the storyline, this game is a thrill-a-minute bombardment of enemies, fun traps and puzzles, speed runs and boss battles, chopped and tossed in a salad of beautifully-rendered graphics, piss-easy controls and a heavy lean towards thrilling you so much, your pants fall clean off.
And yet my pants remain on and this is largely because on occasion, the game becomes repetitive, but also because I do think that in wonderous 1080p, the screen gets incredibly busy at times. Noisy, even. I find it hard to spot where I am and occasionally, I will just fall off the edge into some spiky pitted doom or immerse myself liberally in lava. This is the nature of the game, however and really can't be helped, but not being able to zoom in and follow where I am means that sometimes, I just lost it. Another downer is the clunky and seemingly ineffectual artefacts system where you can boost some of your skills with trinkets you've collected. I've no idea how that works and no inclination to find out and perhaps the fact that I've been able to get on okay without worrying is a good thing, but it is there and I only noticed it when I was looking for my grenade launcher, which, I'm afraid, doesn't make the same noise as in Tomb Raider II. That 'thhhpmm' noise? It's not there.
What is there, however, is replayability. They've worked hard on hiding bits and pieces over their varied and pretty levels, making sure that there are plenty of things that you'll miss on your first playthrough: score challenges, ten red skulls to collect (sometimes in devilishly hard-to-reach areas) and bespoke level-specific challenges; blimey, what more do you want! It's a game you will easily keep coming back to, if just to take out a bit of frustration on the enemy hordes with an impressive array of weapons, including magical puzzle-busting climbable golden ceremonial spears. And big, spiky balls you can satisfyingly roll over monsters. That's good after a bad day, just that crunch. Brutal.
It has its faults, of course, but for my money, it's a brilliant slant on the franchise that breathes new life into Lara's ample chest by taking her out of her normal Tomb Raider environs; if Crystal Dynamics can keep the main Tomb Raider franchise this fresh and exciting, then bring it on!
Eurogamer Spain confirmed it today - Europe is getting the shaft, again. Mainland Europe won't be able to make much use of Kinect because the peripheral's voice recognition functionality will be disabled for that tiny corner of the world until spring 2011.
The software behind Kinect will only be able to 'understand' American English, British English, Japanese and Mexican Spanish at launch this November. If you're fluent in any of these languages (or all of them!) but find yourself living in Canada or any of the larger European countries by the time Kinect releases, then tough shit luck. Simply put, activating Kinect's voice recognition won't be possible because of a region-lock on consoles 'residing' in those areas.
We remind you that Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox 360 will release November 4 in North America and Nomber 10 in Europe. We also remind you that patience is a virtue.
01. Mafia II 02. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days 03. Toy Story 3 04. Red Dead Redemption 05. Wii Sports Resort 06. Just Dance 07. Super Mario Galaxy 2 08. LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 09. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 10. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands 11. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 12. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 13. New Super Mario Bros. 14. Mass Effect 2 15. Dance on Broadway 16. Wii Fit Plus 17. Fifa 10 18. Need for Speed: Shift 19. Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels Starry Skies 20. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
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