Gears of War 2 is a tactical third-person shooter video game developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox 360. It is the sequel to Gears of War, and was announced by lead designer Cliff Bleszinski during the February 20, 2008 Game Developers Conference. The game uses a heavily upgraded version of the Unreal Engine 3. During E3 2008, a worldwide release date for the game was set for November 7, 2008. Since its release, Gears of War 2 has been received with critical acclaim, and in its opening weekend the game sold over two million units.
Grand Theft Auto IV is a sandbox-style action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North. It is the ninth title in the main Grand Theft Auto series and the first in its fourth generation. The game was preceded by Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and will be succeeded by Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Grand Theft Auto IV was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in Oceania, Europe and North America on 29 April 2008, and in Japan on 30 October 2008. A Windows version of the game was released in North America on 2 December 2008 and in Europe on 3 December. Two episodic packs are being developed for the Xbox 360, the first of which is entitled The Lost and Damned and scheduled to be released on 17 February 2009.
Nintendo has enjoyed tremendous success thanks to the forward-thinking innovations of its DS and Wii systems, but the company’s lineup is focused squarely on the past. The publisher revealed today its first-party and third-party lineup of Wii and DS games through March of 2009, with a scattering of revamps and remakes comprising the majority of its own games.
For the Wii, Nintendo has only two releases planned, both remakes of GameCube games designed to support the Wii Remote’s motion-sensing capabilities. The self-explanatory New Play Control Mario Power Tennis and New Play Control Pikmin will both launch in March.
Nintendo UK has released a massive release date list of Wii and DS titles for Europe today. Eurogamer notes that this list features the first GameCube-to-Wii ports, dubbed “New Play Control!” titles, which include Pikmin and Mario Power Tennis. This new label sees classic GameCube titles revamped to utilize new Wii-specific control schemes. See below for the complete, huge list of upcoming European releases.
Wii Release Dates
Epic Games has sent out word that its Gears of War 2 Combustible Map Pack is now available for 800 Microsoft Points via Xbox Live. The pack brings three new maps to the proceedings: Flood, Gold Rush and Fuel Station.
- Flood is a very tight map that’s made extra snug when the environmental hazard of Imulsion begins creeping up around the edges. As the playing field closes in, the firefight will intensify as combat is forced to the center of the map. Teams skilled at flanking their opponents will have a powerful edge. Read more
Its about the shift from teamwork to individuals’ goals and the third-person camera.
Battlefield Heroes: Better than Team Fortress 2?
Work continues on Battlefield Heroes despite the recent closure of the game’s beta, and producer Aleksander Grondal recently talked it up with Gamasutra. Grondal isn’t a Battlefield developer veteran, instead having previously worked on Anarchy Online and Dreamfall at Funcom. As such, he brings a different mentality to the team working on Heroes, which he claims is a mixture of half newcomers to the series and half previous Battlefield developers.
Sequel to Naughty Dog’s archeological action-adventure will apparently bring new arctic locale to the PS3; full reveal at SpikeTV VGAs.
Though third-party console exclusives are an endangered species, first-party titles remain in fairly abundant supply. One of the best-regarded PlayStation 3-only games is Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, developed by Crash Bandicoot studio Naughty Dog. After receiving solid reviews in 2007, the game sold over 507,000 copies on Sony’s console. That’s despite the third-place installed base of the PS3, which took the bronze again in October US sales, according to the NPD Group. (The game is also included in the recently launched 160GB PS3 bundle.)
These days, there is no shortage of games within the survival horror genre. What with the established likes of ‘Resident Evil’, ‘Resistance: Fall of Men’ and ‘Silent Hill’, you would think that most developers wouldn’t bother to introduce a new kid onto the block. However, EA have done just that with the rather excellent ‘Dead Space’.
The character you play is Isaac Clarke (named after the science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke), an engineer on his way to the stricken mining ship, USG Ishimura. Responding to a distress call sent from the USG Ishimura, he is part of a team of four sent to investigate the call. Upon arriving at the stricken ship, Isaac’s shuttle crash lands on the Ishimura flight deck and the crew is attacked by a bunch of mutated hostile creatures called Necromorphs. Isaac gets separated from the rescue team and he then has to spend the rest of the game repairing different areas of the Ishimura, whilst fending off Necromorphs.
