Continue reading »]]> 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.

• Gold Rush takes place in an old Imulsion refinery that now serves as a hotly contested battleground. Players must survive heavy crossfire as they infiltrate the factory and navigate multiple tiers. Breakable glass allows for a clean shot at those who make a dash for the Longshot rifle while bolder players make their run for the heavy weapon. In the right hands, the Mortar can be devastating on this map, so keep those smoke grenades armed as the concussive effect comes in very handy.

• Fuel Station is situated in a desolate area marked by an abandoned fossil fuel station. The team that secures and controls the station is likely to be the side that wins the match. An especially strategic location on this map is the rooftop, as there are only two points of entry – the main elevator and a staircase on the back side of the building. Heavy weaponry is situated right in front, which presents a high risk to reward ratio in this level. Lugging the Mulcher around, deploying it and revving it up can keep an entire team at bay, and unleashing hell from the rooftops is always an excellent tactic.

All of the multiplayer maps in the Combustible Map Pack are playable in the highly popular, five player co-op Horde mode.

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• gears of war 2
• gears of war 2maps pictures
• gears of war three

Continue reading »]]> Burda:ic, a publisher of online games worldwide, today released a major update for the free-to-play, maritime MMORPG Florensia. The update includes a number of smaller changes, from land quest balancing to slight modifications to the user interface, but the biggest addition comes in the form of elemental resistances and attributes. These additions permeate the structure of the entire game so players both new and old will find the fantasy world of Florensia an exciting and dangerous place to adventure.

Each skill in the game has been assigned an elemental aspect like Fire, Ice, or Holy. In addition, monsters and characters now carry resistances to the various elements. Thus, players in Florensia should be wary in choosing their foes, as they might find they just aren’t doing as much damage as expected. Parties no longer simply mean strength in numbers; they mean a wider range of damage across the elemental spectrum.

Of course, these new skills aren’t limited to the players. Four of Florensia’s major bosses have discovered elemental abilities of their own, making them all the more dangerous for those who would challenge them. Be especially cautious if your travels bring you face-to-face with Lanoir, Draug Brenin, Vampire Lord Robinson, or Serbetus, as their newfound powers may spell your doom.

About Florensia

• Florensia is a free-to-play, maritime MMORPG that blends vibrant, colorful graphics with classically accessible gameplay. Choosing one of four starting classes, from the sword-wielding Mercenary to the spell casting Noble, players will do battle with a huge variety of weapons and magical abilities as they explore expansive, underground dungeons and sail uncharted seas. Thousands of players have already signed up and headed out in search of adventure, and there has never a better time to join them in the wild and wonderful world of Florensia.

About Burda:ic

• Burda:ic GmbH is an online games publisher that markets and distributes massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) such as Ragnarok Online, Florensia, and Hello Kitty Online. Furthermore, Burda:ic has established interactive gamer communities like alaplaya.eu or sanriotown.com. More information about Burda:ic is available at www.burda-ic.com.

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Continue reading »]]> Harmonix has announced that thirteen of ska pop band No Doubt’s greatest hits will be making their way to Rock Band. The new song pack will be available for download on Tuesday, December 9th on Xbox Live and Thursday, December 11th on PSN.

The thirteen songs come from the “Rock Band Edition” of the band’s compilation album, The Singles 1992-2003. How’s does the “Rock Band Edition” of The Singles differ from the normal album? Well, it’s missing two songs: “New” and “Trapped in a Box.” Also, you can play it with plastic instruments. Other than that, same album. You can buy the entire bundle for 1600 Microsoft Points ($20) or scoop up individual tracks for 160 MS Points ($2).

Here’s the track list:

1. “Just a Girl”
2. “It’s My Life”
3. “Hey Baby”
4. “Bathwater”
5. “Sunday Morning”
6. “Hella Good”
7. “Underneath It All”
8. “Excuse Me Mr.”
9. “Running”
10. “Spiderwebs”
11. “Simple Kind of Life”
12. “Don’t Speak”
13. “Ex-Girlfriend”

Continue reading »]]> Well it’s good news for PC fans who are looking forward to the Burnout Paradise “The Ultimate Box” pack, because Criterion has announced that they will be allowing the box to be tested on a trial basis to all users including PC users in February of 2009. On top of that, trial users are getting the chance to check out the entire game, not just a limited sector. That’s right, we can now check out every aspect of the city and try out a good chunk of game features. Criterion basically is doing this to ensure PC users don’t run into any unnecessary technical glitches before selling the product to them (once again CG thinks about us).

There is a limit to whatever and how much you can do, because they don’t want you to play the entire game and realize there is nothing to look forward to in the full version. The game will be made available for download at Criterion’s website as well as EA’s home page, but CG will also be handing out millions of discs to fans to install on their PCs. Also the game doesn’t need the disc to work, because CG encourages you to pass the disc on to friends once you’re done. The disc also has an upgrade store feature which allows you to buy the full version once you’re ready to. The game features its regular features, both single and multiplayer.

The Demo will feature the combination of Burnout itself, the Cagney Update, Bikes Update and the upcoming Party Pack.

Continue reading »]]> Hey All! We’ve had a lot of email over the last few months asking about Trophies for Blast Factor, so I’m very pleased to announce that a new updated version of Blast Factor with that sweet Trophy goodness will be winging its way to your PS3 this Thursday!

We’ve had a lot of fun putting the Trophy challenges together, and we reckon that we’ve got a good selection for Blast Factor fans of all abilities. Watch out though, there are a couple that are going to be a challenge to even the most hardcore of Blast Factor players!

We’ve added 25 Trophies in total across the original game and the 2 expansion packs, with around 15 Trophies in Blast Factor: Basic Research and its 90+ levels, and 10 Trophies split between the Multiplayer expansion and Advanced Research with its addition of 80+ levels and Hybrid mode.

We’ve also added rumble support for the DualShock 3 Controller for that extra tactile goodness. All existing versions of Blast Factor will get automatically patched when you start the game, so you won’t even need to download the new version from the store.

And yes, this update is FREE! So if you own Blast Factor, and any of its expansions, all you need to do is fire it up! If you don’t have the game yet, you can get the base game for $9.99, or for $12.99 you can get a bundle including both add-ons!

Continue reading »]]> The Two Brand new Characters are Cammy and GEN. And New info.

-GEN has some new upgrades Like an Anti-air grab and an Ultra Move that dashes him from side to side. Also has two fighting styles.

-There is online mode for some that were dying to Know.

-The Xbox360, Ps3, and Pc will bring a slew of additional character.

-Home Console will receive Several Extra characters.

-Cammy style Doesn’t replicate her history as an assassin, She the basic from back in super Street Fighter2. Moves are being expand Ono explains We’re are Using the base for expanding upon it, So there may be ways to connect these moves together to make new combo that people couldn’t do before.

-Ono hints were going to engineer the home version of the game so you can actually play in arcade mode and you can turn on a function that would allow matchmaking in the background, so you could just have someone jumps in the game exactly as they would at the Arcade. The function can be configure to ranked or player matches or quick warm-up rounds.

Continue reading »]]> The update you’ve all been waiting for, 1.0.6, is almost here! We wanted to thank everyone who tested and provided feedback on this update’s content.

On Tuesday, 12/2/08 all servers will be brought offline to begin the update. North American servers will be brought down at 6:30AM EST with Oceanic servers to follow at 9:00AM EST.

This is our biggest update yet! It’s chock-full of exciting career changes and heralds the debut of the highly anticipated Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun careers.

If you’ve finished the Heavy Metal event and have opened your Heavy Metal Chest, then you will be able to play a Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun when this patch goes live (before anyone else!). For those of you who did not complete the Heavy Metal event, don’t fret! You, too, will be able to play these two new careers starting next week.

This update is so massive that we needed to split the notes into two sections.

Highlights

• New Careers Released! – With this version we are happy to announce the release of the Empire’s Knight of the Blazing Sun, and the Dark Elf’s Black Guard! These new careers are available early for players who have successfully completed the Heavy Metal Event!
• Mastery Point Refunds – Due to a number of significant changes to many of our careers, we are providing a full Mastery Point refund to certain careers. Players who belong to one of the careers below will need to speak with a Trainer to retrain their Career Mastery:
  • Bright Wizard
  • Chosen
  • Engineer
  • Ironbreaker
  • Magus
  • Shadow Warrior
  • Sorcerer
  • Squig Herder
  • Swordmaster

• Morale Responsiveness – Morale abilities will now be much more responsive. These abilities will now fire immediately when activated by the player on the first attempt, and will display their cooldowns correctly at all times.
• Root Responsiveness – We have made a number of adjustments to root spells to ensure that they break properly and feel more responsive to players. Changes include a chance to break on ANY damage including DoT damage, as well as a 5 second immunity to being rooted again after the current root effect breaks.
• Auto-Attack Animations – Improvements have been made to auto-attack animations. Players will now see smoother, more consistent weapon swaps when players change from ranged to melee auto-attacks, and vice versa.
• Ability Activation Responsiveness - The responsiveness of ability activations has been improved. Players will now see less of a delay between the activation of an ability and the corresponding animation.
• Guild Promotion/Demotion – Fixes have been made to issues which were causing guild promotion and demotion to not work properly.

Combats

• We’ve fixed an issue that was causing the buff icon on various marketing rewards to display incorrectly.
• We fixed an issue that was causing weapons and armor to not display their proc effects in the item display.
• Opponents may no longer right-click item effects to remove them from themselves, and the Boost, Blades, Barrier, and Barricade effects will now proc far more reliably.
• Tactics gained from Tome Unlocks have been renamed.
• Damage over Time abilities: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of these abilities has been made consistent across the board. This generally resulted in an increase in damage, but some abilities have also been brought down. Individual abilities are noted in the specific careers’ sections below.
• All Unstoppable tooltips will now mention Knockdown.
• Root effects, with the exception of Morale Roots, will now grant a 5 second Freedom effect to the victim when they break, and will no longer stack with other roots.
• Root effects will now properly have a chance to break on ANY damage event. This includes individual tics of Damage over Time spells.
• Fixed assorted issues where certain movement reductions/increases would stack, slowing or speeding targets more than intended. This also addresses cases where snared players would find themselves essentially rooted when in lava.
• All Tactics now give their bonus when the character that has them slotted is stealthed, mounted, or has a Standard out.

• Centuries of Training (Elves): The tooltip for this Tactic has been changed to be more clear.
• Sigmar’s Favor (Empire): This Tactic will now be triggered only by direct heals.
• Stoutness of Stone (Dwarfs): This Tactic will once again reduce the effectiveness of Stuns and Knockdowns.
• Tzeentch’s Warding (Chaos): This Tactic will now get the bonus when the character is mounted.

Archetype Abilities

• Alter Fate: This ability’s tooltip now displays the correct values.
• Champion’s Challenge: Neither the player nor the player’s enemy may be knocked back while this Morale is in effect.
• Divine Protection: This ability now lists the amount of damage absorbed in the tooltip.
• Force of Will: This ability will now display a visual effect when used.
• Frenzied Slaughter: This ability will now display a visual effect when used.
• Juggernaut: This ability will only fire when the player is rooted, snared, silenced, or disarmed.
• Misdirection: This ability will now display an effect on the caster while the ability is active, and place a brief effect on anyone damaged by the effect.
• Point Blank: This ability will now correctly ignore Knockback and Knockdown immunity, as well as not trigger it.
• Rampaging Siphon: This Morale ability will no longer be affected by points spent in Career Mastery. Additionally, this ability now heals the group for each target hit, instead of only once.
• Raze: This channeled ability will no longer be interrupted while on the move.
• Relentless Assault: This ability will now display n visual effect when used. Additionally, the ability will no longer remove snares and roots.
• Restorative Burst: This tactic’s tooltip now correctly states the number of Action Points gained from triggering it.

• Balance Essence: The damage for this ability has been increased.
• Balanced Mending: The HoT portion of Healing Energy will now benefit from this tactic. Additionally, this ability will now correctly provide a bonus to heals on other players, and a penalty to heals on the caster.
• Boon of Hysh: This ability has had its cast time reduced to 2.5 seconds, and the setback amount reduced to half a second.
• Dissipating Energies: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased slightly to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities.
• Drain Magic: This ability will now increase in potency with High Magic. In addition, damage will now correctly increase based on Career Mastery Points spent in the Path of Asuryan instead of the Path of Vaul.
• Funnel Essence: This ability will now correctly behave like a channeled ability, will channel correctly, and will correctly heal the target.
• Healing Energy: The stat contribution for this ability has been fixed. This was previously receiving more stat benefits than intended.
• Hurried Restore: This tactic will now stun the player when the resurrect is cast, instead of when it is accepted.
• Increased Conductivity: This Tactic will now increase the damage for all abilities listed in the tooltip.
• Law of Conductivity: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities.
• Mistress of the Marsh: This ability has had its cast time reduced.
• Prismatic Shield: This ability will no longer fail if the caster’s defensive target is not a group member.
• Radiant Gaze: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities. Also, this ability will now correctly reduce the target’s chance to critical hit and damage by the correct amount.
• Radiant Lance: This ability will now reliably consume High Magic.
• Rain Lord: The tooltip for this effect now lists all stats affected.
• Scatter the Winds: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased slightly to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities.
• Storm of Cronos: This ability will now correctly reduce Spirit resistance for the correct amount.
• Transfer Force: This ability’s damage has increased. Additionally, the amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities.
• Wild Healing: This tactic will now correctly provide a 50% reduction to AP costs on direct healing abilities when triggered.

Continue reading »]]> Last month, reports began circulating that the latest “Jasper” models of the Xbox 360 had begun selling at retail. Why is a new model of the Xbox 360 so important? Because, as VentureBeat explains in a report on the Jasper’s improvements, the changes made to this model could finally mean the end of the dreaded Red Ring of Death fiasco.

The biggest improvement made to the Jasper model is that it uses a smaller 65-nanometer graphics chip, which will consume less power than previous Xbox 360 chips and fit more securely in its motherboard socket. That means it’s far less likely to overheat and come lose from the motherboard, which is the main cause of the ubiquitous “Red Ring of Death” system failures. So, at least in theory, that problem should finally no longer plague those with Jasper model 360s.

But that’s not the only change Microsoft made to their new hardware. The other big addition is an increase of the system’s internal flash memory from 16 megabytes to 256, which will be used to store the New Xbox Experience. That means even Arcade units without hard drives will be able to have the NXE, without needing to circumvent the storage problems that earlier Arcade units faced. The last big difference is the Jasper model uses a 150-watt power supply, as opposed to the earlier 175-watt power supply.

So for those keeping score, that’s approximately 1,060 days that it took for Microsoft to finally build a model of the Xbox 360 that doesn’t have an unreasonably high probability of self-destructing. So… good on them? Let’s just hope these Jasper models do finally fix the problem for good.

Continue reading »]]> NBA teams are starting to use Live 2009 to see the potential in player trades, or a player’s effectiveness when they have the ball.

Some NBA teams are using NBA Live 09 as a testing device to explore the potential impact of trades and other front office roster decisions.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Rockets GM Daryl Morey said that he uses it to gauge team effectiveness when certain players have the ball.

Continue reading »]]> Microsoft delivered something for both gamers and developers at its keynote address that kicked-off the Tokyo Game Show on Thursday.

The company is reworking the interface for its Xbox Live service, which is the largest social network of its kind with 14 million members. With the "New Xbox Experience" the Xbox 360′s entire interface has been reworked and streamlined, specifically in regards to Xbox Live.

Perhaps taking a cue from PlayStation Home and the Nintendo’s Miis, Xbox Live users will soon be able to create their own customizable avatar, which will be visible to friends and present throughout different areas of the interface. Everything from the dashboard, to gamer cards, to tracking friends, and themes has been reworked to make a more seamless and convenient interface.

Xbox Live’s Marketplace has also been redone to match. Players will be able to view more detailed descriptions, screenshots, and information more easily for titles. This information will also be made available on the Web, so that users who are not at their Xbox 360 can still browse through the Xbox Live Marketplace for one stop shopping.

All these changes are scheduled to take place Nov. 19.

In the gaming space two of the most awaited titles, "Star Ocean: The Last Hope" and "The Last Remnant" were shown in trailer form but that didn’t bother the audience because playable versions are on the show floor. They’ll be out in the U.S. on March 3, 2009, and Nov. 20 respectively.

Other games that were showcased included:

• Biohazard 5 (Resident Evil 5) will launch in Japan on March 12, 2009.
• Ninety-Nine Nights 2 for the 360, but with no release date.
• Tekken 6 on XBox 360 to be released Fall 2009, and to include new online modes and features.
• Halo Wars, early 2009.
• Halo 3: Recon, late 2009.

While the Xbox 360 has an up and coming line-up, the Xbox Live Arcade is not to be forgotten. A "new wave" of games to hit XBLA include a slew of remade classics, such as Space Invaders Extreme, Arkanoid Live, Metal Slug 7, King of Fighters ’98 Ultimate Match, and R-Type: Dimensions.

Microsoft also had lead story writer Graeme Devine talk about and preview Halo Wars. Halo Wars takes the Halo franchise into the real-time strategy space and is set to take place 20 years before the events of Halo, when the Covenant are "at their most evil", according to Devine. Players will have control of the UNSC arsenal as they take on the Covenant and the Flood. Halo Wars is due out early 2009. Halo 3: Recon, which takes place before the events of Halo 3, is slated for a U.S. release in late 2009.

Not to neglect the business aspect of the game show, John Schappert, corporate vice president of both LIVE Software and Studios, talked about iconic Japanese game franchises and their influence on Western gaming, as well as a driving desire to bring more Japanese games onto the global market. According to Schappert, the Xbox 360 is the premiere platform to publish on. As compared to its first generation counterpart, sales of Japanese games on the Xbox 360 are 60 percent higher. Schappert said that XBox 360 consumers will soon have spent over $1 billion on Japan-developed games alone.

PC World – Business Center: New Xbox 360 Dashboard Coming in November