Continue reading »]]> In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Voldemort is tightening his grip on both the Muggle and wizarding worlds and Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it once was. Harry suspects that dangers may even lie within the castle, but Dumbledore is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle that he knows is fast approaching. Together they work to find the key to unlock Voldemort’s defenses and, to this end, Dumbledore recruits his old friend and colleague, the well-connected and unsuspecting bon vivant Professor Horace Slughorn, whom he believes holds crucial information.

Meanwhile, the students are under attack from a very different adversary as teenage hormones rage across the ramparts. Harry finds himself more and more drawn to Ginny, but so is Dean Thomas. And Lavender Brown has decided that Ron is the one for her, only she hadn’t counted on Romilda Vane’s chocolates! And then there’s Hermione, simmering with jealously but determined not to show her feelings. As romance blossoms, one student remains aloof. He is determined to make his mark, albeit a dark one. Love is in the air, but tragedy lies ahead and Hogwarts may never be the same again.

In the game of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, players will return to Hogwarts to help Harry survive a fraught sixth year. They will also have a chance to engage in exciting wizard duels, mix and brew magical ingredients in Potions class and take to the air to lead the Gryffindor Quidditch team to victory. Players may even get sidetracked by Ron’s romantic entanglements as they journey towards a dramatic climax and discover the identity of the Half-Blood Prince.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Achievements:

1. Grime Buster: Clean up after Fred and George at The Burrow – (10)
2. Used the Pensieve: View Dumbledore’s first memory of Tom Riddle in the Pensieve – (10)
3. Quidditch Captain: Assemble the Gryffindor Quidditch Team – (10)
4. Great Party: Create a great Christmas party for Slughorn – (10)
5. Good Deed: Help the student retrieve her stolen Gobstone – (20)
6. Great Mate: Help Ron avoid Lavender – (20)
7. Hidden the Book: Hide the Half-Blood Prince’s Potions Book – (20)
8. Portrait Novice: Use your first portrait shortcut – (10)
9. Portrait Pro: Use all of the portrait shortcuts – (20)
10. Adventure completed: Conclude the adventure – (100)
11. Crest Collector 1: Complete Crest Collector Level 1 – (10)
12. Crest Collector 2: Complete Crest Collector Level 2 – (10)
13. Crest Collector 3: Complete Crest Collector Level 3 – (10)
14. Crest Collector 4: Complete Crest Collector Level 4 – (10)
15. Crest Collector 5: Complete Crest Collector Level 5 – (20)
16. Crest Collector 6: Complete Crest Collector Level 6 – (20)
17. Crest Collector 7: Complete Crest Collector Level 7 – (20)
18. Crest Collector 8: Complete Crest Collector Level 8 – (20)
19. Crest Collector 9: Complete Crest Collector Level 9 – (30)
20. Crest Collector 10: Complete Crest Collector Level 10 – (30)
21. Crest Collector 11: Complete Crest Collector Level 11 – (30)
22. Crest Collector 12: Complete Crest Collector Level 12 (40)
23. Crest Collector 13: Complete Crest Collector Level 13 (50)
24. Crest Collector 14: Complete Crest Collector Level 14 – (60)
25. Potions Beginner: Earn the Potions Beginner’s Luck Badge – (10)
26. Speedy Brewer Badge: Earn the Speedy Brewer Badge – (10)
27. Potions Club Star: Earn the Potions Club Star Badge – (10)
28. Potions Club Veteran: Earn the Potions Club Veteran Badge – (20)
29. Master Potioneer: Earn the Master Potioneer Badge (50)
30. Duelling Beginner: Earn the Duelling Beginner’s Luck Badge – (10)
31. Reflex Badge: Earn the Reflex Badge – (10)
32. Duelling Champion: Earn the Duelling Club Champion Badge – (10)
33. Duelling Veteran: Earn the Duelling Veteran Badge – (20)
34. Master Duellist Badge: Earn the Master Duellist Badge (50)
35. Quidditch Beginner: Earn the Quidditch Beginner’s Luck Badge – (10)
36. Precision Flyer Badge: Earn the Precision Flyer Badge – (10)
37. Combo Flyer Badge: Earn the Combo Flyer Badge – (10)
38. Keen Flyer Badge: Earn the Keen Flyer Badge – (20)
39. Master of Flying: Earn the Master of Flying Badge (50)
40. Secret Achievement: Continue playing to unlock this secret achievement. – (20)
41. Secret Achievement: Continue playing to unlock this secret achievement. – (20)
42. Secret Achievement: Continue playing to unlock this secret achievement. – (30)
43. Secret Achievement: Continue playing to unlock this secret achievement (40)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, developed by EA Bright Light Studio, is scheduled for release later this year to coincide with the Warner Bros. Pictures film based on J.K. Rowling’s sixth Harry Potter book. on Wii„ PS3, X360, PS2, PSP, NDS and PC.

Continue reading »]]> Capcom’s new survival-horror opus is closer than ever, and the staff of GamePro got unprecedented access to the game.

In GamePro’s exclusive reports, we detail the shocking shifts in gameplay in a new Resident Evil 5 preview, dissect vile new Resident Evil 5 enemies, including giant bats and bloodthirsty crocodiles, and engage in desperate shoot-outs in an oil refinery and a desolate mountain pass. Also check out our new Resident Evil 5 Q&A and new Resident Evil 5 screens.

With Resident Evil 5 a surefire hit, the Japanese company is adding to it a trio of gems in 2009: Bionic Command, Dark Void, and the return of Street Fighter (which we’ll be unveiling next week). In the meantime, hold tight and brush up with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.

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.

Incoming search terms:

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

Continue reading »]]> Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.* An abducted soul, a lifetime of sins, a journey to the depths of despair. Electronic Arts Inc.  announced today that EA Redwood Shores, the studio behind the hit horror game Dead Space, is now working on another original property, this one based on the medieval epic poem The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. The dark fiction gave birth to the Tuscan Italian dialect and is widely considered the work that has defined the western world’s contemporary conception of hell and purgatory. The poem tells the tale of Dante who journeys through the twisted, menacing nine circles of hell in pursuit of his beloved Beatrice. Dante’s tortured and tormented world is an ideal setting for this 3rd person action and adventure of a video game, Dante’s Inferno.

Written in the 14th Century, The Divine Comedy was published and read aloud in Italian (unlike the Bible), thereby making the poem accessible to the mass public. The poem delivers a striking and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife and the punishments of hell. In part one, known as Dante’s Inferno, Dante traverses all nine circles of hell; limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, heresy, violence, fraud and treachery.

“The time is right for the world of interactive entertainment to adapt this literary masterpiece, and to re-introduce Dante to an audience who, until now, may have been unfamiliar with the remarkable details of this great work of art,” said Jonathan Knight, Executive Producer for Dante’s Inferno. “It’s the perfect opportunity to fuse great gameplay with great story.”

For more information on Dante’s Inferno, please visit www.dantesinferno.com and sign up for the newsletter and bookmark for news, features and upcoming events.

Continue reading »]]> Good things come to those who wait, but we’re getting more than a little impatient for any news on the first bits of downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV. Long talked about and promised in “autumn” of this year at one point, we’ve been eager to see anything about it this year, let alone play it. Now, at long last, after we’ve finished our sojourn in Liberty City months ago, comes something concrete on the 360 only DLC, with a worldwide release on February 17 next year.

Featuring a whole new set of characters, the new story, subtitled “The Lost and Damned,” seems completely unrelated to Niko and company. The story is based around Johnny Klebitz and his biker gang, the Lost, which existed in the periphery of the main game.

Still taking place in ye olde Liberty City, it looks like you and the guys go around causing mayhem and getting stuff done. On top of that, you get to ride around on bikes. Not a bad deal all around, though we normally preferred driving cars to get places as Niko, which isn’t out of the question, but why dress as a biker if you’re not going to bike?

Rockstar has been tight lipped as usual, so all we really have to go on is guess work, the video, screens and whatever small bits of info we can pry out of them. All the rest is in the haze until we get it right after Valentine’s Day. We leave you with the rest of the images (or head here to view our entire GTA IV gallery) to tide you over while you stare at the calendar.

Continue reading »]]> Recent history is full of console RTS ports falling over themselves in an effort to, at best, recreate something marginally evocative of the PC experience. But Vispi Bhopti, The Creative Assembly’s Communications Manager, contends that Stormrise’s control scheme, which was designed from the get-go around a gamepad, is an honest-to-goodness improvement over the mouse and keyboard. These are big words. I don’t recall the developers of the voice-controlled EndWar’s making those presumptions, and if anyone is entitled to, it would probably be them.

Stormrise will remind you of Full Spectrum Warrior. You view the battle from the perspective of the unit you have selected, which usually means “third-person,” unless you’ve selected one that flies, in which case you get a bird’s-eye-view. Unlike Full Spectrum Warrior, however, you control a force much larger than a handful of fireteams; in terms of numbers, Stormrise brings traditional RTS-sized armies to the field. The difficulties inherent to managing forces this large with a gamepad are where most console ports fall apart. And this is precisely what Bhopti says that Stormrise’s “whip select” control scheme will remedy.

If nothing else, the “whip select” scheme definitely appears flexible. Every one of your units, regardless of how far away, is represented by an icon. In order to select it, you simply “whip” the control stick in its direction. In the case of two unit icons being too close to one another, Bhopti promises that the whip select’s fine-tuning will typically result in your intended target being selected. (I didn’t have a chance to play, but TeamXbox’s Tom Price did, and he told me that his experience didn’t quite bear this out.) Other kinds of supplemental functionality are built into the system. For instance, you can issue a movement command to a distant unit while you have another selected, which seems to work most effectively when you’re looking down on the battlefield from a flying unit. And you can also assign multiple units into a single group, in order to keep the array of onscreen icons manageable.

When talking about Stormrise’s maps, Bhopti brought up terms like “verticality” and “layer cake.” The latter described what he feels is a crucial expression of the game’s level design. Unlike most of the RTS games we’re familiar with, Stormrise isn’t built around a flat plane scattered with obstacles. Rather, many of its maps are layered; one map that Bhopti flew through had a multi-level parking garage, a subterranean tunnel system, and an army-sized warehouse built into it. The point he was trying to drill home during this portion of the demo was that, regardless of where you are (or what your current point of view is), it’s almost impossible to get a full spatial picture of your surroundings. In the case of the army-sized warehouse, an enemy who decides to actually stash an army in it will easily foil you if you dismiss it as empty offhand.

When you consider what this notion of “verticality” could mean for navigating this world of “layer cakes,” Bhopti’s hyping of the “whip select” scheme starts to maybe seem a bit more credible. But chew on this: Stormrise’s PC version will ship with a specially-designed mouse and keyboard scheme. According to Bhopti, the team (which includes quite a few recruited pro gamers) is currently wrestling with a few iterations of it. These days, it’s common for PC ports to come with keyboard commands built-in, regardless of how absurd it would be to actually play the game that way (see: Devil May Cry 4). But it light of Bhopti’s bold statements, shipping the PC version without mouse and keyboard controls would have spoken volumes.

Sega and the Creative Assembly are promising us another look at Stormrise not long after the new year. It’ll be particularly interesting to see how the multiplayer component is shaping up.

Other Information

• Publisher: SEGA
• Developer: Creative Assembly
• Genre: Real-Time Strategy
• Release Date: Q1 2009
• ESRB: TBA

Continue reading »]]> Not long after LucasArts loosed Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on a galaxy not so far away, the publisher said it was already melding a fresh batch of downloadable content for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 editions. Included in the pack, according to LucasArts, would be an all-new level featuring the Secret Apprentice that augments the single-player campaign. Without much of a warning this week, LucasArts said that the content is now available.

The aforementioned new mission will be set in the Jedi Temple, former center of the vanquished order’s power, on the city-world Coruscant. Playing as Darth Vader’s understudy, players will explore the ruins for clues to his origins in general–and his father in particular. The download will also include nine new character skins, letting gamers play through the single-player campaign as a variety of Star Wars staples ranging from purple-lightsaber-wielding Mace Windu to the sinister Darth Maul.

Gamers can pick up the lot for $10 (800 Microsoft points). Alternatively, the new costume set is available alongside the previously released costume pack for $5 (400 Microsoft points).

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• star wars the force unleashed 2 new dlc

Continue reading »]]> Kojima’s site teases the next Metal Gear game…with the Xbox color.

Could this be the thing we’ve been talking about since last year, even back when no one would believe us? You know, the thing that Konami said might happen, but then apparently didn’t say might happen? The thing that Microsoft has recently been talking about being able to run on its platform and hoping to see soon?

Or could it be the Xbox Live Arcade port of Metal Gear Solid that’s apparently been spotted in the past?

Or, is this something else entirely, and it’s just pure coincidence that green happens to be the primary color used by one of the major platform holders?

Either way, Hideo Kojima obviously knows how this would be construed…so either it’s the first official acknowledgment of a Metal Gear Solid game coming to the Xbox 360 or a classic Kojima.

Continue reading »]]> At this year’s Tokyo Game Show, executives from Square Enix, Capcom, and Namco Bandai engaged in a roundtable discussion about Japan’s diminished role in the gaming industry. As a result, the publisher and many of its fellow Japanese outfits are putting a greater emphasis on the West, both in selling and developing their games there.

Square Enix recently set up a development studio in Los Angeles. Capcom is “actively pursuing friendly acquisitions and partnerships” with foreign outfits, and developing games like Dead Rising and Lost Planet with a more Western audience in mind. And today Namco Bandai established Surge, a new publishing label “dedicated to providing cutting-edge, genre-defining games that are targeted at satiating the appetite of western gamers.” Surge will produce games across a variety of genres and platforms.

The first game to carry the Surge label will be Afro Samurai, scheduled for release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 January 27. Based on the animated series of the same name, Afro Samurai features the voice of Samuel L. Jackson and a hip-hop-influenced soundtrack composed by The RZA.

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”