At the Arcade Operator Union Expo in Japan, Konami presented even more of the cabinet for Metal Gear Arcade, featuring a pair of goggles, a headset, and a mounted gun to operate in stealth combat with.
The sit-down unit is fitted with a pair of eyeglasses for the player to view the action through, with gun-shaped controllers to aim and attack with. The big monitor and 5.1 surround sound offer up an even more immersive environment, all the more important when you think how busy arcades are. Of course, when we say “arcades,” we mean Japanese arcades, since they don’t really exist in the U.S. any longer, and we won’t likely see this unit come stateside in a non-import capacity any time soon.
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Blizzard gave The Make-A-Wish Foundation 50% of proceeds from the sale of Pandaren Monk pets in World of Warcraft, adding up to a $1.1 million donation. Fifteen Foundation kids also got an inside look at WoW, courtesy of Blizzard.
The Pandaren Monk was one of two pets introduced to WoW late last year at $10 a pop. Once summoned, the Monk follows the player everywhere and returns any /bows he receives. Sales of the pet between November and December 31, 2009 were used to calculate the Make-A-Wish donation — which means that Blizzard sold 220,000 Panderan Monks in that time frame.
Here’s what Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime had to say of WoW’s generosity in the official press release:
“We’ve had a long relationship with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and we’re proud to support the priceless work they do for children. This donation also reflects the spirit and generosity of our players – their enthusiasm for World of Warcraft and for supporting a good cause made this possible.”
At DICE’s first keynote session, Disney Interactive Entertainment president Stephen Wadsworth revealed the company’s direction this year, and the new games that will bring them there.
Stephen Wadsworth, the president of the Disney Interactive Media Group closed the first day of DICE 2010 with a keynote about his company’s evolving audience and the games being made to satiate them.
Wadsworth described the new audience currently consuming its interactive products. Today’s audience consists of master multi-taskers, media sponges, multiple platform users (including what Wadsworth dubbed “PlayStation Arc,” adding more fuel to that fire) and seamless communicators who are in immediate need of content, but also willing to share. This has led to a change in the way the company works to earn money from them, moving the traditional “Acquire, Monetize, Engage” dynamic to one where customers are brought in with engaging products, then given the opportunity to pay for the product via premium content or subscriptions. However, the core Disney values are still at the center products, as Wadsworth stated “Story and characters form the basis and heart of our products today.” In order to prove this, Wadsworth went through the long list of licenses the company, including Toy Story 3, Pirates of the Carribean: Armada of the Damned, Tron Evolution, and Epic Mickey. Wadsworth also brought up Disney’s recent acquisition of comic book company Marvel, providing more proof that Disney may start publishing superhero games sooner rather than later.
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Capcom’s highly anticipated sci-fi shooter will officially be blasting its ways onto store shelves on May 18th, 2010, and it’s bringing along a few guests to help take down the Akrid.
Capcom’s highly anticipated sci-fi shoot-em-up Lost Planet 2 found an official release date at Microsoft’s X10 media event in San Francisco, slated to hit store shelves on May 18th, 2010 for the PC, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360.
Gamers have already found themselves equally thrilled and confused with the follow-up to action-packed 2007 title, especially since Capcom let slip that Gears of War’s Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago would be making cameo appearances. Also appearing is legendary Resident Evil 5 mastermind Albert Wesker, who will be bringing his own unique brand of sunglasses-themed mayhem to the Akrids.
Just a few days ago Dante’s Inferno didn’t have much more to show for itself outside of an expensive marketing campaign. But Reviews Editor Tae K. Kim found EA’s Hell-based brawler a well-structured hack-n-slash with some memorable levels, inventive enemies, and a worthwhile combat engine; it’s just too bad the story doesn’t live up to its potential.
Game design feels like one big round of “follow the leader” sometimes: when a game does something successfully, everyone else tries to put their own spin on it. Grand Theft Auto III had that effect, leading to a bevy of like-minded titles that aped the concepts that made it so great. The God of War franchise has also left its own indelible mark and it’s finally starting to show with titles like Bayonetta and Darksiders following in Kratos’ deity-sized footsteps. Dante’s Inferno is another chip off the old Grecian block but it exists somewhere in the middle of those two aforementioned titles: unlike Bayonetta, which took the formula and gave it a total glam makeover, Dante’s hews closer to the tried and true; yet, unlike Darksiders, which was a little too familiar for its own good, it actively tries to do something different.
Dante’s more or less succeeds on that latter point, at least in terms of the overall game world. The Divine Comedy might seem like an odd choice for source material, given its relatively small mass market appeal — before any of you literature lovers decide to write me angry yet elegantly worded hate mail, I’m only pointing out that it’s not something most gamers will know intimately — but Dante Aligheri’s epic poem gave the developer lots of material to work with and it actually manages to step away from Kratos’ imposing shadow. The nine circles of Hell deserve a lot of the credit for that: they’re impressively constructed and the dev team got a lot of mileage out of the unique setting.
The architecture in the Lust level, for instance, is appropriately composed of phallic structures and pulsating flesh while the Greed level shines with spilled gold, both in coin form and the molten lava in which the avaricious are constantly bathed. Unfortunately, while the environments are well done, the overall atmosphere is incredibly lacking: You are surrounded by woe but it’s all rather vague; you see disembodied souls plastered into the walls and you hear shrieks of agony, but it’s never more than ambient fluff. I expected my experience to be suffused with suffering but it’s almost an afterthought; even without reading the Divine Comedy, I’m sure Aligheri describes the horrors that he witnesses in great detail and the resulting sense of dread and foreboding is curiously absent here. The puzzle design — a definite holdover from God of War, complete with block-moving puzzles and handles you have to rotate — also doesn’t leverage each level’s theme enough; a lot more could have been done with the material but it’s mostly a rehash of the timing- and environmental-based puzzles that you’ve seen before.
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