American McGee
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Hideo Kojima
Hitachi Wasabe's Xbox 360
Xbox 360 Marketplace Updates: (MajorNelson.com)
Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Xbox 360 dud titles, "Halo" and "The Darkness" movie news ...
- "Don't buy these Xbox 360 games"
- Guillermo Del Toro to direct Halo movie?
- Pang Brothers to direct The Darkness?
- Ubisoft and Free Radical team up on new IP
- New Star Wars Lego game?
- UK Xbox 360 launch as "successful" as US launch
- Digital Anvil no more
- Bungie goes "ARR"?
- Changes to Halo 2 playlists
- Video game deals at CompUSA
NEWS:
1. "Don't buy these Xbox 360 games"
Face it: If you drop 3-to-4 hundred bucks on a new Xbox 360, you don't want to pay for (and play) duds.
Luckily, John Falcone over at ZDNet has put together his list of "duds" -- largely games that scored lower on the 360 than on the Xbox.
The games are FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup, GUN, NBA Live 06, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, and Quake 4.
At least in the cases of NBA Live 06 and Quake 4, it depends on the review (TeamXbox gave NBA Live 06 and 8.1, and Quake 4 an 8.5). 2. Guillermo Del Toro to direct Halo movie?
That's the rumor, coming out of recent King Kong junkets. Guillermo Del Toro, like Peter Jackson, is a fanboy -- which makes both of them great at what they do (didja see Hellboy?
The downside is if Del Toro is picked for Halo, this would likely delay the Hellboy sequel, and Sony Pictures/Revolution Studios may not have the good sense to wait until he's available again, and may bring in an interim (or replacement) director.
UPDATE: Brit movie magazine Empire caught Guillermo del Toro in Madrid (where he's wrapping Pan's Labyrinth), and he confirmed he has been approached by Peter Jackson and Universal for the Halo film. The "bad" news? Hellboy 2 will be the priority if it gets greenlighted (which seems likely, given the Underworld-esque DVD success of the first film), and Halo's no likely to wait.
Read the whole article here.
3. Pang Brothers to direct The Darkness?
In more video game news, Danny and Oxide Pang have been tapped to direct the film adaptation of The Darkness, based on the comic book published by Top Cow Productions, Inc..
The Darkness is currently under development as an Xbox 360 title, by dev superstar Starbreeze Studios, the buys behind the excellent sleeper hit The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay.
The Pang Brothers are the guys behind Bangkok Dangerous, The Eye, and the recently completed The Messengers.
The Pang Brothers' Blue Star Pictures has a first-look deal at Sony Pictures and Revolution Studios -- part of the same ingredients behind Hellboy.
4. Ubisoft and Free Radical team up on new IP
Ubisoft is amazing. And Free Radical is the development house behind the TimeSplitters franchise (one of my favorites), and the under-rated Second Sight.
Now the two are collaborating on a new original Intellectual Property:
"Ubisoft is looking forward to working closely with Free Radical, renowned for creating beautiful and engaging gameplay in epics such as the TimeSplitters series. With this game, we plan to take players to a new level of intensity and create an environment at once terrifying, enthralling and impossible to resist."
I'm looking forward to what comes out of it.
5. New Star Wars Lego game?
Hey, my prayers might be answered!
Right, not prayers so much, but at least my flippant blog one-liner:
"Anyway, check out LEGO Star Wars. Look, maybe if enough of you buy it, they'll make a Lego Star Wars of the real trilogy ..."Rumor has it Traveller's Tales is doing another LEGO incarnation, of the original trilogy. Suh-weet.
6. UK Xbox 360 launch as "successful" as US launch
That is to say, the UK launch also had long lines, sold out within hours, and thousands of disgruntled gamers.
7. Digital Anvil no more
Austin studio Digital Anvil, the studio founded by ex-Origin Wing Commander co-creator and game designer Chris Roberts, is no more.
Around the turn of the century (wow, that's weird to say), Microsoft bought Digital Anvil, added it to its Independent Games Studios Label, sold off Frontier Wars and Loose Cannon to Ubisoft.
Microsoft also made Brute Force an Xbox exclusive. The game was ridiculously hyped (and couldn't stand up to it).
And now, in a statement this week from Microsoft:
"Microsoft Game Studios has undergone a redeploying of resources in its Austin, Texas-based Digital Anvil studio and will centralize the studio's resources in Redmond, Washington."As a footnote, I get hassled for this, but I actually think Brute Force is a decent game (though it took me to Level 16 to genuinely like a level's design).
8. Bungie goes "ARR"?
Rumor has it Halo studio Bungie has been working on a new IP that will come out before Halo 3 -- pirate IP.
No details are confirmed, of course -- -- this is the studio that allegedly has its own staff working on component parts of two different Halo 3 storylines, so that they won't even know which one's real.
Whatever. Give me the rest of the story for the Halo 2 game I bought from you last year.
9. Changes to Halo 2 playlists
Bungie's making changes to the Halo 2 online playlists. Check out the December 2nd weekly update for details, but here's the summary:
- Major Clanmatch and Head to Head have been removed.
- Minor Clanmatch has received a change in configuration. It will now be called Clanmatch and will allow for team of 4-5 clan members each. Your Minor Clanmatch ranks will persist to the new Clanmatch playlist.
- Two new unranked playlists have been added, Rumble Armory and Team ActionSack.
- 6v6 Team Battle has been added as a ranked playlist featuring team sizes of 5-6 players each. Big Team Battle now supports only larger team sizes of 7-8 players each.
- Team Snipers is now a ranked playlist and has a total of 15 maps. Your hidden rank will now be displayed.
- No stats were wiped in the making of these changes.
Check out your local CompUSA, but at least in the Austin area, they've got a clearance section of current-gen games -- running from around $4 to $20. Good games, too. I picked up a new copy of Hunter: The Reckoning Wayward -- the sequel to the Xbox-exclusive (and Adam-favorite) Hunter: The Reckoning -- for $9. And for Hunter: The Reckoning, we should bow down to the brilliant folks at High Voltage Software, and forgive them for indiscretions like Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude.
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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.
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