Tired of the same old gritty warzones presented in action games? So far, Sony’s flagship title Killzone 2 has been a victim of it, too, with what appears to be slums and warehouses to be the main attractions of the show. However, it is being reported that those dull, dreary locations won’t be the only locations you will explore in the game’s world.

“[Helgan] is not just grey urban wasteland,” said Guerilla Games Q&Q Manager Seb Downie on the PlayStation forums.

His comments go hand-in-hand with EGM’s preview of the game in its August issue, which pointed out that some levels will go beyond the cities and show the “natural beauty” of the terrible planet. It is not known if there will be green fields and whatnot, but it sure will be interesting.

Killzone 2 is due out February 2009 exclusively on the PS3.

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Eurogamer reports that the fourth installment in the Fatal Frame (otherwise known as Project Zero) series may be out on the Wii as soon as February 2009.

This comes from the Official Nintendo Magazine, which disclosed the game’s full name, too - Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse.

Little is known about the upcoming title other than the fact that it will have the photographer heroine wandering haunted houses and getting nasty scares.

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Ending the onslaught of free downloadable content for Burnout Paradise, developer Criterion has unveiled Big Surf Island for the game, a new downloadable area.

Writing on its website, Criterion explained that they “never expected to create anything this ambitious for the island, but as it progressed we got more and more excited about what it could become.”

The island is apparently the “culmination of everything” they learned from creating the main game, noting that they want to bring “you a truly spectacular new experience.”

Other than the area itself, the download will add a new Dust Storm vehicle, a buggy.

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Can’t decide which controller you like better? Xbox 360 or PS3? No need to worry, Ben Heck, modder extraordinaire, has you covered.

What you see above is Mr. Heck’s latest creation, the Xbox 360/PS3 controller hybrid cleverly entitled the PS360 controller. Combining the Xbox 360 controller’s shell with the Playstation 3 controller innards, tailored to those who love the PS3, but prefer the shape of the Xbox 360 controller.

Now let’s see a PS3 controller with Xbox 360 innards, but wait, who would want that?

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Are you one of those people who needs to have absolutely every peice of Halo merchandise on the market? Well you better add another item to your list as it was recently made known that Sumthing Else’s 5-disc Halo soundtrack will hit store shelves tomorrow.

Included in the bundle are the original soundtracks from Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, both Halo 3 discs, and a DVD containing tracks from Halo Wars and all kinds of behind the scenes goodness.

Kotaku lets us know that Best Buy has the bundle up for pre-order at a none-too-high price of $34.99, a must have for any Halo fanatic.

Press release after the break

Read the rest of this entry »

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It was recently announced that EA has decided to team up with Chinese-based game studio NetDragon Websoft in order to produce an MMO based on EA’s Dungeon Keeper series.

Not much information regarding the game has been released other than that it will be a 3D MMORPG based on the above-mentioned series.

NetDragon also announced in the statement that they will have exclusive rights to license and operate the new MMO in China. Great news for EA, considering how many gamers there are in China, should Blizzard be worried?

Read (Yahoo! Tech)

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We’ve been hearing quite a bit of the fabled 65nm GPU, but after months of speculation, months of waiting, months of RRODs, it seems its finally here. But will it actually fix the Xbox 360’s fatal flaw?

Well, as most of you know, the RROD was caused by hardware failure, be it overheating or the GPU coming loose from the motherboard, either way it completely bricked your system. Well, with the chip sets new 65nm architecture it runs cooler, fits snugger to the motherboard, and consumes less power, effictively killing the two above problems, or so we hope.

But what happens to those of you that purchased your Xbox 360 so long ago? Well, apparently the chipsets only been avaiable since September so it looks like your fresh outta luck if you bought your console before October 23rd of this year. But perhaps next time your console RRODs (because its almost inevitable at this point) the Microsoft repair center will give you the 65nm upgrade?  We can only hope.

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If you’ve ever been cruious about LucasArts, the game company that’s been around since 1982, then you’ll be happy to know that a book detailing the companies past has been in the works.

Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts provides the reader with interviews, concept art, character sketches, storyboards, and countless other LucasArts memorabilia to feast your eyes on, even a forward by LucasArts frontman George Lucas himeself. Who wrote it? The editor-in-chief of Playstation: The Official Magazine, Rob Smith of course.

You can preorder the book now, here.

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While an unspecified development error caused THQ to axe the release of Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon on the PS3 in North America, effectively making the title an Xbox 360 exclusive THQ has announced that it won’t be so elsewhere. The game is set to ship in North American December 2nd which left very little time to fix the issue they were having.

The title isn’t releasing in Europe until next year so THQ has announced that the PS3 version of the game will be released as originally planned on February 13th. It seems somewhat strange that the company wouldn’t simply announce a delay of the release of the PS3 version but with the title going up against a bevy of highly anticipated games early next year it could be that THQ feels the marketing necessary to get a second launch of the game would cost more than the PS3 version would take in.

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With the Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe not performing quite so well as its creators hoped Midway Games has been in dire straits of late. Now the company has been sold for a relatively low price given its worth of over $30 million as of last Friday. Media mogul Sumner Redstone is having the same financial problems as many CEOs in the ailing economy and sold his controlling stake of the company in an attempt to sort out his financial issues.

Private investor Mark Thomas paid $100,000 for 87% of the company’s stock and took on both the prestige of the studio that created classics like Mortal Kombat as well as the burden of bringing the company back from its precarious financial position. Mr. Thompson inherits over seventy million dollars of debt along with his relatively cheap purchase.

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It’s certainly impressive seeing your face on a box of breakfast cereal in addition to winning eight gold medals in this year’s games in Bejing but it seems that US Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps is going for another slice of immortality. In a 60 Minutes interview the news was broken that Mr. Phelps is going to be featured in his very own video game.

There’s not much more information out there about the game and certainly no gameplay details, but there are definitely some educated guesses to be made. First of all it’s likely that this is going to be a Wii game focusing on motion controls and possibly even incorporating the Wii fit in some way. There is likely to be more than just swimming events involved as the game would bore fans quite quickly otherwise.

With Phelps having received an early promotional copy of Call of Duty: World at War on television and being featured in Guitar Hero: World Tour advertisements it seems likely that Activision will be involved in the title.

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The saga of everyone’s favorite teenage wizard has been brought to a close but there’s still a whole lot of money to be made and everyone’s getting in on the act. While author JK Rowling creates more stories set in the universe and Warner Brothers gears up for making the remaining movies there are yet more tie-in games to be made. The unexpected success of the Lego Star Wars titles launched a whole line of titles. Indiana Jones and Batman both got turned into digitally-rendered plastic blocks complete with platforming action and goofy humor.

Sources at Warner have hinted that the next Lego title will be set in the Harry Potter universe. EA has the publishing rights to do the official movie tie-in games, but since Warner published Lego Batman they’re probably going to handle Lego Harry Potter themselves. With the huge amount of potential content in the series it seems possible that they might release the saga in installments.

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Gears of War 2 Matchmaking Update Issued
Killzone 2 Supports 1080i Natively
Midway: Secret Game Looking Better Than Gears of War 2
GTA 4 Using SecuROM DRM, Rockstar Addresses Complaints
Codename Panzers Cold War Dated

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Brando Has an USB Notebook Cooling Pad With HDD Feature
Blockbuster to Offer Streaming Set-Top Box
Earth Trek launches “Travelling Webcam Hub”
Twilight Sequel to Begin Shooting March 2009

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Following up on its promise, Epic Games has released an update for Gears of War 2, aimed at helping the current matchmaking issues players are facing.

The patch will be automatically downloaded when players sign on to Xbox Live, with the installation of the patch required to play online.

“In order to get the update out as quickly as possible, we focused just on immediate infrastructure issues and have left any potential gameplay issues for a future update,” wrote senior producer Rod Fergusson on the game’s official forum.

His post carries further details on the changes made.

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It was reported earlier on various sites that Killzone 2 would run only in native 720p resolution, but that’s not the case, as according to Seb Downie, QA Manager for Guerilla Games, the game will also run in a native 1080i resolution as well.

“I got a message from one of our code gurus today about me talking about the 720p stuff I was spewing incorrectly and told me that we now support 1080i natively too,” wrote Downie on the official PlayStation forums.

Killzone 2 is due out February 2009 exclusively on the PS3.

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Financially ailing publisher Midway may still have some tricks up its sleeve, as the company has revealed that a secret, unannounced internally developed game is “already looking as good as Gears [of War] 2.”

This comes from creative director Simon Woodroffe who was speaking to Videogamer at a Wheelman press event in London.

Apparently, the game has been in development for only three months and that it is powered by Epic’s Unreal Engine. Woodroffe notes that the company’s policy of sharing technology is finally paying off as they are now achieving their target of simplified development and better-looking games.

As for the game itself, he disclosed that it is similar to Epic’s cover-heavy game, but that the “game mechanics are kind of different.”

“It’s going to be really big and really important,” he explained. “It’s not often, especially when you’re a cynical type, that you see a prototype or creative slice and just get blown away by it. But in this case, the hype is justified.”

He also revealed that another game is in development at Midway Chicago, though it isn’t due out until 2010.

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Pissing off many gamers, Rockstar has revealed that the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV will make use of the oft-criticized SecuROM copy protection. However, some controversial features, such as install limits, won’t be utilized.

“SecuROM is the most effective form of disc based copy protection and allows us to manage authenticity on a global level for Grand Theft Auto IV,” said the developer.

As expected, the game will require a one-time activation via the Internet and the disc of the game has to be kept in the drive while you play.

While the retail physical version won’t have any install limits, digital download vendors may place their own installation limit.

Interestingly, the studio noted that those who crack and play the game will have their game experiences changed, ranging from “comical to game-progress-halting changes.”

GTA 4 is due out December 2 on PC.

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Atari has announced that it will publish Codename: Panzers - Cold War during February 2009. The latest entry in the long-running World War 2 strategy series brings the franchise to the Cold War era, having players duke it out between the US and Russia.

The game suffered a major delay following the closure of series creator Stormregion earlier this year. Development was taken up by InnoGlow, which has been founded by ex-Stormregion employees.

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Assassin’s Creed Sequel Confirmed, Talked About, Even Dated
GameStop has a Wii for you, hopefully
Path of the Furon Cancelled for PS3
Naked Brothers Brace Rock Band
TouchGrind now available for iPhone/iPod touch
FEAR Sequel Banned Down Under
Sony: PSP Piracy Going Down
Gears of War 2 murals invade NYC
Xbox Live gets Red Alert 3 demo
Grand Theft Auto IV: Lost & Damned sold at GameStop

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