Mafia II takes over the UK video games chart
Analysts may be predicting that Mafia II won’t be able to make its developing cost back, but with 2K Games’ gangster sequel debuting at the top psot of the UK video games chart, those fears may be just for nothing. Read more
Square Enix going Gun Loco for your singing
Think you’ve got a singing voice that would be at home on Square Enix’s upcoming Gun Loco? Than put your warbling skills to the test in their singing contest, where the winner will get the smug satisfaction of hearing themselves singing while killing off other players. I dare you to tell me you haven’t at least once dreamed about that.
Heres Square Enix descrbing the how the compititon and how to enter: “Square Enix is offering you the chance of a lifetime with this GUN LOCO music contest. It’s simple, so listen up! From the 9th September you can download the MP3 and lyric sheet from www.gunloco.com then plug in your mic and hit record. When you’ve given it all you’ve got, upload your song for the chance to appear in GUN LOCO.”
I wouldn’t worry about how the quality of how you sound too much. I mean if X-Factor can use auto-tune, than why can’t Square Enix!
Kane & Lynch 2 shoot to the top of the UK video games chart
Mixed reviews? Moot point as it hasn’t stopped the odd couple Kane & Lynch from pulling off one hell of a crime from sealing the number one spot from Toy Story 3, which reclaimed the the top spot on 9th August from StarCraft 2.
While Official Xbox Magazine UK and Games Master gave it praise, Destructoid and Eurogamer were on the opposite side of the spectrum and blasted the game, while 1UP and Joystiq were indifferent. Still, it seems that the hype, marketing and the demo worked.
Two re-entries occurred and surprisingly, one of them was the Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, with the other being the popular Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The Forgotten Sands managing a huge leap from position 19 to 8 and Bad Company moving up from position 11 to 10.
Three video games dropped out and two of them were surprising; Madden NFL 11 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Madden NFL 11 is a surprising departure as the madden series is popular in the UK and yet it only spent one week in the top 10 . Modern Warfare 2’s departure could also be seen as a surprise given it’s dominance in the charts and the fact it’s become the biggest selling game of all time. The other game to have dropped out of the top 10 is Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels Starry Skies. It’s actually pleasing that it manage to spend four weeks in the top ten and is a good sign for the series.
Games that have managed to stay in the top 10 are Red Dead Redemption, Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, Just Dance, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Dance On Broadway. All except Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 and Super Mario Galaxy 2 dropped places, with Dance on Broadway seeing the biggest drop by 6 places down to number 3. Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 stayed at number four while Super Mario Galaxy 2 manages to move up two places to seven.
Here’s how the rest of the chart looks like.
01. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days (Square Enix)
02. Toy Story 3 (Disney)
03. Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar)
04. Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Warner)
05. Just Dance (Ubisoft)
06. Art Academy (Headstrong Games)
07. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo)
08. Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Ubisoft)
09. Dance On Broadway (Ubisoft)
10. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (EA)
Kiss the skies with the Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 demo
Ubisoft are pleased to announce that a single-player demo of Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.® 2 is now available for fans of the original to get their ariel mitts on.
The demo offers 2 single player missions from the main campaign
Interception Course
Take to the air to intercept a group of stolen aircraft high above the Caucasus Mountains.
Right in the middle of this hot spot on the world conflict radar, you will be playing as a Russian pilot in this mission, part of the new multinational cinematic story narrative in H.A.W.X. 2.
Seek and Destroy
Playing from the perspective of the elite US H.A.W.X. squadron, conflict is boiling over in Africa and you are tasked with taking out specific targets with smart ammunition in a treacherous night mission. Take off from a carrier under the cover of darkness and strike against a weapon smuggling operation using precision guided laser bombs.
So now you know what to expect when it comes to trying out the demo. However, PlayStation owners will have to wait a couple of days before being able to experience the H.A.W.X 2 demo, as it won’t be released until Wednesday 18th. Xbox 360 users won’t have to worry as they can expereince it now.
No PAX if you want to join the next Gears of War 2 XP Event
If you’re still playing Gears of War 2 in hopes of earning your “wings”, than there is one upside to missing PAX Prime, because that is when the next Gears of War 2 event takes place.
Rod Fergusson, Gears of War’s Executive Producer, stated that the next Gears of War 2 bumper XP weekend will be running from Friday, September 3rd till Tuesday, September 7th. If you want the XP your going to have to miss PAX or get a friend to fill in for you on Gears of War 2…If he’s not concerned with getting his own XP.
Fergusson tweeted, “Ok, we’re definitely doing something for Labor Day. So it will run from Friday, Sept 3rd till Tuesday Sept 7th. More details soon.”
It’s not known if it will be like the crazy 20x XP multiplayer event that happened. But than nothing has been said, so it’s not something to be ruled out and for making people miss PAX Prime, it’s damn well better be worth their time.
Epic Games Releases August 2010 Unreal Development Kit Beta
Epic Games today has released the August 2010 UDK Beta, this beta is the latest version of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), the free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides uncompromised access to the award-winning toolset used in blockbuster video games, 3D visualizations, digital films and more.
You can download the UDK beta for free at www.udk.com/download.
This month’s beta release includes many upgrades, such as:
- Scaleform pipeline improvements
- Improved motion blur
- New detail lighting view mode
- Recompile materials directly from Content Browser right-click menu
- New character indirect lighting controls
- Better hair lighting
Plus, new documentation like the Scaleform workflow, introduction to FaceFX and camera technical guide will be helpful to those getting started with UDK.
Check below for the full list of improvements in detail:
Scaleform GFx
- Scaleform GFx 3.3.85 is now merged in and all UDK UI is GFx-based.
- Made many improvements and fixes to the Scaleform import pipeline.
Point Light Shadows
- Whole scene shadows for point lights are now supported.
Precomputed Visibility
- Precomputed visibility allows occlusion on platforms that don’t support hardware occlusion queries.
Motion Blur
- The quality of Motion Blur has been significantly improved without a performance loss.
New Detail Lighting View Mode
- Replaces diffuse and specular color but keeps all other material parameters like normal map, opacity mask, two sidedness, etc.
- Useful for viewing lighting without material diffuse color influence.
- Lighting-only view mode is still useful for looking at lightmap artifacts and compression.
Character Indirect Lighting
- Added new controls for fine-tuning runtime indirect lighting settings on characters.
- Added distinct controls for both lit and shadowed environments.
Hair Lighting
- Implemented a new, single-pass technique for translucency lighting.
- Previous technique relied on multiple passes, which over-brightens on multilayered objects, such as hair.
- The single-pass technique uses about half the number of shader instructions as multipass lighting, so hair will be much cheaper.
Before
After
Normal Maps, Indirect Lighting & Lightmaps
- Normal maps are now taken into account for indirect lighting with simple lightmaps.
Before
After
Other New Stuff
- Can now recompile materials directly from the right-click menu in Content Browser.
- New texture streaming system saves memory and prioritizes textures more effectively.
- Added limited support for importing non-power-of-two (NPOT) textures into the editor. MIP maps are not allowed, and image dimensions must be divisible by four for DXT compression.
- Vertex normals are now correctly saved with static meshes exported as OBJ files.
- Terrain export now supports holes.
- New ContentComparison commandlet helps optimize content.
- Lightmass static shadows now have texture space filtering on by default, which smoothes out aliasing.
- Material editor Undo and Redo are now much faster.
- Added multiple camera offset support for particle modules and camera offset support for mesh emitters.
- Spawn at bone/socket now allows rotating mesh particles to the orientation of the bone/socket.
Square Enix announces GamesCom 2010 line-up
For those lucky to go to GamesCom 2010 (which takes place at Cologne on August 18th – 22nd) you’re obviously itching to know what will be at the event, just for the chance to boast to your friends and co-workers that you played [insert awesome game] that was awesome. Or to say [instert not so awesome game] did in fact suck.
Regardless, we can tell you that Square Enix have revealed what they will be showing at GamesCom 2010. The following games that will be showcased are; Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heros of Light; Final Fantasy XIV; Front Mission Evolved; Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days; Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.
Phil Rogers, chief executive officer of Square Enix Europe was not surprisingly giddy with excitement: “GamesCom continues to grow in prominence and this year’s show promises to be something special. Our key titles reveal a powerful line-up of lead characters, innovative gameplay and action-packed storylines and GamesCom 2010 provides the perfect opportunity to share these upcoming games directly with consumers.”
I’d wager that Deus Ex is going to see some serious playtime, though if I was going, I’d get my hands on Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.
Regardless of what game you want to play, you can find Square Enix at booth B54 in Hall 6 of GamesCom 2010.
Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days – Behind the Scenes
Take a look at the development of Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days with this behind the scenes video.
Just in case you need a reminder about what Kane & Lynch 2 is all about: “Experience 48 hours of hell with two of gaming’s most notorious criminals in Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. Kane and Lynch face the consequences when a simple job gone wrong sets off a desperate and frantic struggle to escape the entire Shanghai underworld. Ground-breaking art direction, relentless action gameplay and innovative multiplayer redefine the action shooter experience and positions Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days as the standout shooter of 2010.”
South Korean Game Mirrors Portal
An up and coming online game called ‘Gate’ has players running around a factory like setting creating portals.. or gates to transfer themselves to different areas in the game… not exactly an original.
Virgin Gaming And Ubisoft Challenge Gamers To Experience The Future Of War
Ubisoft and Virgin Gaming (http://virgingaming.com/) have announced a partnership, which will see Virgin Gaming to become the online torunement provider for the publishing giant’s upcmoming multiplayer console releases. The first one will be Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, the latest chapter in the award-winning franchise.
Rob Segal, CEO of Virgin Gaming, is excited at the chance to work with Ubisoft: “Ubisoft is one of the leading video game publishers in the world and we are thrilled to offer our members the opportunity to compete in some of their best multiplayer console games. Virgin Gaming is a unique convergence of social networking, video games and competitive gaming, and we are excited that Ubisoft shares our vision for the platform and its potential.”
“Ubisoft is thrilled to be partnering with Virgin Gaming on its new venture. We have an exciting lineup of multiplayer titles this year that we believe will be a perfect fit for gamers to play and compete against each other in a tournament setting,” said Laurent Detoc, president of Ubisoft North America.
Sir Richard Branson unveiled Virgin Gaming at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) as part of his comeback into the video game industry and recveied an enthusiastic reception. Virgin Gaming saw the postive response and took advantage, not wasting any oppurtinity or time and become “the first online platform for gamers of all skill levels to compete in some of the best games for the biggest prizes. In true Virgin style, Branson kicked things off with dramatic flair, announcing that Virgin Gaming would give away over $1 million in cash and prizes over its first 12 months.”
Ubisoft headlines a slate of industry partnerships with key publishers and retailers to be announced by Virgin Gaming in the coming months.
