sdcc-2011
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Marvel Universe reveals a mouthy merc
Attention, Marvel Universe fans: if you missed some of the reveals at San Diego Comic-Con, we are here to help you catch up. As we have mentioned in a prior article, the man behind the pen of the great Ultimate Spider-Man reboot, Brian Michael Bendis, is set to write the story behind this first-ever Marvel MMO. Although few other details of this highly anticipated free-to-play MMO have been revealed, we now know that a very iconic mutant will grace your screen when you play the game. This, of course, is none other than the Merc-with-a-mouth himself, Deadpool. As the Editorial Director for Marvel.com, Agent M, announced, you will be able to don the secret identity of Mr. Wade Wilson. Will you be as indestructible and athletic as this wise-acre? We will have to wait and see. As more information is revealed, we will be sure to send it your way. [Updated with Agent M's exact title. Thanks, Agent M]
The Guild Season 5 now available for everyone
While Season 5 of The Guild was released for Zune and the Xbox 360 earlier this week, it hasn't been easily available on the web for everyone. Well, that's changed today. For your viewing pleasure, the online smash hit The Guild season 5 has officially hit the 'net! Episode 1, Road Trip, has our online heroes traveling to the Megagame-o-Ramacon, the aptly named convention of all things gaming. The Knights of Good will have their work cut out for them, as the fruits of road trips -- and the actual destination -- never come easily. Felicia Day, the show's creator, and the rest of The Guild were at this year's San Diego Comic-Con, where fans saw a preview of this episode. If you've missed a handful of episodes, catch up over on MSN Video or watch them all on Hulu. You can also catch up over on the Xbox Live Zune marketplace, too.
SWTOR walks us through the Flashpoint 'Esseles'
BioWare and LucasArts have said since the first announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic that choices will matter. No one witnessed that more than visitors to the BioWare booth at San Diego Comic-Con. These fans had to choose between saving the engineering crew or saving the bridge crew in the Flashpoint called The Esseles. In this fast-paced instance, you and your party are trapped aboard the Republic cruiser called the Esseles. Like Darth Vader asking for the ambassador on board the Corellian Corvette at the beginning of A New Hope, the commander of an Imperial Star Destroyer in this Flashpoint is also seeking a Republic ambassador. The difference here is the Imperial forces haven't boarded yet. It is your job to hold them off. After the break, catch the full 13-and-a-half-minute walkthrough narrated by Director of Production Dallas Dickinson, sans epic beard unfortunately.
Leedmees preview: Like a bridge
Leedmees was a nice surprise in the Konami suite at Comic-Con this week -- we haven't posted about it yet at all, and while Fruit Ninja Kinect has gotten a lot of the press as the first downloadable Kinect title, this one looks like it might be the more original. The game describes, during a dreamy little introduction, the player wandering into a secret magical door somewhere, where little white creatures (called Leedmees, presumably) march in step from one little spinning portal to another. Like the old Lemmings games, Leadmees mindlessly walk forward, and it's up to the player to make sure they get home safely. But there's one important twist: In Lemmings, you controlled the little creatures, using their abilities to get through the environment. In Leedmees, you are the environment.
Telltale elaborates on the story and choices of The Walking Dead
Telltale Games didn't have much of The Walking Dead to show off at Comic-Con except for some screenshots and concept art, but we were provided with game designer Jake Rodkin's assurance that it would not be just another zombie game. "The last shot of this game is probably not going to be a guy with two axes on top of a mile-high mountain of zombies," he said. Telltale's garnered a reputation for building licensed games not just around a popular setting, but around strong stories and characters as well. The Walking Dead game will fit right into that tradition. It won't feature the main characters of the comic book or the TV show, however -- Rodkin said they didn't want players coming in with preconceived notions about how the game's story should play out. If the game presents you with a choice of going left or right, players may think, "'Well I've seen him turn left twice now, I saw it in the comic book and in the show, so I'm going to go left.' And as much as a designer would hope that people are going to experiment with your system, people would just want to see that story again." Telltale's game will follow Lee, a prisoner, and Clementine, a young girl he comes across in the zombie apocalypse. And anyone with hopes of anything resembling a feel-good ending should probably check that at the door on the way in. "The Walking Dead," Rodkin said, "is not really a game about people who save the world. It's more about a story of trying to survive as people inside of this huge and horrible situation." %Gallery-125847%
Hyperspace Beacon: Nuna bites
If you happened to be in San Diego this weekend then you may have noticed a large gathering of geekery known as Comic-Con. Usually, this mecca of nerdom focuses on comic book related publications. Although Star Wars: The Old Republic isn't exactly comic book gold, Dark Horse comics rose through the ranks of pulp royalty because of its vast library of Star Wars-related publications. It only seems right that TOR presents itself to this audience. Besides the panel in Comic-Con proper, BioWare developers hosted three separate question and answer sessions focusing on Star Wars: The Old Republic. As with most Q&As, the majority of questions asked have been answered already in the past. If you were hanging out in Darth Hater's Ventrilo server like I was during the live broadcasts, then you heard a lot of "We knew that already." That being said, there were some pieces of juicy meat tossed to the crowd that we had not heard before. I will call them nuna bites, and you can find your slice after the break.
SoulCalibur 5's new fighters get frisky in latest trailer
Comic-Con may be over, but it's still dishing out video game media, such as this SoulCalibur 5 trailer. The video features many of the new upstart fighters, and poor Mitsurugi takes quite a walloping. We'll bet his soul will be burning for at least a week.
Kinect Star Wars preview: Pod (racing) people
At the Comic-Con panel for Kinect Star Wars earlier this week (the same panel where that R2D2 Xbox was announced), Microsoft's head of Kinect Jorg Neumann told the story of how the game itself came about. Back in 2008, when Kinect was still called Project Natal, and basically consisted of just a camera in a back room at Microsoft, Neumann and his colleagues found an engineer playing with game prototypes on the system, and one of those was a lightsaber simulator. That alone convinced Neumann and his division that Star Wars needed to be on the interface in some format. And it turns out LucasArts didn't need much convincing either. Lead producer Craig Derrick described flying out to the Microsoft campus to see the proposal for the game, and saying among his own colleagues that all they planned to do was hold out their hand and see what happened. As soon as they pushed a hand out to the Kinect unit, said Derrick, "it knocked over a bunch of droids, and we were like, 'OK, we're in.'" We saw the game's Force-driven droid pushing and lightsaber waving at E3, but Microsoft and LucasArts introduced a new mode to the game this week: pod racing. Anakin Skywalker's motorsport of choice is in the game as well, and I got to take a pod out for a spin later on in the week at a Microsoft preview event. %Gallery-128889%
Gears of War 3 behind-the-scenes video (Or, 'the giant curb stomp')
There are two approaches to viewing the Gears of War 3 "Crescendo" video. Option one: appreciate all of Epic's insight on the development and story of the final Gears chapter. Option 2: just drink in the spectacle – like a mech curb-stomping a fallen foe. So, yeah, you're probably going with option two.
WETA Workshop takes time off from The Hobbit to design for TF2
In case you missed it buried behind the Soldier's glorious mutton chops, Team Fortress 2's new weapons from Dr. Grordbort's Infallible Aether Oscillators were created in conjunction with WETA Workshop, the makers of Orcs, Na'vi and Prawns for most of the blockbuster movies of this generation. WETA's Greg Broadmore designed Dr. Grordbort's Infallible Aether Oscillators, which include the Righteous Bison and Cow Mangler 5000, two new weapons in the Victory Pack. To better acquaint players with these stellar WETA weapons, Valve has posted a comic featuring the Soldier and WETA promises special promo coupons at its booth at San Diego Comic-Con. Just watch out for the cow pies.
Dragon Age Redemption teases a tentative release date and details
Dragon Age Redemption is bringing big-screen talent to an online miniseries, including Independence Day producer Peter Winther as director, Lost's John Bartley as executive producer and Hellboy's Doug Jones acting alongside Felicia Day (who, to this crowd, needs no introduction). At the Redemption Comic-Con panel, Day revealed that each episode will run six to 10 minutes, or an hour in total. Day, who wrote the script, said she modeled Redemption after The Guild, where each episode has a beginning, middle and end. Redemption was also confirmed as canonical within the Dragon Age universe. The series doesn't have an official host site or release date yet, although Day did say, "It should be out early this fall. Don't tweet that." Luckily for us, this isn't Twitter.
Tekken lead cannot withstand Street Fighter lead's furious flurry of shoryukens
Tekken project lead Katsuhiro Harada clearly hasn't been studying the finer points of the Street Fighter series he's currently collaborating on, as Street Fighter creative lead Yoshinori Ono surprises him with a flurry of shoryukens at multiple points in this bizarre SDCC short, promoting Street Fighter X Tekken (and vice versa, of course).
Darksiders 2 preview: Death pays a visit
So you have a pretty popular game, starring an interesting and original rendition of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It sells well. In fact, it sells well enough that it gives a distraught publisher a much-needed influx of revenue and then, when the time comes to make the sequel, you decide to completely replace the protagonist everyone knows, and bring in a brand new character that wasn't ever seen in the first game. That's what comic book artist-turned Vigil Games founder Joe Madureira did, and though Darksiders 2 definitely looks like it's turning out well, even he says he had doubts. "I still wonder if it's a smart thing," he told me at Comic-Con this week, "because usually when you're building a franchise around a character, you really try and keep the same character." Well, yeah. "But it was a momentary apprehension. As soon as we concepted him and we had him running in the game, it was a cooler character." He says that THQ didn't have a problem with the change either: "They were like, yeah, this is a cool idea." %Gallery-128681%
Halo Anniversary footage shows off Silent Cartographer
As a special Comic-Con treat, Microsoft has unveiled more than four minutes of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary footage. Narrated by 343's Dan Ayoub, the video shows off the beloved "Silent Cartographer" level, which we saw earlier this year at E3. There's a lot to see, most notably the game's ability to switch between the original and remastered graphics on the fly. Oh and, lest we forget, the mighty pistol is in there too.
SDCC 2011: New City of Heroes: Freedom screenshots, trailer
Following hot on the heels of our preview of the new powersets coming to City of Heroes, NCSoft and Paragon Studios have let loose a flood of new assets for the upcoming additions to the game. The images cover the new powersets, the updated tutorial, the new Paragon Reward system, and all the other nifty new features that will finally see the light of day with City of Heroes' Issue 21. We've also got a new trailer for you to allow you to see all of the new content in action, and we have to say it looks like City of Heroes fans have a great deal to look forward to. So if you're a City of Heroes player anxiously anticipating Issue 21, jump on past the cut for the new trailer. Hopefully it will keep your appetite sated for just a while longer. %Gallery-9156%
Retro City Rampage playable at Comic-Con, even without a pass
If you don't mind hanging out in a Hard Rock establishment, you have an opportunity to play a bunch of unreleased games, including Retro City Rampage. In case it weren't abundantly clear from our past coverage of RCR, we're big proponents of not just the game itself, but of the developer's dogged entrepreneurial spirit, so we wanted to make sure you knew about two chances this weekend to play it at Microsoft's Hard Rock-based Comic Con Xbox lounge. Extra convenient? No SDCC pass is required to attend. In between snacking on sliders and getting your 8-bit open-world on, you may also want to check out some of the other games available to play -- everything from Orcs Must Die to Batman: Arkham City, we're told. And before you head over, why not take a look through a brand new set of Comic-Con screens for RCR, just below? Details for the weekend can be found after the break.%Gallery-128947%
Resistance 3 multiplayer beta coming 'first week in August,' watch videos until then
During an interview (coming soon!) with Drew Murray, lead designer of the "spectacular" Resistance 3, we learned that the planned multiplayer beta is just around the corner. "We're doing a friends and family beta right now," Murray said. "And I think we kick off the public beta sometime in August." That "sometime" has now been narrowed down to "the first week in August" according to IGN, reporting from the Resistance 3 panel at Comic-Con. The beta features multiplayer modes Team Deathmatch and Chain Reaction, both shown on video here, and an undisclosed number of maps. It's still not clear if owning the less-than-spectacular SOCOM 4 is the only way to access the beta. These videos both take place on Seaside, so that's ostensibly one map we know about. And the first week in August is really a great time to spend by the sea; one last beach run before the game's September 6 release.
SDCC 2011: City of Heroes has new powers to show off
Time Manipulation has been known about for some time as a new set en route to City of Heroes once the Freedom patch launches toward the end of the summer, but the development team does love throwing in new elements to play with. The game's official boards are alight with new information about two new powersets, Street Justice and Beam Gun, straight from the demo stations at San Diego Comic-Con. Beam Gun, as the name would imply, is a set for Corruptors, Defenders, and Blasters, giving players access to the eponymous gun which deals mostly Energy damage. The individual attacks are fairly weak, but each attack lands a debuff to increase subsequent damage, making the powerset play something like a ranged Brute. Meanwhile, Street Justice is a melee set that builds up combo points to improve a finishing attack, taking the form of smashing and lethal martial arts attacks. No word yet on any other powers that might be coming with the update, but three sets alone should have players hammering out new alts as soon as the update goes live.
SDCC 2011: SWTOR invites you to join the fight with a new in-game trailer
Earlier today, Massively reported about some of the new announcements BioWare gave us at San Diego Comic-Con. However, with Star Wars the Old Republic, the visuals always out weigh the prose, so the community team created a brand new video highlighting the motivation of each character class. The Jedi Knight is looking to rid the universe of darkness; the Trooper wants all Imperials dead; the Smuggler has nothing more to lose; and the Consular follows the Force. On the flip side, a Sith Warrior writhes with hatred; the Bounty Hunter lives for danger; Agents fight for the Empire; and Inquisitors wish to wipe them out... all of them. Which side will you take when you join the fight? As previously stated, SWTOR will have a limited launch, so the BioWare team is encouraging you to pre-order as soon as possible. Catch the full trailer after the break, and pay close attention to the warzone in which the factions are fighting. Is that Corellia? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
BioWare talks Star Wars: The Old Republic vehicles and launches
Vehicles are cool. Not that having a trusty steed isn't cool in any game, but Star Wars: The Old Republic is a game emulating films in which every single vehicle was a character unto itself. In the most recent panel for the game at this year's San Diego Comic-Con, it's been made clear that the designers aren't limiting vehicles to simply spaceships for players and for ambient encounters. Landspeeders and speeder bikes will be available for players, with several styles shown off to the attendees. As always, iconic imagery is at the top of the priority list for development, up to and including the opening text crawl following character creation. A firm release date has still not been announced, but the team has once again reiterated that the game will be out for this year's holiday season. Frustratingly vague? Perhaps, but at least there's plenty of tasty information to chew on despite the insistent lack of clarity elsewhere.
