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Pirates Vs. Ninjas Dodgeball: best game ever?
Blazing Lizard, the company recently formed by former members of Volition (Saints Row), has announced what will no doubt be one of the most earth-shattering games yet created on this planet, Pirates Vs. Ninjas Dodgeball. Yes, the game seeks to answer the centuries old questions of which group is superior. What better way to do that than with a good old fashioned game of dodgeball, right? Actually, it's not strictly old fashioned, as teams are not restricted to one side of the court, being allowed instead to run anywhere they see fit. PvN Dodgeball is set to be the first in the Pirates Vs. Ninja series -- we can only guess what other sports Blazing Lizard has in mind -- and will be available via as yet unannounced download services. We're assuming that Xbox Live Arcade is a safe bet at this point. Oh, and if by some minute chance you prefer neither ninjas nor pirates, there are three other teams from which to choose, though Blazing Lizard has yet to announce what those teams are (lawyers maybe?). Pirates Vs. Ninjas Dodgeball is scheduled to arrive during the first quarter of 2008. %Gallery-5889% [Via Joystiq]
Dementium set to scare up sales on Halloween
The survival horror title from Gamecock and new developer Renegade Kid, Dementium: The Ward, is set for release on Halloween. Spooky! We just hope the game follows up. From the impressions and this spiffy boxart, however, it looks like we may be nightsticking monsters while mowing through the holiday haul this year. If there's two things the DS needs more of, it's violence and horror. The website has been updated with the new date, which was confirmed via press release this morning.
Gamecock's E3 video roundup
Most people who spent time at the Hotel California with independent publisher Gamecock walked away with two major realizations. Gamecock actually figured out how to do this newly formatted E3 absolutely right, even though they technically weren't part of it. The Hotel California was an open door oasis with developers showing their games in casual living rooms as a breeze from the Pacific kept things cool -- the smell of BBQ also helped (which we didn't actually get to eat in all the running around). The other realization, the more important one, is that the games didn't look half bad -- actually, in many cases, they impressed us more than non-indie games we saw. Yes, the Gamecock name still confuses people and the two pseudo-NSFW videos we have after the break add to the things that turn some people off to the company's marketing -- but once those people understand Gamecock doesn't care, it'll start to roll off their backs and make more sense. As long as their games featured in the video above are fun and sell well, that's probably the only thing Gamecock really does care about. We're definitely curious to see how their first published titles like Dementium: The Ward and Fury, which goes into beta very soon, do at retail. And we really want more info on Pandora Legendary: The Box as soon as possible.
Unleash the Fury in a free preview weekend, July 27th
Come July 27th (12PM PT), Australian developers Auran will be opening the doors of Fury for a sixty hour weekend of sheer PvP insanity. Having walked away from E3 with positive impressions of the upcoming MMO title (including our own), publisher Gamecock has decided that now is the best time to get more players involved with the project.Though you'd better be quick on the draw. The weekend preview is limited to the first 200,000 sign-ups.%Gallery-4405%
Joystiq impressions: Dungeon Hero
Dungeon Hero's title is supposed to be a bit ironic. See, the thing in Dungeon Hero is that you're a a human, but you're not actually good, and the dungeon isn't bad. Through a fantastic opening sequence (found after the break) you'll get the premise of what's going on. A dungeon is just another home with various types of creatures trying to live their lives. Although the set-up sounds like developer Firefly is making Stronghold for the Dungeon Keeper fans, it's actually an action RPG title.The game won't be released until Q1 of 2009 so there is still a long journey to go before we can accurately say anything about this game. The premise is that the dungeon is at war, it's not a place where gold is just laying around and enemies aren't just hanging around for the adventurer to show up. The idea is to twist the conventions of dungeon games like Diablo which have become the norm. Players will level up and choose different easily deployable combat moves, kind of like what Molyneux is talking about for the upcoming Fable 2. The developers have hired an artist to tell the story through Max Payne style cutscenes, but with animation added. If Dungeon Hero keeps its sense of irony, heaps on some solid gameplay, we'll definitely be looking forward to it, despite it sounding originally like another dungeon crawl game. The only thing Dungeon Hero has to worry about is becoming the thing it is struggling against becoming -- the path which the remake of The Bard's Tale stumbled into.%Gallery-3760%
Joystiq hands-on: Fury
We like it when a developer is straight-up with us about their game. The developers from Auran, who are working on the MMO Fury, were quite honest in saying, "It's WoW battlegrounds meets Guild Wars, with a bit of Unreal and Battlefield tossed in." This got our attention and the straight-talk express continued through the hands-on.Fury definitely has the Guild Wars look to it, but the gameplay is more Unreal with an intuitive WoW interface. The pace is like an FPS when in an arena battle, the only difference is that instead of just blasting the ever-living bajingus out of your opponent, you'll build up fury and unleash with special attacks, magic and you can always retreat and heal. Playing against three developers meant we didn't stand a chance and had absolutely no idea how to counter various moves -- but unlike an FPS against professionals, we could at least semi-grasp what was going on. Fury is definitely mental twitch play where if you used the right skills it's possible for a battle to last. If you had a basic grasp on what you're doing, it won't feel like a run-of-the-mill FPS where whoever has the most shields wins.The game releases Oct 9 and the original beta was postponed to later this month. We'll have the release about the beta next week to let y'all know about the exact date. The game is graphically on par with today's expectations and PvP players will probably enjoy it because that's clearly the game's focus. From our short time with Fury, developer Auran has done a good job. There are so many other elements to Fury, (it is an MMO after all) like realms compete against each other for the benefit of the entire server and there are numerous game types to do battle. Fury probably won't defeat the big MMOs out there because that's not what it's designed to do. The game is looking to give a solid PvP experience in an MMO environment, with a dash FPS elements -- to that end it succeeds. For MMO players who mostly play PvP it would definitely be worth checking out the beta later this month.%Gallery-4405%
All-new video from Dementium: The Ward
At this point, we're about ready to offer Gamecock our firstborn child, because they are really rolling out the hotness for the DS. On the tails of recent good impressions of the upcoming Dementium: The Ward comes this new trailer, which features -- are you ready? -- nightstick beatdowns. Even if the rest of the game looked awful, we might sign up just for that. Of course, now we fully expect Renegade Kid's second DS game to be Touch! Police Brutality or something along those lines.Did we mention we have an unhealthy appreciation for video game violence? Just go watch the trailer already. %Gallery-4929%
Gamecock's E3 funeral mourns an old friend
While we were preparing for the Joystiq Reader Meetup, friend of the site – and games business journalist – N. Evan Van Zelfden made his way to the death of E3 funeral and wake and filed this report: On the last day of E3, after Barker Hanger had closed, and the Fairmont had rolled up their sidewalk, people began to gather for what was to be the one moment of cohesion during a week of complete decentralization. Walking into the courtyard of the Hotel California – where publisher Gamecock held their relaxed demos parallel to E3 – there was a scene like that of another lost institution of the videogame industry: the lobby of the Fairmont in San Jose. This courtyard was filled with some five-to-ten percent of the Business and Media Summit's total attendees – and these were the people most worth talking to. As a hundred conversations flowed, and beers were handed out, a man on stilts walked by. Later followed by a woman, also on stilts. That didn't seem to bother the crowd, which included the director of the Game Developers Conference, top print and broadcast journalists, dozens of bloggers, plenty of PR people, game journalists, and game makers both elite and rank-and-file. A booth babe, barely dressed in black, and wearing zombie make-up, made her way through the crowd. A number of the attendees are holding black umbrellas with the Gamecock logo on it. Others have black handkerchiefs embroidered with a red logo.%Gallery-4931%
Joystiq impressions: Legendary: The Box
Legendary: The Box is quite possibly the worst name given to a game with a massive amount of potential. They could have called it Pandora and used one perfect word to describe this first-person shooter in a nutshell -- but they didn't. Thankfully, developer Spark has till Spring of 2008 to change the name. Pandora Legendary: The Box starts with a thief being hired to break into a museum to steal a box. Oops, turns out it's Pandora's box which the thief accidentally activates and all hell breaks loose -- literally. In an incredibly intense scene reminiscent of a Call of Duty or Medal of Honor sequence (coincidentally that's what the developers from Spark worked on previously), the world just plunges into chaos. You'll watch the whole thing happen in real time. From the moment the box is opened you'll attempt to escape the crumbling museum, avoid the griffins, try your best to soak in the insanity that ensues around you, and run away from a golem created from cars and building parts. If your character stops, he'll die.A later piece of the game takes place in an English cathedral infested with werewolves. Yes, the developers are quite aware the issue there and are looking to tweak it. The controls are your standard FPS stuff and the weapons we saw are based on modern weaponry. You get ammo off the fallen soldiers belonging to the private army of the man who hired you to "steal" the box. Also, the box infuses you with the power to suck life force from fallen beasts to recover health. The game uses the Unreal Engine 3 and considering we're still a little under a year from seeing the final product, the game is already looking fantastic. The developers say where they invested time was in enemy recognition of objects and surroundings so that the experience is never the same twice. The werewolves don't take the same path to a target every time and they'll crawl walls, drop from the ceiling, jump over boxes and the only way they'll stay dead is by shooting off their heads.The developers also said that multiplayer will be different, utilizing the creatures into various multiplayer types. Humans vs. creatures already sounds like a good and obvious multiplayer experience. We're excited to see more of this game as it comes along. It's still way too early to tell if the game will be any type of good, but a game that utilizes Call of Duty intensity with a modern tale of Pandora's box sounds very cool. Now somebody please change the name of this game to accurately convey how great this title could be when it releases.%Gallery-4924%
Joystiq impressions: Mushroom Men
Mushroom Men is still many moons away from being done and what we saw was mostly still concept art. There was some in-game footage to show the game is real, but it was a video and not a demo. The thing is that developers Red Fly are on a path at the moment, but where that path leads is anyone's guess. Mushroom Men will release as a 3D platformer on the Wii in the fall of 2008 and as a 2D platformer on DS in spring of 2008 (there were no images of the DS version). The concept of Mushroom Men is that a comet has passed over the planet and the dust left behind has given consciousness to the fungus. The Mushroom Men evolved and are now at war with other fungus, all of this isn't noticed by the humans.One of the interesting concepts that we couldn't see implemented is the "Scav" system, short for scavenger. You'll collect trash and put it together to form weaponry. For the Wii version they're still working on eight different control schemes and attempting at all costs to have players do battle without feeling like they are doing battle through "waggle." There is a chance for an Xbox and/or PS3 version of the game if it does well on the Wii. The high-res models they showed of the characters in their video clearly can not be done on the Wii and will need to be scaled back. In an interesting aside, the reason the game is being designed for Wii and DS is due to the install base and the fact that it costs half as much as if they were developing it for the more powerful systems. This reasoning may rear its head by many independent developers who just can't afford the $20 million price tags surrounding full featured Xbox and PS3 games.There's really not much we can say about Mushroom Men. Conceptually it sounds fine, beyond that there wasn't much to show of the game. From the artist concept drawings though we hope the game does do well so we can see the beauty of this title come through on the Xbox 360 and PS3. We also look forward to seeing how the game comes across on the Nintendo DS soon, especially considering spring is only 9 months away -- start incubating those spores now!%Gallery-3542%
Good news from The Ward
Can there ever be good news from the insane asylum? Only if it's coupled with news of a worthwhile gaming experience, and it looks like that just might be the case with Renegade Kid's Dementium: The Ward. Our evil masters at Joystiq got a little facetime with the shooter at E3, and they only had good things to say on the subject. The controls are smooth, says Alexander Silwinski, and certainly reminiscent of Metroid Prime Hunters, but since Dementium's pacing is a little slower, the game is easier to handle. Item selection is apparently a breeze, with the exception of a shortcut to the oft-needed flashlight, and puzzles make sense. The only downside is that the game apparently only takes about seven hours to complete, but maybe the story -- on which we have very few details at this time -- will make up for it.%Gallery-4929%
Joystiq hands-on: Dementium: The Ward
Pleasant surprises end up being more than pleasant because pleasant surprises are so few and far between -- Dementium: The Ward is a pleasant surprise. The first-person survival horror game for the Nintendo DS does the best it can with the hardware's technology and could, at a minimum, be a serious break-out sleeper hit. When you find out Renegade Kid will have finished this game with a development cycle of 11 months, with only three internal guys and five external guys working on it, you'll be surprised. The reason they could pull this off is because these developers are all veterans of the N64 and were "firing on all cylinders out of discipline" knowing how to work with the development software, for them the trick was how to incorporate the stylus, but it all came out just fine.The most shocking thing you'll notice about Dementium is how smooth it runs. It uses the Metroid Prime Hunters control scheme, but because the pacing is slower than MPH, the concept feels better. Left hand stays on the control pad with one finger on the left bumper for action, right hand uses stylus on the bottom screen. The top screen is uncluttered standard FPS fare. The bottom screen has a heart monitor which gives a standard thud-thud when you are at normal health and gets more rapid as you take damage. Currently the heart beat can't be turned down or silenced, the developers said that will put that option into the final game -- listening to a heart beat for that long would drive you Edgar Allen Poe telltale crazy. There is a simple action button when you need to open doors (loading times are nil) and an easily accessible notepad when you need to remember codes or keep notes to figure out puzzles. Items are easily selected by tapping them on an inventory tray which runs along the bottom of the screen. The only thing is that the flashlight is so important to seeing more than a few feet in front of you that a quick hotkey on the bottom menu would be nice -- especially because you can't use the flashlight as a melee weapon (hello Doom 3 irritation all over again). The map is great showing you where you've been and which doors are locked and unlocked. The game takes approximately 7 hours to complete, so figure a few extra hours if you take your time. Puzzles include stuff like finding a code written in blood that you'll need to input into a door and searching around a room for notes to play on a toy piano. Dementium looks like it'll be a great unflinching M rated addition to the DS library. The story is still under wraps, but if the story is as tight as the controls, this'll be a winner for the independent games movement.%Gallery-3636%
E307: DS Insecticide trailer dances before our eyes
Insecticide combines a noir theme with visual elements of Psychonauts and personality-filled characters reminiscent of an adventure game. This is our first chance to see any of the actual DS version of the game, however, and something tells us the publisher doesn't want us to see it. The PC trailer certainly didn't get the shaky-cam treatment.Check after the break for a textbook example of how not to make a video game trailer. Seriously, this goes beyond poor editing or bad screen quality and into intentional obfuscation. But it's worth it to check it out, because Crackpot's game looks fantastic.
Section 8 freefalls into orbit in 2009
The latest title announced by independent publisher Gamecock is futuristic first-person shooter Section 8 by TimeGate Studios. The studio previously worked on the Kohan series and did the F.E.A.R. expansion for PC, Extraction Point. Section 8 is an elite unit of powered armor infantry fighting on war-torn fringe planets on the frontier colonies. The soldiers will have on-demand vehicles and the teaser trailer can be found after the break.The whole project sounds incredibly ambitious, as do many of Gamecock's titles, and FPS' typically have a very high bar to hit nowadays; however, the game isn't expected until 2009 so there is some time. We have very little background as to why the group is called Section 8, as Section 8 has a very specific connotation in the US. Section 8 is a subsidy program to assist the fiscally challenged with housing. Then again, they couldn't call it Section 9 because then all the Ghost in the Shell fanboys would freak. Is Section 7 taken? Oh well, we'll talk to the developers next week at Min-E3 and get an answer to the meaning behind Section 8.Update: The developers let us know their Section 8 is based on the military reference to being discharged from service for being mentally unfit.%Gallery-4522%
Section 8 is revived from development limbo
A long time ago, the developers of F.E.A.R. planned to use the Unreal Engine 3 in a game known as Section 8. Ever since then, the title vanished from headlines, tummylines, even toelines. It was, in essence, not on the body at all (in this analogy, the internet is a human body). Enter recently formed publisher GameCock, who have taken TimeGate Studio's game by the hand and brought it back to life.The game is essentially a post-apocalyptic FPS title, with strategy and tactical elements a la Freedom Fighters (so we'd like to imagine). You are a member of Section 8 -- an elite group of infantry in powered armor who take on the most dangerous missions on many of the future's war-torn planets. Yes, planets, plural. Expect to kick some men on Mars and some women on Venus. Those weird creatures on Uranus? Well, insert your own clever innuendo here. Expect the title to pop up at E3, with an expected release date as of right now set in 2009.
Gamecock reveals Section 8
It's not exactly like the Xbox 360 is short on futuristic first person shooters. Let's see, we've got BlackSite, Haze, TimeShift, and of course we can't forget about Halo 3. That isn't stopping the lads at Gamecock from announcing Section 8, though. Coming from TimeGate, developers of F.E.A.R. Extraction Point. Section 8. The trailer shows off some impressive graphics as shock troopers descend through a planets atmosphere. We're immediately reminded of Halo's Hell Jumpers, which isn't a bad thing. The game promises to give players command of special tactical maneuvers like on-demand vehicle deliveries. We don't know much more about the title, save that it is scheduled to arrive in 2009. With any luck, we may see something at E3 next week.
Full trailer for Dementium: The Ward
We've seen the tiniest of teasers, but now we can enjoy the full trailer for the upcoming title Dementium: The Ward. From this short video, the debut from developer Renegade Kid looks a little like the recent Touch the Dead, but with a few more character models. And should we be surprised? The games have a similar basic premise -- guy awakens in hospital and finds he must fight for his life -- but Dementium is more than just a shooter ... and it seems to have a few more character models to boot. Publisher Gamecock has really been all over the DS lately, and from the looks of these releases, we hope they decide to stay.
Unleash the Fury, beta commences July 6
Looking to try out Fury, the in-development Player vs. Player MMO with FPS elements that claims to do away with level grinding? The first phase of closed beta testing is scheduled to commence Friday, July 6 at 9 pm ET; you can register at the game's website here. (Those who have already signed up can expect invitations in the coming days, according to a press release from developer Auran.)The game will be shown at publisher Gamecock's EIEIO party alongside Min-E3. New trailer embedded after the break.%Gallery-4405%
Today's most horrifyingly dual-screen video: Dementium trailer
When independent publisher Gamecock announced Dementium: The Ward, from developer Renegade Kid, they promised the game would "set the bar for mature handheld games." If this newly-released trailer is any indication, they're on the right track. Decaying corpses, flashlight exploration, and a hint of gun-play. And the graphics aren't too shabby, either.Dementium: The Ward will be on-hand on Gamecock's EIEIO party during Min-E3. Video, care of Gametrailers, embedded after the break.%Gallery-3636%
Penny Arcade Expo exhibitor list unleashed
The exhibitor list for this year's Penny Arcade Expo has been made, checked twice, and finalized. While the past exhibitors are all still present (including favorites Pink Godzilla), the major publishers have signed up en masse. Joining Nintendo and Microsoft this year on the super-sized list of 53 exhibitors are Sony, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Sierra and Konami, among many others. Indie representation will be provided Gamecock, Telltale, and more. Is that the shadow of E3 we see before us? Full list after the break.
