gamescom-2011
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Gamescom 2011: LotRO's Rise of Isengard screen captures on display
If you're not in Turbine's Rise of Isengard beta, A Casual Stroll to Mordor has some Gamescom screen caps you might be interested in seeing. Even if you are in the testing phase for Lord of the Rings Online's next expansion, it's worth a look-see if only to glimpse a few things you might've missed. The screens were captured on a cell phone camera, so the quality isn't worth writing home about, but they do show off an early version of the Isengard map as well as new wound pots, Forthbrond Village, a portion of the Gap of Rohan, the tower of Orthanc, and Saruman impaled on a giant spike just like in the movies! OK, just kidding about that last part, but it was funny seeing you lore-monkeys twitch.
Gamescom 2011: Paradox releases new Salem teaser
A couple of months ago, we were treated to a sneak peek of Salem, the new browser-based MMO from Paradox Interactive. Aside from its colonial America setting and Salem witch trial underpinnings, the defining feature of this odd MMORPG is permadeath. Today, Paradox has a released a new trailer for the title at Gamescom, and though there's no gameplay footage to be had, the atmosphere conjured by the clip is nothing short of bizarre. The video runs a tad over a minute and a half, and perhaps the most interesting thing about it is a subtitle that shows up after the ending title and proclaims that Salem is "the crafting MMO." It's the crafting MMO with permadeath and a PvP focus, if previous Paradox releases still hold true, and if that doesn't tweak your curiosity, well, head past the cut and watch the video anyway.
Street Fighter X Tekken set for 'Spring 2012' with 'totally upgraded online'
Street Fighter X Tekken, you had us at "farting bears." Depending on your partiality to ursine flatulence, you may or may not agree, but a recent Capcom fact sheet provides some additional details. First, Street Fighter X Tekken will not only include the "online features from Super Street Fighter IV," but it also "features totally upgraded online functionality and some new surprises." We'll be honest, the bear farts surprised us a little. The fact sheet also drops a "Spring 2012" release window. The last window we had broadly indicated a fiscal 2011 release, which would mean no later than March of next year. With "spring" being generally agreed upon as March 20/21, in line with the vernal equinox, and fiscal 2011 ending March 31, 2012, we're putting everything we own on Tuesday, March 27. You can practically take this to the bank.
Burnout Crash trailer hits the road, terrifies us
We were really enjoying the first trailer for Burnout Crash, until it occurred to us that, statistically speaking, there are almost certainly some babies in those cars. Maybe even a whole baby family, going to volunteer at a baby soup kitchen or donate blood or something. Oh, and they have one of those cute suction cup Garfields hanging on the window. ... No! It's a baby suction cup Garfield. And he's just finished a 10-year prison stint for a crime he didn't commit, and he was driving to meet his son, Baby Suction Cup Garfield Jr. that was born while he was in lock-up. Also? It's his birthday. ...You should totally watch the trailer though. It's cute. Just try not to think about the ... well, you know.
The MMO Report: What is this I don't even edition
Welcome once again to Massively's coverage of The MMO report, where we get to imagine that this entire article is read by a 1930s radio announcer. The first order of business today is the record-breaking scam perpetrated in EVE Online, followed by the energy and weapon ability changes in the most recent test build of Guild Wars 2. Then we've got The Old Republic's first show of endgame content in the form of the Eternity Vault being showcased at Gamescom. Meanwhile, The Secret World announces a release date, slating the game for April 2012 with beta signups beginning on August 26th. LEGO Universe's transition to a free-to-play model rounds out the selections before a trip into Uncle Casey's Mailbag for some schmemes and other goodness. So jump on past the cut and check it out. Oh, and don't ask about the beginning. We don't know either.
Silent Hill: Book of Memories is really about a book of memories
In this video, Konami producer Tomm Hulett explains the premise of the PlayStation Vita's weird spin-off game, Silent Hill: Book of Memories. "You receive a strange book. When you open it, you see your entire life story written on those pages," he said. "All your memories." You can then rewrite your memories and alter reality. Apparently, judging by the gameplay, all the player-created characters then rewrite their lives as monster-filled nightmares -- with Hulett suggesting that even Pyramid Head shows up. In any other game, that would be weird, but it wouldn't be Silent Hill if the protagonist wasn't totally bonkers. Speaking of gameplay, the above video features the first (early) direct-feed gameplay footage.
Dance Central 2 keeps the beat going with playlists, improves 'Break It Down' mode
Dance Central players are well versed in the rote song selection of the original game, but Dance Central 2 will allow those who can't stop movin' to keep on keepin' on with playlists. Players can now chain multiple songs together to avoid being dumped into the song selection menu after every routine. "20 is the current cap," Harmonix's John Drake told us at Gamescom. He showed us the menu, which featured six customizable options and several pre-made playlists, like "high tempo" or an "easy start." Another nice detail is that the total time required to complete the set updates itself as you add tracks. The transitions between songs are less than 20 seconds, and specific tracks can be skipped if you aren't in the mood. We also checked out the game's new voice commands and "Break It Down" training mode. Voice selection is fully compatible in song selection (for both DC1 and DC2 tracks) and main menu. Drake demonstrated this by calling out several of the game's tracks. "Break It Down," the mode that teaches the routines, has experienced a significant upgrade. Players can now select specific portions of a song to practice, skip certain sections they know better, slow down to learn specific moves and then speed it up again when they think they've got it. And for those who feel they are definitely hitting a move right, despite what the game says, the Kinect can now record and play back a section to show exactly what's going wrong. Update: 20 is the playlist cap, removed ambiguity. %Gallery-130731%
Borderlands 2 improves UI for split-screen, now with online
Borderlands 2 will allow you to take you couch co-op companion online. Gearbox's Steve Gibson told Joystiq at the Gamescom reveal of the game that those playing split-screen will be able to go online and connect with two other players. "The only situation you can not do is split-screen plus split-screen because you need a host," Gibson said. "And a split-screen guy uses a lot of CPU, so he can not be the host." Another improvement for the sequel concerns the user interface, which has been reworked for split-screen. Now you can easily manage the upgrades menu without all that awkward scrolling around. %Gallery-130864%
Amnesia dev discusses success; next project won't lose the 'scary atmosphere'
Thomas Grip, project manager at Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional Games, spoke on "Evoking Emotions" earlier this week at GDC Europe, and explained the intricacies of the game that absolutely terrified those who played it. We wanted to discuss his emotions on the success of the game, which has sold over 400,000 copies --- an impressive feat for an indie dev. "While we were quite confident that we had a game that was better than any of our previous, we had never expected the response we got," Grip told us when we asked if he was surprised by the success. "The press response was very nice -- both in terms of coverage and grading -- but even more fun and surprising was the player response that continues almost a year after. The amount of videos, images, etc. that players have created in response to the game is just amazing, and several orders of magnitude larger than anything we have had. Sales-wise it's, of course, also overwhelming, and I think especially how good it is still selling even a year after."
Third Guild Wars 2 novel named: Sea of Sorrows
During a Gamescom Q&A panel earlier today, ArenaNet writer Ree Soesbee announced that she would be the one penning the highly anticipated third book in the Guild Wars 2 between-game trilogy. The title of the book will be Sea of Sorrows, and that's... kinda all we know about it right now. If you're not following along at home, the first two books in this series are titled Ghosts of Ascalon and Edge of Destiny, both of which are part of the trilogy that tells the story revolving around the 250 years between Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2. The impending release of this final novel in that trilogy simply brings us closer to an actual launch of Guild Wars 2 itself -- and possibly cures the world's hunger and brings world peace. We're not sure. Stay tuned to Massively for more on Sea of Sorrows as it's unveiled!
New SSX trailer shows off social features, Ridernet competition
The latest trailer out of Gamescom for EA's upcoming SSX shows off a little bit of that social functionality we just heard about. After a quick walk around the world and the previously revealed NASA terrain data (that was eventually turned into the game's maps), we get to see an example of how Ridernet will work. You can pull in a friend's (or, presumably, a stranger's) ghost run, then race it down a mountain anywhere in the game's world. You can also see a quick glimpse of the online gameplay, with "up to 100,000 players" competing all at once around the globe. Not on the same map, we hope -- that would probably get a little crowded. There's a few screenshots of all of this functionality (and a sassy-looking updated Elise) in the gallery below. %Gallery-131042%
The evolution of the 'Asura Pose'
Back at E3, Joystiq Features Editor JC Fletcher took the best picture ever, as seen above. Little did we know that Capcom's Kazuhiro Tsuchiya and CyberConnect2's Hiroshi Matsuyama would be so keen to show off their latest version of "The Asura Pose" this week at Gamescom after demoing Asura's Wrath. Osuuuu!
Groove to the beat of this new Sound Shapes trailer
Here at Joystiq, it's our job to know what you want. We've heard your cries for more trailers featuring attractive 20-somethings playing Sound Shapes, so here you go.
Seen@Gamescom: Need for Speed: The Pamphlets
No doubt, the city of Cologne takes Gamescom very, very seriously. With a quarter million visitors descending on the burg, marketing opportunities abound. There's Street Fighter X Tekken ads on cabs, Modern Warfare 3 mega banners in all the subway stations and every Media Markt (German Best Buy) street billboard in the city featuring hardware discounts. But, it's the Need for Speed: The Run / Gamestop leaflets lining the subway cars for the straphanger crowd that really caught our attention. By this evening, most of the ads had been taken by the ravenous Gamescom public.
PlayStation Vita has more RAM than PS3 (hey, cross-game chat!)
More is always better, right? For Sony's upcoming PlayStation Vita portable, more RAM means it has some features that big brother PlayStation 3 doesn't: namely, cross-game chat, courtesy of the console's Party system. "So the reason why we were able to include something like Party, which enables cross-game voice chat," Sony Worldwide Studios prez Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer, "is because we designed Vita so it always has enough resources to handle something like that behind the game while it's running." Sony has finally confirmed the specifications of the system's RAM, after rumors that the electronics giant had halved the RAM to better compete on price with the 3DS. "There were some rumours for the last few months. Some developer mentioned the RAM was halved. We never announced the amount of RAM, and we never changed it," Yoshida said. So in order to combat confusion, they went into Gamescom unafraid to share those details. And, without further ado, we'll share those deets! The PlayStation Vita has 512MB of RAM and 128MB of V-RAM, compared to the PlayStation 3's 256MB of system RAM and 256MB of video RAM. While that's half of the PS3's video RAM, Yoshida reminds us that the resolution of the two platforms is very different. "The resolution on the PS Vita screen is much lower," he explained. "Even though it's four times the resolution of PSP, compared to the console, the amount of data you have to push is much smaller." While this all sounds like good news, there is another reading: Since the Vita uses all that extra system RAM to allow for cross-game chat, one could assume Sony will remain unable to implement the long-requested feature on the PS3. Then again, nearly five years into the console's life, that inability should be pretty apparent to everyone by now. [Update: Apparent as it may be, we thought we'd share this additional quote that Eurogamer published. "Once a game gets RAM we never give it back," Yoshida said. "It's not possible to retrofit something like that after the fact."]
New End of Nations trailer goes meta
You can't fight here, this is the war room! Wait, you can? Nevermind, carry on. Today we have a new trailer from Gamescom highlighting Trion Worlds' End of Nation's metagame. The developers are careful to note that anyone can contribute to their nation's war effort, whether you're a green novice or a hardened veteran. The trailer also takes some time to highlight the different types of battle maps available to players, from the standard PvP map to the monumental mega maps, which feature up to 50 players on the map, each will a full army. The battles raging on each of these maps will determine which faction controls the territory, and each territory grants its controlling faction a different advantage. It's up to the players to decide which territory would most benefit their faction's current needs, and then to bring the firepower and capture the territory. For the full trailer, blast your way past the cut.
Seriously, give these Serious Sam 3: BFE screens from Gamescom a look
There's a GIANT SCORPION MAN THING in it for you.
Defiance drops in new screenshots, artwork
Hot off the press from Gamescom 2011, we bring you a new round of screenshots from the upcoming collaboration between Trion Worlds and SyFy, Defiance. For those of you not up to speed on what exactly Defiance is aiming to be, here's a crash-course. Defiance is set to be the first-ever collaborative effort between an MMO and a TV-show, with actions occurring in each influencing the story of the other. Players will be put in the shoes of the citizens of San Francisco Bay Area, while the TV show takes place in and around St. Louis. Earth is under attack by a mysterious breed of aliens who are looking to terraform Earth until it suits their own needs, and of course this means that all humans must die. Humanity isn't just going to take that sitting down, though, and it's up to players to fight off the alien hordes and reclaim their planet. Savvy? Great. Now hit the gallery below (and if you're new to the Defiance scene, go check out the trailer) for some new screenshots of this innovative title and prepare yourself to fight for the planet. That, or die trying. %Gallery-131087%
Binary Domain marks February 14 launch
Sega confirmed with hugs and kisses at Gamescom that Binary Domain will arrive February 14 and 17 in North America and Europe, respectively. The squad-based action game for Xbox 360 and PS3, by Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi, allows players to command their team via controller or voice commands. Speaking of the voice commands, the publisher admitted that feature still has some lag to work out before launch. During our Gamescom presentation today, we learned that professing love for your female squadmate in the middle of a battle against a robotic army won't be appreciated, indicating there are some nifty Easter Eggs to be found in the voice commands.
'Frobisher Says' it's time to see a new Vita game
If you haven't had enough PlayStation Vita media yet, here's an "absurd new game": Frobisher Says, a sort of WarioWare-style collection from developer Honeyslug. It appears to differentiate itself from other microgame collections with a really quirky art style, and this much, much quirkier trailer. According to the trailer, you'll fight bears, stir soups, and smash your face into a cake as it goes by on a model train. Now that we think about it, we could have said that part first and the quirk would have been self-evident.
