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Sweeping changes to Hellgate: London in Abyss Chronicles
Hell is about to get even hotter, as Flagship Studios prepares to unleash fresh content for Hellgate: London. Our sister blog Big Download has some posted new screenshots of the upcoming Abyss Chronicles for HG:L, as well as info on the 2.0 and 2.1 updates to the title. Patch 2.0 will be Hellgate: London's second major content update, and brings with it a host of new features and changes to the game. The build is likely to go live on the Test Server in the next week, but until then, here's Big Download's breakdown of the 2.0 changes: A new quest line that covers the spread of the Abyss through Parliament Square and the survivors' efforts to fight back A major rebalancing of the Blademaster class A complete PvP overhaul, including achievements, rankings, rewards, and a new CTF team gametype Changes to the Shared Stash, such as a separate pane for each difficulty Addition of two new trinket slots for players to add rings and such to their characters An attribute respec NPC that allows players to remove points from an attribute for a fee-per-point Three new skills for each class A consignment house (read: auction house) where players can sell stuff to other players without direct trading Beyond rolling out The Abyss Chronicles with 2.0, the next area Flagship Studios is focusing on is PvP through Patch 2.1. The patch will 'open up an entirely new side to Hellgate: London' by introducing five cohesive elements of PvP in a single update: ranking, matchmaking, rewards, achievements, and Capture the Flag. The end result is what Flagship describes as 'a robust PvP experience.'
Blue Underground goes Blu-ray, announces initial slate of releases
Fitting, isn't it? Blue Underground, a well-respected distributor of cult / horror films, has decided to start releasing projects on Blu-ray Discs. Additionally, we now know the first half dozen flicks that it plans on releasing: The Final Countdown, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Stendhal Syndrome, Maniac, Vigilante and Fire and Ice, though we're sure hits like Uncle Sam, Dead and Buried and Two Evil Eyes won't be far behind. Each disc will boast 1080p transfers, 7.1 DTS-HD / Dolby TrueHD audio tracks, D-Box Motion Code (on select titles) and a plethora of extras. We're still curious to see how the transfers turn out, but this is certainly good news for underground horror fanatics.[Via DVDTalk, thanks Don]
Comic Watch: Penny Arcade bets on Ponystars
Those impish ne'er-do-wells at Penny Arcade have taken the reins and presented a comic replete with our two favorite topics: human-created abominations of nature, and Ponystars. Our admiration for the latter is obvious, but it could only take the talents of Messrs Brahe and Gabriel to perfectly evoke our passion for the former.Will this comic make you more likely to want to try the game? Although many initially express distaste for the genre, if not outright indignance at the mere mention of its pastorally quasi-equestrian delights, once presented with the possibility of assembling a hideous hooved horror, we've seen many a neigh-sayer quickly bray out a mea culpa and get straight to their dark work. (Note: this is a work of parody; no actual pixelated ponies were harmed in the making of the comic. NSFW language follows.)
Hellgate: London giveths and takeths away
Flagship Studios announced some changes to Hellgate: London in the form of Patch 1.3b, which should resolve issues with the ill-fated Patch 1.3a. Indeed, the month of May has turned out to be HellPatch: London for Flagship and HG: L fans, with the patches even being patched. Some players who logged into the Test Server recently found that their characters were gone and, fearing the worst, assumed (incorrectly) that a character wipe had taken place. This was not the case at all; a Test Center database crash was the culprit, and a restore from backup solved the issue. Now that the updated patch has been rolled out, nightly restarts of the live servers have ceased, as of May 20th. The reboots were a precaution to prevent server instability while issues were being resolved. A notable change in Patch 1.3b is that HG: L now blocks non-subscribers from party portaling into subscriber-only areas. Although this change will likely disappoint the gamers who play for free, a quest NPC previously available only to paying players is now available to non-subs. Whether or not this balances the scales for the non-subs remains to be seen, but portaling into restricted areas would seem to be an exploit. The other changes and fixes in Patch 1.3b are numerous, and affect non-subscribers and subscribers alike. The complete breakdown is found after the jump:
Watch this Twilight Syndrome trailer before it gets dark outside
We noticed two things while watching the new trailer for Spike's horror adventure game Twilight Syndrome: Kinjiraneta Toshi Densetsu (Twilight Syndrome: The Forbidden Urban Legend) (which you can access by going to the site and clicking the button indicated above): It looks exactly like a creepy version of Gyakuten Kenji, with a schoolgirls in place of Miles Edgeworth and Dick Gumshoe Zoinks! Like, we gotta get outta here, Scoob! Seriously, we were expecting hilarity out of this trailer and, while some of the artwork looked goofy, and the actual gameplay bits looked not-scary-at-all, we got pretty freaked out. Not "get up and hide" level, or "stop blogging" level, but there was at least one heebie-jeebie involved. We know that the urgent music is designed specifically to try to get a panic response out of us.The horror genre is taking off on the DS in Japan, but the U.S. has Dementium and pretty much nothing else. Who's going to be the first to localize? Twilight Syndrome would be a good choice, as part of an existing horror series, for which a movie has just been announced.%Gallery-20543%[Via Famitsu]
Joystiq hands-on: Silent Hill: Homecoming
click to enlarge scary-size What's scarier: Silent Hill, or finding out that the latest game in the series isn't being developed by the folks who made the last five games? For many fans, it was the latter when, at E3 2007, Konami revealed that Western outfit The Collective (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marc Ecko's Getting Up) – now Double Helix – would be crafting the creeps this time 'round.Things, as they are wont to do, change ... but from our time with the latest playable version of Silent Hill: Homecoming, we were more scared by the game than we were about how it's going to turn out. The generally positive vibe was generated in large part by what lead designer Jason Allen told us is changing – but also what isn't. Full impressions after the break.%Gallery-22985%
Simple frights await you in this Abandoned Building
Abandoned buildings (in this case a hospital), spooky little child spirits -- sometimes the most popular horror clichés can still be highly effective. D3 clearly thinks so, anyway, because it's included both of the above in its latest Simple game, Simple DS Series: Vol. 42 - The Abandoned Building.From what we could gather from machine translation, you play as journalist Akira Kashiwagi, who sets out to an old, closed-down hospital to investigate the murder of four youngsters twenty years ago. It's played from a first-person perspective, you can hide in various spots throughout the hospital (lockers, for example), and it looks scary.Needless to say, that first shot past the break (of the little girl peering through the elevator doors) will stay with us for our next few sleepless nights.
'Strong chance' Eternal Darkness will return, but will it be for Wii?
One of our most favorite GameCube games is Eternal Darkness. Even though the combat isn't that great, the game just did a wonderful job of screwing with our mind. When a game screws with you to the point that you believe it when it tells you that the memory card inserted into your console has no data on it, causing you to reboot the system and access the memory card directly, its experiences stick with you. At least, it stuck with us.Now, Silicon Knights' Dennis Dyack has commented that there is a pretty good chance his company will be returning to the IP for another title. "There is a chance; we love all the games we work on," he commented. "We don't want to be pigeon-holed [into a genre], we want to be known for strong content...There's a strong chance we'll return to it, but there's no announcements yet." So, good news for fans of the first title, however this is likely going to be a sore spot for some of you. Even though they remain open to developing a game for the Wii, with their work on the Too Human trilogy, the likelihood of that happening is probably pretty slim right now.Who else would do despicable, disgusting things to play an Eternal Darkness sequel on the Wii?[Via Go Nintendo]
Requiem: Bloodymare slashes its way to open beta
Temperions to arms! The battle against the darkness of Ethergia has begun again as Gravity announces the start of the open beta for their newest title, Requiem: Bloodymare. The doors to Ethergia will open up once again starting this Thursday, May 15th, at 7 PM PDT (10 PM EST) and will stay open for an undisclosed amount of time.This phase of the beta will be open to everyone, both closed beta players and the public. All that's required is the new Requiem client, which can be downloaded from the playrequiem.com website, and a Requiem account. All prior accounts will be reset, and all new characters will start off in a totally new tutorial space called Turba Island.This change already addresses one of the large gripes from the previous test - the lack of a decent tutorial space. It seems that Gravity has been listening to all of the feedback they've received about Requiem during the closed beta, and are working to improve upon their game. However, only time will tell as to what else has been changed and added to by the Requiem team.
Mitewa Ikenai: creepy photography both in and about the game
Famitsu has posted some new screens of Mitewa Ikenai (Don't Look), the horror game about investigating photographs to look for ghosts. They look really weird, basically -- due in part to the mosaic blur on everyone's face, and due in part to the, uh, creepy ghost stuff happening in the photos.While you can search for supernatural events in the game's photos, you'll have very little trouble identifying super-skeezy events in the rest of the Famitsu article's pictures. Somehow -- perhaps because of the photography theme -- it made sense for Dimple to promote this game by having former AV idol Nana Natsume come to the Famitsu offices and take pictures in which the magazine's editors pretend to sexually harass her. The video at the end, of Natsume praying at a shrine, is clean.%Gallery-19048%
Is there life in MMOs after the fantasy genre?
Most of the AAA subscription MMOs are set in the fantasy genre. Many of the in-development titles are set in the fantasy genre. The most popular massive game in the US is a fantasy title. So when is the industry going to get over this hangup on orcs and elves? Is there even an MMO industry without the fantasy setting? Those are the questions asked by Oli Welsh today at the GamesIndustry.biz site. Welsh returns to the conclusion many have reached when examining buzz, marketing, sales figures, and new games: players are just as 'risk-adverse' as publishers are when it comes to new game settings.As we at Massively have done in the past, the author goes on to hope for a future with a little more bravery in tackling genre tropes. He lauds Cryptic's adherence to the four-color comic book world, and offers high hopes for 'real life' titles like All Points Bulletin or The Agency. Ultimately, he says, it may just be the case that a developer needs to take the Diku-mud style of game perfected by SOE and Blizzard and transpose that sensibility to another genre. Though Tabula Rasa and the modern incarnation of Star Wars Galaxies approaches that style, there really isn't a good, working "EverQuest with lasers" out there. Perhaps the likes of Red 5 or Carbine will ride up on an armored hoverbike to offers us a new and (possibly) better way.
New Silent Hill: Homecoming screenshots be freaky, foggy
Though the characters in Wes Craven's magnum opus would be an obvious exception, we're pretty sure that protagonists in horror movies have never seen horror movies -- looking at the Silent Hill series, it's clear this rule applies to video games as well. Not that we're complaining, as if the characters in Konami's beloved horror series would collectively realize that abandoned, fog-filled towns are abandoned and fog-filled for a reason, they would probably stop going to them in search of deceased or missing wives/offspring/brothers -- and we wouldn't have these gorgeous screenshots from the upcoming Silent Hill: Homecoming to drool over. So thanks, horror genre characters. Your obvious ineptitude for danger avoidance may deliver you into the jaws of certain doom, but it provides us with near-limitless entertainment -- and really, isn't that more important in the long run? Gallery: Silent Hill: Homecoming
Nanashi no Game looking more and more like a creepy Hotel Dusk
Being an adventure title played with the DS held on its side, it's easy to draw a quick comparison between Square Enix's Nanashi no Game and Cing's Hotel Dusk, but this video walk through of the horror game's 3D halls further pronounces the similarities.Of course, just as Hotel Dusk had its "Take on Me" art direction, Nanashi no Game has its own gimmick -- you've stumbled across a cursed retro RPG (Hydlide?) that is said to kill whoever plays the game within a week. The Ring, much?Interestingly, Square Enix has taken care to take advantage of the DS's speakers to provide 3D sound, so you can actually hear audio cues that really sound like they're coming from behind you. Thus, it's recommended that you play Nanashi no Game with headphones.Bring a flashlight and a kitchen knife into the gallery below for the horror title's boxart, as well as screenshots from Nanashi no Game and its cursed RPG.%Gallery-21570%[Via Game Watch]
A closer, creepier look at Nanashi no Game
Square Enix's horror adventure game Nanashi no Game looks way interesting. We find the game (about a haunted game that kills people in seven days) so cool, in fact, that it's completely worth posting these direct-feed versions of what we saw in a much blurrier scan a couple of days back.The main game uses the layout seen here: a vertical Brain Age-style orientation, with the actual game view stretching across both screens. The use of first person is apparently a design decision, with the intention of making you feel like you have no idea what's behind you. It also uses some kind of 3D sound programming to be even more immersive.Nanashi no Game is about a student who becomes a sort of hero to his peers by bravely playing an old game that is supposedly cursed. When he goes home, he finds -- a portable copy of that same game! (scream) The title screen of this retrogame is even all glitched out for extra creepiness.
Nanashi no Game: Square Enix's new meta-horror game
The latest issue of Famitsu has screens and information about a new DS horror game from Square Enix. Nanashi no Game (Nameless Game) seems to try to convince players that they are in danger even as the characters are in danger.The concept is like The Ring, but on your DS: a cursed game kills everyone who plays it within seven days. It looks from the scans like your character plays this game; but somehow, so do you. There's a fake retro RPG that will no doubt begin dripping with insanity effects, and even a fake DS menu through which you'll receive creepy messages. We're not sure how the main game works, and how it interacts with all these little fourth-wall-breaking touches, but we're sure we'll find out soon. Square Enix is apparently releasing this in July.
Japan gets demented this summer
Fans of Dementium (see: uh, DS Fanboy), you should pay attention. The game is headed to Japan in a few months, as it will see a release to the region on June 26th. It will retail for a price of 5,040 Yen. Other than that, Japanese gamers should pretty much know what they're in for. The game was, in our eyes, an under-appreciated gem and a very competent FPS on a system lacking them. We can't wait to see what Renegade Kid has in store for us with their next game.%Gallery-4929%
Student-made DS games can be downloaded from Japanese Wiis
Student-created DS games are nothing new in Japan, thanks to Nintendo's game seminars. When the students finish their games, Nintendo usually makes them available at DS Download Stations so that other people throughout Japan can play and enjoy them.The company has just one-upped itself, though, by allowing DS owners to download these games from their Wiis. From now until April 22nd, Wakeari no Heya Tsuzuki (a horror game that is played book style) will be available for download on the Minna no Nintendo Channel (Everybody's Nintendo Channel), with more student-made games likely to follow.While anyone outside of Japan (unless you've imported a Japanese Wii) can't do anything but look on jealously, we have to admit that this is a great move by Nintendo. Nintendo of Japan, that is. From what we hear, the students' games are actually pretty good, and offering them to millions of people benefits both the students who've created them and DS owners who want to play them. Even though the game seminar titles were made available to the public before via DS Download Stations, using DS/Wii connectivity to host them will only make them more accessible than ever.Still, seeing all the potential of the Everybody's Nintendo Channel with the DS and not actually having it is pure torture.
More high school horrors: Twilight Syndrome
Just when you think it's safe to put on your schoolgirl uniform, Spike announces another addition to the DS's nascent horror genre -- Twilight Syndrome: Kinjiraneta Toshi Densetsu (Twilight Syndrome: The Forbidden Urban Legend).The new title has two high school girls fending off ghosts and other supernatural forces while they investigate a mysterious set of chain text messages. Making sure its game elicits the right amount of screams and squeals from you, Spike has brought in horror director Osamu Fukutani (e.g. Saigo no Bansan, Jisatsu Manyuaru) to help with the script. The initial batch of screenshots -- which you can view in the gallery below -- show the skirt-clad protagonists exploring a seemingly empty school and meddling with a ouija board, the latter likely requiring touchscreen interaction. Creepy! Expect Twilight Syndrome to hit stores in Japan and haunt your homeroom this July 26th.%Gallery-20543%[Via Siliconera]
The Daily Grind: Your favorite genre
There's a pretty even split here on the team when you ask everyone what their favorite genre is. A goodly portion of us really love paladins, shamans, thieves, and shadow knights. The worlds of fantasy are their stomping ground and they absolutely love nothing more than questing, raiding, and adventuring along in a more mystical world. The other chunk of the team seems to love the cold hard clank of metal on metal, dogfights in space, alien menace, cybernetics and laser beams. The sci-fi world of mankind is their home, lands that span galaxies, in worlds we can only dream of traveling to. Of course, there are also those who love other genres, which are equally as interesting, if a little less widely-written for, like games based on historical lands, or the occasional zombie horror MMO.This morning we thought we'd ask you which genre really appeals to you. Are there any particular genres that you'll follow more closely than others just to see the new titles coming out for it? Or do you tend to genre hop, enjoying them all pretty equally?
Mitewa Ikenai: More horror for the DS
Still looking for a DS game to scare you out of your wits? Joshikousei Nigeru and its undead schoolgirls didn't do the trick? How about the creepy audio message in Jam Sessions? Mitewa Ikenai (You Mustn't Look), Dimple's latest, could be the horror title you've been waiting for!Due for release in Japan this summer, Mitewa Ikenai haunts you with two different modes -- one in which you examine photographs to spot paranormal inconsistencies, and an adventure game in which you investigate a home terrorized by an evil supernatural being.It's like having your own portable episode of Ghost Hunters, except you don't have to wait until Wednesday night to watch it! Also, you don't have to suffer some tool insisting that every unexplained sound was a sign of communication from the dead. Ignore the warning and take a look at our You Mustn't Look screenshots in the gallery below.%Gallery-19048%[Via Game Watch]
