Dexter brings his blood splatter patterns to the Iphone

With its mountain of applications (many of which are games), the iphone and ipod touch are sorely in need of a killer app. While largely based on one's interests (you love the showtime series "Dexter", and don't mind simulated murder), its none the less one of the more graphics heavy games to come to the platform. Icarus studio's plans to release the first installement of the episodic iphone game later this summer. The above trailer clearly show's promise of rendering some good ol bay butcher justice.

First Look at C&C 4

So its official. Kane is back to cause mayhem and weather you root for peace through power or love raining death from above via orca gun ships, its going to be one hell of a ride. Make one wonder when Generals will get the go ahead to see the light of day rather then be stomped on in a march of endless sequels. But it's Kane so the theatrics should be good if nothing else. Check out the trailer below:

Dragon Age says Jolly Good to bestiality...among other things.

Bioware's upcoming RPG Dragon Age: Origins has finally clarified its stance on sexual encounters and how the game will be rated when it hits your local retail shelves. In keeping with the tradition of implied sexual encounters, the game will minus a pair of demon breasts not feature nudity beyond what was seen in mass effect.

So the game appears to be good for any over protective parent or rating concious company worried about impact of sexual content on sales. Or is it.

Bioware's been known to break ground with its story telling, breaking the taboo barrier was not in the cards. So when you set foot in the world of dragon age origins be prepared to visit the local brothel and get your jollies with a 'woman', 'man', transexual or even an animal.

If visions of mounting your mount send you running for the hills then never fear, your team mates will still be available for plot romances and shagging as in recent bioware titles.

Full details can be found via the ESRB here

First look at Iron man 2

The recently released trailer shows a game that expands beyond the movie. Eat your heart out mega man!

Gamefly Launches Ponged.com

In an effort to expand beyond the game rental business, Gamefly has launched the Ponged.com. The aim of the site is supply free to play flash games to the masses. Before writing off the venture as a has bins paradise of mediocrity, Gamefly goes out of its way to assure us that the "hard core" crowd is doing all the vetting work.

So does this mean games like Peggle will be sadly lacking or does that game somehow count as "hard core" ?

Should the PC prove too retro a platform for your gaming delight, the site is fully functional with both the web browsers available on the Wii and PS3.

Good bye Xbox Originals, Hello Games on Demand

While it appears to be simple re branding of "xbox originals" on xbox.com marketplace, it holds promise down the road. This coming August the new "Games on demand", featuring fully downloadable games just like the "xbox originals" section its replaced, will also be hosting a collection of 360 titles. Both 360 and arcade titles are seperate from the original xbox hits but sadly lacking in content when one looks into the 360 section.

Its odd that no official posting was done by microsoft in light of this shift in branding.

Xbox 360 Arcade Upgrading to 512MB onboard memory.

After being confirmed by Eurogamer, its now official that the jasper motherboards found in the arcade xbox 360 will be packing 512MB of memory. Unfortunitly this was done so that the arcade xbox's would be able to make full use of the new xbox experience. Looks like we still need to buy memory cards.

Initial impressions: Terminator Salvation

By: AL3x



yesterday Terminator Salvation arrived in the mail. I'm about 3 chapters in and have a lukewarm response to the game. I'll state the pro's and con's at the end of this post. To summarize, you are john Connor in the year 2016 and rather then being the bad ass portrayed in the movie, you're still finding your footing in world of AI challenged machines. You'll regularly be paired with Blair Williams as you fight your way through hopelessly linear and unimaginative levels, battling terminators that always seem to have nicknames like "spiders", and "wasps".

Skynet's not the most creative psychotic super computer this time around. Essentially there are only 4 (three really since the skin job is just a diguised T600), main enemies to confront excluding the occasional airborne hunter killer gun ships. The T-7-T is four legged juggernaut that is heavily shielded in front but easily taken down from behind where its batteries are CONVIENTLY exposed. One has to wonder if Skynet needs to beta test its designs before going into full scale production. Aerostats are your annoying airborne foes that resemble all of spark's laser shooting robots in the Halo series. They die just as easily, if not more so. The not yet encountered T600 and skin jobs are supposedly "seemingly unbeatable", according to the game manual. I'm not holding my breath for that to ring true.

Excluding some mind numbing revelation farther down the road, the game appears to be a 65%. I know that seems harsh but it feels tacky to the core. The enemies are easily defeated even playing on the hardest difficulty setting. I'm guessing maybe 8-10 hours of game play if that. Baring a full review early next week, I don't see things improving much in the days to come. I could be wrong though, perhaps a seductive fem bot will appear to help save the day a la Sarah Connor Chronicles.

PROS: Short, large amounts of gamer points for easily aquired achievements. Its a terminator game.

CONS: lacks depth, linear events, unchallenging AI, ok looking graphics.

New DS...an upgrade not a remake.

Nintendo has been selling the DS lit as though it were a drug to millions of hard core and soft core gamers. The Playstation portable has been a rudderless ship plagued with low quality ports of hit Playstation one and two titles with lackluster original IPs. Killzone liberation anyone ?

Nintendo rather then wait for its rivals at Sony or Apple (yes some consider apple's touch screens to be handheld gameing systems), to come out with the next generation of handhelds, Nintendo has instead chosen to release its new handheld (DSi), this Christmas in Japan.

We in the States and across the pond in Europe will likely see the new device hitting store shelves in early 2009.

The Nintendo DSi is an upgrade and not an outright revolution. It will play your favorite Nintendo DS lit titles (last gen compatible), but sadly shows no love for the Game Boy advanced generation of games which will not work as there is no port for said games.

The DSi will snap pictures with two different camera's, one facing outward (shown below), resembles the camera's found on apple's macbooks and is capable of take photo's 300,000 pixels large, which in lam ens terms equals out to 640X480 resolution.



The DSi will be able to store and playback music from an SD card which an be inserted into the right side of the DSi. In addition to matching the PSP in terms of audio capabilities, the DSi will also be able to download entire games for ($2-10), via a wi-fi connection from a virtual store. This is clearly a nod to the successful strategy Nintendo and to a lesser extent Microsoft have been employing with their Wii and 360 consoles, both of which have online stores chalk full of AAA, retro and indie titles.

The DSi is retailing for 18,900 yen, or about $185. Its more expensive then the DS lit and its really just an upgrade at the end of the day. If you really need the camera and audio capabilities then go for it, but if your existence will be rendered less fulfilling if deprived of your old GBA titles then feel free to sit this one out.

As for myself, I'll be giving my DS lit to a friend or relative the minute the DSi hits store shelves here in the US. The prospect of sticking it to gamestop by purchasing retro games online is just too tantalizing to ignore.

...................

Sources: BBC / Wired

New Bungie IP ?

Bungie has released a trailer that shows a futuristic society blown to pieces in a flurry of asteroid type impacts. Is this a new installment in the widely successful Halo series or...something more ?

Windows 7 to automatically patch games

With Games for Windows and Windows Vista both being medicore at best and dismal 6 billion dollar failures (vista), at worst, Microsoft could concievably be looking to remedy both tragedies with a single silver bullet. Another operating system!

Windows 7 isn't due out till January of 2010 but if the screenshots leaked out by ThinkNext and referenced by both Wired and ShackNews hold true from now until then, the OS will both alert users that updates exist for games and include an "auto-update", feature removing the otherwise mundane task of manually updating.

Price cuts = sales boom in japan for 360

Until fairly recently most journalists and avid video gamers had written off the land of the rising sun (japan), to be off limits or nearly so, given the difficulty forieghn companies have faced in a country that still shows a strong loyalty to for all its indigenous companies. Sony and Nintendo seem to just plain dominate the market, especially the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS, while the Playstation 3 caters to those with a need for more mature and gore filled titles (which you actually find in japan. Sorry USA.).

To buck this trend Microsoft cut prices on its consoles sold in a market where its had the hardest time getting market share. The ploy seems to have worked with 28,681 consoles sold to Nintendo's 27,057 consoles.

Adding to this impressive figure, Tales of Vesperia has become to Japan what the Halo series has been to America. While we prefer a good old fashioned FPS, the japanese are more inclined to opt for 40+ hours of play in an anime RPG. Tales of Vesperia caused the 360 to be sold out even before the price cuts were announced on September 11th.

Xbox 360 price cut...plus yet another SKU.

Microsoft has finally confirmed what everyone has been speculating on for the better part of two weeks if not more. That the first of the next generation consoles will take a price cut. Obviously this is aimed at making the 360 more affordable and competitive with the nintendo wii.

The Pro system with a 20GB hard drive is now $299 down from 349.99 originally. Meanwhile the elite and arcade will continue to sell for $449 and $280 respectively.

The new SKU retailing at the pro's former price point of $349 will sport a 60GB hard drive (20GB more then the cheapest PlayStation 3), and be available in August.

The real issue here at L337 Gamer Review is why on earth anyone would fork over money for an arcade (formerly core), system ? It has no hard drive and comes with a wired controller and an ugly looking box. The damn thing is crippled (no ethernet cable, HD output (composite video cables instead), no headset or BACKWARDS COMPATABILITY).

Yet for just 20 dollars more you now can have all of what the arcade lacks. Even if your a dirt poor college student, you can scrounge around under seat cushions and come up with 20 bucks.

source: CNET

Graduating to the Xbox360

Recently Gamasutra ran an article in which Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, makes the bold claim that wii owners are going to eventually "graduate", to Microsoft's system of choice: Xbox 360 weather it be arcade, pro or elite. My own personal view on this is that the hardware isn't relevant. I wouldn't consider chucking my 360 for a wii just like I wouldn't have considered chucking my xbox for a gamecube in the last console war. So do graphical might and huge price tags carry the day ? No.

While I am firmly rooted in the Xbox camp for this round of the console war, I and many others who own either 360's or PS3's carry around Nintendo's portable gaming system, the Nintendo DS. Why ? Well its because of software and innovative controls. There is a vast library of DS and backward compatible Game Boy Advanced games for us to splurge on, weather its pre-owned bargain bin favorites at game stop (or gamecrazy), or the endless number of new and sometimes over the top (civilization:revolution DS) releases coming out each month.

One could assume I'd be rooting for the Wii or even the PS3 looking at the console war long term. While I'll certainly be buying a PS3 to enjoy blue-ray goodness and a select few games (as well as a massive PS2 library), the wii is an entirely different matter.

While I jump for joy at the idea of a game like wii fit that gets us off our collective asses to do something beneficial for ourselves. I'm not pleased with the idea of rescuing princess peach AGAIN, or playing wiisports when I don't like sports to begin with and anyone thinking playing sports on a console makes them good at said sports in real life is as about as socially inept as they come. Need we tread down the humiliating path of Dance Dance Revolution yet again ?

Software is king, hardware is an important starting point that can easily become a non-starter assuming we don't have high quality games to play on the damn box's that we drop several hundred dollars for every new console war. The Xbox 360 according to Microsoft should have over 1000 titles by the end of 2008 and they are the only ones to make a big push for indie developed games through XNA. Almost everything that is coming out of any importance on the PlayStation 3 is also coming out on the 360. Lastly, while the people at Nintendo are attempting to make it easier to develop indie games through wiiware, more often then not there is a consensus that most of the games for the wii are garbage unless they are developed by Nintendo. The software conclusion is that Nintendo lacks third party games, Sony's PlayStation 3 lacks exclusivity like the PSP lacks direction and the Xbox 360 could be doing much more then it has been in terms of prices and making life easier for XNA developers.

Market share is another issue we hear on a daily basis, this is a little harder to look at since these numbers have a psychological impact. If most of jimmy's friends are playing with console B instead of console C, then he'll be tempted to jump ship (coward that he is), and buy console B and sell down the river is former console C. The rumored price drops for all of the 360 SKU's not withstanding, I think the Wii will be a strong contender in terms of sales and market share for years to come but ultimately turning out to be hollow in terms of reputation amongst anyone who buys more then one or two games a year (or gets mommy and daddy to do it). I'm looking to spend 500-1000 dollars on video games in 2008 and I'm nearly at the half way mark and its all software. No additional controllers or headsets (though they are the weakest link in the 360's hardware chain...besides the box itself of course).

So Mr.Greenberg and dear readers, while Microsoft would like to think it will see the same sales numbers as Nintendo, it simply isn't anything more then arrogant dilutions of grandeur over in Redmond Washington. The being said, Microsoft has had over 3 positive quarters of profitability on the Xbox 360 and a massive library of games that are competitive with games found on PC. In a world where PC gamers are becoming disaffected with hardware price tags, its worth noting that the 360 could well be the answer to this gameing segments pix elated needs. That is worth more then any graduation ceremony...even if the after party was ridiculously awesome.

Video Games surpass DVD's

So this being the 100Th L337 Gamer Blog post, I thought I'd ring it in with a ground breaking event...of sorts. While the gaming industry has been surpassing the total gross of the movie theaters (9.6 billion in 2007), for awhile now, its finally done the same to the DVD industry. The gaming industry took in 18.85 billion during 2007 while the DVD format (Blue-ray not yet important enough to warrant a comparison of any kind), took in 16 billion for 2007.


On a lighter note, I've just completed Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, and will be posting a review in a day or so. Meanwhile I'm awaiting my review copy of "Alone in the Dark" as well as receiving a review copy of "DBZ burst limit", sometime in the same time frame.

Its fair to say that all I'll be doing is programming and gaming for the foreseeable future. SupCom review also coming next week.

source:GameSpot

Four new HALO Wars screenshots

Ensemble Studios, the developer that brought us the age of empire's series has released fresh screenshots of the upcoming console RTS, Halo Wars. Until the playable demo makes an appearence at E3 you'll just have to get by on these sweet screenshots.

Supreme Surrender delivers lots of laughs for SupCom fans

Anyone who's watched Rooster Teeth's hit series red vs blue or played supreme commander can appreciate the utter hilarity the unfolds in these first two episodes of the series Supreme surrender. Watch and Enjoy.

New Gears of War 2 Multiplayer game play trailer

Diablo 3 announced

Blizzard Entertainment has dropped what some are regarding as a bombshell and others (like the folks at Joystiq), have been prophesizing about these past few weeks. Diablo 3. While the opening ceremonies were getting underway at Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational tournament event in Paris, Blizzard broke the news and officially announced Diablo 3 to be in development, though like Starcraft 2, is lacking in a release date. My own two cents is that everyone at Blizzard is currently either tied up maintaining and expanding WoW or putting the finishing touches on Starcraft 2, and thus we won't see this third installment in the Diablo trilogy till sometime in 2009 or later.





The previous team to work on the Diablo series, Blizzard North being no more (they split up and some even got together to create the Hellgate: London, developer Flagship Studios.



In an age of Conan and WoW monopoly (sorry Guild Wars, I've been questioning NcSoft's commitment to gaming lately), what could this possible 2009 title offer us that we haven't already seen ? For starters, the game will feature a customized version of Havok physics which in lamens terms means that you'll get realistic objects and clothing along with destructible environments. Now if you can permanently alter the landscapes and return to do a little remodeling later on then I can definitely see not only replay-ability but also a fair amount of cheer from those of us who make it our solemn duty to create tricked out maps. Like all previous installments of the Diablo series, this one will be free and not carry a pesky and expensive monthly subscription fee. The most striking difference thus far though is the fact it will launch on both PC and MAC! Aside from being biased toward what I consider the best platform and computer available (not 100% given that yours truly using a macbook and not a Pro), its saying something about the change a few years makes to see the mac again being considered not only large enough a platform but also a profitable one that consumes and demands gaming software.






Until further notice I'll be awaiting an official release date on Starcraft 2 with Diablo 3 in the back of my mind as a game to check out this upcoming year. You may want to check out Blizzards official Diablo 3 site in the meantime

Atari cuts its losses in half

David Gardner and Phil Harrison have managed it seems to set atari on track to turn a profit by halving its net year to year losses in half. Net income loss was reduced from 159.9 million last year to 79.2 million this year, while operating loss improved from USD 95.8 million to 70.6 million) in the same period.

While Atari Inc in north america and infograms have merged and essentially become one entity, the overall bottom line has taken a hit as profits have dipped down from 473.5 million in 2007 to 352.2 million this year.

Now Alone in the Dark was delayed and this undoubtedly affected Atari's bottom line. The upcoming games Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit and Alone in the Dark are widely expected to sell well and lift Atari up to profitabality.

When will Atari be back in black ? The company has forecast a 12-18 per cent growth in net revenues for fiscal 2009, and is confident of becoming profitable at the current operating income level within 18 months and remain so on an annual basis after that.

Atari, Inc. Reports Fiscal 2008 Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results