It seems with the somewhat calm past few weeks, the staff is digging into their backlog with titles like Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Nier, Dawn fo War 2: Chaos Rising, and Mass Effect 2. There's still room for the usual suspects like Halo Reach and World of Warcraft, but with February fast approaching with numerous releases - it's time to clear out the shelves to make room.
It's a new year, and its not a new rumor, but recent information has come to light lending more credence to the fact that Activision friendly studio Raven Software may be working on a Call of Duty title. A recent job posting on Raven's site is what's stirred up the hornets nest, here's the text:
Jeff Minter is firmly stuck in 1984 with retro graphics and gameplay. His latest releases all followed a similar style in titles like 1994's Tempest 2000 and more recently Xbox Live Arcade's Space Giraffe. What's up with throwing random creatures in space Jeff?
The Co-Optimus staff team were ready for Feb 22nd
The most lethal wetwork operators in the world have egos. Spouses who work all day and unwind at night with simulated violence have egos. Even co-op gamers - with no inkling to compete with other gamers - have egos.
Since our last time visiting with Deathspank he had a buddy with him - a goofy little wizard named Sparkles. Shortly after completing the first game, Deathspank makes a triumphant return in a sequel that feels an awful lot like an expansion Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue.
CES is on in Vegas and a plethora of new toys are on display. One fascinating piece of tech in the new Razer Switchblade, which promises to make PC gaming portable. They're not building a better mousetrap, they are revolutionizing the keyboard/mouse combo. The pitch:
Sometime over the holidays we missed Microsoft posting Crackdown 2 onto the Xbox Live Games on Demand. The four player co-op title features campaign co-op throughout - its a game with did quite the in depth review of - and for the most part - enjoyed what we got out of it. Its currently priced at $29.99 which, surprisingly, is the price it goes for at retail. This bucks the trend of digital releases on Xbox Live that seem to be priced higher than their retail counterparts.
It’s a the dirty term to PC gamers everywhere: DRM (Digital Rights Management). Ubisoft has so far been the industry leader in limiting, locking, and generally DRMing your games to the point many gamers will steer clear of the publisher at all costs. It’s a new year now, and one of Ubisoft’s resolutions for 2011 is to “relax the DRM” they add to their games. Not perfect, but it’s a start.
There's a boat-load of new content for PlayStation Plus subscribers in January and February. One of the new items is a full game trial of Borderlands, still one of the best co-op games around. There are a ton of other deals and sales. If you take advantage of all the savings it looks as if the Plus membership would almost pay for itself in just a few months. If you sign up by Groundhog's Day (February 2nd, for those of you not dependent on archaic seasonal predictions) you can get 15 months for the price of 12. What are you waiting for? As usual, non-paying PlayStation Network users will get nothing and like it.
Microsoft officially kicked off the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last night in Las Vegas with their keynote address. During the hour long presentation Microsoft CEO, Steve Balmer, shed some light on just how popular Microsoft's Kinect is. Originally estimated to sell around 5 Million units during the holiday season, Microsoft unveiled they actually sold 8 million units in the first sixty days of the device's existence. Quite impressive.
Never judge a game by its cover. Take this advice from a gamer who has bought more than their fair share of awful experiences based on a shiny font or awesome illustration. However, covers can help you work out what the developer is trying to push. In the case of Portal 2 this would appear to be the co-op elements. You could be forgiven for forgetting that Portal 2 has a solo campaign as Valve have continually looked to push the co-op campaign; releasing footage of the two metal auto bots in several trailers and screen shots. This continues with the newly released box art that shows the dynamic duo tackling one of the many puzzles they will come across.
