MMO Clerks

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories lets you search with your flashlight by pointing the Wii remote.
Image courtesy Konami

SAN FRANCISCO — The creators of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories want to reinvent the videogame horror experience on Wii.

It’s not just about using the Wiimote as a flashlight so your character focuses on things you’re pointing at, or about making radio noises crackle out of the controller’s speaker, although Shattered Memories does both those things. Instead, the Konami developers are taking a much more radical approach: They are re-evaluating all the horror game tropes that earlier Silent Hill games helped establish, and throwing out things that don’t work.

For instance, you won’t have to worry about getting into awkward combat with shambling zombies in Shattered Memories, which is scheduled for release later this year. And you won’t have to run around every room humping every wall and mashing the A button to find hidden secrets. [...]

Original post by Chris Kohler

Capcom was the big winner again in March: Resident Evil 5 outsold every other videogame in the U.S. last month.

The Xbox 360 version alone came in at 938,000 copies sold, with the PlayStation 3 version at 585,000, according to the NPD Group’s sales results for the U.S. videogame industry in March 2009. This suggests that Microsoft’s efforts to co-market the 360 version were quite well received. Recall that last month, Capcom’s top-selling Street Fighter IV sold roughly equal amounts on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
(The Xbox 360 number does not include copies bundled with Xbox hardware, NPD says.)
Other big games for March included Nintendo’s Pokemon Platinum and Microsoft’s Halo Wars.
On the hardware side, it’s the same old story. Everything’s down from February, as usually happens in March.

Wii    601K

Nintendo DS    563K
Xbox 360    330K
PlayStation 3    218K

PSP    168K
PlayStation 2    112K

Software chart and broader industry analysis below.
Top 10 [...]

Original post by Chris Kohler

Come April 24, Capcom will release the latest downloadable add-on for Street Fighter IV. Unlike past offerings however, the "Championship Mode" DLC will be free of charge and aimed directly at "serious players."
"Street Fighter
IV’s new Championship Mode update expands on the
fighting fun by offering players the chance to compete in
tournaments and to watch replays of the best tournament
matches," Capcom said this morning via press release.
Obviously the replays are pretty self-explanatory, but how will the DLC handle tournament play? Capcom explains:

Championship Mode offers you the chance to compete
in 5 different grades of tournaments, creating the right challenge
for players of every skill level. You’ll score Grade Points (GP) for tournament wins, and
as your GP total grows, you’ll become eligible to enter into more exclusive
tournaments. Winning tournaments will also net you Championship
Points (CP). 
CP are like “prize money”
up for grabs in the tournament. The higher the GP skill of the players in a
particular tournament, [...]

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

The latest trailer for Batman: Arkham Asylum spotlights the appealing insanity of The Joker’s top henchwoman, Harley Quinn.
More than that though, it perfectly encapsulates why so many of us have high hopes for this game: Despite its realistic graphics, it doesn’t ruin our memories of the classic Dini-Timm animated series of the 1990s.
That’s the image of Batman I (and presumably many of you) grew up on, and to a generation, that is the ultimate ideal of what these characters should be. Including Quinn — a character who originated in the animated series — and having Kevin Conroy again voice Bruce Wayne and his cowled alter ego is a smart design decision.
Now let’s just hope the actual gameplay lives up to all these crossed fingers.
See Also:

A First-Hand Tour of Batman: Arkham Asylum’s Madhouse
Batman: Arkham Asylum ‘Close To Perfect,’ Publisher Says
Lego Batman Deemed ‘Oppressive,’ ‘Destructive’ to Kids

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

City of Heroes’ recently released Mission Architect is a huge hit with fans — so much so that the amateur creators have used the add-on to craft record-breaking numbers of additional mission arcs for the superhero MMO.
“By midnight on day one, we had over 2600 arcs, and exactly 24 hours
after launch we were already at 3800 arcs,” reads an official post from Paragon Studios’ Matt “Positron” Miller.
“We did some data mining of
our own, and 3,800 surpasses the amount of content that we, the
developers, have made for all of City of Heroes and City of Villains
combined. In just one day our users did more than we could in almost
five years.”
Miller says players have also begun sifting through the vast number of missions, and offering comprehensive reviews. “They have even gone so far as to make movie-style posters, comic-style
covers, and in some cases machinima using the in-game models to promote
their arcs,” [...]

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

In the gaming world, March 2009 will be remembered for its successes as well as for the games that fell short.
As reported Wednesday by the NPD Group, Capcom hit it big with Resident Evil 5, selling 1.5 million copies across both platforms. Halo Wars did well for Microsoft; perennial performer Pokemon cashed in for Nintendo.
But sales of some critically acclaimed, Mature-rated games were not as impressive. Gamasutra reported that Sega’s Wii game MadWorld (above) and Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for DS sold only 66,000 and 89,000 units, respectively.
EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich, ahead of the NPD release, said that Chinatown Wars‘ performance "confirms that attempting to release a major AAA title on the Nintendo DS, targeted at a mature demographic, carries significantly elevated risk. With the majority of publishers currently taking a risk-adverse stance, we expect this to slow the growth rate of future mature rated titles on [...]

Original post by Chris Kohler

Yet again, only a day after I talk up Burnout Paradise’s upcoming “Cops And Robbers” add-on, developer Criterion Games drops important new information, in this case, an official release date.
For those who missed our previous coverage, the “Cops And Robbers” add-on offers players a chance to drive specially designed cop cars, based on a wealth of models from around the world. It is scheduled for release on April 30.
Though Criterion does specify that the DLC will be “paid content” and characterizes it as “the greatest freeburn game mode yet,” the developer has yet to offer a price point for the content.
Image courtesy Criterion Games
See Also:

Teaser Offers Proof of Burnout’s ‘Pursuit’ Mode
Rumor: Pursuit Mode Returns in Burnout DLC
Criterion: Burnout Paradise Islands ‘Will All Be Free’

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

Stardock’s recently released PC strategy title Demigod has attracted more than 100,000 gamers. An impressive feat, except that the majority of them pirated the title, according to company CEO Brad Wardell.
"We ended up with 140,000 connected users, of which about 12% were actually legitimate customers," Wardell wrote in a recent status update intended to explain the game’s recent multiplayer connectivity issues.
"Now, the roughly 120,000 users that weren’t running legitimate copies
of the game weren’t online playing multiplayer or anything.  The issue
with those users was as benign as a handful of HTTP calls that did
things like check for updates and general server keep alive. Pretty
trivial on its own until you have 120,000 of them. Then you have what
amounts to a DDOS attack on yourself."
Wardell believes Stardock has amended the issue however, saying "the day 2 update we released basically made sure legitimate customers were no longer being affected by those users."
Expect other [...]

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

Publisher Electronic Arts has unveiled a handful of screenshots from the upcoming Nintendo DS movie tie-in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra revealing a top-down gameplay style for the title.
I can’t say that I have high hopes for the game, given the hit-and-miss-and-miss-again track record of film to game translations, but maybe developing the title as a simple Robotron-style shooter could work.
It doesn’t leave much room for cerebral plotting or tense storytelling — the gameplay style traditionally appeals to gamers looking for non-stop frenetic action, and not much else — but with a property based on a cartoon series designed to target pre-adolescent boys, this could be a wise choice.
Unless you were expecting the upcoming film to rival Apocalypse Now for characterization and emotionally stirring themes. In which case, I get the feeling you’re in for a bit of disappointment.
Three more screens can be found below.

Images courtesy EA

See Also:

Release [...]

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

Main character Lightning (left) and partner Sazh stare down a giant enemy in the demo version of Final Fantasy XIII, released Thursday in Japan.
Image courtesy Gamersyde

Gamers in Japan got their hands on the eagerly anticipated  Final Fantasy XIII demo Thursday, offering a first look at the latest sequel to one of the world’s most popular role-playing game franchises.

The hour-long demo, which shows an action-packed segment that occurs during the game’s opening moments, has been a long time coming: Developer Square Enix showed the first trailer for Final Fantasy XIII in May 2006.

Since then, the game has never been demonstrated to the outside world, even at trade shows. The PlayStation 3 demo disc, bundled with a Final Fantasy movie and currently available only in Japan, marks the first time that anyone outside Square Enix has played the company’s flagship next-gen title.

To call this demo "long-awaited" would be a drastic understatement: Development [...]

Original post by Chris Kohler