Shinji Mikami is probably best known as the brains behind the Resident Evil series, but he’s had his influence on more motion oriented Capcom franchises in the past like Viewtiful Joe and Devil May Cry as part of the highly revered and sorely missed Clover Studios. Vanquish is his first game with Platinum Games, the Bayonetta developer he helped found in 2006, and it looks to take that frenzied motion up a notch.
Set in the near future, Vanquish imagines the US and Russia in a fierce battle for Earth’s remaining natural resources. Not content to keep this war cold, Russia wipes out San Fransisco with a space laser. Now only one man can storm the space station and save the day! Pro tip: It’s you!
Vanquish will release on October 19, 2010 on PS3 and Xbox 360
Today the positively hilarious guys over at Zombie Cow Studios released their latest game, which features a crack squad of contraceptive-capped marines delving deep into people’s most disturbing orifices, blowing up all kinds of nasty naughty diseases.
It also happens to be free, so you can go grab it right now and not have to pay a penny!
Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment gave word today the the upcoming sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum will be entitled Batman: Arkham City. You may now begin a long daydream sequence where you imagine the Batman franchise embracing its Batdance past and hiring Prince to remake Erotic City as a theme song.
In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz Valve’s director of Business Development Jason Holtman shed some light on the developer’s Mac gaming push. In order to increase the product offering for Steam users on Macs, Valve is providing some of their own development code.
…we’re going to release some our graphics code for the GL layer that gets people there faster. So our Steamworks partners will have access to some of the hard work that we do to get our games up on Mac, and they’ll be able to incorporate that into their games, and our hope is it gets them there faster. Because that’s the real hard work in making Mac version is doing that graphics work, so we’re going to help people along by giving them some of our code.
Score another win for Mac gamers, and Valve’s golden-haloed PR department.
We’re just over a week away from the launch of Monday Night Combat, the third person arena shooter that’s not trying to hide its inspiration drawn from Team Fortress 2. In this 14 minute walkthrough from Uber Entertainment, we see a match of MNC’s “Crossfire” mode. Crossfire is described as follows:
Crossfire
Crossfire is Monday Night Combat’s six versus six competitive mode over Xbox LIVE. Both teams try to protect their Moneyball while trying to destroy the opposing team’s Moneyball. Both teams have streams of robots that march mindlessly towards the enemy Moneyball and will jump on it and bring it down for players to destroy once they are escorted there. There are four Crossfire arenas.
There are two categories of robots and eight total robots. Breach Bots follow a set path from their spawner to the enemy Moneyball. When they get there, they jump on the Moneyball and breaching the shields, making it vulnerable. Eliminator Bots pick an enemy Pro and go after that Pro until they die and then move on. If there are no Pros, they attack enemy turrets and then the Moneyball. Robots can be spawned by players at their own spawners for a cost. The type of robots spawned depends on what class spawns them.
Of particular note in the video is how money is earned and upgrades purchased during active gameplay. Immediately after respawn, the developer takes a moment to upgrade various weapons and talents of his character. Unlike TF2, where class changes are common as a change of pace, it appears changing class late in a game of MNC might put you at a disadvantage.
Monday Night Combat launches August 11th on XBLA for 1200 MS Points.
The following system message was sent to Xfire users today in response to Viacom transferring the rights to an undisclosed company:
“Xfire was bought by new owners today. Most of the team that has built Xfire over the last six years is leaving. We enjoyed working for you for the last 127 releases and wish we could stay to create the next 127. Good bye, good luck, and game on. — The Xfire Team.”
The site and service has been up and down today, and users are on edge as to what the future may hold for the PC gaming service.
UPDATE: Apparently the new owner is Titan Gaming, the four year old company best known for tournament organization. Titan’s been trying to compete head-to-head with Virgin Gaming as of late, and this looks to be their attempt to work in a communication platform with their existing tournament structure.
Today EA announced a new game coming Fall 2010. As you can see in the trailer above, Create looks to be a playground challenge type game obviously inspired by LittleBigPlanet. Lacking in the trailer above is any cute adorable face of this engine, a la Sackboy and company.
“Create uses families’ imaginations to develop new ways to play together that are both fun and challenging,” said Harvey Elliott, VP and General Manager at EA Bright Light. “We wanted to design a game where the entire family can explore, decorate, and solve challenges where no solution is wrong and the only limit is the imagination.”
For those new to the industry, the keyword here appears to be “family”.
Fresh off his company’s recent acquisition by Gamestop, Kongregate CEO Jim Greer made a few statements hinting at avenues the gaming site is looking to explore in the near future.
We want to go beyond the desktop to mobile and other venues for gaming. What gamers want is to play games on different screens. We are not big on the iPhone. We make social games and monetize them through our own platform. Apple wants to control its own platform. We are betting heavily on Android because it is more open and they are working on providing a great experience. We are looking for other opportunities like that.
With an estimated 7.7 million Android phones sold last year, a number that was doubtless dwarfed this year, the Android Market is a major player in mobile game sales. A concentrated effort to expand and improve the level of games on the market could be a boon for gamers and indie developers alike.
Let me set a scenario for you. A very real and very deadly scenario soon to be played out in NIS’s upcoming PSP RPG “Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman” due out this winter.
In the year 20xx… a lovely prophecy told of a baby who would be the catalyst for bringing an unprecedented danger to the world. The people called this infant ‘Super Baby’ and heavily pampered her as their savior.
However that would not last long. Since the baby grew so famous, so fast, the ‘Demon General Darkdeath Evilman’ has kidnapped her.
Undefeated since first appearing, the Demon General, Darkdeath Evilman has cut down every single hero to date. On the other side we have a hero, also undefeated and said to even be immortal. The invincible Absolute Victory Unlosing Ranger!
If the Super Baby dies at the hands of Darkdeath Evilman, the world as we know it will end!
NIS seems to have a special understanding of exactly what the western audience finds hilarious about localized text from Japanese games. This is almost like Engrish of the second degree; oddball translation thrown in intentionally to craft some sort of theater of the absurd. It may not hit home with everyone, but I think I’ll go find my PSP now…
It seems like just last week Gamestop CEO J. Paul Raines was chirping on about finding new online ventures for the gaming mega-chain, and today he may just have it. Gamestop announced today that they have purchased one of the premiere flash-gaming communities: Kongregate.
GameStop CEO J. Paul Raines,
“Kongregate advances GameStop’s digital strategy by providing a gaming platform for casual, mobile and browser games that can be promoted and played by our existing gamers. We welcome the Kongregate team to the GameStop family.”
The move marks a dramatic step away from Gamestop’s current e-commerce website structure as they push to provide social functions and free flash gaming. One feature I’m hoping they retain is Kongregate’s amazing achievement system which has helped to develop a loyal userbase of 10 million monthly players.
Fresh off his company’s 
