First Screenshot Released For Next COD

An image detailing a high textured character model has been released showcasing what to expect in the next COD game which is due for release this year. The image was revealed at GDC 2014 and was released by Sledgehammer Games to IGN

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The image above was first shown at a panel entitled Quest for Quality: Maximizing the Relationship Between Creative and Production, and had people speaking from Sledgehammer Games. Call of Duty this year is the first in the series to switch to a three year development cycle, adding Sledgehammer Games to a cycle where it would normally switch between Treyarch and Infinity Ward.

Activision publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg recently had this to say at a press conference "Obviously in the console-transition year, anyone who developed a cross-generational game last year had to deal with the fact that the technology of the next-gen platforms was still coming into focus and changing quite a bit during the development process, Now that we have the next-gen hardware out in the marketplace and solid, that is our primary development."

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BlackSite: Area 51 Trademark Renewed

Warner Bros have renewed the trademark for Blacksite: Area 51 with the US trademark and patent office.

The original trademark for BlackSite: Area 51 which was released on PC, PS3, and 360 game was filed by Midway in 2006, who were then purchased by Warner Bros in 2009. Warner Bros filed the new trademark on April 23rd which was spotted by NeoGAF.

Not much information about the game has been confirmed just yet allthough the trademark is for 'an assortment of digital goods, including video game software and computer game software for use on mobile and cellular phones'. We'll keep you posted if we find any more news!

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Ryse: Son of Rome Gets DLC Pack

Microsoft has confirmed that the third DLC for Ryse: Son of Rome will be available for £4.79 or free if you own the season pass. The DLC will be titled Duel of Fates and it is available now. Duel of Fate, adds two new arena mode round-to-round maps called "Invictus" and "Barbarous", along with a survival map called "Island". Two new gladiator skins are also included. Be sure to check out Mike's Horeplay vid below!

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Just Cause 3 coming in 2015

Just Cause 3 maybe happening and maybe sooner than you think with next year being rumoured. There are some major signs of this happening although Square Enix are quick to quash the rumour. One of the founders and chief creative office at Avalanche Studios Christofer Sundberg, lists an unannounced sandbox action game on his LinkedIn profile, which has been created by Avalanche Studios New York and is set to be published by Square Enix. It is described as a new project with completion promised for 2015. There was also a recent publishing of a domain name which seriously confirms that its going to happen however Square Enix were quick to respond with this statement "Registering domains for our big franchises is just routine IP management activity.” Stay tuned for more happenings!

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GRID Auto Sport trailer and info released

Codemasters has officially announced a new game within their GRID series titled GRID: Auto Sport which is set to be released on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. The game is being described on the Codemasters Blog as the "the next game in the GRID series and descendant of TOCA Touring Cars and is designed to move the series back in line as a more authentic racing game". The game is due for release on June 24th 2014 with no next gen iterations of the game coming. You can catch the trailer aswell as all the info below.

The Handling

As ever, our handling model has had a lot of effort put into it and you’ll really notice the difference, we think, from GRID 2. For GRID Autosport we’ve gone back to a more authentic handling style. It’s definitely not a full simulation – we want it to be authentic, not clinical – but it’s more towards that end of the spectrum than before. If anything, we believe the handling is actually one or two steps further towards simulation than Race Driver: GRID, to give you an idea.

Each car has been tuned and adjusted to really give a sense of its personality so they will act and behave differently from one another, as they would in real life. This is especially noticeable across disciplines. Pick up a WTCC spec Touring Car and it’ll feel completely different to a Formula 3 car for instance. The goal has been to replicate an authentic feeling of what it’s like to race each of these cars in the games as if you were out on the track yourself.
We’ll be talking more about the handling and how we created it in the coming weeks, including how you, our Community helped shape it in ways that you may not yet know.

The Racing Disciplines
You’ll be hearing us talk about disciplines a lot as they make up another of the core foundations of the game. Disciplines are various types of motorsport, of which there are five within GRID Autosport, each with its own unique style and feeling. There’s a vast difference in the way a Touring Car race unfolds compared to that of an Endurance race. Each discipline requires a different approach, strategy and comes complete with its own style of racing.
For instance, in Touring Cars it’s all about aggressive pack racing. You’ll have to manage tyre wear and race into the night in Endurance competitions but look to race smoothly and with precision in our Open-Wheel races. Street Races are about reacting on the fly on claustrophobic streets through cities with unpredictable changes in elevations and drift cars are all about demonstrating your car control. To become an all-around driver, you’ll develop a broad set of skills.

Each discipline has a number of dedicated series within them; ranging from Touring Cars, GT, Single-Seaters, Muscle Cars, Drift, Supercars, Hypercars, Time Attack, Prototypes and many, many more. You don’t just get five broad experiences, but also different racing experiences within those styles.
We’ll be going into more detail of each discipline between now and launch, starting next week with our in depth look at the Touring Discipline.

The Locations
You will have noticed the likes of Hockenheim, Sepang, San Francisco, Jarama and Yas Marina within our announcement video but that’s far from the complete roster, there’s plenty more to come.
GRID: Autosport will feature 22 locations with a combined route list that totals over 100!
While we will have a selection of great city based locations it’s the circuits that make up the bulk of the roster and there’s a great variety on offer.
From the iconic to the old favourites, the ones classed as legendary and of course some new faces as well. In fact, there are more circuits in GRID: Autosport than there are in Race Driver: GRID and GRID 2 combined.

The Career

The single player career in GRID Autosport will allow you to become a professional racing driver. As you make progress you’ll be able to join and switch teams, fulfil sponsor demands and beat rivals.
Racing with a teammate is back and at your request he/she will now attack the cars ahead or defend their position. All this is handled by a simple button press on the controller and it’s a feature that will also allow you to request information from your team engineer.

The career is open and this means that you’ll only ever have to compete in the racing disciplines that you want to. If you’re a Touring Car fanatic then by all means find a home within the Touring section, and never leave. If you love the precision of Open Wheel racing and also enjoy the odd bit of Endurance then you can happily bounce between the two.
The choice is entirely yours to make – choose your favourite style of racing or master them all.

The Racing Experience

When you take an authentic handling model, a great selection of cars and a variety of racing disciplines, it still needs the racing experience to hold them all together and in GRID Autosport your racing experience revolves around the paddock.
This is the menu you’ll find yourself in before a race and it’s from here that you’ll be presented with a number of pre-race options, such as practice and qualifying.
If you find yourself racing on an unfamiliar circuit or route then simply head into practice and spend some time on the track. After practice you can jump into qualifying where, as you’d expect, you’ll be able to set your fastest time with the aim of starting higher up the grid come race day.
Much like the career, the choice is entirely yours. If you want to have a practice session and jump straight into a race then great. If you want to give practice a miss and just do qualifying then that option is also entirely possible, as is skipping straight into the race itself should you so desire.The paddock will also allow you to tune your car before the race. Tuneable components include: brake bias, differential, downforce, gears, ride height and suspension at both the front and back. All of the cars in the game run great as ‘stock’ but the option to tune is there should you wish to get the car handling to your own preference.

Multiplayer

Powered by RaceNet you’ll be able to join with friends to form Racing Clubs and race under team colours against other clubs in the community. Receive new challenges every week with the new and evolved Discipline Challenge, track your stats including your complete vehicle history and climb weekly and persistent leaderboards.
We’ve got a series of features planned for the coming weeks, all of which dive deep into the multiplayer of GRID Autosport so be sure to keep your eye out for those!

Driven by Community Feedback 

While we were patching GRID 2 and releasing new content we were also busy gathering feedback. We listened to everyone who had an opinion on not just GRID 2 but our older games as well. This feedback was digested and ultimately it played a huge part in the early development of GRID Autosport.
The authentic handling model has been shaped by Community feedback but we haven’t just stopped there. Cockpit view makes a return, and with it a dashboard view too, yes, GRID Autosport will ship with two in-car cameras.

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New Fatal Frame coming to Wii U

If your a Wii U owner and looking for some horror, then good news because a brand new Fatal Frame is heading to Nintendo console.

The next installment of the creepy horror game, in which you take photos of ghosts to defeat them, is a joint effect between Temco Koei and Nintendo. No other details have yet emerged, but it's a safe bet it will make use of the Wii Us unique game pad.

The game is not the only planned release for Fatal Frame, as a live action movie, book and comic are all said to be in the works, expanding on the series. It is going to be a good time for Fatal Frame fans.

Thanks to Gematsu

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Risen 3 Teaser Trailer

A new teaser trailer for Risen 3: Titan Lords offers a glimse at one of the enemies the player will come up against in the war torn world.  You can catch the press release below as well as the trailer.

Piranha Bytes, the creators of Gothic and Risen, return to their origins with a new, classic RPG. Risen 3: Titan Lords pulls the player in to a hand-crafted role-playing world full of rugged charm where every decision changes the course of the story. Risen 3: Titan Lords is set for release in August 2014 for the Xbox 360 games and entertainment system from Microsoft and for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system as well as Windows PC.
The key element of the cult Gothic series as well as Risen is the vivid world and the freedom to explore it. The world of Risen 3: Titan Lords will be diverse, authentic and full of life, providing the player with an authentic, classic RPG experience.
“Like a carpenter with a hand-crafted piece of furniture, we put together the story, the characters and the landscape until it all fits and the player has the possibility to discover things all around the place. You can try out and find things that others might not. Exploration is the key to our game”, says Bjoern Pankratz, Project Lead at Piranha Bytes.
The world of Risen 3 is abandoned by all gods and suffers from the Titan Wars when a new threat rises from the soil. A young warrior is attacked from the shadows and deprived of his soul. He sets off to reclaim what is lost amidst the darkness that is spreading throughout the world. The banned Mages could be powerful allies on his quest. To get their help, he needs to find the Mage sanctuary on Taranis, also known as the Island of Thunder. Protected by the Guardians, the Mages search the mines of Taranis for crystals loaded with magic energy. Will the player join the Guardians to get in contact with the Mages? Or will he choose one of the other guilds in Risen 3 to reach his goals?

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Amazing Spider-Man 2 delayed indefinitely

Activision has indefinitely delayed the Xbox One version of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. With the release of every other console imminent it comes as quiet a shock to us. The publisher confirmed this in a statement: "We want to inform you that we are revising our release plans for ASM2 on Xbox One, when and whether ASM2 is released on Xbox One is TBD."

Major retailers are now cancelling pre-orders and the listing on Activision's website for the Xbox One version has now been removed.

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PS4 Sales at 7 million

Sony are reporting that more than 7 million PS4's have been sold with more than 20.5 million games sold at retail and on the PlayStation Store as of April 16th. Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House said this in a press release:

"The response from the global gaming community for PS4 has been overwhelming and we are truly humbled that gamers are selecting PS4 as their next generation console of choice,"
"The PS4 journey has just begun, and although we are still facing difficulties keeping up with the strong demand worldwide, we remain steadfast in our commitment to meet the needs of our customers, and surpassing the wildest expectations of gamers by delivering new user experiences that inspire and engage. We look forward to unveiling many of these experiences to our fans in the coming months."

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5 things needed for the Resident Evil 2 Remake

Recently there has been news of a fan made remake over at Invader Games and although there has been much talk from Capcom stating that if demand is high enough then it will happen. To see an example of why it would be such a great idea then we would have to look no further than the Nintendo Gamecube remake of Resident Evil which returned the series back to the survival horror roots.

1. Setting

When playing through the campaign on Resident Evil 6 there were terrifying moment's and for the first couple of hours of game play it was the RE game I had always craved, however things went down hill from there. One thing RE2 did well was immerse the player within the city landscape which had succumbed to a zombie outbreak. For the remake it needs more of the same however I want to be able to come face to face with zombie hordes but the key to surviving is not blasting them all to pieces no, but running through the scattered alleyways of Raccoon City frantically panicking as I don't know what's around each corner. Houses can be hidden in while the horde passes and doors can be boarded while working with survivors you find along the way much like the RE Outbreak series which were so under rated. The scenery is filled with rubbish and cars are scattered and burning with only the moon lighting the way in which Lickers could jump out of the darkness at any moment. The important thing to remember is this will be returning to the survival horror genre so moments where nothing happens are needed just to let the player build up a sense of dread and paranoia. Once this has all set in just a big bang from an electricity pylon would be just enough to terrify the player without thrusting the monsters of the RE Universe onto the player.

2. Mixed Control System

One thing that's for sure is that the earlier RE games had a control system that was basically Marmite - some people love it and some people hate it. Personally I'm a believer that the tank controls add to the horror of the game but to be honest I see no reason to include 2 or 3 different control schemes. The earlier fixed angles could be a hardcore mode for the die hard fans where there is no cover system and players are vulnerable to certain attacks which encourages the gamer to take their time. Then a more traditional third person view could be incorporated into a easy/normal game type where it's easier to see around corners and the game is slightly faster paced. 

3. More Story Progression

In the RE remake on Gamecube many things were added to not only bring the game up to date but also to fill in plot holes with in the story and tie things together more. More case studies can be added and letters can be found explaining the turmoil in which the people of Raccoon City went through and their final days alive. The love story of Ada and Leon can be explored in depth as we know that in the old game it just seemed rather abrupt how they seem to fall in love so easily. I also feel the origin story of William Birkin and Sherry could be be explained in much more detail with how things started and how things went so wrong so quickly.

4. Mix Things Up


With this being a remake its important to say nothing needs to remain the same. Yeah the story will be and characters that are used however it's nice every now and then to throw shock and awe moment's where the player is stunned. Just like the firs time round when Robert Kendo is eaten alive by zombies breaking through the shop windows something which gave me nightmares for weeks. New locations and secret areas are a must whether it be underground in the Umbrella Hive or in the Police Station.



5. New Game Modes

Obviously the awesome mercenary's mode will be introduced but maybe with the world being open an infinite mode could be added much like the Dead Rising games where the player has to survive as long as he can whether that's through co-op or NPC's and the player has to find antidotes if they have been infected or they will become a zombie and go up against other players within that game world. Another great addition would be an on-line verses mode much similar to Zombi U where one player takes control of a horde and the rest have to defend for as long as they can whilst trying to survive within the timer.



If Capcom do decide to make a Resident Evil 2 Remake then I'm sure if they take any of these thing into consideration then the game will be onto a winner and we may well be looking at a generation defining game just like it did back in 1998 when it was first released!

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Titanfall's first DLC is called Expedition

At a panel at PAX East Titanfall's first DLC titled Expedition was announced which will be available in May and will feature 3 new maps titled Runoff, Swamplands and Wargames.

Titanfall Expedition is the first of three new content packs with each pack available for $9.99. For fans looking to get all three content packs while saving a few bucks, the Titanfall Season Pass is the way to go. Available for a one-time price of $24.99*, the Titanfall Season Pass is available for Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC and delivers all three content packs as soon as they become available.

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Civilization: Beyond Earth Announced

Today at PaxEast, Firaxis Games, responsible for bringing popular the RTS games Civilization and XCOM: Enemy Unknown  to us, announced their new title, Civilization: Beyond Earth. The latest game in the Civilization series will be taking players from Earth to find a new home. This means a whole new alien planet and a sc-fi feel to the game, which is due Fall or Autumn 2014.

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The Last of Us Remastered trailer revealed

The first trailer for The Last of Us Remastered showcases a small look at the PS4's visually refined world. The trailer mentions every accolade that The Last of Us achieved before showing one of the finer moments between Ellie and Joel.

The PlayStation 4 version of The Last of Us is promising many improvement's over the PlayStation 3 release from most notably the promise of the frame rate going from 30fps to 60fps.

Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells had this to say in an interview: "The graphical fidelity has been turned up to 11, we've got 1080p, we're pushing the draw distances further, we're creating higher resolution character models, better lighting, better shadows."

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Podcast Ep - 10 - I Know we missed another a month!!

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