This is Button Mashing, Grizzly Bomb’s video game news headquarters. Previews, interviews, rumors and all the latest stories relating to the biggest games, all in one place. Here are the most important things you need to know for the week of March 12, 2012:
343 Industries Shows Off Halo 4
I don’t think anybody truly believed the Xbox’s flagship franchise was going to take a bow and walk away after Halo 3, so when Halo 4 was announced it didn’t feel much like a huge break from its predecessors. However 343 Industries is doing everything they can to make us believe that there is more to this sequel than a simple extension of the trilogy, a nice example of which is this ‘First Look’ video from Halo Waypoint:
Halo 4 will be the first game in the series to be developed outside of Bungie Studios, now that the franchise’s creators have officially separated from Microsoft, but some of their people have transferred to 343. It should make the change of hands much smoother than this type of change often is, and the video above does a lot to instil some faith in the new team.
My interest in Halo has been waning since before Reach came out, so a revamp of the franchise sounds like a great idea to me. I’m sure most fans would disagree, but I think a lot of good can come from looking at the story with fresh eyes.
There are fourteen days left until the Reapers reach Earth in Mass Effect 3. Are you ready? If you were watching The Walking Dead last week you might think you are; Bioware dropped a gorgeous pre-rendered teaser for the game during the show, but that wasn’t the whole picture. The 2-minute trailer that aired on AMC was a condensed version of the real deal; the extended trailer boasts a full extra minute of footage that rounds out the clip and packs on the adrenaline, even incorporating some of the stuff shown in ME3‘s first teaser way back in 2011:
I am shaking with anticipation for this game to come out, so watching this gave me goosebumps. That being said, this is the third version of the same trailer. Before AMC aired its edited version of the above cinematic trailer, a 58-second long ‘trailer preview‘ was making its rounds on the internet. I’m a little baffled by that decision – they made a teaser for a preview of a trailer for a video game. I’m sure the idea was to generate a steady build of excitement, but I feel like all it did was take away the novelty, because with each subsequent trailer, a large fraction of it was already old news. When I add to that the fact that the trailer’s pre-rendered and therefore offers nothing relevant about the actual game, it gets a little ridiculous.
But I’m looking too deeply at this. The bottom line is, this trailer is fantastic and if it can drum up some excitement and bring more people into the series I’ll be a very happy FemShep.
You knew it was going to happen. Apparently Activision does not want you to know it is going to happen but hey, we are going to take the news and run with it. Gamespot is reporting via GameBlog, a French gaming site, that Black Ops 2 definitely does exist. Apparently they stumbled upon some screen shots from the Amazon France site that showed it was ready for preorder before the site decided to shut the page down. Obviously, those sneaky French gaming bastards screen shot the evidence to tell the rest of the world. Of course, they also ended up getting a warning from the French division of Activision demanding the news would be pulled. GameBlog refused and then Activision has decided to blackball them from media events and pull their advertising. Over a game they are probably going to announce soon. Hell, it’s Amazon France’s fault anyways. They just wanted to get their preorder money’s worth before the Euro collapses.
I will say that I mildly dislike the single player on World at War and Black Ops, but the multiplayer experience is definitely better on these games. Why? Nazi Zombies. So yeah, this will be bought for the multiplayer because it still remains the game that most of us writers play and swear at each other constantly. Anyways, this is a boring post so below is my favorite kills/kill streaks. Also, Dr. Kronner loves getting a hatchet to the face in Sticks & Stones.
This is Button Mashing, Grizzly Bomb’s video game news headquarters. Previews, interviews, rumors and all the latest stories relating to the biggest games, all in one place. Here are the most important things you need to know for the week of January 30th, 2012:
‘Xbox 720’ Chipset in Production – (IGN)
Rumors and hearsay has become cold, hard fact: “Xbox 720”, or at least its core ‘System on a Chip’, is already being developed. According to Fudzilla:
“Recent speculation that the new main System on a Chip (SoC) for the Next Xbox began production is apparently accurate; the SoC did indeed start production in late December of 2011. Sources tell us that the code name for the chip is Oban, and it is being produced by both IBM and Global Foundries for Microsoft.“
Fudzilla’s report continued with a lot of important (and partially incorrect) combinations of words and numbers which are certainly important and made no sense to someone as tech-stupid as myself:
“The power behind the next Xbox will be a PowerPC CPU that is married to an ATI Southern Islands GPU, or modified 7000 series…”
However, IGNcorrected the initial mistake with the following update:
“…mass production of the system’s GPU will indeed begin by the end of 2012 but will not, however, be based on AMD’s 7000 series Southern Islands GPU. Instead, the processor will be derived from the 6000 series, which was introduced last year. More specifically, it will be akin to the Radeon HD 6670, which offers support for DirectX11, multidisplay output, 3D and 1080p HD output.”
They went on to summarize it for the layman (Thank you IGN. Sincerely: The layman):
This is Button Mashing, Grizzly Bomb’s video game news headquarters. Previews, interviews, rumors and all the latest stories relating to the biggest games, all in one place.
I’m The Wozz, and here are the most important things you need to know for the week of January 23rd, 2012:
Max Payne 3 Shows Off Its Targeting/Weapon Systems
Rockstar Games is doing a series of behind-the-scenes featurettes which shed some light on the new mechanics and technology going into the upcoming return to the Max Payne franchise. The second one is out now, and it goes into some of the ways they’ve fine-tuned the shooting mechanics.
Initially I was pretty dismissive of a new Max Payne. I really liked the first two games, they were powerfully story-driven, atmospheric and the gameplay was enjoyable, to boot. But the bullet-time feature that drove the whole franchise, and revolutionized almost every single shooter after it was getting tiresome by Max Payne 2. It’s a very cool thing to see the first 6 or 7 times, but it eventually becomes a pace-breaking crutch, just like the more recent ‘VATS’ mechanic in Fallout.
But these little promos are really starting to work their magic. Rockstar Games are just some of the best storytellers and innovators in the industry, and Max Payne looks like it’s just as wonderfully dark and unique as ever before. Begrudgingly it’s turning me around.
Resident Evil fans were abuzz last week because promos for RE6 started being reported at retailers. Posters like this one have appeared in stores around the country, point at a November 20th, 2012 release date:
The news comes, as promised, following a viral marketing campaign from NoHopeLeft.com, which posted dozens of mysterious photos and videos pointing to some kind of conspiracy. The blog repeatedly pointed to January 19th, 2012, at which point the official announcement was made.
Following the reveal of Resident Evil 6 came this teaser:
The trailer reveals the return of Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy, and an amazing amount of content for a first teaser.
Skyrim Creation Kit is Almost Here – (Bethesda Blog)
Coming straight from Bethesda themselves, it looks like the biggest game of 2011 is about to give players the opportunity to create their own content in Skyrim. From Bethesda themselves:
“For all you PC gamers, you will be happy to know that the Creation Kit and Steam Workshop are nearly ready. Bethesda is currently working with members of Valve and their modding community to do some final testing and are on track for a public release near the end of the month. The current update plan for the PC is to first release updates as “beta” versions through Steam. This is something you’ll be able to opt into through Steam and back-out of if needed.“
Meanwhile, the developers are also working on the game’s latest update. Version 1.14 will patch a lot of the game’s hiccups for all 3 platforms, hopefully making it even easier to lose yourself in Tamriel’s Northern-most province. For a list of all the glitches and bugs resolved in the update, they’re all listed on the blog.
Infinity Ward’s Looking Ahead at Next-Gen Call of Duty – (IGN)
IGN shrewdly discovered that a job listing posted on Infinity Ward’s website is requesting a senior animator “with experience in-game development and an interest in working with next-generation technologies.”
It’s not a huge surprise that there are plans to make a CoD game for the next iteration of the home consoles, but Sledgehammer Games has reportedly already done the same. IGN speculates as to the possibility of the job offers being connected, but it will be a long time before the full story is announced – Sony and Microsoft have still not made any official statements regarding the release of new hardware.
Mass Effect 3 Will Feature Kinect Voice Control – (IGN)
If there’s one thing hardcore gamers will come together to support, it’s the unanimous disdain for motion controls and extra peripherals like voice commands. The joypad is king to the dedicated player, so fans were kind of disappointed when it was announced that Mass Effect 3 would allow Xbox Kinect users the opportunity to use voice control for certain actions. However, doubters might want to relax because apparently the voice commands work extremely well, and really compliment the gameplay:
“Mass Effect 3 uses Kinect only for voice commands – absolutely no motion recognition is supported. Instead, any command that players previously had to pause the action to access, like Biotic powers, ammo swapping or party member management can now be managed by voice. This allows players full access to Shepherd’s suite of combat options without ever pausing the action.
Most important of all is that this Kinect integration just works. When you say sniper rifle, Shepherd switches to his sniper rifle. Saying “Adrenaline Rush” activates the biotic power. Say “James, Move” and your squad mate moves to the location you have pointed out. During the entire demo, I never once had a voice command not register properly.“
“Miranda, Disrobe” The one voice command not accepted…
I don’t own an Xbox 360, and while I’m not heartbroken that I’ll be missing out on the voice commands, I’ll admit that bringing up the power menu or designating your squad to move around during combat can be a chore in Mass Effect. If the tech works as accurately and consistently as IGN says, it could resolve one of ME‘s few flaws, and allow for more fluid, better-paced combat.
I know all too well the pain of having to scale back a game’s graphics in order to make it work on my rig (Read: mediocre 5 year old laptop). In fact, I had to reduce Mass Effect 2‘s specs to some extent to run it on Steam and still could only play in 45-minute intervals or run the risk of overheating. It sucks to not be well-equipped, is what I’m saying. But thankfully I’ve got the requirements for Mass Effect 3 right here, so you won’t have to worry about whether or not your PC can adequately handle it:
Minimum Spec:
• OS – Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1, Win 7 *Supported chipsets: NVIDIA 7900 or better; ATI X1800 or better. Please note that NVIDIA GeForce 9300, 8500, 8400, and 8300 are below minimum system requirements, as are AMD/ATI Radeon HD3200, HD3300, and HD4350. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required.
• CPU – 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (equivalent AMD CPU) • RAM – 1GB for XP / 2GB RAM for Vista/Win 7 • Disc Drive – 1x speed • Hard Drive – 15 GB of free space • Video – 256 MB* (with Pixel Shader 3.0 support) • Sound – DirectX 9.0c compatible • DirectX – DirectX 9.0c August 2009 (included)
Recommended Spec:
• OS – Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1, Win 7 • CPU – 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (equivalent AMD CPU) • RAM – 2GB for XP / 4GB RAM for Vista/Win 7 • Disc Drive – 1x speed • Hard Drive – 15 GB of free space • Video – AMD/ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB or greater, NVidia GeForce 9800 GT 512 MB or greater • Sound – DirectX 9.0c compatible
Side Mission also included the fact that in order to run ME3 PC users will have to register and run Origin, both for online and offline use.
We have already told you a little bit about Lollipop Chainsaw… the sexy, zombie-filled video game being released this year by Suda 51. In Lollipop Chainsaw, you play Juliet- a cheerleader full of school spirit! But when zombies take over the school, she (with her disembodied head of a boyfriend by her side) decides to grab a chainsaw and get to killing!
The villain’s name is Swan. Check him out!
Every time I find out more about this game, I get even more excited! Lollipop Chainsaw releases this year. I am thinking that this looks like a sweet Halloween costume! Check out this chick in Juliet Cosplay:
Here are some cartoon upskirts for the pervert in you:
Grizzly Bomb 