Nathan Blades looks at the polarising RPG for PS3 & 360.
Jason Rose brings us a buyers' guide to smartphones available this Christmas.
Nathan Blades covers some console and industry-defining titles for the Sony PlayStation
Nathan Blades burns rubber in Mario kart 7.
Xbox 360 owners can now use USB storage devices on their console. The Spring dashboard update includes the ability to connect flash drives and external hard drives up to 16GB in capacity to store game saves and downloads. In related news, the 250GB hard drive for the Xbox 360 has been released with an RRP of £79.99.
It was announced during a Microsoft press conference that players will need at least 4m of space in front of their TV in order to use Natal with the Xbox 360.
Nintendo have announced a new portable game console, the 3DS, to be released by the end of March 2011. The newest addition to the DS family will be the first portable console to offer 3D technology, and it will do so without the need for any special glasses. It was also be backwards compatible with existing DS games. Sony say they have no plans to do anything similar with the PSP, instead focussing their 3D efforts on the PS3.
The Swiss parliament has passed a proposal to ban any game that “requires cruel acts of violence against humans and human-like creatures for in-game success”. Though the details of the law have not been fully decided, this could eventually lead to violent games being banned in the country for good. However, if enough Swiss citizens are against it, they can challenge any new law passed by their government.
Chancellor Alistair Darling announced in the budget that the UK games industry would finally be getting the support it deserves from the government. This will come mainly in the shape of tax relief, but only for games which fit specific cultural criteria, such as British settings, plots and characters. Even so, this is good news for the successful and growing games industry which can provide thousands of jobs and bring billions to the economy. Hopefully it will go some way to reversing the trend of developers being lured away to other countries with better support for their games industries.
As announced in the last gaming news article, Steam is coming to Mac. Well, Valve have now announced that the Steam client will be hitting Apple’s OS on 12th May, allowing Mac owners to finally join PC gamers in some of the most popular games available on the platform.
Jason Ward and Vince Zampella, the Infinity Ward heads sacked by Activision a couple of months ago, have set up their own development studio. The new Respawn Entertainment has also signed a publishing and funding deal with EA, but it will remain independent and keep the rights to its intellectual property, no doubt to avoid the problems faced by IW because of their contract with Activision. There also seems to be a mass exodus from IW in progress, with many of their staff gradually leaving over the last month or so, a lot of them joining their colleagues at Respawn. The future looks very uncertain for Infinity Ward, which may be forced to shut down completely, and many wonder what will become of Modern Warfare 3 if that happens.
It’s not all bad news for Call of Duty fans, as this year’s release has been named and dated! Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops will be available on 9th November 2010. Although few details have yet been revealed, it seems that the game will be spread across the Cold War, with locations ranging from Cuba to the Arctic to Vietnam (as suspected) as it shows the birth of elite special forces. There are also rumours that it will include the legendary Iranian Embassy siege which first brought the SAS to the attention of the public. In addition to the usual singleplayer campaign and multiplayer modes, there will be co-op play, though what form this will take from Treyarch is not yet known.
The Halo: Reach multiplayer beta started yesterday (3rd May) for all owners of Halo 3: ODST, and will run until 19th May. Here’s the new live action trailer to get you in the mood!
Epic Games have announced the final game in their hugely successful Xbox 360 trilogy, Gears of War 3. The game, due out in Europe on 8th April 2011, sees the return of familiar characters from the previous games including Marcus, Dom, Baird, Cole and even Anya as the first playable female character in the series. This final instalment will also include a four player co-operative campaign, which not only means you’ll get to play through the story with your friends but also hints that there will always be at least four of the protagonists around at once, rather than just two, and that some of the background characters will play bigger roles. As you can see from the trailer below, Gears of War 3 looks even darker than its predecessors!
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