This new Japanese promo spot for the upcoming Pokémon Black & White 2 doesn't show a single second of gameplay. What it does show is over five minutes of impressive Pokémon animation, as trainers and pocket monsters beat the snot out of each other in the name of children's entertainment.
While there's no English subtitles, it basically goes like this:
- I choose you, [Pokémon]
- Pokémon fight
- Nintendo reminds you (or, at least, Japanese consumers) to buy the game on June 28.
While there were whispers of this earlier in the month, Sony's Hong Kong website has now officially lifted the lid on a new piece of Mass Effect 3 DLC.
Sadly, it's not the singleplayer "extended ending" DLC most players are hanging out for. Instead, it's a new multiplayer pack called "Rebellion".
The Rebellion Multiplayer Expansion opens two new fronts against the Reapers: Firebase Jade's jungle reservoir and Firebase Goddess on Thessia. In-game reinforcement packs now include three new weapons as well as equipment, consumables, and six new classes: Quarian Engineer and Infiltrator, Vorcha Soldier and Sentinel, Phoenix Adept and Vanguard. The battle continues – hold the line!
Aren't you cute, over there making fun of Diablo III's Error 37. So old-fashioned! Haven't you been following the latest trends? Everyone knows that Error 37 is yesterday's news. Today, the hot new error is Error 3003!
Oooh, just look at it there, strutting onto your computer screen. So fierce, so present.
I bet you thought you'd be able to play your game today! I bet you thought that stupid, constant Error 37 you got yesterday had been resolved, and that maybe the idea of an always-on internet requirement for a single-player game wasn't acutally flawed in a fundamental way.
Shows what you know! Time to get with the hippest fashions, my friend. Go ahead. Boot up Diablo III and try to play it. You'll most likely get an up-close look at our fashionable new friend Error 3003.
If you're lucky, you may even see his cousin, Little Miss Error 75. She's shy, but mark my words: She may just be the Next Big Thing.
Update: Blizzard has apologized and announced that they hope to get things back up and running by 11:45 PST, or 2:45 AM EST.
We're continuing to work on the issues currently affecting the Americas region, which are resulting in failed login attempts and service issues. While we've identified the causes and are working to resolve them, we expect our efforts to require an approximate two hours to complete. We expect game services to fully return by approximately 11:45 p.m. PDT. We apologize for the downtime, and appreciate your continued patience.
This old Diablo II commercial, from around the time of the game's launch in June 2000, is notable for two things.
The first is that it's a rare example of official live-action Diablo.
The second is the use of the word Macintosh in the closing splash. For all the credit companies like Valve get these days for making Mac gaming a little more mainstream, for a very long time Blizzard was about the only major studio on Earth really waving the flag.
So much so that if you weren't really paying attention at the time, know that seeing "& Macintosh" in major commercials over a decade ago was weird.
Diablo is one of Blizzard's tentpole franchises, part of a Holy Trinity of PC gaming that includes the universes of StarCraft and Warcraft. It's reverence is well-deserved, as Blizzard has done a fantastic job with all three games.
Old-time fans of the series may remember, though, that in 1997 a Diablo product was released that had almost nothing to do with Blizzard whatsoever.
That product was the expansion Hellfire, which bizarrely was neither developer nor published by Blizzard (though it was of course authorised...we're not talking a bootleg expansion here, people).
The expansion was the work of Synergistic Software, a studio which had been founded all the way back in 1979 and which had survived just fine before being bought by Sierra in 1996. It was Sierra who published Hellfire, and who then a year later shut Synergistic down. Good job, guys!
That closure had nothing to do with Hellfire's quality; it was more to do with Sierra's shoddy performance in the modern era, which saw the former adventure game powerhouse (and publishers of the original Half-Life!) fail to cope with the changing PC landscape of the late 1990s.
Coming out a year after the original Diablo, and featuring a concurrent storyline, Hellfire introduced the Monk, Barbarian and Bard as classes (though the latter two were only available after a small hack), and also some new quests. While it "plugged in" to the main game, opening up new dungeons within Diablo's existing world, its multiplayer modes were not and are not compatible with Blizzard's Battle.net service.
Nor are its events necessarily considered canon, as subsequent games make almost no mention of what takes place in Hellfire. It does live on in some way, though, as various enemies, artistic flourishes and even some gameplay tweaks (like the ability to run) were taken up by Blizzard in Diablo II.
Hey, Kotaku. Today's been wild, and I've been unable to track down the requisite number of random off-topic things for you to discuss.
So instead, let's pick an optional theme for tonight's open thread. A reader wrote in to ask what I thought about how in their view, there are only a few flavors of Blizzard game. They're all good flavors, sure, but Blizzard seems awfully committed to maintaining those few flavors rather than trying anything new.
I get that argument, but I also see the other side of it—why change something if it works? I leave it to you: Discuss, if you will, the flavors of Blizzard. Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Diablo—how do they compare? Which do you prefer? Which would you like to see changed?
Or you know, since it's an open thread... talk about anything else.
Activision is facing another big lawsuit over its tentpole Call of Duty series, only this one has nothing to do with people who used to work on the series. It's to do with a rival developer who owns the right to a name that Call of Duty uses a lot.
Fans older PC shooters may be familiar with NovaLogic's Delta Force series, which around the turn of the millennium was OK, but is now the kind of thing you find selling for $5 in giant buckets in a post office.
Quality aside, Novalogic holds a trademark over the use of the term Delta Force, as well as a logo it designed for the series. These date back to the late 1990s.
Call of Duty fans may be more familiar with the term from Modern Warfare 3, though, as one of the units in the game is called Delta Force. Call of Duty's Delta Force not only uses the same term, but has a logo that's very similar to the one Novalogic has been employing.
But wait, you may be thinking, isn't Delta Force a real thing? With Chuck Norris in it? So how can anybody trademark it? Turns out it's not; while there is a branch of the US Army's Special Ops known as the1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, there is no such thing as a unit officially branded "Delta Force", so Novalogic were free to snap it up (the old Delta Force movie was actually called The Delta Force).
Here's the meat of Novalogic's complaints, as reported on Courtroom News:
"The infringing mark's lightening rod is horizontal rather than vertical and a portion of the delta sign is set behind the dagger blade rather than being superimposed," according to the complaint.
"In single player mode, 7 of 16 missions are designated Delta Force missions, in which the only avatar available to players is 'Frost,' a Delta Force operator," the complaint states. "In addition, players fight alongside a number of non-player controlled characters. Several of these characters are members of Delta Force."
"In multiplayer mode, 7 of 16 mission maps have 'Delta Force' as one of the two factions that the player can select," NovaLogic says.
"At the time of this writing, Activision has released 6 additional multiplayer maps with infringing content. Activision plans to release additional content through their 'Elite Content' feature," it added.
"Despite Activision's irrefutable knowledge of NovaLogic's superior trademark rights, Activision created knockoff marks that are nearly identical [to] NovaLogic's design and word marks," according to the complaint. "Activision then shamelessly inserted these infringing marks throughout its competing first person military adventure video games.
"As if this were not enough, Activision has in-turn licensed the infringing marks to Defendants Voyetra Turtle Beach then shamelessly ('Turtle Beach'), Microsoft Inc. ('Microsoft') and the BradyGAMES division of Penguin Books ('BradyGAMES') without NovaLogic's permission. As a result of Activision's unauthorized licensing, Turtle Beach and Microsoft have created special editions of their products where the overall look and feel is entirely dominated by use of the infringing marks. In addition, BradyGAMES, a creator of videogame strategy guides and books, has reproduced NovaLogic's marks in its publications relating to defendants' game."
In terms of what Novalogic wants out of all this, the developer says it is seeking unspecified damages and "an injunction for trademark infringement and unfair competition."
Sonic just can't get enough attention from collectible statue creators First 4 Figurines. Though committed to other franchises, and even introducing a few of Sonic's friends in previous products, First 4 Figurines has covered Sonic, Metal Sonic and Super Sonic.
But what about modern Sonic? As written in the product description, "He has a much sleeker, leaner and taller design than his previous classic version." And so this as yet unreleased figurine commemorates the modern design we're all currently familiar with.
A First 4 Figures statue would not be complete without lighting effects, though. If you browse through the gallery above you'll find sparks flying from Sonic's feet as he shreds through Emerald Coast, as well as glistening water beneath him in the statue's base. But don't expect your 15" Sonic figurine to come with blurring effects. That's just photo editing, silly.
If you have $200 spare dollars and a taste for limited edition figurines, First 4 Figures has you covered yet again.
Music fans rejoice, today saw the release of a couple of melodious treats with which to massage your ear-holes.
(Ew. Why do people open articles that way? What is my problem? Sheesh. "There's new music today" would have sufficed.)
Anyway, Sworcery composer Jim Guthrie has released the soundtrack for the critically acclaimed and still-unseen-by-me Indie Game: The Movie today, and it is just lovely.
Also, we got a track from HEALTH, the rockin outfit that provided the soundtrack to Max Payne 3. Yep, it's the one that plays over the commercial, and over that gnarly killshot video Chris made.
The guys at Rockstar know from good music, and Max Payne 3 appears to be no different. I'm gonna dig into this game soon, and I'm sure I'll have more on the soundtrack at some point on Kotaku Melodic.
In the meantime, listen to the track free on Soundcloud, or right here!
Yesterday, after a comment from Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee, rumors began to swirl that Kingdoms of Amalur developer 38 Studios was finding themselves with money woes.
Today, the Providence Journal reports that 38 Studios has, indeed, missed a loan payment to the state and now essentially finds itself in default.
Speaker of the Rhode Island state House, Gordon D. Fox, announced that 38 Studios had missed a $1.125 million installment on its roughly $75 million loan from the state. The developer is now seeking an emergency meeting with the state agency that issued the loan, the Economic Development Corporation, which is chaired by the governor. The EDC will be meeting tomorrow morning "to address and consider an unexpected occurrence that requires immediate action to protect the public regarding the 38 Studios, LLC financing."
Rhode Island issued the loan in July, 2010, in a bid to bring more gaming and tech jobs across the border from neighboring state Massachusetts. At the time, 38 Studios promised the Ocean State something it needed badly: more jobs.
But on its launch earlier this year, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning faced middling sales, finding itself neither a failed game nor an overwhelming success. Although the studio keeps pumping out more DLC and has an Amalur-based MMO in progress, it seems their games can't keep up with the original star power of the studio's founder, former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. Creating tech jobs is a laudable goal, but big-budget game development is a notoriously risky endeavor. Rhode Island taxpayers, in the end, may pay far more for Amalur than a world's worth of gamers ever did.
While there were whispers of this earlier in the month, Sony's Hong Kong website has now officially lifted the lid on a new piece of Mass Effect 3 DLC.
Diablo is one of Blizzard's tentpole franchises, part of a Holy Trinity of PC gaming that includes the universes of StarCraft and Warcraft. It's reverence is well-deserved, as Blizzard has done a fantastic job with all three games.
Music fans rejoice, today saw the release of a couple of melodious treats with which to massage your ear-holes.
Yesterday, after a comment from Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee, rumors began to swirl that Kingdoms of Amalur developer 38 Studios was 