The Super Soldiers

Retailers such as Best Buy, GameStop, EB Games, and Wal-Mart are offering deals for pre-ordering Hellgate: London and we’ve got them all here listed for your convenience.

Best Buy

RadioShack is evidently jumping on the bandwagon of retailers clambering to join the Halo 3 launch madness. According to Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson, starting next Tuesday, the ubiquitous electronics chain will use Bungie’s anticipated shooter to begin selling games and consoles in dedicated sections of its stores.

Indeed Evan Wilson’s suspicions were probably confirmed when the RadioShack online store began offering Halo 3 exclusively for in-store pickup (pictured). RadioShack is evidently attempting to herd potential customers into retail outlets. According to GameSpot, Despite the label, the game can still be ordered for standard delivery.

Most analyst seem skeptical of the idea due to GameStop’s (also the owner of EB Games retailers) dominance of the video game retail business. They also cite the amount of space or rather, lack thereof, possibly available to video games in RadioShack stores. Kotaku also seems doubtful about the prospects of RadioShack becoming a large video game retailer unless they are willing to dedicate a great deal of floorspace towards video games only.

Recently, Hellgate: London appeared in the New York Times. Thankfully, they’ve ceased charging to view older articles so we can provide a snippet of what they had to say.

There are single-player games (like Mass Effect). There are persistent online games (like Tabula Rasa). And then there is the hybrid action role-playing genre pioneered by the fabulously popular Diablo series. Many, many contenders have tried to exceed, or even just match, Diablo’s addictive combination of randomized levels, easy yet deep combat and, of course, “slot machine”-style loot, where every monster just might drop that superpowerful item you’ve been hoping for. All have failed to approach the polish of the Diablo series.

Continue reading »

PRESS RELEASE — The creators of Hellgate: London are planning to release a Collector’s Edition alongside their release. Contained within their special collector’s edition packaging is the following:

Continue reading »

While playing Burnout Paradise at the Electronics Arts pre-show press event in Japan, IGN found something that was never thought to ever be in a PlayStation controller again: Rumble. Thus also confirms rumors of a new SixAxis controller. According to IGN, it felt heavier than the standard SixAxis controller and featured a sticker on the bottom which stated “RUMBLE”. Their report is below.

Big shocker at today’s Electronic Arts pre Tokyo Game Show press event. While playing a demo of Burnout Paradise, we felt something that we never thought we’d feel from a PS3 controller — shake!That’s right, Burnout Paradise is the first rumble-equipped PS3 game we’ve ever played. Which made us think at the time, if the game is making the controller shake, the controller must be a new version of the Sixaxis!

Continue reading »

This morning Newsweek ran the first part of a Q&A between editor N’Gai Croal and Bill Roper — this specific conversation took place in January at CES. N’Gai has some great things to say about the unique look of the levels in Hellgate and focuses in on Flagship’s “breaking new ground with its pervasive use of randomization.”

Can we talk a little bit about the level design? You talked about the architecture, but looking at this level right here–I’ve seen a lot of like war-torn cities that are World War II-ish, and they all start to look the same. This feels interesting and unique and fun. It has a really good sense of place. It’s familiar, but it doesn’t look like a lot of those World War II games which have a same-y-ness in the way they look.

Well that’s one of the big things that has been a challenge for us in terms of using such a well-known city. A real strength of Hellgate: London is the fact that every time you go out into an area, every time you go out adventuring, you’re going to a randomized dynamically generated setting. So it’s not like we actually map out London specifically. But what we’ve done is we went to London, took photo reference for textures and everything, so when you’re in different parts of London, it’s built out of things that feel right for that section of London. However, the actual layout that we’re going through is completely randomly generated. The huge upside of that is you never lose the sense of exploration that you lose in a lot of RPGs, “Oh, I’ve been through this area before. I know where everything is. I know what items they drop. I know where to hunt for them.” Here, the monsters are different. The items they drop are different. The layout’s different. You never know what you’re going to get. And depending on where you are in the game–

Continue reading »

As reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, veterans of the war gathered to protest recently at the Missouri Black Expo. The primary focus of their protest was a display of the America’s Army video game:

About 90 Iraq war veterans, dressed in black shirts, stood in formation Saturday afternoon in front of military recruiters at America’s Center and shouted their protest message three times: “War is not a game!”They were referring to the large military simulation game set up by Army recruiters… The group of veterans, known as Iraq Veterans Against the War,, were in St. Louis for their annual meeting this weekend when they decided to stage a brief demonstration at the Expo.

Video available after the jump

Continue reading »

Nintendo Co Ltd’s video game console Wii outsold Sony Corp’s PlayStation 3 by a ratio of three to one in Japan in August, but Nintendo’s overwhelming lead in the market narrowed for the second consecutive month. Nintendo sold 245,653 units of the Wii in the four weeks ending August 26, compared with 81,541 units of Sony’s PS3, game magazine publisher Enterbrain said. The ratio was more than four to one in favor of the Wii in July and six to one in June.

Sony’s PS3, packed with cutting-edge technology such as a Blu-ray high-definition DVD player, has been trailing the Wii in sales since the consoles were introduced late last year, due to the PS3’s high price and a scarcity of strong game titles.
Continue reading »

Double Fusion, a private company that connects advertisers and video game publishers, rolls out new technology on Tuesday to allow advertisers to mount last-minute ad campaigns in games the same way they use spot TV ads.

The technology will be shown to developers at the Austin Game Developers Conference starting on Wednesday. Game designers now designate and hard-code locations for in-game advertising during the development process. After the coding is completed, advertising content can be changed via an Internet connection, but locations for ads cannot be changed or added.

Double Fusion’s new program, called fusion.runtime, separates in-game advertising from the development process, allowing developers to create new placements in completed games, including back catalog titles. “With the fusion.runtime, you can get the code in the game, and figure out the ad-spaces later,” Jonathan Epstein, Double Fusion’s president and chief executive, told Reuters. The new program adds almost unlimited flexibility to what was once a fixed constellation of advertising slots within a game, Epstein said. “This allows advertisers to dynamically run campaigns,” he said.
Continue reading »

Sony Computer Entertainment Japan announced today some details on the pricing for the Japanese version of Warhawk. Unlike the NTSC version, which is available on the PlayStation Network in addition to retail, the Japanese version will be sold exclusively through the PlayStation Store. PS3 owners will be able to begin downloading the game starting on October 4th.

On a bonus, The game will retail online for ¥3800. That’s roughly $32.80 USD. If you believe your Japanese is strong enough to handle several pages of online commerce and you can make it to the online without physically being in Japan, you can get yourself one hell of a deal. Of course, that’s the hard part.