Short X-Mas Break

Hey everyone, I'll be on vacation until after Christmas. Updates may happen but they will be spotty at best, between vacation and shipping a milestone. :p

\\drew

New Final Fantasy Trailers!

Call me a ravenous fanboy all you want to, but I enjoy the Final Fantasy series. Despite the fact that the new games look similar to FFXIII (considered the weakest in the series by me) I'm completely excited.

Here's the extended trailer for FFXIII

They've finally shown a second character, assumed playable, which mildly waylays my fears of an FF game with only one playable character seeing as prior to now they have only released images of the main character Lightning. ((insert jokes about weather based character names here))

And then this fantastic CG sequence from FFXIII Versus.

While the CG is fantastic I would like to see some in-game for this one to see what the game side is actually shaping up to be.

To get on a slight tangent I would now like to say that if Sony was looking to push some PS3's these titles will most likely do it. PS3 sales have already begun to catch up and become competitive and with 5 star titles like this on the horizon Sony may final pick up the steam necessary to stay competitive in today's current gen market.

\\drew

Shuffle, another Flash Game Time Sink

At last, exactly what we need. Another simple flash game that is pretty addicting. Conveniently enough the game is fairly easy and I can't see someone actually losing during their needed 4 win rush.

Check it out.

\\drew

Ugly Box Art

Thanks to the writers over at Games Radar we can take a look back to the year that was and take a gander at some particularly poor video game box art.

See their full article here.

I would now like to delve a little deeper than they did in regards to box art. Some of the pictures seen on this games is absolutely atrocious. Take this image in particular. First off, I have no idea what the game is about based on the box art, though it may be something related to all of those self-help movies on Lifetime.

But perhaps I'm looking at this the wrong way. I'm thinking too modern, too yesterday. I should really think childhood... Wait that's it! This cover reminds of Golden Books! Aww. That's so sweet how this current gaming company is paying homage to the great story-tellers of our childhood.

No, I take that back. This cover in no way inspires me to purchase the game, nor does it describe the game held within.

I loved my golden books, but that was a different age. Perhaps they could have added a lens flare or a star wipe to the box art. That would have revitalized it. No star wipe? Are you sure? Fine... no star wipe.

\\drew

Unreal Tournament III PS3

IGN has recently release a preliminary review of UT3 for PS3 after a quick hands on test of the game.

Much to my surprise the game translates well to the Sixaxis controller and much of the UT experience that makes the game fun is felt on the console despite the lack of keyboard and mouse.

Check out IGN for the full early review.

\\drew

Mass Effect sells 1 million copies

Despite some trepidations within the industry Mass Effect is proving to be quite the good seller. In the first 3 weeks after release the game has taken in $1 million worldwide according to Jeff Bell, Corporate Vice President of Global Marketing for the XBOX360.

Originally the game was slated to sell only 328,000 units in November, but has tripled that estimate in only 3 weeks of shelf time.

This is good news to fans of the series as it was envisioned as a multi-part space opera and its current success bodes well for the subsequent games.

\\drew

Red vs Blue shows off new Halo 3 content

Everyone's favorite machinima Red vs. Blue had the luck to display some of Halo 3's new content during the Spike VGA's on Sunday. Check it out, it's certainly worth a gander.

\\drew

Nintendo Pulls Wii Ads

Nintendo has recently announced that they will be pulling all Nintendo Wii ads and replacing them with DS ads.

According to Nintendo, stores are running out of the much praised console too quickly for them to keep up with the demand and it would be irresponsible for them to continue to run ads for the system seeing as most people will not be able to purchase one.

Nintendo has said though that they will be running the ads once again after the Christmas season when they hope to hit 17.5 million console produced by March (up from their original target of 14 million).

Currently Nintendo is producing 1.8 million Wii's a month and still cannot keep up with the ravenous demand.

Must be nice to be Nintendo this go around.

\\drew

Norwegian Boy Takes a Tip from WoW and Evades Moosey Death

According to a Norwegian newspaper a young boy and his sister were attacked by a Moose and luckily they both survived thanks to some quick thinking.

Purportedly the boy "taunted" the Moose away from his sister, you know, gaining aggro. Once aggro was gained and his sister went outside of the Moose's path the boy "feigned death" in order to lose aggro. After this the moose did in fact lose aggro and walked away, leaving both children unharmed.

The boy was quoted saying, "Just like you learn in level 30 in World of Warcraft."

Yep, how do you evade enemies? Well that's easy, I'm a level 30 hunter, I just drop on the ground with my tongue sticking out.

Full Article Here

Also, I believe it's fair to note that the validity of the newspaper is up in the air, but conveniently enough I don't know anyone from Norway to confirm or deny the claim.

\\drew

Master Chief Snowman

I don't know the story behind this one, but regardless it makes me happy.

Now we just need these guys to make a covenant snowman with a small firework inside, a lit match and a video camera. Classic entertainment.

\\drew

Final Fantasy IV DS Video

The upcoming re-release of FFIV, the classic SNES RPG, is looking quite good in its new DS upgrade.

More in-game cutscenes as well as new FMVs, the art style adopted in FFIII DS, this game is really shaping up to be a winner. Now I'll postscript that with I'm a Square fanboy, and FFIV is one of my favorite in the FF series, only slightly behind my top 3 of FFVI, FFI and FFXII.

The game is slated for JP release December 20th of 2007 with its American port coming sometime next year.

\\drew

Busy Busy Weekend

Two big news stories are buzzing through the tubes today, but unfortunately I don't currently have much time to go through them. In turn I will simply briefly explain the scenarios and link to full articles for those interested to dig deeper.

Jeff Gerstmann, video game reviewer over at Gamespot was fired due to his scathing 6.0 review of Kane and Lynch. Apparently Eidos paid Gamespot for a large spread ad across the main site, (see: one of those obnoxious skins) and upon receiving the review from Gerstmann Eidos pulled the payments for the ad. Acting just as quickly to this Gamespot fired Gerstmann. So that's what we can expect from Journalistic Integrity huh? If you can't be honest and crap on the hand that feeds you in the gaming industry perhaps you shouldn't take hand outs from companies who may in fact make bad games.

Full Article Here

\\drew