EL33TONLINE: News archive for August, 2009
It’s just been jointly announced that The Walt Disney Company has agreed to acquire comic book megalith Marvel Entertainment for a whopping $4 billion in a stock and cash transaction.
The acquisition, Disney says, highlights the company’s “strategic focus on quality branded content, technological innovation and international expansion to build long-term shareholder value.”
Last week the Xbox 360 outsold the PS3 by almost two to one in Japan, this week not only does the Xbox 360 outsell it again but the PS3 finishes in last place on the Media Create Hardware Chart.
All the consoles record a decrease in sales this week. The DS is still the best-selling console, selling 65 313 units for the week ending the 23rd of August. Of those sales, the DSi sold 59 578 units and the DS Lite 5 735. The PSP follows in second place with 27 187 units with the Xbox 360 next with 8 979 units.
A new bunch of screenshots of the epic-looking Final Fantasy XIII have surfaced for impatient fans to peruse, offering up a variety of shots showing off snaps of battle sequences, cinematics and character close-ups.
A few videos concerning the game have also appeared, featuring a two-part interview with the developers, as well as footage from the gameplay demo available at gamescom a week ago.
Furthermore, Square Enix will be throwing a Final Fantasy XIII ‘Premiere Party’ on the 8th of September before the Tokyo Game Show, where the official release date of the game (presumably the Japanese date) is expected to be revealed.
Direct your viewing devices downwards to see the rest of the released screenshots, and watch some in-game footage and developer interviews:
For those of you who can remember as far back as 1994, and were lucky enough to own a SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis console, the name of the classic platformer, Sonic & Knuckles, might just send you into a daydream of nostalgia.
You can awake from your slumber, however, as it’s been announced that Sonic & Knuckles, the only game to feature a blue hedgehog and red echidna on a retail box, will be making an appearance on Xbox LIVE Arcade (XBLA) next Wednesday, or September 9th to be clear.
Not only that, but if you already own Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2 and 3 on XBLA, you’ll be able to access special bonus content in each of those games if you decide to part with your precious MS Points and buy Sonic & Knuckles. What kind of bonus content? Look below to find out:
It’s competition time here at El33tonline. We are giving away two copies of Velvet Assassin (one for the Xbox 360 and one for the PC) as well as 10 tickets to rAge.
Don’t miss out - head over to our competitions page to enter today!
EA recently announced that the announced downloadable content (DLC) for their boxing sim, Fight Night Round 4, has been released and is now available to buy and download from both Xbox LIVE Marketplace and the PlayStation Store.
Will we ever escape the need to compare the graphics quality of the same games across two different game consoles? Can’t we just be happy that we own any of the current generation consoles and enjoy the games for what they are, rather than how much better or worse they appear on a piece of competing hardware? No?
Alright then, you may as well take a look below as the visual fidelity of Batman: Arkham Asylum is scrutinised and compared across the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Which looks better? You be the judge:
The Rock Band Music Store for the Xbox 360 and PS3 will be updated with a five pack of songs from Talking Heads this week, along with tracks from Avenged Sevenfold, The Jam, Oasis and Rage Against the Machine.
Wii gamers can look forward to tracks from Tom Petty, Billy Idol, Fleetwood Mac and Judas Priest while singles from Guns N’ Roses and Franz Ferdinand will be available for Rock Band Unplugged.
On the 19th of September, Xbox 360 gamers are invited to participate in an online event called X3G’s Big Day In, in an effort to raise awareness of Xbox LIVE and online Xbox 360 gaming in South Africa, as well as show the powers that be (i.e. Microsoft) that there are “more than just a handful of South Africans on Xbox LIVE.”
To help ensure that the event is a success, the organisers are calling upon you, the Xbox 360 gamer, to sign up on the X3G website, as well as encourage everybody you know to do the same.
Once you’re all signed up, you’ll need to keep your eyes on GamerLobby.net, which will be hosting game schedules for the day, enabling you to see what games are being played and when, or you can simply host your own game and invite friends to join.
Kurt Cobain is the latest rock icon to join the Guitar Hero 5 line-up. Cobain will make his videogame debut as one of five exclusive in-game artists in Activision’s upcoming rhythm game. Cobain joins Shirley Manson, Carlos Santana and Johnny Cash.
Cobain, the former lead singer and guitarist of Nirvana, will be featured as a playable character in the game, performing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and a special, previously unreleased live recording of ‘Lithium.’
Developer Telltale Games has announced that The Siege of Spinner Cay, the second chapter of Tales of Monkey Island, will be available on WiiWare across the US today.
The Siege of Spinner Cay will cost 1000 Wii Points. A European release date has yet to be confirmed but the developer believes an imminent release is on the cards.
The Behemoth (Castle Crashers, Alien Hominid HD) have released a new video for their new project, currently title Game3.
Although the video is short it does showcase a few new features that the developer has added to the game. First up you can “watch the monkeyman hide and duck and run” and secondly you will notice an “audience along the bottom of the screen.”
El33tonline has ten tickets to rAge up for grabs. rAge will be taking place at the Coca-Cola Dome in Northgate, Johannesburg from the 2nd to the 4th of October.
Head over to our rAge competition page to roll the dice with lady luck. Thanks to the rAge Expo for sponsoring the tickets.
Do you remember as a kid how you used to make block towers just so that you could see them fall down, crashing to the ground? Boom Blox is just like a set of those wooden blocks, only in video game form. Every variant of game you can think of that could be played with wooden blocks (and a few more that couldn’t) is in Bash Party, making this a fun kit of games for a group of players.
The single player game consists of a bunch of rulesets, each with a bunch of levels to play. For example, one set of levels sees you given a bowling ball that you use to knock everything to the ground in the least number of throws. To throw the ball you point the Wii Remote at the point you want to throw at (rotating the stage if you wish to by holding B), pressing A to select the spot and flicking the Wii Remote as hard as you want the ball to be thrown. When you release A the ball goes flying towards the spot you chose and the realistic physics engine takes over from there. If you found the weak spot in the structure you have the pleasure of watching the entire thing fall apart in spectacular fashion.
Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Boom Blox Bash Party.
To start with Henry Hatsworth is a breath of fresh air: a new platforming game with a great new character from EA, a publisher that was once famous for its release-every-year strategy. But, sadly, it turns stale after a while and becomes downright stenchy near the end of the game as the cheapness of the level design is bound to cause all but the most hardened gamer to throw down their DS in disgust.
Henry Hatsworth is the Pompous Adventurers Club’s number 1 adventurer. He’s as stereotypically 19th century British as anyone could be, complete with bowler hat, monocle and large mustache. The game begins with Hatsworth in the jungle trying to find the mysterious golden hat. His nemesis, the Pompous Adventurers Club’s number 2 adventurer, Weasleby, is also after it, but for far more nefarious reasons. It turns out the hat is a device that can straddle two worlds – our world and the Puzzle Realm, a place that looks like Tetris, or Bejewelled. This is really just an elaborate plot device to weave platforming and puzzling into one game.
Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure.
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