EL33TONLINE: News tag archive: brutallegend
We had a collection of leftover videogame news bits that we didn’t know what to do with, so instead of throwing them away and casting them into the great unknown of the internet, we carved out a home and carefully placed them here.
What’s the latest word on games like Uncharted 3, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine and Duke Nukem Forever? What’s up with the latest 3DS colour and Double Fine’s ‘Pack of Brütality?’
Let’s find out:
Double Fine Productions is ten years old today, July 27th 2010!
Ten years ago today, Tim Schafer and some like-minded individuals thought it would be a good idea to start an independent videogame development company, after years of working at LucasArts making classic titles such as Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango.
What fools.
In a recent interview with Eurogamer, and while talking on a range of topics, head of Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts, Brütal Legend) Tim Schafer let loose a spate of vitriol when the topic of Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick came up.
Calling Kotick a ‘pr*ck’ and a ‘d**k,’ Schafer went on to say that Kotick’s attitude towards games, and game developers, isn’t good for the industry, noting that the Activision boss could happily move into another industry that “makes more money. Ball bearings… Something that suits his passions more. Weapons manufacturing?”
Here are a few select Schafer quotes from the Eurogamer interview:
In order to get his games to market, Double Fine Productions head Tim Schafer has had to go through a lot of difficulties in the past.
Not including his entire history of adventure games at LucasFilm Games/LucasArts, you would have to take into consideration the troubles Schafer experienced in trying to publish Psychonauts - Microsoft dropped the game at the last minute before being picked up by Majesco, who handled marketing of the title poorly.
More recently, the epic battle Schafer and Double Fine were up against during the publishing of Brütal Legend comes to mind, as the game was dropped by Activision Blizzard after the Sierra/Vivendi Games and Activision merger, while shortly after that, the small developer was sued by Activision Blizzard for pursuing a publishing contract with Electronic Arts.
While this could have left Tim Schafer a bitter, gnarled man on the inside (maybe it has), he’s continued creating and crafting games at Double Fine, hopefully hard at work on the next game we’ll all cherish and love, but that doesn’t stop him from making some ‘observations’ about the videogame industry from time to time.
The winners of the 13th annual Interactive Achievement Awards (IAA), organised by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS), were announced last night, recognising outstanding achievements in the videogame industry.
The overall ‘Game of the Year’ award (as well as quite a few other awards) went to Uncharted 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum picked up a few nods and Brütal Legend received a couple honours, while David Crane, Mark Cerny and Doug Lowenstein were all awarded industry achievement awards.
Flick through the full list of winners at the 13th annual Interactive Achievement Awards below:
Brütal Legend, Double Fine’s heavy metal-inspired action adventure game, will receive its second piece of downloadable content (DLC) next week, in the form of the Hammer of Infinity Fate pack, bringing with it a host of customisation options and gameplay additions.
After worse than expected quarterly financial results, and poor market reception to its original intellectual property (IP) such as Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge and Brütal Legend, EA has revealed their future strategic plans, and it doesn’t look good for original, innovative content.
In the wake of the announcement that EA is to cut 1500 jobs across all of it studios, and the revelation that nearly a dozen, unannounced titles currently in development at the publisher had been cancelled, EA CEO John Riccitiello has pointed the way forward for the company:
The NPD results for October have just been released, showing that Brutal Legend failed to earn itself a spot in the US Top 10 software chart.
The heavy metal inspired action adventure game from developer Tim Schafer sold a combined total of 215 400 copies. The Xbox 360 version was tops with 150 000 units while the PS3 sold just 66 000 units.
I think from now on we can simply expect updates for the PlayStation Store to be chock-full of excellent content, because the track record for the last few weeks has been pretty incredible.
This week on the US and European PlayStation Stores, we’re treated to such delights as a free map pack for Brütal Legend, special price offers on a variety of new and old games, a few solid demos, a whole bunch of add-on content, interesting videos and some wallpapers and themes to spruce up our PS3 and PSP backgrounds.
Browse through the full list of content available now on both the European and US PlayStation Stores below (now including content for the PSP and PSPgo):
Playing and reviewing Brütal Legend was a bit of a strange experience for me, and I believe it has a lot to do with my level of investment in the game.
To be clear, I am a huge fan of Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions, and I’ve been looking forward to Brütal Legend, and any news I could scrape together, since its official announcement in 2007, and even since playing the studio’s previous effort, Psychonauts, years before – I was desperate to see what the team would come up with next.
The closer the release date for Brütal Legend became, however, the more worried I became, and the more questions I had; will the gameplay hold up throughout the entire game? Will Tim Schafer’s trademark humour and fleshed out characters be in there? What about the usual highly creative environments and twisting stories? And what’s with these real-time strategy elements I keep hearing about? How do they work and are they implemented well enough with the core combat-based gameplay?
Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Brütal Legend.
Brütal Legend’s downloadable content (DLC), Tears of the Hextadon, is now available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace to buy for the price of 400 MS Points, providing you with an additional two multiplayer maps (Death’s Fjord and Circle of Tears) to play with.
Those of you who buy and download the map pack will also receive a free in-game axe with the excellent name, ‘The Blade of Ormagöden.’
You can get a watch one of the new maps being played by two of Double Fine Productions’ best Brütal Legend multiplayer players (as studio head Tim Schafer commentates) in a video below:
It’s just been announced that the first downloadable content (DLC) for Brütal Legend, a two-map map pack, will be available early next month.
Called ‘Tears of the Hextadon,’ the Brütal Legend map pack will be available on November 3rd on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 400 MS Points, and on the PlayStation Store on November 5th for free until November 19th, when an asking price of £3.99 will be implemented.
Tears of the Hextadon’s two maps, entitled Circle of Tears and Death’s Fjord, will expand on Brütal Legend’s Stage Battle multiplayer mode, while everybody who downloads the map pack will receive a free axe, awesomely named the ‘Blade of Ormagöden.’
President of Double Fine Productions, Tim Schafer commented:
If you’re a fan of metal music, and your favourite musicians include people such as Lemmy Kilmister of MotorHead, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, and Ozzy Osbourne, then you’d better not miss out on watching the Brütal Legend Rock Legend documentary below.
The three music legends mentioned above who contribute to Brütal Legend by providing voice work, as well as the game’s creative director Tim Schafer, all sound off on their involvement with the title, their opinions on roadies, and what Brütal Legend means to them.
Watch the excellence below:
In an extremely surprising turn of events, Fifa 10 has managed to stave off a chart attack by last week’s behemoth of a game, Uncharted 2, remaining in the No. 1 position on Chart Track’s UK Software Sales Chart for the third week in a row.
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising makes a valiant effort of staying in the Top Ten this week, shifting down to No. 3 from No. 2, while Wii Sports Resort shifts up to No. 4 from No. 5 last week.
The packed-to-the-brim PlayStation Store updates keep on coming, with yet another juicy list of new content this week on both the US and European PlayStation Stores.
Downloadable games include .detuned and Mushroom Wars on both storefronts, while the European store gets Uno and the complete WipEout HD Fury pack, and the US store gets topatoi: The Great Tree Story.
Rock Band DLC is more metal than usual with the appearance of a Brutal Legend three-song track pack, as Guitar Hero 5 gets a little more awesome with the addition of a Wolfmother track pack.
The usual assortment of videos, special offers, wallpapers and add-on game content also shows up to bolster an overall great PlayStation Store update this week.
Browse through the full list of content available now on both the European and US PlayStation Stores (now including content for the PSP and PSPgo) this week to see if anything catches your eye:
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