Grand Theft Auto IV DLC for Feb. 17

Well it is finally announced. The add-on will be called “The Lost and Damned” and will feature a whole new ‘hero’ called Johnny Klebitz, a member of a biker gang known as The Lost.

While you won’t play as Niko Bellic he will make some cameo appearances throughout the add-on. Dan Houser, said that he didn’t want to give the plot away but that Johnny is a very different person and character than Niko and that players will see Liberty City in a very different light.
Meanwhile the screenshots remind me a lot of the FX show Sons of Anarchy (I just watched the last episode which was great by the way) and this can certainly allow for some lovely language and action scenes.

Sam Houser also mentioned that there will be two episodes and that “We hope fans of the game enjoy the new way of experiencing life in Liberty City contained in this first episode.”

So far no price has been given but it’ll be interesting to compare sales of the add-on to those of Street Fighter IV which comes out the same day.

Bungie Warns Against Installing Halo 3

Yesterday the New Xbox Experience launched on Xbox Live introducing a new interface, avatars, Netflix and full game install on the HDD. As can be expected from any big launch it wasn’t flawless but overall it went smoothly.

The surprising news came from Halo developer Bungie who said that installing Halo 3 on the 360 HDD would in effect slow the game down more. While this may seem odd they said that Halo 3 was made to access the DVD and it would be very complicated to change this process. It seems then that games made before NXE might be better off being played normally. As for games developed from now on we will have to wait and see.

While the full install feature is a nice option and I can understand that some past games aren’t optimized for it, it would be a bit frustrating to waste 7GB of space to have a slower game.
It would be really nice if Microsoft could release a list of the games that would not benefit from the install… Though they probably never will.

For the full Bungie article check here

EDIT: Here is a website which gives info on the time saved when installing games to your HDD.

Binge Gamer

World of Warcraft Breaks Another Record

Blizzard has always been an amazing company delivering quality title after quality title. Not even mentioning the great series like Diablo, WarCraft and StarCraft, games like The Lost Vikings and Blackthorne were great games in their own rights as well.

But then four years ago things changed, World of WarCraft came out and took the world by storm, I know, I barely slept for two weeks. The game now claims more than 11 million players! When The Burning Crusade came out it sold 2.4M copies on day one! And it’s happened again, The Wrath of the Lich King, which came out last week, sold 2.8M copies on its first day making it the top-selling PC title of 2008….in 24 hours.

Moral of the story? What is happening? “Succeeding you…father”!

Square Enix Moves to L.A.

The new generation of consoles has brought a new direction for the RPG giant, aside from merging the two biggest RPG developers in the world it has tried to befriend the Occident.
Indeed several Japanese developers have realized that Japan isn’t as thriving as it used to be and they would benefit from westernizing themselves a little. As a result Square Enix has developed games exclusively for the Xbox 360 (Lost Odyssey, The Last Remnant and Final Fantasy XIII). It was also recently announced in a surprinsing news that they would publish Gas Powered Game’s sequel to the big RTS hit Supreme Commander.

And the latest to come is that the Japanese developer will open an office in El Segundo, CA. Though the office existed before it was only an administrative hub. It is building a whole new development team that will be working on a brand new action-oriented IP game which will likely be a 360 exclusive.

No other info has been released so far concerning the game.

Naughty Dog Alumns Ready for WiiWare

For those of you who remember, Naughty Dog released their first breakout game and took the PlayStation world by storm. In 1996 Crash Bandicoot came out and was such a huge success that Crash almost became the console mascot. Since then they created the great Jak and Daxter series and the successful Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune for the PS3.

A year and a half ago two former Naughty Dog employees, Jason Hughes and Andrew Gilmour, went on to create Steel Penny Games. Their first game will be called Bruiser & Scratch, a puzzle game that will be available next month on the WiiWare service.

More Deus Ex 3 Concept Art

Since Eidos confirmed the game fans haven’t had much to feed their hunger but today Kotaku managed to grab two new artworks for the game (courtesy of Gamereactor). The art looks pretty impressive if a little different, the city looks less realistic and more Neo-Noir (in Blade Runner fashion) and you can see some bright sunlight.

The very few plot details revealed talk about a Biotech employee, Adam Jensen, who survives a massacre at his company and goes on to find the answers to all his questions.
Since I love games that take place entirely at night (Deus Ex, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Max Payne…) i’m not sold on the daylight yet but everything else looks very nice and I can’t wait to see more!

Street Fighter IV Finally Dated

First Street Fighter IV was announced, then people were saying “yay” and “nay”, then the arcade came out and everyone was saying “YAY”, then a vague date was announced for PS3, 360 and PC, then the PC verson was delayed, The the game was announced for February on consoles and now…oh boy now….

Capcom has announced the game will be released for the 360 and PS3 on February 17 except of course in Europe, a.k.a. the fifth wheel, where it’ll be released on the 20th. Meanwhile PC users can keep guessing for a while longer.

If you have an arcade with the game near you go and the opportunity to try it out go ahead because you’re one of a lucky few.

Blood of Bahamut Trailer

Last week SquareEnix teased us with a new countdown site mentioning Bahamut. Some including myself speculated in a Bahamut Lagoon sequel or remake, others opted on a sort of Final Fantasy spin-off of the infamous summon.

The game has since been announced as Blood of Bahamut, en entirely new game which gives only a half answer but either way the teaser for the game was just released so check it out.

A Vampyre Story Demo!

For those of you who are not aware yet A Vampyre Story is a new adventure game developed by Autumn Moon Entertainment, which was created by Bill Tiller.
Who is Bill Tiller you ask? why he’s only one of the geniuses behind classics such Monkey Island and the best point and click ever made i.e. The Dig.

From everything we’ve seen so far on the game it looks to be a pure throwback to the Golden Days of LucasArts so if you like point ‘n’ clicks and/or vampires be sure to get the demo.

You can download it on Worth Playing.

New Bahamut Lagoon on the Way?

One of the lesser known Square RPGs released on the SNES is Bahamut Lagoon, a tactical RPG which was never released outside of Japan.

Recently SquareEnix opened a countdown page on the address www.bahamut.jp which has lead many to believe a new Bahamut is on the way. The possibility of a remake for the DS a la Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy III is also a strong possibility.

The music featured on the page sounds a little like the main theme of the original SNES title but it’s hard to tell for sure. The Dragon also looks eerily familiar if you check the original cover art.

Now to remake Rudora no Hihou !