Inc Gamers

Dhani Harrison Working On Rock Band 3

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:00:00 UTC

Dhani Harrison has revealed he is hard at work on the next game in the Rock Band series.

Speaking to the Chicago Tribune, Harrison let slip that he is involved in the development of Rock Band 3.

"I'm working on 'Rock Band 3' and making the controllers more real so people can actually learn how to play music while playing the game," said Harrison.

"Give me a couple years, it's going to happen."

Harrison previously worked on The Beatles: Rock Band.

The Damned and White Stripes For Rock Band

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:00:00 UTC

EA and Harmonix has announced tracks by The Damned and The White Stripes will be added to the Rock Band Store next week.

Seminal British punks The Damned add “Smash It Up (pt II)” to the roster, while The White Stripes Pack 01 adds “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”, “Icky Thump” and “Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine.”British rockers Kasabian also contribute “Club Foot” to the catalogue.

All tracks cost £0.99 GBP each on PSN and Wii and 160 MS Points on LIVE. The White Stripes Pack 01 costs 440 MS Points or £2.49 GBP.

No Zelda in 2010?

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:00:00 UTC

Nintendo has suggested the next installment in the Zelda series may not see a release next year.In an interview with GameTrailers (via CVG), Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime warned fans that they may have to wait longer than they expected for the much-anticipated sequel."We haven't committed to Zelda for 2010... so we'll see how that continues to develop," Fils-Aime said.However, Reggie was typically enthusiastic about Nintendo's line-up for next year."In terms of the three we highlighted during E3, Sin and Punishment 2 is going to be something that the Nintendo fan can get really excited about," he said."Galaxy 2... what can you say? Mr. Miyamoto himself is very excited about it. He thinks that it adds even more to that great title.“And then Other M... that is another franchise that I've personally got great memories of, back to a side-scrolling Metroid title."

EA Secures Strikeforce For MMA

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:00:00 UTC

EA Sports has announced the Strikeforce organisation will feature as a premier league in its upcoming MMA.The licensing includes the Strikeforce cage, ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr and the league's commentary team of Frank Shamrock and Mauro Ranallo.The Strikeforce deal will also bring two new fighters to EA's MMA roster, Brett Rogers and Jake Shields, both of whom fight on the Strikeforce: Fedor vs Rogers card tonight in Chicago."We are honored that EA SPORTS has selected STRIKEFORCE to serve as a premier league in its forthcoming MMA title,” said Strikeforce president Scott Coker.“EA SPORTS has long been recognized by gamers as a highly innovative, ground breaking provider of sports gaming entertainment. We are confident that EA SPORTS MMA will function as a great ambassador for STRIKEFORCE's fighters and effectively promote our sport to a new audience as well as to long time fight fans."

Dragon Age: Origins Toolset Released

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:00:00 UTC

Just in time for the game released here in Europe, Bioware has now released the Dragon Age: Origins Toolset.With Dragon Age being such a massive game it will probably be some time before gamers get stuck in with the toolset, nevertheless, it's now available for all gamers wanting to get creative with Bioware's new RPG release. The Toolset features the following:The Dragon Age Toolset puts the power of the game developer in the palm of your hands. The Dragon Age Toolset will allow you to produce your own content including dungeons crawls , full-length campaigns, and even cut-scenes you can share with friends and the BioWare community.The level editor supports both indoor and outdoor terrain, with complete control over the placement of structures and props. You can create a dungeon by piecing together large prefabricated tunnel pieces, or stack wooden mugs one by one on a tavern counter. Visual effects and lighting conditions can be combined to produce any mood.Conversations, plots and scripting are tightly integrated; you can use simple plots and pre-defined triggers to handle most common aspects of adventuring or delve deeply into the game's inner workings to produce more specialized effects. Much of the functionality that in previous games would be hard-coded into the engine is instead handled by scripts that an experienced modder can easily override.Also included is a dedicated cutscene editor with a wide variety of powerful cinematic capabilities. The cutscene editor is a movie-making toolset in its own right; it is quite capable of producing stand-alone works of machinima if one so desired. All of the in-game footage in Dragon Age was produced using it. Lip-syncing and facial animation is fully automated, making lifelike performances easy to accomplish.Create New Adventures – Forge your own environments from your imagination, or use the rich set of Dragon Age locations and artwork as starting blocks to build new, original campaigns, quests, or cut-scenes.Stage Massive Battles – Test your might in battle by fully customizing the combat and creature AI, allowing you to create detailed action sequences full of heart-pounding warfare.Be the Director - Create your own stories with the powerful cinematics editor that offers full control of the camera, voice and lip syncing tools, and a full character creator.Content Creator's Community – Join the BioWare Social Network where you can easily find tutorials, share content, chat with other creators, and get content updates for the toolset.The Toolset can be picked up from Bioware's Social Networking site and why not read our review of the game while you wait for it to download.

Warhammer Endless Trial Launches

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:00:00 UTC

In an effort to entice gamers back to Warhammer Online, Mythic has revealed their Endless Free Trial.This offer is now open to everyone and features a streaming content update which means that once the initial download of around 1GB is compete you can start playing. The remaining content will stream in the background while you're playing. The unlimited trial has now replaced the 10 day trial and all players who were on the 10 day trial will have their accounts changed to the Endless Free Trial. The new WAR endless free trial replaces the original 10-day time-limited trial program, and gives new and returning players the opportunity to create and play any of the 24 different careers to find their perfect character match for use during extended gameplay if they purchase the game and/or subscribe. The endless free trial limits players to progress through character level 10 as they explore the tier one Empire vs. Chaos zones of Nordland and Norsca. In addition, players can explore the newly added tier one dungeon, Hunter’s Vale, or battle other players in the instanced scenarios Nordenwatch, Khaine’s Embrace and Gates of Ekrund.Endless free trial players will embark on the recently introduced New User Journey, which features enhanced tutorials and new community elements, such as a “new player” guild, to streamline the transition of new players into WAR and its vibrant community of players.“With the introduction of the endless free trial and streaming client, we are making it easier than ever for a new player to join the WAR,” said Jeff Hickman, executive producer, Mythic Entertainment. “We’ve worked hard to create a more informative and community driven new user experience, and now we are giving players an unlimited amount of time to explore the early parts of the game at their own pace. We are confident that players new and old will find all the enhancements we’ve made to WAR over the past year worthy of their time and commitment.” If you want to help boost the Warhammer player numbers and take the game for a spin, grab the trial from the official website.

360 Social Networking Apps Eventually For Kids

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:00:00 UTC

Microsoft's Major Nelson posted an update earlier stating that new social networking apps on the 360 will not be useable by minors for the time being.Features such as Twitter, Facebook and LastFM are to remain locked for 360 Gold members under the age of 18 until Microsoft can offer a system which will let parents select which applications they want their kids to use. Before there is mass protest on the subject, Major Nelson explained Microsoft's reasoning behind this decision:As some of you might be aware, those under the age of 18 are not able to access Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm in our public preview. I want to you let you know that this will remain the case when it launches to the world soon. We made this decision because as it stands now, parents aren’t able to use Family Settings to customize which of these applications their children can access. In order to offer an age-appropriate environment for everyone, we decided to turn off these applications for those Gold members under the age of 18. As expected, this has been a hot topic with the preview users. We want to make sure everyone was aware, however, that the development team is working on an update that gives parents the choice of which social applications their children can access. This means that Xbox LIVE members between the ages of 13 and 17 will be able to use Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm as long as their parents approve. The team hope to roll this out several weeks after launch and I will update you on the exact date as it gets closer.

IncGamers Podcast 6/11/09

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:00:00 UTC

The regular end of week podcast discusses all the Modern Warfare 2 controversy from the past week, the new game addiction clinic that's opened in the UK, will the next Blizzard MMO be heading back to the Warcraft universe and much more. The team also discuss the games they've been playing including Torchlight, Heroes of Newarth, EA's Winter showcase, Mass Effect 2 and other gaming delight. Don't forget the regular bullshit story of the week and the the Special Needs forum post of the week! Tune in now! Show 23 (6/11/09)

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Mass Effect 2 Hands-On Preview [360]

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:00:00 UTC

Tim McDonald tries to work out whether Mass-ive improvements will have an Effect on the quality of BioWare's highly-anticipated action-RPG sequel.

Modern Warfare 2 Server Concerns Misjudged

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:00:00 UTC

PC gamers' angry reactions to news over the last few weeks that there is to be no support for dedicated servers for CoD:MW2 is of little concern to Activision.Speaking at an earnings call Activision president Mike Griffith gave this reaction when asked about the complaints."We're of course watching this very carefully and paying attention it it, but we're not overly concerned about it. One of the problems of our PC on this title in the past is that it has not been as friendly a consumer experience in terms of matchmaking and online play as the consoles have allowed it to be. Our solution here improves that consumer experience overall by a significant margin, so we think the benefits that we will see are going to far outweigh any negatives that seem to be surfacing."Fans' displeasure at the revelation back in October was such that a petition was started to call for Infinity Ward to review the decision, so far the 185,227 signatures are carrying no weight with IW. The promise of a better consumer experience through their IWNet service will become evident, or not, next week when the game hits retailers. Whether those 185k petition signatures' boycott the game or not will be answered then.If their barks prove worse than their bites it could further pave the way for developers to steam roll apparently unpopular ideas assured that sales probably won't be affected in the long run.

Blizzard Game Pipeline Solid

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:00:00 UTC

During Activision Blizzard's quarterly conference call, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime outlined Blizzard's future plans and discussed the past quarter stating that their game pipeline was 'solid'.Blizzard figures have been impacted by the change of their Chinese service provider to NetEase following a longer than expected transition period from The9. However, he was keen to stress that WoW in China is continuing to grow and just recently they had their highest online concurrency rate ever in the region.Morhaime also pointed out that the new WoW v3.3 patch will be released in the 'coming weeks' which is great news for fans keen to get started with the latest update which includes new dungeon content and the usual balancing changes.Blizzard has also rolled out the pet store where players can purchase in-game pets. Morhaime was asked if there were further micro-transaction plans and he added that all the features being added to the game that utilise micro-transactions have been added to enhance the playing experience but they would not be adding any features that would detract from that experience. Item sales spring to mind here.When asked about Blizzard's new unannounced MMO Mike did give an interesting answer confirming again that there is an unannounced MMORPG in development that is not a "direct" sequel to World of Warcraft. This may well have just been the way he phrased his answer but could Blizzard be looking at doing what has been done with Star Wars: The Old Republic and taking the Warcraft universe back in time for an all-new game? We'll have to wait and see.Morhaime also said that StarCraft 2 was still on schedule for release in the first half of 2010.

Assassin's Creed 3 To Have Multiplayer?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:00:00 UTC

With Assassin's Creed 2 just around the corner, Ubisoft's Montreal team are already thinking about the direction of their next Assassin's title.Speaking to IncGamers and after being asked why the "creed" hadn't been utilised for multiplayer, AC2 producer, Sebastian Puel, has said that co-op and multiplayer is something the team has considered.We asked if the Animus could transport players to a multiplayer environment in the game where there would be a proper creed of assassin's who could complete missions and objectives together, or if there was the chance to play the game co-operatively in its entirety."The franchise has a lot of potential, and the Animus allows us to do whatever we want," said Puel."Whatever we want to do, whether it's multiplayer or additional missions or content, the Animus is a perfect tool for that."Asking again if there were any details to reveal about the next game, and whether multiplayer would be incorporated into the next title, Puel simply said "[w]e'll let you know in the upcoming months."So multiplayer for Assassin's 3...now we just need to figure out where it will be set. Keep your eyes open for our full video interview which will appear in the next few days.Oh, and if you've not read our in-depth preview, then I suggest you do it.Now.

Activision Blizzard Results Better Than Expected

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:00:00 UTC

Activision held their quarterly conference call last night which revealed better than expected results.Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft were hot topics in last night's conference call which revealed that Activison Blizzard surpassed their $700 million quarter projection. The company's net revenues were $755 million.Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, was keen to highlight that "the Guitar Hero franchise was the #1 best-selling third-party franchise in North America and Europe. We continued to see strong sales for Call of Duty World at War and associated map packs, which year to date have sold more than seven and half million units".Activision Blizzard are continuing to do well in the harsh economic climate and with Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Tony Hawk Ride, Guitar Hero, DJ Hero and World of Warcraft all top titles for this holiday season, the company has a strong line-up.

First Screenshots Of The Old Republic's Imperial Agent

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:00:00 UTC

BioWare has revealed the next class for forthcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic - the Imperial Agent.The Imperial Agent is the sixth class announced for the game, and the third for the Empire, joining Bounty Hunters and Sith Warriors. The other three classes currently known are the Troopers, Smugglers, and Jedi Knights, which will be fighting on the Republic side.We're told that the Imperial Agent will let players explore "the underbelly of the Empire" and will be using high-tech gear to help them with their infiltration and assassination. Let the speculation begin.This leaves two unannounced classes, and we have a suspicion there'll be news on them before too long. For now, though, check out the first screenshots of the Imperial Agent below.

No Dedicated Server For Rage?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:00:00 UTC

The dedicated server debate continues with news of id's upcoming shooter Rage unlikely to include a dedicated server feature.Following the uproar over he lack of dedicated servers in Modern Warfare 2, Variety spoke to John Carmack on the subject of dedicated servers for their new shooter Rage. When asked whether the game will support dedicated servers, John stated: “It’s not cast in stone yet, but at this point no, we don’t think we will have dedicated servers.”Although Carmack is not completly sure which path they'll take, he does see dedicated servers as things of the past and id will keep an eye on how well Modern Warfare 2 manages without them."The great thing is we won’t have to be a pioneer on that. We’ll see how it works out for everyone else" added Carmack.Comments people. Are you PC gamers going to be annoyed if all games drop dedicated servers?

Left 4 Dead 2 New Screens And Dev Interview

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:00 UTC

EA and Valve have released new screenshots for Left 4 Dead 2.We've also managed to acquire a dev interview with producer Chet Faliszek.Left 4 Dead 2 has made headlines this year, with L4D fans creating an online petition on the Steam network claiming a new game was just a cash cow for EA. Recently this has been resolved and Left 4 Dead 2 is set to be one of the best selling games this year.Check out the screenies...

New Saboteur Screenshots Show Textured Boobs

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:00 UTC

New screenshots for the Saboteur show off the game's beautiful artstyle.Of course, that beautiful art style is contrasted with a fair few blood splatters and - gasp - some topless ladies.If you're as shocked as we are, be sure to write to your local MP about how breasts are totally inappropriate content for adult games but are fine in teen-rated films - or just check below for the screenshots. Be sure to have a look at an all-new official developer interview over on IncGamers TV, too, with our own exclusive interview coming next week.

Infinity Ward Considering New IP

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:00:00 UTC

Infinity Ward's community manager, Robert Bowling, has not excluding the possibility of the developer working on a new IP.

Known primarily for its contribution to the Call of Duty franchise, and more recently Modern Warfare, Infinity Ward seems to do no wrong and is one of Activision's strongest brands. While Activision's Bobby Kotick has expressed a wish for annual releases of the big franchises, Infinity Ward has not commented or committed to this.

Bowling said in an interview with Devlop that "[i]f [we] do want to do something else, then we will do it. We don't feel tied to making Call of Duty games. We never worry about the future too much. Right now we wanted to make a sequel, so the entire team is hands on deck for making Modern Warfare 2."

While not hinting on what other type of games the developer would like to work on, it's certainly worth keeping an eye on this developer after MW2 is released.Of course, and as always, we've contacted Infinity Ward for further comment, and will keep you posted as and when we know anything.

Nintendo Finally Going HD With New Console?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:00:00 UTC

Nintendo has announced it will be moving some productions to HD quality in a recent press conference.

"We probably cannot swim against the tide," said Shigeru Miyamoto, implying a change is inevitable. "The customers' tastes will become more and more refined. Even today, many customers who have seen HD once say they cannot go back to SD... When the majority of people around us say it is OK, we are content with the situation."

Research and development manager Genyo Takeda added: "Since an increasing number of the TV sets at home around the world are becoming HD today, it will be natural for a machine to be able to generate graphics that people will be accustomed to see on HD televisions. Since the ordinary TV programs are now shifting to HD, moving to HD appears to me a natural flow."

Not all games will take the high definition route, however. Costs will increase if games are made in HD, and certain games don't need that extra edge.Takeda explains saying "[f]or example, we have to ask ourselves if HD is really necessary to develop Wii Fit. Won't HD be better for the games like Pikmin? The developers should choose the most appropriate graphical format depending on the software they make."

Takeda said his department has been looking into "many different things, including HD and SD," and while there won't be any announcements yet, things are heading in a HD direction.***UPDATE*** Nintendo of America's Reggie Fils-Aime has been quite vocal about HD, and has wanted to make it clear that the HD side of things will not incorporate the Wii. Speaking to GameTrailers.TV (via Kotaku), Fils-Aime has said "Michael [Pachter] continues to be the only one who believes that this is gonna happen. I don't know how forcefully we can say there is no Wii HD."So whatever the Nintendo team are doing, it seems like it'll be a new console rather than an upgrade to the Wii.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 DLC Available

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:00:00 UTC

Activision has announced new DLC for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2.

The new DLC will be available for both PS3 and Xbox 360 until the 31 December and will include Marvel's Civil War storyline with five new characters: Carnage, Psylocke, Cable, Magneto and Black Panther.

There will also be four new challenge missions, including new boss encounters, dangerous gauntlets and other content.

This little package will cost you 800 Microsoft Points on Xbox LIVE or £6 GBP ($ 9.99 USD) on the PlayStation Store, and you can also grab the Juggernaut as an additional character for 160 MS Points or £1.20 GBP ($1.99 USD) respectively.Activision has also thrown in a free official demo download from Xbox LIVE, allowing players to try out the Washington D.C. mission as either a pro-registration or anti-registration team.

If you haven't heard of M:UA2 before, it's an action RPG with many options for customisation, including story-line driven changes to your character. It supports up to four players, and our very own Spanner Spencer had this to say when he reviewed it.