Quick-Review: King of Fighters Ultimate Match '98
(XBLA)

2009 has been a 2D fighting fan's best year since the days of the Dreamcast - We finally got Street Fighter IV, Mark of the Wolves and KoF '98 Ultimate Match hit XBLA, and this month we see the retail release of two more 2D fighters, BlazBlu and KoF XII.  As Ken Masters might say, "Yay!"

Last week, I was saddened by the lag-infested online play of Mark of the Wolves, and since this week's KoF '98 UM is another SNK Playmore game, I was expecting the worst.  But thankfully, this one is seemingly programmed much better.  I did experience some game-killing lag, but it was far less frequent than with MoW.  Only when other players' pings were in the 200+ millisecond range did the game really start to chug.  My only complain, which is no fault of SNK, is that very few people are playing online.

Other than that, though, what can I say?  It's King of Fighters '98 with some extra characters, a few new stages, and a gameplay tweak or two.  If you've already played '98, you'll be right at home as not much has changed. If you haven't though, get ready for a steep learning curve.  This game is definitely not a simple one.  There are three different fighting styles, different roll commands, and different ways to pull off special moves.  KoF noobs should check out the more simple XI before they try anything in the late '90s era.

So if you're a fan of KoF already, this is a definite purchase, since it's the definitive version of '98.  It's the fastest-loading (other than Neo-Geo) and the most feature-packed version of the game.  You can choose between new menus and old, arranged or original music, and 3D [Dreamcast] or original backgrounds.  It would have been nice to see redrawn sprites and backgrounds but what can you expect for 800 MS points?  In any case, this will tide you over until KoF XII finally hits stores later this month.

Yay! It's KoF '98, tons of options, newly included characters, decent online play, cheaper than  the PS2 version.

Nay! Sometimes laggy, steep learning curve, pretty ugly for a game that kinda-sorta came out in 2008 [JPN PS2, arcade].

For those of you who REALLY hate reading, or only learned to read numbers: 9/10

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Valve: Steam sales even boost retail games

Worried that those pesky digital shelves are going to put your local brick-and-mortar out of business in the next few weeks? Worry not, friends, as Valve's Doug Lombardi is here to put all your worries to bed. Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, Lombardi claimed that "free weekend" sales on Steam (among others) actually help to bolster sales at physical retail locations as well as online.

"Recently we've seen data that shows Left 4 Dead free weekends increase the sales of Left 4 Dead on Steam, at retail and on the Xbox 360, which we would never have guessed could have happened, but it's just that word of mouth," says Lombardi. Furthermore, he waves off talk of bad blood between Valve and GameStop over the developer's Steam service, saying, "We spent more money at GameStop in the US promoting Left 4 Dead than we did at any other chain ... we sold more copies of Left 4 Dead at Gamestop than we did at any other chain ... for us, whichever cash register you want to pay at, that's fine." Not that it matters to GameStop anyway, given the lack of a threat posed for at least another five years, right?

Valve: Steam sales even boost retail games originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gears of War In Red And Blue Bronze [Comic Con
2009]

Via the Mindzeye Studios comes these three 12 inch tall Gears of War bronze collector's statues of a Boomer, Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago.

All three are limited to a production run of one hundred and priced at US$125. The statues are cast in bronze — bronze is heavy! For example, the Boomer weighs a whopping 11 pounds!

All three are Comic-Con 2009 exclusives.

Exclusives! [Comic-Con Thanks, Matthew!]

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17 minutes of Brutal Legend with Tim Schafer

We at Destructoid cannot get enough of Brutal Legend. Everything about this game is going to be so awesome!

A new video for the game was released and it shows off the first 17 minutes of the game. All of this was covered in our preview already, but this video also has Tim Schafer walking us through the entire thing which makes it 100 times better.

There’s just something about Tim Schafer that’s so … magical. Like, he could be selling a wrecked car filled with flaming dog sh*t and I know he’d be able to convince me that it’s the best thing ever. I'd end up buying three off of him due to his charm.

I am so looking forward to Rocktober when Brutal Legend is released. How about you? Hit the break to check out the new video.

[Video via GiantBomb because I did not want to download/upload a one gigabyte video file. Jesus. -- CTZ]

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Ghostbusters Coming To
LittleBigPlanet

After achieving success with last year's Metal Gear Solid add-on content, LittleBigPlanet for the Sony PlayStation 3 is about to pick up another popular franchise for all of the Sackboys and Sackgirls of the world to explore: Ghostbusters. There are...

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PressTheButtons/~3/FtceiyUY8wY/ghostbusters-coming
-to-littlebigplanet.html

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Fight Night Round 4

Fight Night 3 was, and possibly still is, one of the best looking games from the early releases of[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://ready-up.net/reviews/fight-night-round-4/

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Tim Schafer's Brutal Legend Intro Walkthrough
[Clips]

In this set of videos Tim Schafer provides a sort of director's commentary for the beginning of his upcoming Brutal Legend.

Packed from beginning to end with spoilers, I'd suggest giving it a pass if you want your Legend experience to be virginal.

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Sony patents more motion tech, uses everyday
objects

We'd be lying if we didn't say we're a bit worried about the future of gaming controllers. Between the Nintendo's MotionPlus, Microsoft's Project Natal and Sony's ... erm ... motion thing, our precious game pads get more and more antique looking every day. And according to a recent patent filed by Sony that Siliconera found, our precious controllers have one more thing to fear: everyday objects.

That's right, friends -- in the future, we could be using our real-life keys to open doors, our swords to slice up fools, and our guns (not outside of the US) to shoot up the screen "accidentally." The patent shows off a PlayStation Eye-based system that can recognize 3D objects and use them in-game based on various actions taken by the player -- something Microsoft claims it's Natal is also capable of doing. Various household items will be affected in different ways, the example given being a U-shaped object that, when turned upwards, becomes a sword, versus a U-shaped block when facing downwards (think Halo's Covenant Energy Sword). Apparently the system is able to scan a whole mess of objects and store them in a databank for future use. Like so much future tech we've seen recently, we're taking this one with a full truckload of salt until we get some face time.

Sony patents more motion tech, uses everyday objects originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SGC 09: ScrewAttack blows ... NES cartridges

One of the highlights of today's ScrewAttack festivities was the great cartridge blowing competition, an epic contest in which hopeful gamers relived their childhoods in an attempt to get old games to work. The lads at ScrewAttack put fourteen NES cartridges through the worst possible Hell -- dirtying them, drowning them, even putting them in the toaster.

The aim was simple -- blow into the cartridge as hard as possible, pop it in an NES and see if it works. It was tense drama that not even Jack Bauer could hope to rival. Hit the jump for some footage I grabbed of the event, even though a bunch of nerds kept getting in the way and whatever footage ScrewAttack puts up will be ten times more professional and less shakey. 

video details and more

video details and more

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Visceral explains the controls of Dead Space
Extraction

"Working on the Nintendo Wii was a pretty exciting thing for us. We were excited about the unique controls and what they brought to the gamer," explains Steve Papoutsis in this new dev diary. Extraction, the Wii-exclusive prequel to Dead Space, as with many Wii games, takes advantage of multiple control modes, depending on whether you use the Wii Remote or Zapper. Either way, the game utilizes some clever Wii-specific tricks, like switching to alt-fire by simply turning the controller on its side.

The footage showcased in the latest dev diary highlights some of the best visuals we've seen on Wii so far. One of the co-op segments highlighted in the video combines puzzle-solving and monster-blasting in a rather smartly designed (and terrifying) way. Even worse, the two players will have to switch off during the puzzle as enemies continue to jump in. With so many clever ideas being thrown about, Extraction may have a shot at making us all scream in terror.

Visceral explains the controls of Dead Space Extraction originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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