Dodge the cars to check out Frogger Returns
screens

by: Chad Smith
NEWS - Aren't you glad you hopped on to GamingNexus at this exact moment?  Your day is about to get even better with these new Frogger Returns screen shots.  The game is being developed for release on WiiWare and the PSN.  Konami released the screens below showing what it will look like on each. 

Who doesn't love some hot frog-on-pavement action?  I know I do.  Features of the game include enhanced graphics, all-new levels, multiple gameplay mode, and local multiplayer options.  Look for the game to be released this month. 



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http://www.gamingnexus.com/FullNews/Dodge-the-cars-to-check-out-Frogger-Returns-s
creens/Item14900.aspx

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No Doubt Sues Activision, Virtual Karaoke Players

No Doubt is suing Activision for un-permitted use of their avatars within Band Hero, and they’re seeking damages for their avatars being turned into “virtual karaoke players”.The band argues that it “agreed to place avatars containing their name and likeness performing three No Doubt songs”. However, the band never allowed use of their avatars beyond their [...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Gamercenter/~3/Ps0viVreKfQ/

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2009 THQ year-to-date sales up 22 percent over
2008

THQ has released its financial results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2010, which ended September 30, 2009, and things are mostly looking up. The company lost money this quarter compared to the same period last year, posting non-GAAP net sales of $100.38 million, down from $151.62 million during Q2 of its fiscal 2009. However sales are up for the entire year, with THQ posting net sales of $334.28 million for its fiscal 2010 thus far, up from $272.69 million last year, a 22 percent increase.

THQ blamed the second quarter dip on a lack of new titles, though it hopes to have a good holiday season thanks to a "strong mass-market line-up" including WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2010 and MX vs ATV Reflex. The company was also sure to mention its triumph in the JAKKS Pacific lawsuit, which resulted in a much lower payment to the longtime WWE series developer (though the scuffle is still haunting the publisher).

Finally, THQ promised to prevail in its march to profitability by the end of fiscal 2010. Though the company expects its Q3 2010 to be 5-10 percent lower than the same period last year, it predicts Q4 sales will exceed those of last year. A reasonable hope, given that all of THQ's major releases drop in its fiscal Q4, including Darksiders, Metro 2033 and the Dawn of War 2 expansion, Chaos Rising.

2009 THQ year-to-date sales up 22 percent over 2008 originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Elementals: The Magic Key

Plunge into the captivating world of magic and mystery inhabited by elementals. Embark on a thrilling adventure to help Albert, a young magician, restore the Key of Eiron and save his sister kidnapped by Sibelius, a wicked sorcerer. You`ll never feel lonely in your fascinating travels – your aide, Felly, will faithfully follow you, no matter what dangerous obstacles you face in Elementals – The Magic Key!


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http://www.fenomen-games.com/elementals-magic-key.htm

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Delicious: Emily's Taste of Fame

On her way to Hollywood and her new cooking show, "Emily's Taste of Fame", Emily's car breaks down. Help Emily get on the road again by making delicious meals and serving them to a huge variety of hungry customers. Along the way, help your customers and friends with unexpected events that seem to pop up at the worst time! Will Emily make it in prime time? Or, are there more important things in life than glittering lights, fame, and fortune?


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http://www.fenomen-games.com/delicious-emilys-taste-of-fame.htm

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Darksiders Is "Akin to Zelda" But Way Bloodier
[Impressions]

We're exactly three months and one day away from Darksiders' ship date and I'm still waiting for Battle Chasers #10.

I'm sure comic-book-author-turned-game-designer Joe Madureira is pretty sick of hearing that for the last eight years or so. But here's hoping his game will make you forget all about war-torn worlds, burly swordsmen and huge gauntlets.

Oh, wait...

Darksiders, for those of you who don't know, is about one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War. Turns out, there was a false Apocalypse and somebody set War up to take the blame. War's bosses glue a creature called The Watcher (voiced by Mark Hamil) to his fist and kick him back down to Earth sans most of his powers to figure out what went wrong.

Gameplay follows War through a series of environments on the ruined Earth. The map itself is huge once you open it all up, necessitating both a warp function you unlock later in the game and a badass horse called Ruin that serves as your ride. You also have to do a lot of backtracking to areas as you learn new abilities that open up places you either couldn't reach or see initially. Not only are you getting mystical powers like the ability to see into the Realm of Shadow with a button press, but also weapons and items that might remind you of a certain green-clad Nintendo icon.

It was about halfway through my tour of Darksiders with Hayden Dalton that the Zelda connection clicked. We'd just entered a room with several giant spiders and a puzzle element to it that was more complex than the usual go-here-kill-this kind I'm used to in action/adventure games. There was a grappling hook involved and something that looked like a spikier version of Link's boomerang.

"The puzzles are akin to Zelda," he explained after successfully dodging a huge spider dropping from the ceiling a la the Great Deku Tree dungeon in Ocarina of Time (only yuckier because Darksiders is big on blood and puss).

Dalton went on to say that Darksiders is about 40% puzzles to 60% combat/level exploration — and even the combat itself is something of a puzzle. In addition to planning for what weapon upgrades to buy (because you can't afford everything in the game on the currency you earn in one playthrough), you've also got kill types to consider and a Wrath gauge to fill. Killing enemies in the old fashioned way nets you souls — which are the game's form of currency. However, there are three different types of soul and only one of them can be used to buy weapon upgrades, while another fulls your Wrath gauge and the third restores your health.

The best way to go for soul-gathering is probably the special kill button. This happens when you beat an enemy within an inch of its life and then the B button icon pops up, prompting you to pull off a fancy special kill. You can ignore this button and just keep thrashing said enemy how you were thrashing it — but going for the special kill nets you more than one kind of soul currency. Also, that button prompt might give you the chance to ride on an enemy's shoulders to trample other enemies for more souls. And once your Wrath gauge goes up all the way, you can activate your Chaos Form overdrive which makes War more super-awesome-kill-guy than he usually is for a short amount of time.

Having cleared the gross spider mini-boss, Dalton continued on our tour of Darksiders. We encountered a sexy angel (voiced by Moon Bloodgood) who was bitter about being left behind on the post-apocalypse planet to clean up after War's mess; a flying griffin creature that we totally stole from said angel's buddy; and the ominous Black Tower that looms in the background of most levels 'til War finally finds a way to reach it.

The Black Tower level Dalton demoed for me looked the most like a Zelda dungeon of anything else I'd seen that day — but it also reminded me of another game. Apparently, it takes something like two hours to complete and you get a nifty portal-making gun that turns the whole thing into a giant puzzle, like, well — Portal. The cool thing about Darksiders' portal gun, though, is that you can shoot portals through portals to solve puzzles and you can change the velocity at which things pop out of the second portal hole once they go through the first. This means you can make crazy super-jumps to get enemies' heads during fights from across the room where said enemies can't even reach you.

All in all, I walked away from Darksiders with a pretty good feeling that I'd seen a tasteful pastiche of action/adventure games with a solid coat of Joe Mad's storytelling — instead of a hollow rip-off of other action/adventure games that hides behind a comic book author's big name. Also, Mark Hamil was there and that makes everything better.

A couple of fast facts for the road:
1) There won't be a demo.
2) The basic game is 15-20 hours, but completionists will take something like 30 hours and still not be able to afford every single weapon upgrade in the game.
3) There are no quick time events.
4) War doesn't level up, but his weapons, abilities and equipment do if you're spending souls on them. So if ever the game seems too hard, grind a bit and buy some upgrades.

Darksiders ships January 5th. If it sells well enough to warrant a sequel, let's all start begging Joe Mad to include random pages of Battle Chasers #10 on the loading screens in Darksiders 2. That would awesome.

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The Daily Hotness: GUN SHOES!

One of the best new weapons of the year? Gun shoes. Hands down.

Dexter brought us more stuff on the Prince of Persia movie, GTA IV isn't helping anime, Anthony has dibs on Nick in Left 4 Dead 2, we're giving away a huge Modern Warfare 2 prize pack, bonus stages return to Super Street Fighter IV and more happened on 11/04/09.

Destructoid Originals:
Prince of Persia creator pleased with the upcoming film
Ten Minute Taste: Band Hero
Podtoid 123: Scary Basement
Rev Rant: gaaaaaaaaaaaaay
GTA IV isn't helping anime with Princess Robot Bubblegum
Attention, everyone buying L4D2: I have dibs on Nick
Video: Connecting a PS3 controller to the PSPgo, on TV
Ten Minute Taste: LEGO Rock Band

Community:
Community blogs of 11/04/09
Forum of the day: Dragon Age: Origins

Contests:
We're giving away an Xbox 360, Modern Warfare 2 & more!

News:
This sounds necessary: A videogame based on The Host 2
Bonus stages coming to Super Street Fighter IV
Spector tried to obtain Deus Ex, planned a successor
Miyamoto talks MotionPlus for next Zelda game
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom trading cards!?! Yes! Pre-order now!
Konami to publish Ninety Nine Nights 2 in America?
Suck down this Fable III concept art
Capcom's Jun Takeuchi frowns on Japanese gamers
Infinity Ward: Wii can't deliver a cinematic experience
Seriously: Attorney opens videogameseizures.com
Shocker: Crazy Christian game selling well in the South
Nintendo and Treasure execs pooh-pooh the N64
IW responds to MW2 petition, servers capped at 9v9
Braid bringing rewind potions to PS3 next week
GameStop says PSPgo story is 'far from over'
Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks bonus: Feather stylus
Final Fantasy XIII soundtrack is huge, awesome
UK Modern Warfare 2 advert has guns in it
Ex-Midway producer accuses execs of forcing multiplayer
No Doubt suing Activision over appearance in Band Hero
American McGee's Alice trailer was a cheeky fake
Play as Special Infected in the L4D2 demo because you can
BlazBlue is coming to the PSP
Super SFIV's Juri used to be cute and fat (like a baby)
Capcom talks Lost Planet 2 multiplayer battles, we listen
These blurry Tekken movie set photos are kinda LOL
The Rock Band 2 SE bundle for $99? Consider it done
Atlus replacing strategy guides for Demon's Souls
Mickey remains silent in Epic Mickey plus sequel talk
Modern Warfare 2 Avatar nonsense hits Xbox Live tomorrow

Media:
Japan Studios' Numblast heading to PSN this Thursday
Bayonetta gets her gun-shoe freak on in new trailer
UK news report on game addiction clinic upsets gamers
Fast Food Panic brings back some tough memories
New Darksiders trailer is pretty kick-ass
Left 4 Dead 2 gets another sexy TV spot
Check out Cloud and Hatsune Miku in 3D Dot Game Heroes
Altair and Ezio are different says latest dev diary
Dragon Rising DLC announced, detailed, and dated
Eminem drops rhymes over new Modern Warfare 2 trailer

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'Skirmish' DLC available tomorrow for Operation
Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

by: Chad Smith
NEWS - Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is about to see its first update tomorrow.  The game is getting a patch for the PC and 360 tomorrow, with the PS3 update coming at a later time. 

Along with the patch, PC users will also get the 'Skirmish' pack for free.  This includes four new multiplayer maps as well as two new Fire Team Engagement maps for solo and co-op play.  Since Microsoft says that you can't get DLC free on the 360 (not officially, that's just what typically happens) players on that console will need to spend 400 MS Points to get it.  

All of this comes out tomorrow so get ready!

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http://www.gamingnexus.com/FullNews/Skirmish-DLC-available-tomorrow-for-Operation
-Flashpoint-Dragon-Rising/Item14899.aspx

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PC multiplayer for Modern Warfare 2 capped at 18
people

by: John Yan
NEWS - And here's another bad thing coming out of the whole no dedicated server setup that Infinity Ward's got. A chat on a Best Buy forum with a developer and an artist from Infinity Ward let loose that the maximum number of players for a multiplayer game on the PC is 18. Yes, the first Modern Warfare had 32 player support as most PC games in that genre do these days but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is stuck at 18.

Let me say that this really does feel like a step back for the series. One of the things I really enjoy when playing online on a PC is the fact that I can have a large group of people playing. Now some folks might think that it's not that big of a deal to go from 32 to 18 but for me it does feel like a let down. Infinity Ward said they wanted to do it for balancing reasons but I have a feeling that a big reason is also since one person has to be a listen server, the limited bandwidth in most residential connections went into this decision.

We see folks like DICE delaying Battlefield 1943 a bit to craft a better PC version and to up the player limit on the PC from 16 to 32 players yet Infinity Ward's going the opposite direction. My excitement for the game becomes less and less with each passing day though and for me it's disheartening to see how the company and series has changed. Maybe I'll get it in and forget all the things they changed. I certainly hope so but I am guessing a part of me is going to have these little thoughts in the back of my head when playing on what it's become on the PC side and what it could have been.

Thanks 1Up.

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http://www.gamingnexus.com/FullNews/PC-multiplayer-for-Modern-Warfare-2-capped-at
-18-people/Item14898.aspx

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Smoke Retro With Namco's Game Zippo Lighters
[Goods]

Namco Bandai's Zippo lighters may not hold a candle to similar—okay, far superior—recent combustible offerings from Sega, but if you're a huge Xevious fan, Banpresto has a lighter for you, buddy.

Four Zippos themed on classic Namco properties Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Xevious and Galaxian are yours for the pre-ordering and importing, should you have the desire and funds to complete the transaction. I say that because, like the Sega Saturn and Mega Drive Zippos, these aren't cheap. Each is 10,000 yen, equating to a $108.90 USD price at importer National Console Support.

But if you're expecting to need a Zippo in January, these might be exactly what you're looking for.

ZIPPO Namco Classic Game Zippo Lighters - Import Preorder [NCSX]

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