Madden Cover Announcement Coming Wednesday

Electronic Arts and ESPN have teamed up to make the task of deciding the cover athlete for Madden 2012 interactive. Fans have had the opportunity to vote for their favorite players via an online bracket hosted by ESPN that featured 32 athletes and are now down to Peyton Hillis and Michael Vick

Read The Full Article:
http://www.pwnordie.com/2011/04/25/madden-cover-announcement-coming-wednesday/

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Speculation About PSN Outage Turns to Custom
Firmware

Word on the street is that the PlayStation Network outage may have been caused by a custom PS3 firmware that allows unlimited game and content downloads with fake credit card numbers.

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Minecraft in 2D, you say Terraria looks legit

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"Terraria is like a 2D Minecraft," reads an email in my inbox. I click it, and a heavenly light exudes from my monitor as I hunch increasingly closer to the screen in pure delight.

I get the impression that Terraria is so much more. It may not look it initially, but give the video a minute, and you can see how the game veers in a surprisingly different direction. Check out that inventory screen! And those worm creatures! Oh, and that floating skeleton dude! What is this thing?

While some of its influences may seem fairly obvious, there is plenty of creativity to be found in the overall design. Seeing as how development only started back in January, it could be a while before we get our eager hands on Terraria. The team is shooting for a 2011 release, with focus currently set on Windows.

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Hidden SpringStones 2

Hidden Spring Stones 2 is point and click hidden object game created by Ainars. Find 56 hidden SpringStones. Each of the pictures has seven hidden SpringStones. To progress to the next picture you need to find all stones in current picture. Good Luck!Play This Game

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/escapegames24/~3/Ln__VkxHN1s/hidden-springstones-2
-walkthrough.html

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Is rampant piracy to blame for PSN downtime

As if the story of the PlayStation Network's week-long downtime couldn't get more speculative, fresh Intel from a user on Reddit is lending credence to the theory that illegal downloads on a significant scale caused Sony to shut down its online services. 

Modded PS3s that allow users to download PSN content for free were among the first things blamed when Sony confirmed it had suffered "external intrusions," and a PSX-Scene moderator has seemingly spilled the beans on how it was done.

Using custom firmware that makes a retail PS3 act like a debug unit, hackers were able to get onto a "trusted" version of PSN reserved for reviewers and developers. Since users of this network were considered kosher, fake credentials were never checked, and people could help themselves without having to give up real personal details or fork over a single dime.

This is not confirmed to be the root cause of the shutdown, but it's been gathered together based on factual occurrences. People had indeed been using a new custom Firmware to steal content, whether or not this is the reason for Sony's actions. In any case, this speculation has been far more informative than Sony wants to be. Take that for what it's worth.

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Capcom & Dtoid go to the park for Street Fighter
IV 3DS

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Capcom Unity and Dtoiders alike came out to Dolores Park in San Francisco this past weekend where many confused hipsters witnessed the lot of us playing Super Street Fighter IV on the 3DS. We teamed up with the king of fighting game franchises because we're all about bringing communities together. Plus the thought of free pizza was way too enticing!

We had a great turnout for the afternoon of fighting, all of which was captured on our Justin.TV stream. Yes, nothing more exciting then watching a bunch of people play on a handheld system over the Internet! Congratulations go out to Jason for winning the Super Street Fighter IV tournament we held and earning himself the M. Bison limited edition trophy and a Mr. Destructoid bobblehead.

Many thanks to everyone that came out from both communities, Capcom for being so awesome and J Eckert for all the photos. Special thanks to chiptune artist Crashfaster who came by and gave away his brand new CD to the crowd too!

We're definitely going to be doing more of these meetups in the future. Join the San Francisco emailer to keep up to date with all that's going on with the Destructoid community or check out one of these other worldwide groups to be part of the fun.

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Hidden SpringStones 2 walkthrough

Hidden SpringStones 2 is point and click hidden object game created by Ainars. Find 56 hidden SpringStones. Each of the pictures has seven hidden SpringStones. To progress to the next picture you need to find all stones in current picture. Good Luck!Play This Game

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/escapegames24/~3/Ln__VkxHN1s/hidden-springstones-2
-walkthrough.html

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New releases: Outland, Darkspore, Hector and more

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Well, not a whole lot going on this week but that's for the best since Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat were just released last week. At least we have Outland for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this week. It's definitely something to keep your eye out on.

What's looking sw33t to you?

PS3: Man vs. Wild, ZEN Pinball: Sorcerer's Lair, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Resurrection, Outland

X360: Man vs. Wild, Kinect Sports: Calorie Challenge, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Resurrection, Outland

Wii: Man vs. Wild

PC: IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover, Outland, Darkspore, Hector: Badge of Carnage - Episode 1: We Negotiate With Terrorists

Operation Flashpoint: Red River (PC)


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Darkspore (PC)


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Hector: Badge of Carnage - Episode 1: We Negotiate With Terrorists (PC)


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Aaamaazing!: Yo Bro! I got you a job, man!

_{[For his Monthly Musing, Hakael tells us how immersed he became in Shemue, and how amazing the entire experience was for him. There's still a few days left to get your musing in, so if you haven't written one, do it now! -- JRo]}

When I was a sophomore in high school my favorite hobby changed forever. I'd always played games, but up until my mid-teens they were just a distraction. Putting an hour or two into an RPG at a time, or playing a few rounds of Street Fighter was something I would do when I was bored, and that was it. I'd owned multiple systems and had procured a decent collection of games, but outside of Legend of Zelda and the occasional square game, I'd go to the movies or buy a new book if I wanted a real story to chew on. On Christmas Day 2000, things were different. That day my eyes were opened to what games could become as a storytelling medium. It was the day I played Shenmue for the first time.

Shenmue was the first video game I was truly immersed in, where everything about the characters and location felt real. They had daily lives. The people in town weren't standing around waiting to talk with me. Instead they had jobs. Everyone in the game's fictional 1986 Japan had routines, families, and voices. They were either willing to indulge me with conversation, or they would ask me not to bother them so they could move along with their day. It rained in Yokosuka! IT SNOWED! Stores closed at night, and the streets became more dangerous to wander in. It was the first video game world I had experienced where it felt like the world didn't revolve around my actions. If I wasted a day having Ryo practice fighting with Fukuhara at the family dojo, Nozomi would still be tending to her flower shop. Tom would still be selling hot dogs. The world continued on as it always had if I wandered the town or not.

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The people along the way in this revenge tale are still fresh in my mind. Nozomi, the unrequited love who had to move on with her life because Ryo was too obsessed to stop and kiss her. Tom, the hot dog dealing, tornado kicking, Jamaican chilling out in the middle of town. Gui Zhang, rival and ally at the same time. Master Chen, wise and mysterious. Terry, Evil King of the Harbor. Mark, the working man looking for his brother. Goro... loveable, stupid Goro. He got me a job. And Chai. Good lord, I still hear that bastard's laugh in my nightmares. While these characters all had specific interactions with Ryo, they stood on their own. They had their own character goals, independent of Ryo. Nozomi moves to Canada for school, Tom plans to move back to America, Goro wants to get married! Ryo was part of their lives, but he wasn't the focus of it... something I still find refreshing.

The opening sequence of Shenmue played a large role in getting me hooked. While you're given a clear goal, this was an action game where you weren't provided with a blueprint for how to achieve that goal, or an endless stream of enemies from point A to point B. Instead, you needed to figure things out. Who was Lan Di? Why did he want this mirror so much? Was he somehow justified in taking the life of Iwao Hazuki? He revealed that Iwao had killed someone. These were the questions I was asking myself as I wandered the streets of Dobuita in between taking care of a kitten, playing at the arcade, and slowly gathering intel about how to find Lan Di. The price of gathering such information was steep, time needed to be spent practicing new moves in order to use them effectively in battle. As the game progressed, it became apparent that every moment I spent beating up a gang member so he could point me to the nearest Mad Angels hideout was going against Iwao's final wishes to Ryo. But sometimes you just can't let things go.

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Another thing that Shenmue provided that few other games had at that point was the sheer variety of things to do. If you were otherwise bored with your quest, you could choose to hit the arcade, pick up boxes or stack crates with a fork lift for extra cash, spend your time walking from place to place examining items, or collect in-game toys. A lot of this seems trivial and stupid from where we sit now, but much of it has been incorporated and improved in modern games. The main quest featured fighting, QTE, open world exploration, and racing. These modes would change within moments of each other, or shifted as a scene progressed. The fighting was deep, based off of Virtua Fighter. Tons of combos could be achieved by the end of the game. Quick Time Events were an entirely new animal to most, sometimes frustrating, sometimes rewarding, but it was a new element in console gameplay. Yes, Dragon's Lair and other games in the early 80s had an element like QTE where you memorized specific button presses to continue the game/movie, but Shenmue was responsible for integrating them into a modern title, and quite successfully. Controversial as they often are, QTE still exist in some of today's great game titles, and it's largely due to Shenmue.

Shenmue wasn't just a game for me. It was an experience I'd liken to reading a favorite book for the first time, or listening to a new band and finding that I enjoy them. It was formative. I don't know if I'd play the same types of games, or if I'd have eventually dropped the hobby entirely if I had never played it. It had such an impact on me that when the Dreamcast failed, I imported a copy of Shenmue II from Europe because I didn't want to wait for the X-Box port. Today, I feel like we're standing on the brink of a gaming renaissance. Video games are offering more in terms of immersion, storytelling, and character interaction than they had achieved in previous generations. But I can't help but feel that they owe much of it to the risks Sega took with Shenmue. While I'm currently waiting patiently for games like LA Noire, Mass Effect III, and Skyrim ... sometimes, just sometimes ... I wish I was still driving a forklift and looking for seedy characters at the docks on my break.

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Phantasy Star Online 2 comes out of hiding

Springing out of the Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity national tournament and fan event in Akihabara is a new, super fuzzy trailer for Phantasy Star Online 2. YouTube won't let me embed the thing here for whatever reason, so you'll have to get your click on.

There was a time -- back in the GameCube days -- when I'd be all over this. It's not for me any longer, but surely this stuff is still someone's jam. If it is, I kindly point you in the direction of these screenshots. Additionally, andriasang has picked up on a few extra details relating to PSO2.

Series producer Satoshi Sakai reportedly spoke about the team's longing to bring adventure back into role-playing games. Yes, please! I'd like more of that, thanks.

Phantasy Star Online 2 -- First Video Footage [andriasang]

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