Seemingly unconvinced that enough people had said “hey, you spelled ‘messenger’ wrong” after the first model, archrival regionals Cricket and MetroPCS have both launched Samsung’s Messager II with a 2 megapixel camera, EV-DO, and a pair of keypads: one slide-out QWERTY, one numeric permanently affixed up front. Admittedly, the name is no stranger than the “Vice” brand adopted by the phone’s twin sister up in Canada, but isn’t it kind of ironic that a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard be given a name that nearly everyone thinks is a typo? Find this sucker now on MetroPCS for $149 and Cricket for a hair under $200.
Valve has announced that the recently revealed Left 4 Dead 2 campaign, “Dark Carnival,” will be playable at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo, which takes place next week. The campaign will be playable at both the Valve and Microsoft booths, and each booth will be showing off different portions of the campaign. Valve is also planning on revealing “a few more of the 20-plus new items” that will appear in the game, though the company disclosed no hints as to what those might be. Napalm? More Depeche Mode memorabilia? Who knows?
For those that can’t make it to PAX, have no fear, because Joystiq has you covered. You can bet your soon-to-be zombie-chewed brains that we’ll be spending some time with the game during the show.
Peggle, after releasing pretty much everywhere else to critical acclaim, came out on Xbox Live Arcade this March, to additional critical acclaim, thanks to its new multiplayer modes. Now Peggle fans intent on either playing the game only on Xbox or on buying every Peggle release will have something else to look forward to as PopCap has announced the XBLA release of the sequel, Peggle Nights, coming by way of an XBLA expansion for the original Peggle.
Like other releases of Peggle Nights, the XBLA version includes a new Peggle Master named Marina, 60 new levels, and 60 new challenges and will be available to all Peggle players as a Title Update. Most importantly to some status-obsessed gamers, Peggle Nights will include three new Achievements, worth a total of 50 points.
Peggle Nights will be available sometime this fall for an undisclosed price.
Only those who rose (sigh) up to Microsoft’s annual $50 multiplayer fee will find themselves in the online company of Megan Fox next week, when she plays Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen exclusively against Xbox Live Gold subscribers. The actress, self-outed Wii fan and professional runner-from-explosions will expect you to promptly log in by 5:30PM ET on Saturday, August 29 — the session kicks off at 6PM sharp!
In the meantime, you’ll want to send a friend request to the following very real Gamertag: Megan Fox 2009. Please, don’t be upset if you don’t hear back right away. She probably needs to trim her friends list a bit to make room for you.
We guess a lot of sneaker lovers also enjoy racing games, because Microsoft has announced that Puma will be an exclusive marketing partner for Forza 3. The result of this partnership ensures you’ll be gawking at Puma ads throughout Forza 3 and guarantees Puma driver Natacha Gachnang will be the face of the game across Europe.
The partnership will even extend beyond the game, helping to create a Forza 3-branded Puma shoe and enveloping employees who are demonstrating Forza 3 at special promotional events leading up until its October 27 release in – you guessed it! – Puma gear. We think that’s kind of good thing though, because the last time we saw the game it was tough to understand the publicists through those big driving helmets they all had on.
Visually, there could not be a more stark contrast between the Joystiq staff and the Joystiq Biomass. While we’re all impressively fit, tanned skin stretched across the sinew of our typing fingers, the Biomass is an amorphous, million-faced blob whose opinions are forged from the unmitigated madness of our community.
But occasionally, when its wailing gurgles become too overpowering, we must unlock its hermetically-sealed cage and let it have its say. Today, when the Biomass reviews Batman: Arkham Asylum, is such a day.
We’re calling it “this year’s Mirror’s Edge” — WET is dripping with style, but will its unconventional controls and arcade-inspired combo system jive with mainstream gamers? We chatted with Bethesda’s Pete Hines to talk about the publisher’s late involvement with the A2M project. Below is a text excerpt of the entire video interview:
What does WET stand for? WET is short for wetworks, which is a CIA term for operations where your hands are literally going to get wet with blood. We want you, as the player, to always be shooting, always be taking people out, whether it’s with your guns or your sword. You’re running around walls, jumping, spinning, sliding. It’s about comboing together cool moves to take out your enemies and doing in this cool 70s Grindhouse look.
What gives WET its Grindhouse feel? You really get that Grindhouse feel from the VO work from folks like Eliza Dushku, voice of Ruby (the character you play), Malcolm McDowell. There is a lot of music in the game, both from Brian LeBarton, who works with Beck, created an original soundtrack for the game that’s kind of really cool and hip and funky; and then layered on top of that are all these tracks we got from indie bands that have this cool rockabilly type sound that fit really well with both the original soundtrack and with the game.
The intro to Batman: The Animated Series … reimagined with game footage
Batman has had a long and (mostly) horrendous career as a video game crime fighter. While his big screen adventures have evolved into masterpieces, most of Batman’s video game outings have made players want to poke out their eyes with a Batarang. To celebrate the arrival of Batman’s latest and (we assure you) greatest adventure – Batman: Arkham Asylum – Joystiq looks back at the rest of the Caped Crusader’s games.
Don the cape and cowl and bring a flashlight. We’re going to have to crawl through a lot of darkness to get to the light at the end of this licensing tunnel.
Instead of sharing images of its Modern Warfare 2 peripheral lineup with us yesterday, when they announced everything, Mad Catz has given IGN a “worldwide exclusive” video tour which (and maybe it’s just us) isn’t quite as effective at triggering our consumer gland as some good, ol’ fashioned photos. Nevertheless, the highlight of the video lineup is, undoubtedly, the “Combat Controller” for both Xbox 360 and PS3. They each go for $50 (yeah, that’s the approximate manufacturer’s suggested price for the first-party controllers!) but that $50 doesn’t quite get you a first-party experience.
As shown in the video, the Combat Controllers feature special finger buttons on the bottom of the gamepad and both mirror the general design of their first-party counterpart; however, the Xbox 360 version isn’t wireless and the PS3 version lacks rumble. No, really. They also show some other accessories: the $30 “military inspired” Throat Communicator is perfect for snacking while gaming they tell us; the $25 Combat Gamepad for PCs is curiously not on par with the console counterparts; and the lineup of keyboards and mice seem like overkill to us.
From success story to sufferer to savior, Jordan Weisman has laid claim to a variety of positions during his journey through the harrowing halls of Microsoft. The FASA Interactive founder has blasted his former overlord — and sculpted some self-promotion for his new venture — during a recent chat with GamesIndustry.biz.
The year was 1999 and, following what was surely a rewarding acquisition phase, things quickly soured as Weisman’s studio was indoctrinated into the Microsoft way of work. “The two reasons [Microsoft] bought us was, one, they wanted the catalog of intellectual properties and, two, they felt that we had developed a really good development culture,” Weisman said. “And the reality is that, pretty much from the day we moved to Redmond, that development culture was destroyed.”
Lucky for Bungie, a dejected Weisman was still knocking around Microsoft when the Chicago-based studio was being acquired, and, according to Weisman, he became the “lead vocal pain in the ass to get things done very different for Bungie.”
“I tried to convince [Microsoft] to leave Bungie in Chicago, but not winning that I did succeed in getting them to put them in a walled off room,” Weisman recounted. “We were much better able to defend Bungie’s culture than we were FASA’s culture.”
And so, MechWarrior was sacrificed to secure the foundation for Halo, or something like that … right? Weisman has already raised $29 million for his new company Smith & Tinker, but we’re sure he won’t turn away a few more bills pitched his way for his good deeds.
