A Preview of Rock Band Downloads Feature OneRepublic, Ace Frehley from 1up:
Developer Harmonix has 10 more tracks ready for next week’s Rock Band DLC. They’ve announced new downloads from L.A. punk pioneers X, former KISS guitarist Ace Frehley, modern pop sensations OneRepublic, and more. Be on the lookout for the DLC next Tuesday, March 23 on Xbox 360 and Wii (Thursday, March 25 on PlayStation 3).
The Rock Band devs also listed the 29 songs that have been added to the Rock Band Network store on the Xbox 360 over the last week. Among the new additions are tracks by Clutch, Third Eye Blind, MxPx, and Left 4 Dead 2’s Midnight Riders.
The four-pack from X will set you back $6.99 (560 Microsoft points) on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Singles will be priced at the usual $1.99 (160 Microsoft points; 200 Wii Points) apiece, with the exception of a pair of Little Fish tracks at 99 cents (80 Microsoft points; 100 Wii Points). Rock Band Network pricing ranges between $1 (80 Microsoft points), $2 (160 Microsoft points), and $3 (240 Microsoft points) per song.
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A Preview of Heavy Rain’s "The Taxidermist" DLC Coming April 1 from 1up:
The first bit of Heavy Rain downloadable content, titled “The Taxidermist,” will come out on April 1 according to the PlayStation Blog. The additional episode, which was released for free to those who pre-ordered the game, will cost $4.99. The episode takes place before most of the events of the game, and features Madison investigating a suspicious house while on the trail of the Origami Killer.
Our experience with the DLC was fairly short, but it puts stock in replaying it in a variety of ways. The episode features multiple endings, and fans of the game might enjoy discovering all the ways this story can go awry. More DLC episodes are said to be on the way featuring other characters both before and after the events of the game. Given the game’s strong sales so far, Sony and Quantic Dream should have a well-established audience for the episodes.
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A Preview of Free MAG "Trooper Gear" DLC Coming Next Week from 1up:
MAG will receive its first piece of downloadable content next week, for free. Zipper’s Jeremy Dunham gave word on the PlayStation Blog that the “Trooper Gear Pack” is due out next Thursday, March 25. The pack will add a flashbang grenade, new light machine guns, and additional uniforms for each faction of PMC (above). To celebrate the occasion, Zipper is kicking it off with a Double XP Weekend. It will start at 12 a.m. PST on March 25 and last through midnight on Sunday.
Dunham promises this is just the beginning, and more DLC is in the works. It does raise an interesting question about MAG, though. This first pack is explicitly called free, so we can probably expect that most other packs won’t be. Since MAG is an MMO-styled shooter, we have to wonder what will happen once the player base is split by downloadable packs. Zipper may be planning mandatory updates to the game so that everyone can still play together, but we’ll have to wait to see.
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A Preview of Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight Review from 1up:
Electronic Arts has given over the Command & Conquer franchise to an always-online, MMO scheme of leveling up to unlock content, which can work in a shooter, a role-playing game, or Scientology. But it’s a fundamental misreading of the appeal of real-time strategy games. The basis for an RTS is that you have a box of different toys. Each game, you choose different toys. Do you go with tanks? Infantry? Aircraft? Your choice, pitted against the other player’s choice, determines how the game unfolds.
But when you start Command & Conquer 4, your choices are limited to about a fifth of the actual content. Leveling up is a slow laborious process. Expect to spend several hours fingering listlessly through the meager baseline stuff. Vanilla tank. Vanilla rocket buggy. Vanilla anti-tank soldier. Skirmishes against the A.I. and online games can inch you along that bar to the next level. The campaign is a big, fat, uninteresting experience point farm, and you’re expected to play through it twice, once for each faction. You get the usual scripted guff, which is particularly frustrating when you have to play the more difficult missions at the mercy of A.I. teammates or — even worse — a timer. The story throws over the series’ usual, B-level celebrity camp in favor of something earnest, but it doesn’t work any better. It’s clearly digging deep into its source material, so it’s not going to make a lot of sense to folks who haven’t kept up on the lore. Me, for instance. At one point, Kane says something along the lines of “when I found you people thousands of years ago, you were living in mud huts”. Aside from having no idea what he was going on about, he really doesn’t look that old. As near as I could tell, the story was about a one-of-a-kind Lasik procedure and some unlikely cosmetic surgery. Go figure.
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A Preview of Grand Theft Auto Episodes Delayed on PC, PlayStation 3 from 1up:
Been holding out for Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City on PC or PlayStation 3? You’re going to have to wait just a bit longer. Developer Rockstar Games sent word today that the newly multiplatform episodes won’t be making their originally announced release date of March 30; instead, expect The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned to finally hit PS3 and PC on April 13 in North America (April 16 everywhere else).
So what’s up with the delay? Apparently Rockstar opted to make some “minor content changes” to the PS3’s PAL version of the game at the request of Sony Europe. What these changes are, exactly, remains unclear, but a representative from Rockstar assured us that the alterations won’t affect players’ enjoyment of the games. They also noted that the adjustments have nothing to do with the requirements of any local ratings boards.
We’ll let you know as soon as we know anything more about whatever it is Sony wanted cut from (or added to?) Episodes from Liberty City.
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A Preview of Sam & Max Make Big Changes In Their PSN Debut from 1up:
Nobody does episodic games like Telltale. Sure other companies might call the games they put out episodes, but Penny Arcade Adventuresstill hasn’t gotten to its third chapter, and Half-Life? We’ve given up on that ghost a long time ago. But with Wallace & Gromit, Tales of Monkey Island, and Sam & Max, Telltale has proven that it can consistently deliver solid comedy content. With the upcoming third season of Sam & Max, the main hurdle the team at Telltale has to overcome is making the game feel accessible, both for first-time Sam & Max adventures and for people who just never considered adventure games “their thing.” While Season 3, The Devil’s Playhouse, isn’t a complete reboot, Telltale is throwing several new ideas into the well-trod genre. And during this year’s GDC, the developer showed off exactly what’s going to be new for the comic duo’s third caper.
For one, this is the first time the series is coming to PSN and Mac. That doesn’t mean there are any new exclusivity deals — you’ll still eventually be able to play the game on 360, PC, and Wii — but Telltale wants to make sure that as many people on as many different systems as possible are able to experience the game. But it’s the gameplay tweaks that really change things up with this iteration. The Devil’s Playhouse will allow you to freely switch between the game’s two leads — finally letting you delve into Max’s twisted mind to see just how the demented rabbit-thing views the world.
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A Preview of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Sales Top 2.3 Million from 1up:
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has been pretty well-received by critics and fans alike, but is that positive buzz translating into sales? With more than 25 million people already invested in the competition, you may not have expected DICE’s shooter to take retailers by storm. According to EA’s internal figures, however, that hasn’t been a problem; they’re reporting over 2.3 million copies of Bad Company 2 sold in the roughly two weeks since the game launched.
Not only that, but — as seems to be the trend these days — they also threw out a handful of absurd statistics gathered from the game’s servers. EA’s stats show over 2.9 million hours of multiplayer have been racked up during the last 24 hours alone, and that players have earned a total of more than 81 billion points, unlocking over 43 million pieces of equipment in the process. The publisher tallied a peak-concurrent-users figure of around 230, 000 — a number that’s caused EA’s multiplayer servers to buckle on more than one occasion.
DICE’s Karl Magnus Troedsson chimed in to address the game’s on-again, off-again server stability issues. “In the first 48 hours we had such a tremendous rush to multiplayer gameplay that our servers experienced overwhelming demand. This is a testament to the massive response players have had worldwide for the extraordinary action experienced in the Battlefield sandbox,” explained the game’s executive producer. “DICE and EA have brought more servers online. We now have enough capacity to handle all BFBC2 connections seamlessly and we continue to monitor online play daily.”
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A Preview of Final Fight: Double Impact Coming Mid-April from 1up:
Capcom’s small tribute to classic arcade brawlers is due out in the midst of tax time. The company announced today that Double Impact will be coming out on April 14 on Xbox Live, and April 15 on PlayStation Network. It will cost 800 Microsoft Points, or $9.99 on its respective systems.
Double Impact combines the arcade version of Final Fight with the classic Magic Sword. Combining the two makes it about five bucks per game, which isn’t a bad deal if you’re a fan of classic arcade brawlers. Check out the video above to see it in action.
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A Preview of Jamie Foxx Cast in Big Screen Kane & Lynch from 1up:
The Kane and Lynch movie has had its Kane for quite a while in Bruce Willis, and now it’s found its Lynch. Screenwriter Kyle Ward tweeted last night that Jamie Foxx is in as the psychologically unbalanced mercenary James Lynch. He had to clarify that he wasn’t referencing the movie based on Uncharted that he’s also writing, after one user jokingly asked about “a black Nate Drake.” We previously reported that producer Adrian Askarieh was impressed by Bruce Willis’ enthusiasm for the script. “He called it one of the best action scripts he’s read,” said Askarieh, “and Bruce is an expert in terms of action scripts because he’s read everything over the last 20 years.” Now Foxx, who is relatively new to action movies as compared to Willis, will be playing alongside him.
While Kane appears like he won a Bruce Willis look-alike contest, Foxx’s resemblance to Lynch (above) isn’t quite so uncanny. Very early rumors had Billy Bob Thornton pegged for the role, but Foxx it is. We’ll keep you updated on the movie as we hear more about casting details and release information.
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A Preview of Sega Aiming to Reestablish Respect for Older IPs from 1up:
Between the first Sonic the Hedgehog reboot, Golden Axe: Beast Rider and other less than stellar titles, Sega’s original IPs have taken a bit of a beating. No more though, the publisher said in a recent interview with Computer and Video Games.
“It’s important that our old IPs are respected, [and] we need to deliver a good product,” said Sega’s Mike Hayes. “And in some instances we have done that – look back at when we re-did Sega Rally. It scored well and was moderately successful commercially. But then with other great franchises like Golden Axe we didn’t produce a great game at all.”
He continued, “Going forward, if we’re going to look at any existing IP to bring out the locker, we have to make sure we get the quality to a level we now expect. I’m not saying which IP it would be – a Streets Of Rage, a Crazy Taxi, whatever. What we have to do now is build something that is 85 percent plus [rated]. We can’t just get away with PR.”
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