New Footage From The Last Guardian

By Mark

Some new gameplay footage has come our way via a video interview with Fumito Ueda, director of The Last Guardian. 


While the footage seen may not look like gameplay I can assure you it is, we see more of the interplay between the main character and the creature. Ueda also explains some of the design choices and aim of the game so it really is worth a watch for those interested in the game.

Australian Mortal Kombat ban to be appealed

By Jonny

Warner Bros have announced that they intend to fight against the recent banning of Mortal Kombat in Australia.
While the game is very gory and over the top, the publisher states that the violence and gore in Mortal Kombat is no worse than other gruesome games currently on the Australian Market. Here's the full statement from the publisher:

"After careful consideration Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Australia have decided to appeal to the Australian Classification Review Board against the RC (Refused Classification) decision given to Mortal Kombat. After reviewing both the game play and the Board's original decision WBIE Australia believe the violence in the game is on par with numerous other titles readily available for sale in the Australian market. As such the company wants to exhaust all options to make the game available to Mortal Kombat fans in this country. An identical version of the game will be submitted for appeal."

Source: IGN

Lengthy Gameplay Video For Hunted: The Demon's Forge

By Mark

Still unsure about upcoming Hunted: The Demon's Forge? Well that could change after watching the new video that has hit the net featuring 8 minutes of footage that blends in game cutscenes and gameplay footage.

Developed by InXile Entertainment, Hunted, follows the adventures of E'lara and Caddoc with the former being our heroine capable of wielding small weapons and bows whereas the latter is the large male protagonist that slays his enemies with larger melee weapons. The pair go off in search of an artifact courtesy of a vision that Caddoc has.

Primarily meant as a co-op affair the game will offer players a co-op experience that doesn't utilise splitscreen. President of InXile, Matt Findley, has previously said that “We’re co-op in that all of our special skills and abilities are designed to make you work together,”. Let us know what you think of the title in the comments below.

Battlefield 3 Uninterrupted Gameplay

By Mark

Remember the first teaser for Battlefield 3? It was about 40 seconds long with lots of editing and little opportunity to focus on the game. That's now been rectified by EA and DICE as they have released a video entitled 'Fault Line Series Episode 1: Bad Part of Town'.

The video is roughly 3 minutes of pure, uninterrupted gameplay allowing us to properly focus on what's on offer and the immediate thing to notice is the visual quality. It's pretty sweet looking to say the least, but don't take my word for it, watch it.

Visceral Games To Work On 'Bold New IP'

By Mark

Not satisfied with just sitting on the Dead Space franchise, Visceral Games are now looking to make all new experiences. The news comes by way of a job listing via the developer that seeks an executive producer for an 'AAA' title. Part of the listing reads:

The Executive Producer for Visceral Redwood Shores will be leading a bold new IP that is heavily backed by EA leadership. The team is made up of industry veterans with a proven track record for shipping quality product.

As for what type of game, what platform and all the other usual questions then I'm afraid there are no answers yet, the title seems to be in the earliest of phases. No doubt the developer has high ambitions for the title and I for one look forward to what the come up with.

[Source - Gamasutra Jobs]

Black Ops Patch released for Xbox 360

By Jonny

Treyarch have just released the 7th title update for Call of Duty: Black Ops on the Xbox 360. The update comes with a bunch of improvement to the matchmaking, multiplayer and zombies mode, as well as fixing the broken leader boards.

Community manager Josh Olin also announced that the PS3 version of the update is coming and is stated to arrive alongside the release of the "First Strike" map pack on March 3.

Issues Fixed

- Matchmaking improvements to return higher quality results faster. This change includes settings that are tunable in the live environment, so tweaking may continue beyond initial release of this update.
- The in-game store now hides DLC map packs that do not match the language of the player's disc to decrease the possibility of users downloading the incorrect language version.
- Calling in a Chopper Gunner immediately after getting shot down in a Gunship will no longer end the Chopper Gunner run prematurely. Required timing-specific button presses.
- Split screen players are now able to change camera perspectives and cycle through players as a spectator.
- Addressed an issue where the most recent match played in Zombies could overwrite the best match played on the leaderboard.
- Improved Zombies lobbies to prevent players from erroneously receiving the error "Unable to join game session" under certain circumstances.
- Addressed a number of community-discovered Zombies gameplay exploits.
- Additional security feature updates.

Gameplay Fixes

- Additional Sniper rifle tuning

Obsidian Working On New Projects - Licensed and Fresh

By Mark

Obsidian Entertainment have spoken about some upcoming projects that they have in the pipeline and what they'd like to work on.

The CEO of the developer Feargus Urquhart has been speaking to Game Revolution and talked about what the team has planned post Dungeon Siege III release. 

"There's nothing that's been moved forward, but we'd love to develop Dungeon Siege 4. On the flip side I think as a studio we have some original ideas and stories to tell."

He then goes on to talk about what they have in mind for pitches:

"We have a great idea for a new world we've just started pitching to publishers and we have an older pitch that we really like called 'Defiance' which is about a fantasy world where, basically, Sauron won. Everything isn't happy in The Shire, they didn't get the ring in the fire and the hobbits are all dead. We think that's a cool pitch and we hope to have a publisher pick that up at some point."

Most recently the developer has worked on Fallout: New Vegas which received favourable reviews from most with the biggest complaint being the amount of bugs in the game at launch. Previous to that they handled Alpha Protocol which was a fresh IP that released to really mixed opinions.

In terms of another new IP the team is currently at work on a project that is set to release on XBLA which is aimed at the first quarter of next year as they are also at work on a licensed IP which he couldn't talk much about:

"it's a licensed product that when people hear about it they're going to be 'well you had to do that. there's no option, if I was a developer and I was offered that I would just do it'. I'm hoping that'll be announced around E3."

So there's Obsidian's plans for the time being folks. Thoughts?