Lost in Nightmares Review

Lost in Nightmares is the first of four DLC releasing this year for Resident Evil 5. The next bit of extra content containing extra chapters is called Desperate Escape which is coming out early March and the 2 other packs I mentioned are costumes packs. All can be found here. I have decided to purchase all the DLC because I have had Resi 5 since launch but coming out on March 9th is Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition which contains all the DLC on the disc. Each DLC costs 400 and the Costume Packs are priced at 160.


Lost in Nightmares is a new chapter that shows one of Chris and Jill’s old missions, it is not very long. On Amateur it took me 20-25 minutes but on Veteran it took me well over an hour. The mission takes place in Ozwell E. Spencer’s (Founder of Umbrella) mansion and it looks exactly like the one off the first Resident Evil. As soon as I started I was taken back to when I first played Resident Evil and it felt brilliant. The first half of this DLC takes place in the main part of mansion and you don’t have much combat, more running around finding pieces of paper and a crank.

There are a few boss fights later on but they seem to have re used a boss of the Resident Evil 5 storyline, of course the boss has had a few mild changes. When it got to final confrontation I was actually surprised it was ending, it was just starting to get better. After you have finished Lost in Nightmares you have the chance to give Mercenaries Reunion a go. This is basically Mercenaries but with different characters such as the famous Barry Burton and the evil Excella Gionne, unfortunately not in her Urboros state.


I have put a few hours into the new Mercenaries mode and I am still enjoying it. I need to finish Lost in Nightmares on Professional mode still and this time I will run through as Jill because as soon as you complete it once on any difficulty you get the option to choose Chris or Jill which is nice as some people do prefer Jill. This is also like the first game where you also there had the option between Jill and Chris.

I love the Resident Evil series and Resident Evil 5 did deliver. This DLC is a great addition, it’s just a bit disappointing how short it is and that it could have been much longer. I would not recommend buying this DLC unless you play Resident Evil 5 on a regular basis. I hope Desperate Escape is just that little bit longer when it comes out next month.

8/10

New Blur trailer looks impressive

Bizarre Creations has released its latest Blur trailer in which the team discusses social gameplay aspects and how the game 'brings people together.'

NeoGAF is reporting that a beta for the game will be available from the 1st of March. It comes after Fileplanet revealed a 'top secret Xbox 360 beta' will come out on that date.

Enjoy!

Just Cause 2 Demo coming next week

Square Enix has just confirmed the Just Cause 2 demo will be released March 4 on Xbox LIVE.

A tweet from Square Enix UK's community manager gave the news:

The Just Cause 2 demo will hit Xbox Live, PSN and Steam on March 4th.

The demo apparently features 30 square miles of gameplay area for you to get your hands on.

There you have it. The game is out March 26.

Transformers: War For Cybertron Gameplay Trailer

Here's the first gameplay trailer for the new Transformers game. Luckily it's not a tie-in game with any of the films, so it could be half decent, however, this trailer didn't really do anything for me, but hopefully some of you guys will like it.

Enjoy.

Video Games | Transformers: War for Cybertron | Exclusive Gameplay Reveal Trailer HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

GAME closing 43 stores, axing 247 jobs

Oh dear. Just as we thought the worst of the recession was behind us, and that the game industry was one of the survivors over the last 2 years, comes this.

GAME has confirmed it will close 43 stores, laying off 247 staff across its UK operations.
The news comes after the company had seen its sales over the Christmas period, fall by 18%.
They will close 12 GAME stores, all 25 stores based in branches of Debenhams, and 6 Gamestation stores. Tough market conditions coming in 2010 are to blame for the closures.

In a statement to Gamesindustry.biz, the company said: "The majority of the identified sites are located close to another one of our stores, and we will help each customer affected by a closure to transfer to their nearest store as well as our online offerings,"

"We will provide extensive support to the teams in each store. However, with deep regret, we have had to offer redundancy to 247 employees. We will do our utmost to redeploy roles if possible, and have started consulting with all affected employees in the 43 sites."

New Red Dead Redemption screens. They're gorgeous

Rockstar has released five more screenshots of Read Dead Redemption, a day after we saw a new video featuring the ladies of the game.

Feast your eyes on them below, this game looks to be a stunner.

Alpha Protocol screenshots and boxart revealed

SEGA has sent over some screenshots and the boxart for the upcoming Alpha Protocol. Although the picture below shows the PC version, it'll look exactly the same for the Xbox 360 and PS3.

It was announced last night that the game would be released on the 1st June in the US with Europe getting it a few days earlier on the 28th of May. The news comes as a relief to many after the game was delayed umpteen times.

Tweet in game with Blur

Blur the new racing game from Bizarre Creations and Activision have today tweeted that you will be able to tweet in game. This new racer looks brilliant and now with twitter in game that adds even more excitement!

I really can't wait for this to be released so I can get some racing and tweeting done. Release is set for Spring 2010.

New Red Dead Redemption video shows the ladeeez'

Rockstar has released a new trailer for its forthcoming western epic, Red Dead Redemption, this time focusing on the female species in the game.

Far from what you would expect a lady from days of old to be like, these babes pack some heat. Be warned when crossing them in the game.

The game's out April 27/30 US and UK.

Final Fantasy XIII to Have Massive Install

Final Fantasy XIII, Square Enix's latest installment in the extremely popular franchise, will hit Xbox users with an epic install of 18.3 GB. This news will destroy any chance of an arcade user has of installing the game, as the Xbox's 20 GB hard drive actually only has about 17 GB that you can actually use.

Arcade user be prepared to either face long load times, or buy a bigger HDD when the game hits shelves on the 9th of March.

This week on Arcade - 24th Feb

Greed Corp

Price: 800 Microsoft Points
Why share when you can have it all? Greed Corp is an online multiplayer strategy game in which you battle for dominance over a world once rich in resources. In order to prevail, you must exhaust all remaining resources to build an army, and use the depleted collapsing terrain to your advantage. An extensive campaign mode and multiple unlockables prepare you to take the battle online.

Fret Nice

Price: 1200 Microsoft Points
FRET NICE™ is a 2D platformer that’ll rock your world. Control your character through funky-fresh stages to explore hidden areas, collect items, and clash note-for-note with outrageous, heavy metal bosses! Rock out by blasting enemies with riff combos and creating your own sounds with each “strum” of a chord!

Lazy Raiders

Price: 800 Microsoft Points
Dr. Diggabone's getting too old for archaeological digs, or so he says. But truth be told, he’s just plain lazy… Unlock the Full Game and send the Doctor or your Xbox LIVE Avatar on a gravity-defying quest through 75 mazes by spinning and flipping the world. Beware those thieves, minions and traps, though. Without any challenge, you'd just grow lazy… and we wouldn’t want that, now would we?

F1 2010 to be revealed next month

Codemasters has said that F1 2010 will be revealed to the public for the first time in March.

Speaking to Sim Racing World, the company said the game for 360, PS3 and PC would be shown for the first time on March 17.

Its the first next gen F1 game since Codemasters picked up the rights to the F1 franchise from Sony in 2008, - and a long awaited one at that.

The 2010 season starts on March 14 in Bahrain.

Army of Two: The 40th Day DLC announced, coming in April

EA has today announced DLC for Army of Two: The 40th Day, titled Chapters of Deceit. 


Continuing the recent trend of launching content that probably should have been in the full game, Chapters of Deceit has you and buddy continue the action over two more levels where you stumble across information that could lead to the end of the invasion by Jonah and the 40th Day Initiative army. Guess the few people that actually play this game may be mildly excited ...

The DLC will launch on April 1st for 800 Microsoft points.

More Halo from Bungie?

While talking to CVG Bungie said that seeing Halo: Reach as their final involvement in the Halo franchise may be 'premature'.

Although Bungie is treating it as their last game in the franchise, they won't say it definately is their final piece.

Brian Jarrard, the community boss at Bungie said: "You know, it might be premature to say we'll never ever, ever make a Halo game again. We sort of have a little special place for Halo in our hearts. But for the foreseeable future, this is it."


"There is a degree of pressure there but I also think that inspires our team. If we don't ever come back to Halo again, we better damn well make sure that our last game is the best one ever. Let's set that bar really high and at least leave our fans something really special."


This is good news to all the hardcore Halo fans, and lets face it, there is a lot of them out there. 

Wossy says October for Natal, Microsoft say nay nay!

TV host Jonathan Ross last night tweeted that Project Natal will hit shelves in October.
This comes after the host, a fan of video games, and of spoilers apparently, got to try out the upcoming product last night.

He tweeted:

OK. Before bed. Natal on X Box impressive. Not quite there yet i think but tye have til october and if they get it right...skys the limit.


October eh? Well Microsoft don't think so.

VG247 were told :


"There have been no further announcements on the release date of Project Natal. It remains scheduled for Christmas 2010"


Sounds to us like an overly mouthy Microsoft rep let it slip, or Wossy got it wrong totally.
Either way, we still don't know, but what we do know is we can watch the man himself playing Natal below! Enjoy.

Gordon Brown praises the UK Games Industry

The PM has said that the UK is home to the most important games industry in all of Europe, and who is to say he's wrong? Some of the major developers here in the UK include Rocksteady (Arkham Asylum), Lionhead (Fable) and of course Rockstar (GTA).

His comments have come from this podcast about the Global Investment Conference (GIC).

In the podcast he states that UK developers are "by far the biggest producer of computer games in Europe" and promised that there will be new commitments of investment in this area.

Listen to the podcast, and tell us if you think this could be the start of an even brighter future for the UK games industry.

Bioshock 2 DLC Detailed

2K Games announced today that Bioshock 2 will be receiving some very welcome DLC. They have stated that both mulitplayer and singleplayer experiences will be catered for. However the first pack called "Sinclair Solutions Test Pack" will be multiplayer content only and will bring with it; Rank cap increased to 50, 2 new playable characters, a third upgrade for each weapon, 5 additional masks and 20 new trials. The DLC is set to be released in March with a price of 400MSP. The other DLC will be released over the course of the year.

Pachter Predicts Natal Success

Microsoft and Sony’s attempt to catch up in the casual gamers market has resulted in Xbox’s Natal Project and the Arc system for the PS3, which will both bring new interactivity to the consoles, much like Nintendo does with the Wii. Michael Pachter a professional gaming industry analyst has predicted that Natal will outsell Arc by 5:1, he puts this down to the fact that Natal is out of the box friendly, and is much more accessible than the Arc system. He expects Natal units to fly of the shelves at a far greater rate when both peripherals are released before the end of the year.

Microsofts Word on "The Pro" Fiasco

Stephen Toulouse, Director of Policy and Enforcement, has released a statement regarding the now infamous "The Pro" video. The video shows The Pro, who is a moderator, seemingly handing out console suspensions and bans without giving much reason as to why. However Stephen stated that he had "seen the heavily edited video," and that while he will have a word with The Pro regarding his tone and manner in the video, it is more likely than not that The Pro was acting within his authority, and did not step out of his bounds.

Activision Facing Lawsuit

Media giants Activision are facing criticism and a lawsuit over the way in which they patented Guitar Hero. "Patent Complience Group," the group behind the lawsuit, is maintaining that the "Patent" and "Patent Pending" on the box is misleading and that Activision don't actually hold the patent or the patent they do hold does not accurately describe the Guitar Hero game/controller.

If found guilty Activision face a $500 fine for every misleading product sold, and as this covers 4 games in this series it could become a costly mistake on their part. However the chances of it ever getting that far are extremely slim, especially when taking into account recent similar cases.

Bungie to make up for ODST failures

In a recent chat with OXM Bungie have stated that they would really have liked to incorporate match-making into the firefight mode, but didn't have time to get it up and running, and also said that could be why it hasn't been as popular as previous Halo games. However, they are going to be making up for it in Halo: Reach.

In his chat he said:

"I regret not being able to go back and make Firefight in ODST work and have match-making. I think we would have loved to have done that.

"We've heard it from the fans, we've heard it from the press. It's definitely something we'd have loved to be able to do but we didn't have the scope on the project. We didn't have the time.

He added: "We accomplished a tremendous amount, but that's probably the reason ODST isn't being played as much right now as we'd like. It has had a shorter lifecycle than any of the Halo titles before. But Reach is our big chance to make up for some of those things. "

Perfect Dark XBLA to have Goldeneye multiplayer maps and weapons

Microsoft Game Studios’ Ken Lobb has confirmed that the soon-to-be-released XBLA Perfect Dark revamp will contain maps featured in Goldeneye. As of yet, confirmed levels are Complex, Felicity and Temple.

In addition, the executive told Kotaku there will also be weapons in the game from the FPS classic, but will be called different names due to potential legal reasons.

You Weren't There Man! - COD 'Vietnam' rumors continue

I like Treyarch games. There. I said it.

Quantum of Solace was the best Bond game since Goldeneye, Call of Duty: World at War is great, and Call of Duty 3 was massively under rated, even with its flaws.
And even though Infinite Ward also make great games, I dislike the IW snobbery that we see a lot of when dealing with Call of Duty.
So when I heard about a new Treyarch COD, and also rumblings of it being set in Vietman, I almost wet myself. I said almost.

So its pleasing to hear that the guy's at VG247 stumbled across some new info about an upcoming Activision 'Video Game', which includes character names and backgrounds, notably centered around the Vietnam war, and possibly Russia.
It comes after a casting call that asked for four actors to provide voice acting, motion capture and other such shindigary for a game which sounds very much like the rumored Call of Duty Vietnam game.

Also, there is a hefty mention of the characters, and their backgrounds, including a "fiercely patriotic veteran of WW2", a "very physically fit black man in his 20s" and a "Russian-born martial arts expert and CIA operative who’s calm to the point of being cold and detached".

Yep. That really does sound like a lonely hearts column advert.

So there we have it. A possible change in direction from the traditional battlefield home of Call of Duty. We have Vietnam, a bit of martial art's and possibly some other Cold War action as well.

Bring it on. We'll put up more info as we get it. Going by previous COD games, we should get some solid info by spring. If they got the soundtrack right on this, it could be a classic game - and one of the better set during Vietnam.

Final Fantasy XIII Super Elite pictured

Thanks to VG247, we've managed to get the pictures of the new 360 250GB bundle and she's a beaut. Take a peak what you get for your £249.99.

 

Final Fantasy XIII launch event in London, shows love to cosplayers

Fans attending the UK launch event on 9th March will be treated to a very rare opportunity to meet both Yoshinori Kitase, the producer of the game, and Isamu Kamikokuryo, the game’s art director, who will be available to sign games and answer questions. High-profile DJ and TV presenter Alex Zane will also be entertaining fans as the MC for the event.

That's not all though. There'll be goodies all night and the first 50 people to arrive in a Final Fantasy costume will bag themselves a free game soundtrack.


Date: 9th March 2010
Time: 5.30pm - 7:30pm
Photocall: 6:05pm – 6:15pm
Address: HMV, 150 Oxford Street, London, W1D1DJ
Entry: Free to everyone

Check out the full press release below:

New Splinter Cell: Conviction trailer, highlights Sam's story

Anyone up for a new Splinter Cell: Conviction trailer featuring some more knee-cap shooting, neck wrestling badass-ery? Good, because Sam Fisher's doing all that in this latest trailer which looks at his motives for killing everyone he sees.

Splinter Cell: Conviction launches April 16th in the UK.

Alien vs Predator Launch Trailer

It's almost upon us, guys. Some of you may even hold the game in your grubby mitts as you read this, for everyone else though who isn't lucky enough to own it yet, here's the launch video.

New MW2 Glitches have surfaced?

This video below shows some new Glitches on the Xbox 360 version of MW2, let's hope this not easy to do and that IW catch light of it sooner than later.

Alan Wake: Box art and first 5 minutes

Alan Wake is receiving the full spotlight now ahead of its May 21st release date and today has received 2 press updates. First up, the box art:

Codies call time on Operation Flashpoint

In the wake of the criticism and rocky launch Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising received and the continual demise of the series activity due to bugs, glitches and unpopular dlc updates, the community manager announced the makers have halted work on updates for the game, be it bug fixes or extra content dlc.

“With the upcoming release of the Overwatch DLC on PS3, and a few “heated” threads on the topic, I just wanted to inform you all that the team have now completed the “Dragon Rising” chapter of Operation Flashpoint and that’s it for DR-related content going forward.

“We are sorry if Dragon Rising and the two DLCs released to date have left you wanting even more, but in the grand scheme of future plans and schedules the vast majority of the team are already busy planning the future of modern combat.We’re aware that this news might disappoint some of you, but I kindly ask that you all please keep any future posts on this topic mature and constructive.”

EA continuing the server shut-down process.

EA have announced further server switch-off's with only a couple scheduled to impact on 360 players. We've filtered through the list and can confirm the following game's online support will be turned off on March 16th and April 15th.

• The Godfather (March)
• Def Jam (March)
• Lord of the Rings: Conquest (March)
• The Simpsons Game (March)
• Burnout 3: Takedown (Xbox, April)
• Battlefield 2 (Xbox, April)
• Madden NFL (Xbox, April)

This comes soon after the last online cull list which saw the below servers turned off:

• Fifa 06, 07, 2006 World Cup
• Facebreaker
• Fantasy Football 09
• Madden NFL 06, 07, 08
• Nascar 07, 08, 09 (Europe)
• NBA live 06, 07, 08
• NFL tour
• NCAA March Madness 07
• Tiger Woods 06
• UEFA Champions league 07

More programming content heading to Xbox LIVE

Kotaku is reporting that Microsoft has plans to expand its traditional programming content after the success of 1 vs 100

Xbox product management boss Aaron Greenberg said; "1 vs. 100 was an entirely new space for us. In many ways we are pioneering an entirely new category of entertainment and it has been very successful"

"It wasn't that hard for us to convince folks" to advertise on 1 vs. 100, he said. "Now we're looking at not just doing more of that, but how do you think about new types of programming on a network of 23 million people."

"We're all over the board with ideas," Greenberg said. "I think 1 vs. 100 was one of those, we will definitely throughout the year reveal more of the innovative things we are thinking about."

Wheel of Fortune on Xbox LIVE anyone?

As long as the content is good and the advertising isn't intrusive or annoying (Bing and Decide, anyone?) then this could work very well indeed, especially for Microsoft. 23 Million people to potentially advertise to = $$$