Club Nintendo is celebrating the release of Dark Moon with a sale that will run for the next three days, appropriately titled "Luigi's 72 Hour Sale."
Not everything is Luigi-centric though, so be sure and check everything on the site before you ignore him (poor Luigi!).
On a related note, my Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon review will be going up on Thursday, so be sure and tune in then to see what I thought. You can also catch the green goon later this year in his own version of New Super Mario Bros. U.
Luigi's 72 Hour Sale [Club Nintendo]
Someone has finally found a way to make YouTube comments useful. Almost.
[Via @DrewHolmes]
John Riccitiello will leave his position at EA as CEO and member of the board of directors effective March 30th.
EA has appointed Larry Probst as executive chairman “to ensure a smooth transition and to lead EA’s executive team while the board conducts a search for a permanent CEO,” EA said in a note to investors.
“We thank John for his contributions to EA since he was appointed CEO in 2007, especially the passion, dedication and energy he brought to the company every single day,” said Probst. “John has worked hard to lead the company through challenging transitions in our industry, and was instrumental in driving our very significant growth in digital revenues. We appreciate John’s leadership and the many important strategic initiatives he has driven for the company. We have mutually agreed that this is the right time for a leadership transition.”
Riccitiello added: “EA is an outstanding company with creative and talented employees, and it has been an honor to serve as the Company’s CEO. I am proud of what we have accomplished together, and after six years I feel it is the right time for me pass the baton and let new leadership take the Company into its next phase of innovation and growth. I remain very optimistic about EA’s future — there is a world class team driving the Company’s transition to the next generation of game consoles.”
The investor note added that “EA expects that its revenues and earnings per share for the current quarter will be at the low end of, or slightly below previously issued guidance provided in its press release dated January 30, 2013.” EA will announce its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2013 results on May 7th.
The post Riccitiello to step down as EA CEO appeared first on Edge Online.
There's nothing wrong with a game that innovates. There's everything wrong with a game that goes out of its way to innovate without reason.
Like any tool, innovation is neither good nor bad, and it has its specific uses. However, some developers bang on about it like it's a magical cure for every ill in the industry. It doesn't matter if the game's good or not, to hear some of them speak, only that it innovates. What rot.
I can't say I've ever bothered to play Max and the Magic Marker , but with a completely different art style, this Xbox Live Arcade-exclusive spiritual successor looks hard to resist. If you're into games like Trine, you should feel similarly. Check out this trailer to see what I mean.
According to developer Press Play, the puzzles this time around will be "less cluttered" and "more about knowing Max' powers and abilities." The team has also cited The Goonies and the children's book The Brothers Lionheart as inspiration. Max: The Curse of Brotherhood will launch this spring for 1200 Microsoft Points.
The Disney Movies UK Twitter account revealed that Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two will be heading to the PlayStation Vita sometime this year. No other info was revealed, but we've reached out to Disney and will have more for you as soon as we know.
Quite peculiar that Epic Mickey 2 is getting a Vita release. The game didn't review all that well, leading to very poor sales, and the inevitable shutdown of developer Junction Point.
Those who Kickstarted Oculus Rift were originally supposed to get a copy of Doom 3: BFG included with their order, but that is no longer the case. "Unfortunately, we've been informed that [the game] will not support the Rift development kit by the time we begin shipping," wrote the Oculus team. Specific reasons for the delay were not given.
Given this spot of disappointing news, replacements are being offered to those affected. You can either get a $20 Steam Wallet credit or a $25 Oculus Store credit. There's also the option for a full refund of your Kickstarter pledge. If no option is chosen via the Oculus Order Manager by April 5, the replacement will default to store credit. At least there's still Hawken.
Oculus Rift no longer shipping with Doom BFG [NeoGAF -- Thanks, M Gross]
BioShock Infinite is out next week and this new CG trailer shows off the two main heroes trying to survive another day in the flying city of Columbia. No gameplay is shown off, but rather the ad focuses on the intense action while fluffing it up with quotes and praise from various media outlets.
And that's totally fine. BioShock Infinite is already sold to the gamers that pay attention to the blogs and such. This ad is trying to reach everyone else that is only aware of the likes of other first-person shooters, and I think it does a rather effective job.
Persona 4 Arena is finally making its way to European Shores on May 10, Zen United has announced. Additionally, the publisher has unveiled a pair of pre-order incentives for the game: a soundtrack CD and collection of "exclusive" digital artwork.
Originally planned for release in August last year, the title's European localization became mired with delays before ultimately getting pushed back to 2013. Luckily, the hold-up is almost over and folks needn't wait too much longer to get their hands on this exquisite fighter.
Last week we reported on a father hacking a Donkey Kong ROM so that his daughter could rescue Mario playing as Pauline. This week brings us news of another retro Nintendo gender swap.
Hobbyist animator Kenna W and her developer boyfriend have hacked The Legend Of Zelda to replace Link with Princess Zelda. You can watch the video below, and read Kenna’s blog on the hack here.
The post After Donkey Kong: Pauline Edition, meet Zelda Starring Zelda appeared first on Edge Online.
The post SimCity: explore Maxis’ city-builder here appeared first on Edge Online.
Having spent the past five years coming to terms with DLC, microtransactions and F2P, the next five look to be about always-online games. Publishers claim it’s the natural extension of games as services. Players counter that it’s intrusive DRM, an assault on their rights and it stops them playing their games on the train. To some, SimCity just became the equivalent of Bethesda’s horse armour: an exemplar of everything they fear the future holds. Given what SimCity used to represent, and the game that’s still at its core, that’s a shame.
Let’s list the mistakes. First, it wasn’t possible to pre-load the game before the minute of release. That led to Origin’s servers being overwhelmed in the hours after launch. When players did have the game installed and ready to play, they found the servers unable to cope with demand, being either down or sticking them in lengthy queues. And once they did finally connect, they were likely to be disconnected shortly thereafter, sometimes losing progress.
EA scrambled to respond, adding more servers, reworking its infrastructure, and temporarily dropping some of the functionality used to justify the always-online requirement in the first place. At the time of writing, some features – including the fastest game speed – are still unavailable.
The result is that people bought a game that didn’t work at all or didn’t work as advertised, and it’s tempting to write the game off here. Please don’t, because there are good reasons to drive into the heart of SimCity, both to discover sights worth seeing and to discover how deep its problems run.
Released in 1989, the original SimCity was a revelation. It was a sandbox game about building a functioning city, but its simulation was balanced such that the challenges stacked: you might solve your power shortage with more power plants, but you risked meltdown and brownouts; you could provide more jobs by zoning for cheap industry, but the pollution would cause citizens to get sick. There were specific scenarios, but you didn’t need them. SimCity’s clockwork simulation was the game.
The new SimCity understands this. You begin as before, placing down roads and then zoning for three types of building: residential areas for your population to build houses in, commercial areas where they’ll do their shopping, and industry where they’ll work. Pop down a water pump, a power plant, and a sewage filtration plant, and the simulation hums to life. Construction trucks stream into town, buildings sprout from the ground, followed by moving vans delivering residents. Open one of the new data layers and you can see the heart of the simulation beating underneath. Water can be watched as it flows to each building, sewage can be seen being flushed away, and in time, you can see the creeping impact of your town’s industry as pollution spreads through the ground.
From here, the process of developing your cities is almost identical to previous games. You place health clinics, police and fire stations, and schools. These services cost money, so you need more taxpayers. You zone more residential, and upgrade the roads so your original neighbourhoods switch from small houses to apartment blocks. Traffic slows to a crawl, so you build a mass transit system. Then you might place parks, which attract wealthier inhabitants, who in turn require a higher class of shop and industry, and a better education system.
While previous games were always punishingly difficult, it’s relatively easy to build a functioning, profitable city in less than an hour. This brings two changes to SimCity’s long game. The first is the specialisations system. Each city can be focused on a single purpose. Cities that specialise in tourism can become a miniature Las Vegas, littered with casinos. A mining or drilling town built on a large supply of ore, coal or oil will deliver huge profits, but produce a similarly grand amount of pollution. There’s also trade, electronics, culture and education.
Each of these goals gives more structure to SimCity’s open play, with targets – make 800,000 Simoleons in oil profits in a day, say – gating access to buildings and upgrades. Thankfully, it never overwhelms the core sandbox. Specialisations instead force you to make extreme decisions in crafting a city, and push you towards the kinds of infrastructure problems that are fun to try to solve.
The second change is the game’s shift from micro- to macro-management. Old games of SimCity used to begin with not just the placing of roads, but the careful construction of a network of sewer pipes, water pipes and power cables. Now your roads are more than just the backbone of your traffic system: everything automatically flows down them, at least as long as there’s the appropriate sewage treatment centre or nuclear plant placed somewhere en route.
The post SimCity review appeared first on Edge Online.
If you're itching to explore the open world of LEGO City Undercover and don't have a Wii U, there's hope yet, as the prequel, titled Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins is headed to to the 3DS on April 26th.
This is an entirely different game set before the events of the console version of Undercover, and deals with Chase McCain and his rookie years, before he became legendary.
I've been playing Undercover for about a week now, and although it still retains the same charm as the LEGO games you know and love, I feel like a lot of it is a wasted opportunity.
Whereas LEGO Batman 2 pushed the envelope in multiple ways, Undercover doesn't feel like quite a leap, amidst some fairly generic story missions.
Five Pixar artists who have worked on movies including Brave, The Incredibles and Toy Story have formed a new studio, Steel Wool Games.
Co-founders Sequoia Blankenship, Andrew Dayton, Jonathan Hoffman, Joshua Qualtieri and Jason Topolski have over 60 years of experience at Pixar Animation experience combined.
Steel Wool’s first title, Flyhunter, will be released in summer this year and will be published by Ripstone.
Andrew Dayton said of the studio’s approach to game art: “We have an internal phrase that we use to describe our style: ‘Grimsical’. It’s our fundamental principle as a company. We create worlds that are funny and whimsical but dipped in gritty tones.”
The post Pixar artists form Steel Wool Games appeared first on Edge Online.
Tomb Raider is this week’s UK number one despite a 72% week-on-week drop in sales and a strong challenge from Sony Santa Monica’s God Of War Ascension, the highest new entry this week at number two.
Ascension has posted the series’ second biggest week one sales behind God Of War III, which sold more than double when it arrived at number one back in 2010.
StarCraft II: Heart Of The Swarm and Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 are also new this week at three and four respectively.
The Ukie all formats top ten for the week ending March 16th, compiled by ChartTrack, is as follows, with week-on-week sales differences in brackets where given.
1. Tomb Raider (-72%)
2. God Of War Ascension
3. StarCraft II: Heart Of The Swarm
4. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2
5. SimCity (-50%)
6. FIFA 13 (-14%)
7. Far Cry 3 (-3%)
8. Crysis 3 (-42%)
9. Call Of Duty: Black Ops II (-14%)
10. The Sims 3: University Life (-57%)
The post UK charts: three new entries, but Tomb Raider hangs on at number one appeared first on Edge Online.
After playing through Mirror of Fate and placing the finishing touches on my Castlevania article for the upcoming issue of Nintendo Force *shameless plug*, I find myself still on a Castlevania kick. Thankfully, Doug "Nostalgia Critic" Walker was able to momentarily sate my hunger with the latest episode of Video Game Confessions -- think HBO's Taxicab Confessions but with videogame stars.
Simon Belmont doesn't have any particularly nasty secrets to share, but he is disappointed that the vampire-hunting business has dried up for him. After killing Dracula, he was hired to assassinate various other notable vampires. One day, he suddenly realized that he had killed them all. He killed all the vampires. What to do now?
While we're on the subject, did you guys know I was actually in an episode of Video Game Conventions years ago? Yeah! Check it out here! You'll recognize me as the guy who's not funny!
Video Game Confessions - Simon Belmont [That Guy with the Glasses]
