An unannounced air combat game titled "Stormbirds," in development by Juice Games, was recently cancelled by THQ, according to former Juice artist Greg Calvert.
Stormbirds was set for release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC before THQ apparently got cold feet. As a result, the team of over 30 developers was laid off by Juiced owner THQ.
"The game was in the same genre as Ace Combat and HAWX," wrote Calvert in a recent blog post. "THQ deemed the project too high risk, [and] as a result the entire team were made redundant on the 1st of December 2008."
Juice Games was acquired by THQ in 2006. The developer is best known for the "Juiced" series of racing titles.
Rather than see the fruits of their labors go to waste, some renders (below) from the Stormbirds project have been released by both Calvert and Steven Kerswell of CG studio RealtimeUK, along with an intro cinematic which is available from the link at the top of... More »
SpartanFX from VGChartz (linked above) reports that the OPM February issue has posted the first review of the stellar PS3 title Killzone 2. The game has got the perfect score as expected. The reviewer said:
"The buddies alongside you in each battle have been expertly tuned to provide just enough cover and support to actively get your back on occasions, while never making it feel like they could acchieve every objective alone."
"...the believability and consistency are hallmarks of the Killzone 2 expereince. None of the circumstances, weapons you find, locations you visit, or frankly any of the details in the world feel arbitrary. The world is consistently realized in its unappealing flavor."
"...filled with moments that can handily be described as inspiring awe"
- bots in offline multiplayer "perform pretty well"
"Without a doubt Killzone fans, action, and shooter fans of any stripe will isntantly tag this seq... More »
It was inevitable that gamers would compare PlayStation 3 trophies to the Xbox 360's achievements. While it's true that both reward systems add a considerable amount of replayability to games, it's still unclear which is superior.
The main thing that Xbox 360 fans can boast is that achievements are mandatory for every game available on the Xbox 360 and it has been that way since the launch of the system. It is a shame that the trophy system Sony implemented in many of its games were not available at launch and was not mandatory throughout most of 2008.
Hopefully, trophy support becomes mandatory in 2009, so that gamers aren't torn between buying games based on whether or not they support trophies. Regardless of which was around longer, trophies and achievements are very similar, and are in direct competition for gamers attention.
Here are the reasons why trophies should motivate more gamers to collect them all rather than collecting achievement... More »
Recently, I showed my Sony PlayStation Portable to my friend, Jeff, who's 38. He never had seen the hand-held game system up close.
He gazed in wonder as this 6.7-ounce "toy" played the movie "National Treasure 2" vibrantly on a 4.3-inch screen, then we toured a video game that looks and moves as impressively as any PS 2 game.
I showed him photos of Charisma Carpenter stored on the PSP. We surfed the Web (albeit slowly) using its internal WiFi. But he didn't get a chance to listen to music on it, iPod-style, though it has that capability.
All this, I told him, costs $200. And this new version, the PSP 3000 (released in October), comes with a built-in microphone so you can make Skype phone calls on it. Plus, the 3000's new LCD screen features less glare and much more screen detail than before.
Jeff experienced mild consumer surprise, or what I call PSP Envy. He asked if he could buy my PSP from me. No, of course not.
The latest spark of hope for psp-3000 users!! Great job MaTiAz for the find and +1 to Freeplay for getting it to work on the newest PSP revision!!! From the original article:
Now this is how you start a new year! New exploit, old game! Damn, it's so cool to actually see this beauty working - and on a PSP-3000 no less! The PSP scene was buzzing the other day when MaTiAz found an exploit (read: buffer overflow!) in the three year old game, GripShift.
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