You may have noticed a shrewd nonexistence of last week’s podcast, seeing as how, well, there wasn’t one. Just know, we did not forget. Fret not, we are just taking a short 2 week break from podcasting for whatever reasons. That means no podcast this weekend either, but you should expect an ultra jam packed episode next week. There is alot to talk about, and you just can’t afford to miss it.
Meanwhile, the blog will still be updated. No rest for the weary eh?
In an interview with Blizzard, MSNBC uncovered some more interesting details about Starcraft 2. Some interesting parts of this interview include that design for the game began in 2003 and it only began to be actually coded for in 2004. Also during development some ideas like a new race were thrown into the mix, but due to some complications were taken out. When finally asked about the released date, he said basically what everyone on a game development says, “We’ll release it when we are ready”, but he does go on to say that it will not be coming out this year. So if you were really excited for it this year, you’re probably disappointed.
Via[MSNBC]
Yes it’s true! Just today, our very own Will saw that some of the Halo 3 Beta players on his friends list were miraculously waiting in “The Custom Games Lobby”, or even “Playing a Custom Game”. After further investigation, it was uncovered that if you join one of these games and quit, you get dumped into a fully functional custom game lobby of your very own. The difference between this one and the one that people have been glitching into for a week now? Simple: Now you can actually play any custom game that you see fit.
For about an hour now, we have been testing out all of the cool new features that are yet to be officially uncovered. We are experimenting with two new weapons (to Halo 3) , the Magnum Pistol and the Energy Sword. The Pistol in this game is quite different from both of the others, but retains some of it’s classic features. It’s look and feel seems like a combination of the two, but it fires at a much slower rate than ever before. The sword remains basically the same, but it’s melee distance has definitely been shortened a little, and it looks graphically unfinished to me (perhaps why its not included in beta matchmaking?).
We will have a video of a sword/pistol match with some new settings (unlimited ammo, low gravity) on this blog later on, for now, go try to get into a custom game to try it out yourself!
There has been some news about some games that I though needs some updating. Hit the link to see the news!
Half-Life 2: Orange Box
UPDATE #1: Half-Life 2 Orange Box PS3 Version Cancelled
A re-release of Half-Life 2, this box will include not only the original Half-Life 2, but many extras as well. It will have both Episodes 1 and 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. The only thing missing from this set is Counter Strike, which would have been awesome on XBOX Live. Episodes 1 and 2 are both expansions to HL2; Team Fortress is a multiplayer game with a cartoony art-style. Portal is a puzzle game.
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
After a while without any news, some BIG news has just been released: who the characters will be. The first mercenary up: Mattias Nilsson. You remember him!! The swiss guy with the ‘hawk. Yes, he will make a return as everyone’s favorite mercenary. Up now, Jennifer! She seems to be a high maintenance girl with very high precision and good grenade throwing. Last, but not least, is Chris Jacobs. He seems to be a funny guy who is basically a brute that can take out whole armies. here are some pics:
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
New screens for this Escape from Butcher Bay 1.5 have just surfaced. This game is basically EBB, but with an extra mission. Originally, this game looked amazing on the XBOX, but now they look even better. Jaggities that were visible in the last game have been smoothed out and it looks slightly better detail-wise too. Here is a pic:
Last week the Halo 3 Beta came out and since then 7th columnist has been going crazy searching through the code for more details about the game. Some of them are really great and answer basically everything we wanted for the game and others are just informative. Hit the link to see it all Continue reading ‘Halo 3 Uncovered: The Sex, The Lies, The Greatness’
Sony released their firmware update 1.80 which most notably, adds DVD, PS1, and PS2 upscaling to 1080p. This allows normally 480p displayed content to be sent to a TV in 1080p. This leverages one of the Cell’s strengths, media handling. Additionally Sony extended RemotePlay over the internet. This allows any PSP owner(after the next PSP update on the 27th) to access their PS3 stored content from any hotspot in the world. Also important is the addition of a DLNA enabled media client. This allows the ps3 to receive streamed content (video included) from any DLNA-Enabled devices, or from DLNA-enabled software like WMP11 and 10. These features, along with various other additions make this one of the most important firmware updates yet.
Full details here.
–Will Bertelsen
The teaser trailer for the next NFS has just surfaced, and let me say it is going in a brand new direction. It seems that you will still be able to customize cars to your liking, but the game will feature DAMAGE!!! The trailer shows a car hitting a wall, and its front end crumbling. It also shows the car flipping while its tires fall off. I don’t know how well this will work in a game like NFS, as it is so fast-paced, and I will not want to restart a race just because of misjudging turn. Here is the video:
Give us you’re opinion on this move by EA!!
Everyone knows that the release of any significant games is about to slow down as it does every summer, and everyone also knows that the release of Madden also signals the end of this dry spout and sales beginning to increase. But, that is changing with some games beggining to launch earlier, the best example is the highly anticipated Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV is also scheduled for a pretty early release too. And now Nintendo is getting in on the action with the release of the new Metroid Prime: Corruption set for a Wii release August 20th, a week after Madden 2008 is set to launch. Another early release for Nintendo is Mario Strikers coming out July 30th, which is another highly anticipated game. Metroid Prime: Corruption is set to be one of the best games for the Wii and hopefully feature a great online aspect. We can only hope though because the Wii really has not shown its capabilities in that area.
-Ali Shah
Not as many stories as usual this week, but lots of big big news and announcements are covered:
After this morning’s announcement of StarCraft 2 at Blizzard’s World Invitational in Seoul, Korea, videos and pics of everything from gameplay to the game’s artwork hit the web faster than a zergling rush. I decided to wait it out until all the vids showed up to make this post, so that I could stuff them all into one. So what are you waiting for? Hit the link to see way more StarCraft than you can chew. Oh, and make sure to point your browser over to StarCraft2.com to chcek more RTS goodness.
Continue reading ‘Blizzard Announces StarCraft II; Wave of Media Follows’
The Google interface that focuses on simplicity and usuability, and that resulted in a simple homepage that hasn’t change basically since its inception years ago. Well, now Google seems to have update the homepage and is bringing about more of these changes with time. Some of the changes you will immediatly see is the addition of a navigation bar into the top-right hand side.
This bar features all the things that you would want to access via Google and most importantly a link to Gmail(finally). They also allow you to access basically all their types of searches via the more menu. The search page also seems to have changed with the addition of this bar at top of the page, a gradient between the bar and the results, and also quick links at the top of the results
Like this example of above, if you search something with many videos, it will place the link to the videos in that bar because it has already searched there. To an extent this is where they are trying to head with search. They are trying out something that has been referred to as “vertical” search, which all the types of google search, when you hit the search button. Allowing for many different types of results and a more broad array of what you want to view. So the default results are not just going to be Web results, but they will get some videos embedded and maybe some images, too. They really haven’t implemented this to what they actually want it to be, but soon you will start seeing some of these changes to the results. The change in Google search is also shown by the increased amount of grouping results(ie. when you search Numa Numa, it comes up twice in Newgrounds, therefore the second one is indented). To see some more ideas that Google has for their search, you can head over to http://www.google.com/experimental/. Over there you will find some things like Google Timeline Search, Mapping of Results, and keyboard shortcuts. To see the changes at work you should head over and try out Google right now.
-Ali Shah
The Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta was released yesterday albeit, dampened, due to the failure to enable the beta for Crackdown users. Crackdown, which included a beta invite on specially marked CDs, makes up the vast majority of beta users. However. none of them could download the beta untill 10:00 PM Eastern, 15 Hours after the announced release time. Additionally a significant number of Rule of 3 winners failed to receive the email with the code. Due to these issues the beta has been extended from July 6th to July 10th.
Expect a full analysis of the beta on this weeks Revenge of the Podcast.
–Will Bertelsen
An anonymous source has recently announced that Halo 3 will be coming out on September 25, 2007 in the United States, and the next day in Europe. This is much sooner than what many people were expecting. This is right after the Tokyo Game Show. This will definately be a smart move on Microsoft’s part as it will make for better sales during a generally slow month.
Dear Rotpod readers and listeners.
I’m sorry that I was not able to put the pgr4 video up. I think there might have been a coding issue. Please forgive me for my stupidity and unqualifying characteristics. Please take the following screenshots after the link as an apology gift. I know it might be late, but you know what they say: better late than never!
Love, your friend,
Ravi Gogineni (supreme Rotpod ruler)
Continue reading ‘Letter to the Fans’
Playstation Home is a pretty neat service that is in beta right now from Sony. It basically lets you create a realistic avatar that allows you to walk around the world doing things like playing games, talking to others, and managing your own “home space”. Well eventhough this thing is in beta, releasing any videos of it is against the TOS, but here is video that is in the while. Seems like it is from France and shows off some features like playing games and looking at your PSP, which is basically your menu while in home. Check it out:
Holy Schintzkees!!!!!! PGR 4 gameplay videos and screen shots have just been released.
All I have to say is wow!, these graphics are niez. The weather system looks REALY nice. If you want a look, heres a vid:
Yes, it’s true! In the span of just 24 hours two huge Xbox 360 downloads are blasting onto Xbox Live. First this morning was graced by the Spring Dashboard Update (which is freakin’ awsome by the way), and now word comes in from the official Forza 2 Demo Thread at the forzamotorsport.net forums that we will be able to get a taste of the most anticipated racing game in years at 2am EST (GMT – 5) tomorrow. I know alot of you guys have been anxiously awaiting this epic demo as much as I have, and I know it will be hard to contain your excitement. Just try to get some sleep tonight ‘kay?
Official Forza 2 Demo Thread (It’s On! Tonight 2am EST)
Remember all of that crazy hype about the sweet new features coming to the Xbox 360 in the form of the Spring Update? No? Perhaps that is because there has really been no media coverage about the progress of the patch since it’s release date was announced. Well you can start getting excited again because in just a few hours, the update should be rolling over Xbox Live. Set to completely change the way you game and communicate using your 360, the Spring Update is bursting at the seems with awesome new features which will bring it more up to speed with console/Pc connectivity, as well as console/mobile phone connectivity.
Here on the east coast, we should be getting the Update at around 5am (GMT -5, EST). That gives you a few hours to memorize all the new features which will be coming with the patch. Hit the link just below to get all the juicy details.
Continue reading ‘Xbox 360 Spring Dashboard Update Hits in the Morning’
I thought it would never happen to me, that I was safe from what only plagued others. I was just looking over my beautiful shiny DS Lite when I discovered this crack on the left hinge. This was a defect of a large number of DS’s in the first shipment to North America. The problem is not a design flaw (thank god) but a mistake in the manufacturing (an air bubble in a portion of the plastic body). Thankfully, I realized I had purchased an extended 2 year replacement warranty from the kind folks at my local Best Buy. This allows me to completely replace my DS for a new unit (same color) within1 year and replace it once in the following 2 years. For $20, this is definately worth it. I never thought I would use one of these warrenties, but it appears as if my ignorance has caught up with me.
-Elias Tsang
(7 votes, average: 3.71 out of 5)
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