XBox 360 Rally

Being put out by Codemasters (of Overlord fame), is a new title that seems to draw heavily from the ideals presented in God of War, which of course borrowed heavily from the Castlevania series (which of course took most its characters right out of myth, lore, and the likes). I don’t mind the similarity of these games, as they all seem to dominate on different systems anyways. So with that, check out the very first clip of the new action-RPG Rise of Argonauts, which has my official stamp of “So Far, So Good.”

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The concept behind the Transformers couldn’t get any easier: Autobots vs. Decepticons. Good vs. Evil. There were no drawn out love stories. There was no political intrigue. There was no subtle attempt to slide social commentary in. All you had were two sides of robots that transformed from everything ranging from fire trucks (Optimus Prime), VW Beetles (Bumblebee) and F-15 Fighters (Starscream), to more “unique” items such as cassette tapes (Soundwave) and a Walther P38 (Megatron, baby!), into giant robots that would pound the living crap out of eachother day in and day out as they fought over the life-giving Allspark. You’d think there could be no way a developer could screw that up, right?

…well, somehow Activision found a way.

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Though Mass Effect won’t be under anyone’s tree this Christmas, Bioware has released a couple of new tidbits for and about the game.

First are four new images of the character Wrex, the Krogan Battle Master (scroll down for those), as well as having up on the bioware.com site a nice flash animation of the character that you can click on and hear some of the voice over work used with him. So take a sec to check him out in motion and find out a little about how he was betrayed by his own Krogan peeps here.

Second news bit is Chris Priestly has confirmed today that Mass Effect will be at E3 on a forum post here .. other than the confirmation however, he releases no other information, bastard! Oh well, for now, enjoy the four new screens and then head over to Bioware.com to see a little more of Wrex.
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Jack Thompson talks about “murder simulators” all the time. He’s usually referring to games like Counter-Strike: Source (MaximusPaynicus) and Grand Theft Auto. This would be annoying in and of itself, to be sure, but now there seems to actually be a video game that is committing MURDER! …murdering Xbox 360s, that is.

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It’s no secret that Germany has some “interesting” policies regarding gaming. Many games that they consider “extremely violent”, and just about all games that feature Nazi symbolism are immediately banned in the land of the bratwursts. For these reasons, it looks like The Darkness is going to have a few changes for it’s German release:

• All Nazi symbolism has been removed from the title. Understandable, considering their past that they aren’t particularly proud of.
• Four of the kill methods possessed by the darklings have been removed.
• Your tenticles will no longer eat hearts. Now they will suck out the souls, which are represented by a yellowish-green fog.

That’s absolutely weak. I can understand the removal of Nazi symbolism, but to remove the gore? That was just the German Government being priggish about the whole ordeal. If I lived in Germany, I’d have my copy of the game imported.

[areagames.de] <– It’s in German, so good luck.

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Head to http://www.xbox.com to see extremely minor changes!

The real news here is im back from Ecuador! After spending far too much time in the Miami airport waiting for a connecting flight for over a day, I am back home in my underwear writing here on the Rally. JW has been doing an awesome job as per usual, in fact while writing this I am checking out on all the news I have missed out on while being in the video game bootleg capital of the world (okay maybe second place to China, but seriously, if you want to complete a PS2 collection for a buck fifty a game, head to South America). I have my email open in another window checking out some great entries on the contest here for you to WIN GTAIV! (July 2nd people, make sure to get your entries in if you haven’t!)

However, I must sleep now as not to endure the pain of sun burn I received while staying on the Galapagos Islands, so to end on an odd note, that Michael Jackson picture is from the Guayaquil Airport, just some souvenir shop, I have never laughed so hard or been so sad all at the same time seeing Jackson used to sell hats and other crap.

Sid Meier is cool. Civilization is cool. Henry Rollins is cool. So this trailer to Civilization Revolution is… um… let me do the math… ok, carry the one… right. As I suspected, it’s freaking cool.

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After four years, and one hundred official episodes (plus a TON of specials), Red vs. Blue has come to an end. The 100th, and final episode is now available to view over at the Rooster Teeth Message Boards.

All I can say is that this episode, to me, is arguably the funniest episode they ever produced. It ties up the series perfectly, and brings to an end one of the best damn fan-made shows to ever grace the internet.

[Red vs Blue]

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Sid Meier is better than you. This is a Universal Truth, and to deny it is blasphemy. PC Gamers have known his greatness for many, many years, and now the console bound are primed to experience his awesomeness as Activision has today announced Civilization Revolution. Being developed by Firaxis themselves, Civilization Revolution is the first game being developed for the “next-gen” (current-gen, people. They’re all out now) by the aforementioned Sid Meier, who is still better than you.

Here are but a few facts about the game that we now know:

~It’s due for release in Spring, 2008

~You’ll get to play as one of sixteen different civilizations from world history

~It’ll feature online multiplayer with a bevy of nice bells and whistles, from auto-match making, to ranked games and leaderboards.

~The game’ll be streamlined to allow players to get into the action quicker than on the PC. This’ll probably piss some PC purists, but we’ll see.

Now, for all the juicy details, you can read the press release after the break.

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…sometimes, words aren’t needed. This is one of those times.

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I love the Xbox 360. Obviously. I’m being paid to. But it goes without question or reasonable debate that there is definitely a problem with the 360’s hardware. I’ve gone through three different 360s because of those damned red lights. Some reports, like the one we spotlighted on the site from earlier this month, have the Xbox 360 failure rate at somewhere around 30%. I don’t care who you are, a 30% failure rate is awful in everything but baseball.

“So, how could this get any worse?” you ask. Well, what if I told you that the company who repairs the console are refusing to repair the ring o’ death issue?

That’s right, folks. Micromart (NE) Ltd, the company that receives many of your coffins, is refusing to repair any console that has experienced the dreaded ring of death.

On their website, Micromart (NE) Ltd states that the problem that causes the ring of death error is inherent in the console, and the sheer volume of complaints has made repairing the problem non-viable.

Micromart has now withdrawn from offering a Repair Service for the dreaded 3 Red Lights fault.

This problem is endemic on the XBox 360 console and the volume has made this repair non-viable.

Other repairs to the XBox 360 are still being supported.

This is a major blow, if you ask me. This basically means that, should your Xbox 360 die, you’re practically SOL. The sad part about this is that Microsoft is absolutely refusing to acknowledge that there is a problem. If they just came out and ordered a recall (which I know would never have happened under any circumstances, but still), they could have avoided this whole damn mess. I swear, it’s almost enough to turn me to the PS3.

Almost.

[Micromart (NE) Ltd]

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In an article posted on this very website only a few hours ago (which I’m not even going to bother to link to, since it’s RIGHT BELOW this one you’re reading right now), I made note of how Mass Effect was taken off Xbox.com’s “Coming Soon” list. Well, now we may know why.

GAME, which is basically the Gamestop of the UK, has Mass Effect listed as “Jan-2008″. Now, this should hardly be taken as an absolute. Bioware, more than once has essentially said that all speculated release dates are bogus until THEY give one, which they have not. Bioware has always taken the stance of ‘it’ll be done when it’s done’, which I have no real problem with. It only assures that the game will be polished when it IS finally completed.

For what it’s worth, I’ve sent out two e-mails regarding this: one to Bioware, and one to Microsoft. While I haven’t received a response from Bioware as of the time I wrote this (roughly 12:30pm EST), would anyone care to take a stab at the response I got from Microsoft? …anyone?

“Microsoft does not comment on rumor and speculation.”

…so there you go.

[GAME]

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So, if you go to the Xbox.com website, you can find a page with a list of games for the 360 that are “coming soon”. Some titles, like Alan Wake and Halo 3 have been on that list for forever and a day, which at this point is my last refuge from accepting that we may very well never see Alan Wake again.

But another of those games that was always on that list was Mass Effect, the Bioware Super-RPG that the entire planet has been waiting for since, roughly, two days after Jade Empire’s release. Well, it seems we’ll be waiting a bit longer — Xbox.com has removed Mass Effect from it’s listings.

…yeah, I know it’s not real news, but you know what? Not a lot happens at 2:30am. Either way, this is but another sign that Mass Effect will NOT be coming to us any time soon, and that Bioware will release the game when it’s good and ready.

[Xbox.com]

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Over at the official Xbox website, there is a rundown of everything the fine folks over at Xbox.com want to see at this year’s E3 Business Summit… which 451 is NOT sending us to (I swear, you crash Kim’s Ferrari ONE Time…). Included in this run down is news on both Halo 3, and Halo Wars, the Real-Time Strategy based inside the Halo Universe.

Halo 3:

Single-Player Master Chief
The folks at Bungie have crafted the world’s most effective smokescreen with the Halo® 3 multiplayer beta. This remarkable gift to gamers has effectively allowed Bungie to keep mum on the final single-player chapter in the Halo® trilogy, as gamers spend less time hounding them with questions and more time enjoying the beta.

While nothing is confirmed (Bungie is notoriously tight-lipped), we hope that this year’s E3 will be the launch point for unveiling the Halo 3 single-player campaign. It’s time to discover the fate of Cortana, the state of the Covenant, and bring about the resolution of this epic war.

Halo Wars:

Halo Wars Expected
Again, while nothing is confirmed, it seems only natural that E3 will be used to further expand on last year’s E3 bombshell revelation of the real-time strategy game, Halo Wars. While last year’s trailer was a site to behold (available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace), it is high time we get a look at the groundbreaking gameplay and next-gen features.

Now, usually this kind of talk is thrown to the side and never mentioned again. BUT, we have to remember who it is saying all this — this is not some random gaming blog like Kotaku, Joystiq or Xbox 360 Rally. This is the official Xbox website, an arm of Microsoft itself, saying this. It almost sounds like Microsoft’s way of giving us all a wink and a nudge about their plans for the upcoming E3. While it’s not officially official, it certainly warrants us keeping an open eye at this year’s E3 Summit.

[Xbox.com]

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Holy Freaking Crap, Soul Calibur IV is looking better and better and better with each passing day. The latest bit of true news is that Soul Calibur IV, which many believe will be the last in the series, will FINALLY have online play. In the most recent issue of EGM, Soul Calibur IV director Katsutoshi Sasaki stressed that Soul Calibur IV WILL have Online Play, explaining that with the build-in online infrastructures that both the Xbox 360 (Xbox Live) and the PS3 (Playstation Network) have, there really would have been no excuse to NOT have it in.

Now, as for the pretty pictures… Xboxygen has the scans from the recent EGM article, to which the above image is from. Now, I’m warning you that, depending on where you work, the images of Ivy (My #3 Video Game Crush, by the by) may be a bit NSFW.

And finally, rounding out the trio of Soul Calibur IV stories… someone at Namco-Bandai loves boobies. Like… really, really loves boobies. Games Radar noticed that Ivy’s chest has grown… exponentially since SC III. I mean, those are freaking huge! And that’s not the most telling part, oh no. There has been a recent trend in the later Soul Calibur titles of increasing the average chest size of their characters, as Games Radar also notes.

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