Some time back we had blogged about EA’s Godfather 2 game. Now here are few screen shots from the game.

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Regarding the characters Wallace and Gromit:

Wallace and Gromit are the main characters in a series of four British animated short films, a series of ten short-animated sequences, and a feature-length film by Nick Park of Aardman Animations. All the characters were made from moulded plasticine modelling clay on metal armatures, and filmed with stop motion clay animation. Wallace is an absent-minded inventor, cheese enthusiast (especially for Wensleydale cheese), and companion to the dog, Gromit, who appears to be rather more intelligent than his master. Wallace is voiced by veteran actor Peter Sallis; Gromit remains silent [he has no visible mouth], communicating only through facial expressions and body language.

Due to their popularity, the characters have been called positive international icons of modern British culture. BBC News has called them “some of the best-known and best-loved stars to come out of the UK. Icons.org.uk has stated that they have done “more to improve the image of the English world-wide than any officially appointed ambassadors”.

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Recently Thunderbolt reviewed the game World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.

What Wrath of the Lich King aims to do is improve and expand upon these concepts – further still, after the initial expansion release of The Burning Crusade – in an attempt to please the dedicated players and newcomers alike. And oh does it deliver.

Everything that the original World of Warcraft and its first expansion, The Burning Crusade brought to the table has been expanded and improved on greatly in Blizzard’s newest expansion: a level cap of 80, hundreds of new quests, a new profession, an achievement system, new dungeons, the continent of Northrend, and a new “hero” class: The Death Knight. I’ll dive into the details of all these new features in an attempt to welcome the veterans to the shores of Northrend, and to welcome newcomers to the lands of Azeroth.

What Wrath of the Lich King aims to do on the continent of Northrend is immerse the player into the quests. What was once a task now feels like a goal. What was once a chore is now immersive and interesting. As you explore the new lands of Northrend you will quickly realize that the requests of your common quest-giver now stray from the path of standard fare and lean more in the direction of story expansion, making the player feel like they are affecting the world that they inhabit. What’s even more spectacular is how successfully Blizzard managed to pull this off, given the vast numbers of players populating the world at any one time.

Work to add a new member to your given faction (be it Alliance or Horde), converge on enemy strongholds and battle to capture them, and ultimately, scale the icy peaks of Icecrown to bring down the Lich King: Arthas. If you have to grant the folks down at Blizzard at least one major success, it’s the depth and solidity of their lore, and how this aspect of story telling has been integrated into the questing system. With Illidan down following the events of The Burning Crusade, it seems only appropriate that Arthas and his scourge is the next target. What this goes to show is that minor details do wonders for immersing a player into a world that’s not their own, be it quest-completion initiated cinematics, environment altering outcomes, or voices in your Death Knight’s head urging you forward.

Regarding the Death Knight, allow me to introduce you – if you haven’t already been formally acquainted – with Blizzard’s first “hero class”. What separates World of Warcraft’s first new class and hero class from the rest? Those familiar with Blizzard’s successful Warcraft 3 strategy game will be familiar with the hero units, and the Death Knight has been the lucky first chosen unit to be represented in Blizzard’s online role-playing game. However, the title of hero comes with a cost. The Death Knight hero class begins at level 55, and requires a character of the same level to exist on your account - a small price to pay for the interesting new features that the Death Knight brings to the table.

As a disciple of the Death Knight Arthas, you are born (or resurrected) as your chosen race as an instrument of his bidding, which in Arthas’ case is evil. As you play through the initial quests in the exclusive Death Knight zone, Ebon Hold, you will experience some of Blizzard’s most astounding quest-detail work. From voices in your head urging you to kill innocent peasants, to a gripping task of murder, the Death Knight is introduced both to the world and to players as a keen tool of chaos and discord amongst Azeroth. As the game’s first plate-wearing hybrid tanking class (tanking with a two-handed weapon rather than a shield), the death Knight excels at quickly downing casters and suppressing melee damage, and is sure to please the crowd who felt that their warrior tank didn’t pack enough of a punch. The introduction of the hero class has set a new stage for the World of Warcraft and has left players craving more and speculating on what the next hero class will be.

With a highly improved and immersive questing system, a new profession to master, a largely PvP focused zone, a level-cap of 80, and a devious new class to play, fans of World of Warcraft will be greeted with a multitude of new reasons to sell their souls and their time to Blizzard’s outrageously successful online RPG. Those concerned with picking up a copy and being forced to contest with over-crowded zones and starting areas can put their stresses to ease. Blizzard has very successfully managed to control and filter the large waiting time that players faced in The Burning Crusade by creating two distinct starting zones for Northrend. Also being introduced is a player-specific starting zone for the Death Knight, which escalates into the player-inhabited world of Azeroth after a specific series of quests have been completed by the player leading up to level 60.

It’s safe to say that Blizzard has learned from their past mistakes, and the outcome is an expansion pack that delivers on every front of the casual or hardcore online gamer’s expectations. Readers beware: This is one online game that hooks you in and doesn’t let go without some kind of heavily organized intervention or your inability to pay the $15 monthly charge. Good luck.

1UP has posted a discussion with Diablo game director Jay Wilson on, among other things, combat, character creation and class differentiation. It is as follows:

1UP: Someone could look at the new classes and make reductionist statements that compare them to the Diablo 2 classes. For those who claim the Wizard is just a reskinned Sorceress and that Witch Doctor is just a new name for Necromancer, what attributes would you point to that make these new classes different and not rehashes?

Jay Wilson: Well, for the Wizard versus the Sorceress, I would say that if someone makes the argument that the Wizard is just a reskinned Sorceress, I would respond, “Yeah, you’re right; the Wizard is basically a reskinned Sorceress.” What we couldn’t do with the Sorceress very well was break into what I’d call the old-school pen-and-paper magic user. You know the old magic user who could do a variety of things, like conjure up animals out of midair or create clouds of fog and acid or control time or disintegrate things or use death spells. They had this wide variety of magic that they could use compared to the more traditional elementalist — which is what the Sorceress is, meaning fire, ice, and lightning — who was just more limited. What we really wanted to do is break into this area, while if we just did the Sorceress again, we’d be like, “OK, you have to do fire, ice, and lightning, but where does disintegrate fit? Where does slow time fit in?” So we decided [that we’d] just take the same class mechanics, and [that we’d] change the basic concept and name and just have a throwback to that old-school magic user to give ourselves a broader range of magic skills. But there was never a huge desire to go away from the basic gameplay of the Sorceress; there’s a lot of repeated skills, and that’s intentional.

With the Witch Doctor, I’d say that the Witch Doctor is not a reskinned Necromancer. He has similarities, but I would say no more so than the Hunter and Warlock do in World of WarCraft. Sure, they’re both pet classes, but they don’t operate the same. For the Witch Doctor, we wanted to create a class whose pets were not his primary source of damage output. Sure, you can build a Necromancer that’s not reliant on pets, but most Necromancer builds are very pet heavy. The pets do a lot of the damage, and a lot of mechanics are built around debuffing the enemy so your pets can be better against them or taking advantage of the bodies your pets create by blowing them up with corpse explosion.

And on the progress of the classes in development:

1UP: Can you talk about the state of the classes? For example, is every class — even the two that you have yet to reveal — playable in the game right now?

 Jay Wilson: No. The fourth class is playable in game but is using a placeholder model — one of an NPC, actually. And all of the skills are what we call “programmer art” because we haven’t implemented actual skill effects. So that one is just in gameplay testing for us while we determine signature skills. The fifth class, we’re just about finished concepting it and are about to start building it. We can’t use placeholder art, so we’re now just going to build a model and start working on the first series of skills for that one. We’re actually spending more time on the Witch Doctor, Wizard, and Barbarian because of a big change we made to the skill system that we wanted to [integrate them] with — so it’s mostly just artwork that’s going on for the other two classes.

You can read the entire interview here.

Below is the review of  Meteos Wars by Team Xbox:

Block-based puzzles are nothing new. Tetris, Lumines, and the less blocky, but equally addictive Bejeweled have been keeping gamers thumbs twitching and brains buzzing for years. Despite the stiff competition, though, Meteos has managed to carve its own space among the other blocky blockbusters. Designed by Q Entertainment and famed producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi (the aforementioned rhythm-based Lumines, and fan fave Rez), Meteos has enjoyed a few releases already, including a Disney version that slapped Mickey’s and his pals’ cutesy mugs on the blocks you were blasting. Now, Xbox Live Arcade addicts can get a taste of the puzzling action with the series’ best entry yet, Meteos Wars. For those already familiar with Meteos’ block-launching formula, Wars won’t be all that fresh, but its content-crammed modes and online multiplayer should still make it their most satisfying trip to the series’ intergalactic setting. And those that don’t know a colored brick from a floating jewel are in for a real treat, as Wars delivers an endless can’t-put-it-down puzzle addiction that just about anyone can pick up and play.

The series’ main hook has always been its requirement to blast blocks upward off the screen, rather than just destroying them or making them disappears. You’ll still need to match like colors—three in a row vertically or horizontally—but once you do, the bricks launch upward as if powered by spaceship-like thrusters. This neat gimmick also nicely ties into the title’s simple sci-fi presentation and story. In a nutshell, the Meteos are enemy invaders trying to destroy your planet, and you must protect your planet by launching these bad boys back into space. It’s not much, but hey, what do you expect from a puzzle game—if you want narrative depth, go play Fallout 3.

Recently Xbox reveled their top gaming titles they are as follows:

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)
1 Halo 3
2 CoD: World at War
3 Call of Duty 4
4 Gears of War 2
5 GTA IV
6 Dash of Destruction
7 Left 4 Dead
8 Madden NFL 09
9 FIFA 09
10 Fable II

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)
1  Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
2  Bomberman Live
3  A Kingdom for Keflings
4  Castle Crashers
5  Worms
6  UNO
7  Banjo-Kazooie
8  Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
9  Portal: Still Alive
10  Braid

The above arcade list is based on full versions purchased.

Original Xbox Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)
1 Halo 2
2 Star Wars: Battlfrnt 2
3 Fable
4 Counter-Strike
5 Conker: Live Reloaded
6 Call of Duty 3
7 Splinter Cell Chaos
8 Battlefield 2: MC
9 Star Wars: Battlefront
10 Doom 3

Top Community Games NEW! (Full Versions purchased)
1  Golden Royal Blackjack
2  Snowmans Dilemma
3  Word Soup
4  Weapon of Choice
5  Tower Revolution
6  World Molder
7  Couples Sudoku
8  Petank Party
9  sin(Surfing)
10  Classicard

These lists are based on global unique users connected to Xbox Live or in the case of Arcade and Community Games, full versions purchased during the week.

The heat between Guitar Hero and Rock Band is increasing. Yesterday we had blogged that Rock Band is going to add four more tracks. Now we have news that Guitar Hero World Tour will have two free Bruce Springsteen tracks.

Activision will be offering two free DLC tracks day-and-date with the release of the All-American rocker’s new album, Working on a Dream. The classic “Born to Run” will be joined by “My Lucky Day,” a single off the new release.

The songs will be available for download on both PSN and XBLM from January 27 through February 4.  Below are the two videos for the songs.

Some time back Actvision Boss Bobby Kotick had said that their game Guitar Hero is dominating EA’s Rock Band. Then Rock Band 2 officially announced that their songs downloads had crossed 28 million mark.

Recently Rock Band 2 announced that they would be getting four new tracks from Snow Patrol, Deep Purple, James Gang and Jethro Tull in 2009. According to this news, Snow Patrol will make its first Rock Band appearance with debut single “Take Back the City”, alongside Deep Purple’s “Space Truckin’”, James Gang’s “Funk #49″ and the Jethro Tull single “Hymn 43″.

The tunes will be available as DLC from December 30 for Xbox 360 and January 8 next year for PS3.

This will surely be a great new year gift to Rock Band fans. It will now be interesting to see what more can Rock Band do to increase its popularity and move ahead in the race. 

Few days back we had blogged about the Batman Arkham Asylum game and its official star cast. The below screen shots has very much convinced me that the game will provide all the entertainment and adventures that are required in a Batman series.

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I am a big fan of game videos, especially fan videos. I came across this fast paced fan video of Motorstorm 2, which I believe deserves sharing. The video captures the feel and pace of the game and shows off some impressive footage. The game was released last month and has received positive reviews. The first target render teaser trailer of the game was released on 12 March 2008 and showed pre-rendered cut scene featuring destructible environments and realistic character modeling along with the song “Tarantula” by Pendulum who appeared in the first game also with “Slam”.

The monster truck ploughs through a biker and the running down a yellow buggy, whilst the black monster truck (a van, perhaps) crashing through an old building, causing it to collapse and then trapping a rally car. An ATV uses the wreckage as a ramp over and a biker ducks through a collapsed platform, while the other one crashes into it. For more go to the wiki here.