Street Fighter IV... Lookin' Good

Okay, so I'm unashamedly a fan of the fighter genre... Oh how many hours I used to spend getting owned when I first started playing them (Hey.. I was only like.. 4.. poor motor skills I say) but when Street Fighter II came around, I finally found my place, somewhere between Chun Li's spinning bird kick and her meaty thighs I had found my place...

So when Street Fighter IV was announced, I was a bit.. meh, really. SFII and SFII: Turbo were for me the peak of the series... 3D fighting games haven't really ever been able to capture (for me at least) the feel of a 2D fighter.. But street fighter... is making amends...

The above is a video of Chun-Li taking on new character Viper... They move beautifully, it's very fluid.. and it's very.. Street Fighter.

Save us, Gordon

Okay... So the Large Hadron Collider didn't result in Hawking radiation and spawn a micro black hole to kill us all or portal in a dimension of demons etc... And with integral parts like Alice, CMS and ATLAS, the names are perfect for your next objective...

But if the news had lead us to believe what was right... who was going to answer the call? Who would save the planet?

Indeed, blog.reddit enclosed to CERN, a package containing a crow-bar, some life advice, and a note...

"Get this to Gordon Freeman. He'll know what to do."

Source: Kotaku, Reddit

Great Sadness

A tide of great sadness washes over Eddy and I at the knowledge of Ensemble closing... We both have loved the Age series since making our little Romans run around all those years ago in Age of Empires back in 1997, and have played every game since.

Ensemble have had an impressive track record with Microsoft Game Studios, but are now being closed down at the end of their current Xbox 360 project, Halo Wars.

Apparently Microsoft will be moving employees into a new game studio (maybe a restructure away from RTS? But then why couldn't this have been achieved with Ensemble? Marketing maybe?), and those who do not make the move to the new MGS studio will be put into as many positions within Microsoft as they can fill...

Perhaps this is the end of an Age...

Source: IGN

Australian Release Schedules... are hot...

Wow... After so long, feeling like we're in a pit of despair, the wonders of spring, (and September) are now (or soon to be!) here! What is coming at this stage?

We can expect the likes of Spore (and it's collectors edition, pictured above), STALKER: Clear Sky and Infinite Undiscovery on September the 4th.

Titles like Star Wars: Force Unleashed on the 17th, and Crysis: Warhead follows on the 18th.

Warhammer Online graces our PCs on the 23rd, and Brothers In Arms: Road to Hells Highway will see release across the PC/PS3/360 on the 25th.

October brings Fable II for 360, Fallout 3 on all PC/PS3/360, as well as Dead Space.

Hot? Highly.

MMO update: Chronicles of Spellborn

Well, since I know Aeon suffers a love hate relationship with the darling MMO genere, I thought I'd take it upon myself to post up some news semi-not-really-regularly.

Chronicles of Spellborn is a new fantasy MMO in development, slated for a release sometime this year. While boasting an interesting art style and a soundtrack by Within Temptation, the game also features some very different ways of playing through combat and the overall AI.

Combat in Spellborn is very different, and may cause some issues when introduced to latency. The player must actively target their enemy with their mouse, throwing away the traditionally passive and repeditive click and button mash technique for something far more involving.

The AI too is a source of interest, as creatures travel in groups, and act as any party would when attacked; the tank runs to the source, the healer stays in range of the tank and the caster will backpeddle and attempt to root the player. This creates a new dynamic in play style, and means utilising different skills and strategies for attacks will be necesarry as the game progresses.

Hopefully we'll see something new with Spellborn, and fingers crossed that it won't disappoint like so many others.

We <3 you, Bioware

Here is the latest trailer for Bioware's next game, an original IP named Dragon Age: Origins. The trailers from the GC convention are streaming in! All I can say is that it looks the way I think Neverwinter Nights II was meant to look!

We can all expect more information to come in from the convention on this title soon! I think bioware is becoming, if they weren't already, one of those developers with a nigh-on-perfect track record. With Neverwinter, Mass Effect, and the whole range of Black Isle games behind them, here's hoping Dragon Age will be another title in Bioware's A-Class lineup. It sure has come a long way!

Lara's Looking.. A little less like a man!

The first true gameplay trailer for the upcoming Tomb Raider: Underworld revealed plenty of things for us to see! The trailer is set in Thailand, with Lara (invariably) scouting around some ancient temple or other and uncovering something she really shouldn't (Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation anyone?).

What excited me most is that in action, Lara looks a little less like a man, and more like the Lara we all know and love... If you know what I mean... It's also the first chance we've had to see the game really in motion, outside of cutscenes and glimpses of gameplay inter-spliced in two-second shots in previous trailers. Anyway, go ahead and watch, and enjoy!

Force Unleashed Demo... August 21st!

Your salivating can start now, with the Force Unleashed demo set to prepare gamers in only a few days! LucasArts have announced their next Star Wars title will have a demo up on Xbox Live and PSN on the 21st of August!

We can't wait for this game, so the thought of getting our hands on it early is just a little... hot! The full game is expected to release in Australia on September the 17th. We await you!

Aion... It's hot

Here's the trailer of little known upcoming MMORPG by NCSoft, Aion. Not a lot to say except gosh-darn it looks pretty! Enjoy!

Source: GameTrailers.com

Batman!

Well, as a lover of the new Batman films, the old-school comics and Thief, I was absolutely thrilled to here that Eidos and Rocksteady Studios are making a new game for the series; Arkham Asylum.

Set in the insane asylum of Gotham City, home to the madmen and women that haunt the town, the player takes the role of Batman, sneaking and fighting their way out of a trap laid by the inmates and the Joker. There'll be sneaking, terror and gadetry, forcing the player to use all of their detective skills.

And the inmates? So far Joker and Croc are confirmed, as is my personal favourite Harley Quinn. Poison Ivy and the others are still maybes though, so fingers crossed for those childhood favourites.

The game will be coming out on the PS3, Xbox360 and the PC, and is slated to release sometime in 2009. Oh, and to make it even better, the script will be written by legend Paul Dini, so it should be fantastic!

Looking forward to some horribly scary moments, hehehe. XD