Artless Gamer

After a long time of rumors, hinted at, teased and talked about for months. Now it is finally official. EA has announced Dead Space 2. All platforms will benefit from this long awaited title and as such Xbox 360, PS3 and PC gamers alike will be able to enjoy this second installment of this much loved title.

Not much else can be said about this new release. We don’t have an exact release date yet and the game hasn’t been rated by the ESRB or PEGI, either. Executive Producer of Dead Space 2, Steve Papoutsis, promises plot twists that will surprise gamers and has had this to say about the new release:

Hero Isaac Clarke returns for another heart-pounding adventure, taking the fight to the Necromorphs in this thrilling action-horror experience. New tools to gruesomely slice and dismember the Necromorphs complement Isaac’s signature Plasma Cutter, empowering him as he meets new characters, explores epic Zero-G environments, and fights against a relentless necromorph onslaught. Survival isn’t the only thing on Isaac’s mind in Dead Space 2 – this time, he calls the shots.

Further information about the game can be found by clicking here.

Popularity: 31% [?]

At first I had my doubts that anything big would leave EA’s gigantic publishing factory any time soon. Recent announcements of massive lay-offs have painted a dark picture of the company’s financial situation and with 1500 employees less, the company seems to be significantly weakened. The company justified this by calling it a move to “narrow the product portfolio to provide greater focus on titles with higher margin opportunities”. Why not just call it saving money?

Despite the disheartening news, it seems like EA are still planning to go ahead with some rather high profile titles. DICE’s senior lighting artist Oscar Carlén, included the title Mirror’s Edge 2 in his list of games for his 2009-Present portfolio.

As soon as the news about this spread, however, he removed the entry.

When EA published the first title for Mirror’s Edge I played both the demo and the full version. While the game concept was fresh and exciting, the full release version was very underwhelming in terms of actual game play delivery. The first title was plagued with many issues, including an exaggerated camera motion feature that made a lot of gamers “motion sick”. Aside from the motion sickness, the game didn’t really blow me away. It was short, didn’t expand and ended up being a bland experience that tasted more of an early experiment for a concept to be worked on in the future.

Players can now hope that the second installment of the game will be a more fleshed out and gripping experience than the first one.

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The early months of 2010 are currently looking to be very exciting. Aside from the PC launch of the game in Q1 of 2010, the first two DLCs will be released by Ubisoft in both January and February.

Each of the new content units will require 1GB of HDD space and that looks to us like quite a large expansion to the game. After being sorely disappointed by short-lived and low-impact DLC in Fable 2, Assassin’s Creed II promises to be worth every penny spent on it.

The January DLC will be titled Battle of Forli, and the February DLC release will run under the title Bonfire of the Vanities. Exact release dates or DLC pricing have not been announced, yet. I am guessing, however, that the price point will be somewhere around 1600 MS Points, considering the size of each DLC.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Halo Reach Menu

Over on the MLG message boards a user, Tom Morello, has leaked some images of what looks to be the next and final episode of the Halo game saga, Halo: Reach. The images are quite blurry and were presumably taken with a low quality cellphone camera (iPhone?).

Some new weaponry, entirely new environments and a blurry hint at much improved graphics can be gleaned from the images. At least this time around it would be a pretty safe bet to say that they are going to use a new engine. I’d send you to the original post on MLG to see the entire original thread, but the MLG Forum is one of those places that won’t let you read unless you are registered.

Descriptions made by Tom in the thread suggest that Halo: Reach will be featuring “perks” and other additions to the old multiplayer modes we know from Halo 3.

Here the images:

New Assault Rifle?

New HUD with perks?

A Needler Rifle?

Bee Eff Gee

Shortly after the release of the images and some comments on the forum, some arguments started breaking out over the real source of these images. Microsoft remains silent on all this. For some more information on the issue, a few more screen shots and a few silly forum post exchanges, just go here.

Either way, these screen shots are really exciting. I  just wonder how long we will have to wait until Halo: Reach actually reaches us.

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Game Boy Advanced

While looking for new material for our blog in hopes of fooling Google into thinking that we’re actually a quality site with regular updates I stumbled over something awesome.

Yes, follow that link. The grand hand-held hero of portable gaming, Nintendo’s Game Boy, has made it into the Strong National Museum of Play and has taken its rightful place in the Toy Hall of Fame. Apparently, that’s quite an accomplishment. I wonder why Masters of the Universe aren’t there, yet.

Quoted from the Hall of Fame entry:

No video-game platform did more to put gamers “on the go” than Nintendo Game Boy. And go they did—bringing their gaming experience to school, to summer camp, and to the back seat of the family automobile. Over the past two decades, Game Boy has become synonymous with portable gaming fun.

We’d like to congratulate Nintendo on this 1000 point achievement and hope that other ingenious contraptions of endless gaming fun will join its ranks in good time. I still don’t see the Commodore 64 there. Does that even qualify as a toy? The Bicycle has made it into the Hall of Fame and that isn’t purely a toy, either.

What does the Future hold for the Toy Hall of Fame? Looking at the sales numbers of the Nintendo DS, it looks like Nintendo may have another one of their products join that list in about 12 to 15 years. Let’s just hope the PSP Go won’t make it there. What an awful piece of junk.

Popularity: 48% [?]