BitSnark

After the commerical success of their previous CG foray into the Resident Evil universe, 2009’s Resident Evil: Degeneration, it appears that Capcom is ready to bring a second instalment to our screens in 2012.

Entitled Resident Evil: Damnation, little is known about the title other than Resident Evil stalwart Leon S Kennedy, is poised to make a return.

The film is apparently in production now and will be released on 3D Blu-Ray at around the same time as the regular release in 2012.

More details will likely follow on this along with a trailer of some kind (hopefully).

Nintendo will be releasing a conversion of their 1993 SNES mario collection, Super Mario All-Stars for the Wii to mark the Italian plumber’s 25th anniversary.

Going on sale on October 21st for ¥2,500 (US$30/£22), the compendium will feature a soundtrack CD, special edition sleeve and of course, the content of the original Super Mario All Stars collection which comprises of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels.

Unfortunately there has been no indication from Nintendo regarding bringing this to the West, which is a shame as the pictures that gaming website Kotaku have of the collection look rather tasty indeed.

They can be seen below:

http://kotaku.com/5636372/my-what-a-lovely-box-you-have-mario

After receiving critical praise in it’s Japanese 2008 and European 2009 releases respectively, Square-Enix have today confirmed that their popular Final Fantasy crossover fighting game will recieve a sequel for the PSP at a date to be determined.

Very little is known about the game, but what we do know is that stoic Final Fantasy XIII heroine Lightning will now feature, along with Kain from Final Fantasy IV. Predictably, the game itself will feature the same interactive arena based fighting gameplay that made the original game as enjoyable as it was.

Hopefully we’ll hear more about this next week at the Tokyo Game Show.

When developer Just Add Water recently announced that they were working on an Oddworld game, few would have suspsected that it would have been a HD-tastic remake of Oddworld: Strangers Wrath, an innovative and overlooked FPS which released on the orginal Xbox console back in 2005.

But yet here we are, and what they have planned for is quite impressive indeed. With fully remastered 720p HD visuals, all-new graphical effects, remastered dialogue, support for Playstation Move and a slew features yet to be revealed, we should all be feeling quite spoilt right now. Quite spoilt indeed.

Oddworld: Strangers Wrath took the series into previously uncharted FPS waters by casting the player as Stranger, a bounty hunter whose sole goal is to make as much ‘moolah’ as possible to pay for a life-saving operation. This is achieved by capturing outlaws, bandits and also by completing missions and taking down boss enemies.

Most notable however, is the ‘live ammunition’ weaponary that the game employed. Everything from really pissed off wasps to different kinds of animals could be used in completely different and unique ways to defeat your foes. It was quite surreal back then and even now some five years on, the game remains a breath of fresh air in a genre dominated by ‘realistic conflict’ and violent sci-fi shooters.

I shall be very much looking forward to this.

You folks should be too.

The game formerly known as Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 finally has some screenshots to flaunt about.

They contain much Batman, Two-Face and Catwoman awesomeness.

You have been warned.

The screenshots can be seen at videogames website VG.247.com, with a link below taking you directly to the shots:

http://www.vg247.com/2010/09/01/first-arkham-city-shots-get-out-stop-clock/#comments

Go wild.

After nine years of giving Xbox gamers a controller with a poorly designed d-pad, Microsoft has today announced a redesign of the 360 wireless controller.

The new design features concave analogue sticks, smoothed face buttons and most crucially, a raised d-pad for hopefully improved fireball and dragon punch motions.

The pad will release in the US along with a play and charge kit for $64.99.

No EU details have been confirmed as of yet.

You can get a peek at the new pad below:

Atari Europe, in conjunction with Cryptic Studios have announced the development of Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter; a new title in the Neverwinter franchise that was first started on the PC by Bioware back in the hazy days of 2002.

Strange perhaps, is the choice of developer in this instance. Cryptic Studios who brought us MMO titles Star Trek Online and City of Heroes amongst others, seems like a bit of a leftfield choice to develop the game. With their expertise almost exclusively coming from MMO development, it’ll be interesting to see how the final game turns out.

Due in Q3 2011 for the PC, the title allows gamers to become one of five classic D&D classes and join forces with friends or the computer AI to create parties to tackle quests, dungeons and the overaching story. Additionally, a user-friendly content generation system called Forge is also promised.

The story of Neverwinter itself is built upon the forthcoming novel trilogy release from longtime D&D author R.A. Salvatore; with the first book ‘Gauntlgrym’, releasing on October 5th this year and providing the narrative foundation for the Neverwinter game.

No media has been released yet regarding the title, but it’ll be one to keep an eye on.

Vanquish, the hyper-kinetic sci-fi third person shooter offering from Bayonetta developer Platinum Games, is getting a demo next Wednesday for both PSN and Xbox Live users.

Boasting an extended prologue sequence and a boss fight, the demo should at the very least be a moderately accurate example of the stupidly fast third person gameplay and immensely flashy sci-fi stylings that we’ll come to expect from the final game.

I’ll stick up some impressions from the demo as soon as I can.

Update:

Microsoft has gone on record with gaming website Eurogamer to say that Kinect WILL ship with voice activation features when it launches in November. The confusion appears to stem from the fact that a number of non-English dialects are not currently supported by the device.

Phew!

Original Article:

Microsoft today dropped a fairly large bombshell on all of those folks who intend to put down £129.99 on a Microsoft Kinect; there will be no voice control or video chat at launch with Marketing manager for Xbox Live EMEA Robin Burrowes saying: “We will be announcing when voice control will be turned on in due course.”

Ouch.

Considering that the voice activation and integration feature was one of the MAIN REASONS why people perhaps would have pre-ordered the peripheral in the first place, you can begin to understand the consumer ire at having a key feature stripped out of the unit on launch day.

Broken promises before a launch are never a good portent of things to come.

The ball is in your court Microsoft. Make us happy.

EA and Hothead Games must have thought that we needed a lot more ridiculously humourous, hack ‘n’ slash action after their release of Ron Gilbert’s Deathspank earlier in the Summer.

They must have also thought that we needed quick, very quick, because EA and Hothead Games have confirmed that a sequel to the not even two-month old DeathSpank, will arrive on XBLA & PSN distribution platforms on September 21st for 1200 MSP and £9.99 respectively.

Hothead Games Director of game development, Vlad Ceraldi had this to say regarding the title:
“We’re taking action RPG fundamentals and adding loads of new creatures, environments, weapons and characters, while continuing to push the envelope with our signature humour,”

Holy shit that was QUICK.