In the midst of random industry non-news and other things of little importance comes three screens of the upcoming powerhouse action game, Kung fu Panda. Based on the upcoming movie of the same name, Kung fu Panda allows players to embark on an epic adventure as they master the specialized Kung Fu fighting styles of, title character, Po the Panda. OK, we’ll stop pretending like this is Halo 4 but Activision has done well with their translations of G rated films in both sales and execution. While previous movie-based games will hardly win a gameplay award, they always look polished and fun. Also, we hear the points are pretty easy to get - so sign us up.
In what may or may not be good news today from the Blizzard Store, it looks like the Blizzard Authenticator was back on sale for a short time. It sold out rather early, and there was some rockiness with some orders, but it looks like Blizzard’s at least trying to get back on track in delivering this extra layer of account security. Unfortunately, although it was showing as purchasable just an hour ago, it once again shows up as Sold Out currently.
There’s no word yet on whether they’ve fixed any problems with keeping the Authenticator in stock, so it may be that they simply got in one shipment and are waiting for another. Hopefully, that shipment comes soon and they can work out their stocking problems a little more permanently. Until then, I’d sit tight and wait a bit. At the least, you don’t want to be like the poor folks tipster Aaron pointed out to us, who are bidding up to $93.00 for one on eBay.
Thanks to everyone who sent us a heads up on this!
After being reunited with our dear friends from Oceanic Flight 815 this past Thursday, we’re suffering from a pretty severe reoccurance of Lost fever — luckily, this new trailer came along just in time to satiate our hunger for tropical island adventures. The game looks gorgeous, and seems to be very faithful to the show, apart from a few characters who are not voiced by the actors who played them in the show — the most jarring of these being John Locke, who sounds like a slightly bewildered Steven Seagal throughout this trailer.
Of course, every good Lost fan knows to look out for branded sharks and hidden messages — which this one-and-a-half minute trailer has plenty of. We’ll leave it to you to find these single-frame clues. What do you think — is there some significance to these blips, or is this just another four-toed statue?
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. Matthew Rossi plays a couple of shamans. And he’s embarrassed to admit that he forgot that he hadn’t finished his series of columns about how to level a shaman. No excuse, no justification, he just plain forgot. So here and now we continue the interrupted series with a look at levels 41 - 58. We’ll get back to elemental gear, I promise.
Parts one and two of the series got you up to level 40. You’re wearing mail (most likely the Scarlet Monastery blues, especially for aspiring enhancement shamans) and ready to begin the march to Outland. Well, the first thing you’ll need to do is find a place to start adventuring! Well, okay, the first thing you’ll need to do is train your new level 40 abilities, and you’ll keep having to do that as time passes. Then you’ll need to find a place to go adventuring, mainly to pay for things like training.
First, however, a sad note: say goodbye to Ghost Wolf. Sure, you’ll still have the spell, and you may even use it to escape a bad situation since it can be cast in combat. But that’s basically the only thing you’ll use it for once you get your first land mount. Since Ghost Wolf doesn’t make you immune to poly, free you from snares or any of that good stuff and it has a casting time, you won’t even use it much in PvP aside from flag running. I know, I miss it too. You have no idea how often I’ve used Ghost Wolf to run around cities just because I could. Epic ghost wolf? Flying ghost wolf? Throw us a bone here.
No question: Take-Two lurves their BioShock baby. In an announcement today, the publisher revealed that, to date, BioShock has shipped over 2.2 million units across both the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows platforms. Not too shabby, eh?
It’s clear that with this news, Take-Two’s gearing up for BioShock mania. Combine strong sales with the recent announcement of BioShock on PS3, news of the Verbinski-directed BioShock film, and the inevitable BioShock 2 announcement from 2K Marin, and we’re on the cusp of the next big franchise in gaming. Good thing or bad thing?
As I’ve mentioned before, The Darkmoon Faire is currently in Terrokar Forest, just outside Shattrath City, so if you have decks to turn in or need to refill your private stock of Darkmoon Special Reserve, now’s the time to get on it. But if you’re still a little bit taken aback by the prospect of gathering all those cards, or wondering if the trinket at the end will really be worth it, we’d like to help you out.
In this post, we’ll be looking at both the old and new decks and listing some pros and cons of each deck so you can figure out if you want to spend the next month tracking down cards before the Faire shows up in Elwynn Forest in March, or even if you just want to blow your epic flying mount fund on getting a deck before it leaves for the month.
It is no secret that Microsoft was in a hurry to get the Xbox 360 out the door as quick as possible, leaving the original black box on the streets to fend for itself. But Microsoft sees it differently this time around and thinks the Xbox 360 will see a much longer life cycle.
Chatting with CVG during the Gamers’ Day festivities, Microsoft’s own Shane Kim talked about the Xbox 360’s life span saying that they “expect the Xbox 360 to have a long tail”‘ and are “confident” that the 360 will last seven years. Crunching the numbers, that means the 360 should be around until sometime in 2012, a full seven years after its November 2005 launch. Honestly, we’d love to see our beloved white box around until 2012, as long as we don’t have to fear anymore RROD and as long as we can bring our achievements with us into the next, next generation.
Anyone who has stared into the pitch-black eye of madness known as the Fox News Network’s “coverage” of Mass Effectand its “Luke Skywalker meets ‘Debbie Does Dallas’” gameplay, is probably now familiar with psychology specialist Cooper Lawrence, who laughingly admitted on the show that she had never played Mass Effect, but still assured the program’s viewers of the game’s vicious, child corrupting qualities.
We imagine the chuckles came to an abrupt end when Lawrence checked the Amazon ratings of her newest book, “The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace With Your Inner Overachiever,” whose middling review had been torn asunder by incensed gamers — many of whom took the time to mention that they had never actually read the book, but hated it anyways. Amazon recently took down these negative reviews — a shame, as we’re sure they’d provide more entertainment than the actual book ever could.
Lawrence has since apologized in a New York Times article, claiming she was misinformed about the game, and that she’s “seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.” Nice work, Lawrence. You might have settled things with the gaming community, but now you’ve pissed off the DHARMA Initiative, who are capable of doing much more than just downvoting self-help literature.
Update: X-Play’s Adam Sessler recently spoke his mind about the “Mass Stupidity” debacle — his video comments can be viewed (and enjoyed) after the jump.
The9, which is the company that runs Blizzard’s World of Warcraft in China, has announced today that the game has hit a full million concurrent players (which means that they’ve had one million people playing the game all at the same time) following the release of the Burning Crusade expansion there last year. Here in North America, concurrent users hasn’t really ever been as high (although that is of course unofficial data, and we don’t have information after the first month of this year). But MMOs are a different beast in China and other Asian countries — not only do players pay-to-play (instead of a monthly fee, many players often pay hourly or daily, which means concurrent users equals paying users), and there are actually three games that have hit a million concurrent users over there (while here, WoW is far and above the largest MMO online).
Still, it’s quite an achievement. It’s interesting that it’s coming so late in the product’s life — it seems that, just as over here, the expansion had a significant impact on player interest. Definitely a big milestone for Blizzard’s game in China.
Prompting this reaction were apparent Live Arcade statistics, revealing that in one week Frogger on XBLA outsold Space Giraffe. Minter is clearly taking the lack of his game’s success a bit hard, but we hope that he doesn’t let the sheer popularity of retro titles push him away from any future development.
Minter’s angry ranting was posted at 1:45 am, his time. In the event that he sobers up and removes the post, we’ve copied his frothy words for your perusal. Check out all the anti-retro spite after the break.
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