Absolutley crazy.. loads of games have been scrapped in the Activision-Blizzard merger massacre. I say scrapped like they are being deleted — but they could be, if someone (Developer and or Publisher) does not buy them.

I will turn emo if the Ghostbusters game does not get released - shut up, yeah?

Rather than type all the painful words myself, OXM.co.uk has a list of what’s what. Have a good read while I go and enquire about the latest My Chemical Romance album….. whateva x–<3–x

The deal is done. Activision has merged with Vivendi and emerged reborn as Activision Blizzard, and it’s dumped a lot of upcoming games in the process. Here’s a handy status report on what lived and what died, and what’s coming next.

–The Survivors–

Prototype
The all-action open-world title from Hulk: Ultimate Destruction creators Radical Entertainment is still a goer, although it won’t be out until 2009.

Spyro
The established kid’s franchise is sticking around, which is good because the new title looks really rather impressive.

Crash Bandicoot
Another big franchise that Activision reckons it can restore to its former glory.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Didn’t even know about this one. The film’s just coming, so it’s probably sat in boxes and ready to go.

Ice Age Ditto. Can’t imagine it took a lot of thought to hold on to this one…

–The Fallen–

Ghostbusters
The most surprising game to be dropped, it’s half-finished and up for sale, with a release date now delayed until 2009.

World in Conflict
Another weird one to throw away, this was a hit on PC last year and from what we’ve seen is ready to go on Xbox 360. Could be out for Christmas if somebody buys it quick enough. Devs Massive are up for sale, although not for long with their reputation.

Bourne
We hated the first game, but there was another title that sounded much more interesting: Treadstone, an MMO based around the shady organisation that employed and then chased Bourne. The rights to the name are back with the Ludlum estate, the code is half-finished in Radical’s offices.

Brutal Legend
The maker of Psychonauts, Jack Black, heavy rock theme - we badly want this game to come out, and we’re assured it will be along as soon as creators Double Fine find a new publisher. Like Ghostbusters, though, it might slip into next year in the process.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand
By our reckoning, this should be finished by now, so somebody will doubtless pick it up and get it out. UK-based Developers Swordfish are up for sale.

–The Mysteries–

F.E.A.R.
No news on this one at all. It was under development somewhere in Vivendi, but was always a dicey prospect because original developer Monolith owns the rights to everything other than the name. We reckon Warner should cough up and buy it back, frankly - F.E.A.R: Project Origin, anyone? That said, Activision have retained one more “unannounced game” - FEAR 2 was never officially confirmed, so maybe that’s it.

Wet
Remember Wet? Yeah, us neither. A little-seen action title with a female protagonist likened to Lara Croft, we’ve seen a few teasers but not a lot else. However, it’s been under development for a while so it might well be complete enough to sell on.

Leisure Suit Larry
We haven’t heard anything. We don’t want to hear anything. Please, let it die…

Social Bookmarking:

How about Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid too?

No this is not a joke, its all made possible due to the ‘Create a Soul’ or Character Creation in Soul Calibur IV.

First one to create Chell from Portal gets a gold star!

Social Bookmarking:

To add a bit of proof to the rumour, there is screenshots going around that show Darth Vader AND Yoda on the character select, this shouldn’t be possible on one console.

Further proof can be found on Namco’s harsh reaction on the ’slipped’ news, taken from OXM.co.uk;

“Namco asked for the video to be removed, which is a shame, but the move makes sense for Namco and all we need now is official confirmation from the developers themselves. Whenever that may be…”

Social Bookmarking:

Are you seriously kidding me? I would love to learn Romaji, Katakana and Hiragana from the DS. See, the problem is, you have to know how to read Katakana or Hiragana (i don’t even know that much to seperate them from the two) to even use, navigate and read the instructions on these titles.

I have searched google for ages and all i found was tons of titles that teach the Japanese how to lean Japanese, thats pretty odd to me, but i can see the appeal to kids on how to write the Japanese characters while playing a game, it’s fun learning. The thing that is REALLY odd is they just would not do that with ANY other language learning tutorial aid, i can’t see how this would be helpful to learn German if the instructions of the tutorials were in German?

I don’t think any developer or publisher has seen this gap in the educational market - we can all use our brain, stop telling us to train it! Let us expand our international horizons and knowledge. I’ll leave you with some Nintendo DS Box Art from the useless (to non-Japanese linguists!) Japanese learning titles. Berlitz, if you ever decide to release a Japanese learning title on the DS, be sure to drop me an email ;)

Check out this site for all the Learning Japanese with DS titles from Play-Asia.com

http://learn-japanese-ds.blogspot.com/

Social Bookmarking:

Game to movie conversions are looked upon with knowing hasty eyes.. But this looks to have cult status notched up and eager fans waiting to swallow up the involvement once again.

Here is the video synopsis taken from the official website.

Based on the legendary, hard-hitting interactive video game, MAX PAYNE tells the story of a maverick cop determined to track down those responsible for the brutal murder of his family and partner.  Hell-bent on revenge, his obsessive investigation takes him on a nightmare journey into a dark underworld.  As the mystery deepens, Max (Mark Wahlberg) is forced to battle enemies beyond the natural world and face an unthinkable betrayal.

Social Bookmarking:

Project: WiiHUNT

Use Nintendo Wii Controls for Manhunt PC Game
Version 1.0

The Idea

Can you feel the pain already? This has been a personal gaming goal of mine since i heard about the Wii Remote and motion sensitive programmable controls. Finally. Enjoy the pain.
What i’m trying to do.. is make it so you have to perform motions for the kills, there would be really no point in having to press a button to punch or kill since you can use your mouse for that anyhow, and takes all the fun out. This is a complete functioning script BUT i will have to work on certain issues, adjustments and tweaks from time to time. My main aim was to for you to have the most real experience without actually getting locked up!

The Control System

Main Controls are shown above, full explanation of more controls are in the ReadMe file supplied with this file.

The Downloads

You will need a pc program called GlovePIE and to use GlovePIE with the Wiimote, here is what you will need…

Social Bookmarking:

News from Hollyweird: several more actors have been cast for the 2009 movie Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li that Capcom is producing with Hyde Park for Fox. Filming has also begun, so pop the champagne!

Smallville mega-hottie Kristin Kreuk will be playing Chunster, and will be the main character in the movie. Who knew Kreuk was of Chinese descent? Plus Dutch and Canadian. She’s a veritable smörgåsbord of hotness. Umlaut!

Michael Clarke Duncan from The Green Mile and Sin City will be Balrog. Look at those guns!

Taboo out of Black Eyed Peas will be Vega. Hopefully, backflips are a big part his on-stage dance moves.

Neal McDonough will be donning the peaked cap and flappy cape of Bison, everyone’s favorite crime lord/would-be dictator. McDonough has been in a ton of movies and TV shows you’ve seen, including Band of Brothers and Minority Report.

Chris Klein’s role as Charlie Nash was announced a few weeks back. His on screen name is cool, as it actually incorporates the two different names this character is known by. For some reason that even I can’t remember (and I’m old and know lots of odd Capcom secrets and weirdnesses), the character of “Nash” in Japan became “Charlie” in the US. Justin Marks, the screen writer cleverly slammed both names together — an idea borrowed from the comics, evidently — which should make people happy regardless of country of origin.

Social Bookmarking: