VIDEO GAMES BLOGS
VIDEO GAMES BLOGS
by: froosh

April 27th.

If Nintendo wasn’t printing enough money off sales of its amazing Wii franchise, it will now be bringing back an old game for the new console: Mario Kart.

Read more.

by: ashley
related tags: PC Games |

Consider this: The Sims franchise is the best-selling PC series in the world. Yes, bigger than games with the WarCraft name. Stack it up against console games, and The Sims’ global sales are second only to titles that bear Mario’s moniker. Yet many gamers still seem to associate The Sims with its dollhouse parts — clothing packs, furniture exchanges, MySpace pages with soap-opera movies — forgetting that there’s an intricate game there, too. With The Sims 3 , Sims Studio head Rod Humble and his team are trying to bring that aspect back to the front.The biggest change to The Sims 3 is that it takes place in a wide-open, constantly changing neighborhood — a much bigger sandbox, if you will, and a much more complex simulation. The town and park exist in the same seamless space as your Sims’ household, and what you do outside your home now matters as much as what you do within. The game also sees a major shift in how Sims’ motives are handled: Individual meters indicating bladder and sleep-deprivation levels are replaced by a new system of discrete moods, the aim being to get players off the treadmill of fulfilling primal eat-sleep-pee-repeat requirements so they can focus more on, well, going out on the brand new town.

There are tons more changes, too, some big, some small, all detailed in the exclusive 12-page preview in the April/May issue of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine, showing up in subscribers’ mailboxes today and on newsstands shortly after. Inside, you’ll find an exploration the Sims’ new, open hometown; a full explanation of the new gameplay mechanics, including the radically revamped character-creation system; in-depth interviews with Sims Studio head Rod Humble, design director Matt Brown, and executive producer Ben Bell on the other big changes; and lots more.

Once you’ve had a chance to read the story, visit the 1UP forums, where you can pose your most burning Sims 3 questions to the game’s developers — we’ll pick the best ones, present them to The Sims 3 team, and report back with their answers in a few weeks.

And be sure to check out our extended Sims 3 coverage through the months of March and April.

by: ashley

UPDATE: A Take-Two representative has confirmed to Shack News that Ken Levine will be involved in the BioShock 2 project in some capacity, saying “[Levine] is critical to BioShock.” Reassuring news, though it’s still unclear how closely Levine will be working with the 2K Marin studio during development, especially since he almost certainly has his own new projects to work on with his team at 2K Boston.

ORIGINAL STORY: Consider us not very shocked at today’s announcement from Take-Two Games that a sequel to last year’s uber-successful BioShock is on the way. Take-Two says they are aiming for a fall 2009 release for the game, sticking to their previously-revealed desire to release a new BioShock game every two years.

As had been heavily rumored, BioShock 2 will be developed by the brand-new 2K Marin studio, which was formed by a group of BioShock developers late last year. That means that 2K Boston and presumably BioShock lead brain Ken Levine will not be directly involved in the sequel.

In addition to the hardcore-exciting BioShock news, Take-Two also passed along some scraps for the casuals. Bragging that their Wii minigame collection Carnival Games has sold over one million units since its August 2007 launch, 2K Play announced two new games in the franchise. First off is a portable Nintendo DS version of Carnival Games due out this summer, followed by the brand-extending Carnival Games: Mini-Golf for the Wii this fall.

We’re all excited for the Mini-Golf, no doubt, but what we really would like to know is whether or not that rumor about the next BioShock game actually being a prequel is true. After all, how else is a return visit to Rapture going to be possible? Hopefully more information will be forthcoming shortly.

- Philip Kollar on www.gametab.com