This is awesome….
From Kotaku.com:
The official Assassin’s Creed web site gives us a brief taste of the second entry in the series and clues us in on when we can expect concrete details on Assassin’s Creed 2—next Thursday.
The teaser consists of little more than a short Flash animation, rendered in a hand drawn style noticeably similar to that of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions—focusing on the concealed blade Altair used in the original—and his Vitruvian Man. The final drawing hints at some sort of winged contraption that may indicate we’ll be doing some flying (or at least some floating/humming of the Batman theme song) in the sequel.
The teaser also notes that we’ll see more in the upcoming issue of Game Informer, with the date April 16, 2009 presumably indicating when the games mag is allowed to lift the veil on Ubisoft’s sequel.
Given the Italian pedigree of the teaser, we’d think those rumored details of Assassin’s Creed 2 taking place in Venice are sounding more and more likely. We’re sure to know by next Thursday. Keep an eye peeled!
Today CD Projekt RED, the world’s leading developer of games with “The Witcher” in their title, announced its first internally-developed foray into handheld gaming, The Witcher: Mysterious Secrets. The game is in development for all current-gen, next-gen and gen-after-next-gen handheld systems and is scheduled for release between Tuesday and Friday 2010.
A jaw-dropping revolution in handheld gaming, The Witcher: Mysterious Secrets features a massive list of revolutionary features that will completely revolutionize, then de-evolutionize, then evolutionize and then once more revolutionize the industry. Among the revolutionary features are two cooperative multiplayer modes never before seen on handheld systems: play together with your friend on one system as you harness Geralt’s awesome Powers of Movement on the D-pad while your friend uses the awesome Powers of Doing on the A and B buttons; or connect with a limitless number of players as you play for a bit, then pass the handheld to your friend and watch them play for a while, and then finally take it back to play some more yourself!
The awe-inspiring graphics created using half of the game engine’s available 32 colours help to immerse players in the awe-inspiring story of Geralt of Rivia as he fights to save the world from an unknown evil. Set in a completely open world that allows for movement in both left and right directions for an infinite amount of time, The Witcher: Mysterious Secrets also includes some features usually found in today’s best console games, like the Decisions and Inconsequence system that ensures that no decision you make will have an impact on the outcome of the game. That’s right – no more worrying about making bad decisions. We’ll also have DLC at astronomical prices, including the upcoming “The Witcher: Go Up and Down” pack. Yeah, DLC on a handheld. You wanna fight about it?
“The Witcher: Mysterious Secrets is really awesome,” said Adam Kicinski, the guy who runs CD Projekt RED. “Like… really awesome. It has better graphics, better combat, a better story and more boobs than the PC version. Awesome, right?”
This game looks great and quite nostalgic. Should be interesting to see what the controls will be like and how the gameplay works out. Check out the trailer:
from the GlobeandMail.com:
People have long been able to watch YouTube videos on their televisions through media centre PCs, Apple TV, and the web browsers of certain game consoles, but the experience is less than ideal. YouTube was designed for the 18-inch viewing experience of someone sitting at a desk; its text and video thumbnails are just too small and unwieldy for the couch-bound.
Hence YouTube for Television, a new interface for the popular video sharing site designed specifically for the ten-foot living room viewing experience and optimized for web browsers available for the Wii and PlayStation 3 (plans are in place to roll it out for browser-equipped set-top boxes in the future).
I powered up my Wii this morning and headed over to www.youtube.com/tv to try it out. After spending almost a minute waiting for the site to load, I found myself on a simplified version of the YouTube home page that consisted of three tabs across the top allowing users to search, sort videos, and access their YouTube accounts, and four large video thumbnails below that showed the most viewed, top rated, currently featured, and most recent YouTube clips. The few words present were giant and easy to read.
As far as browsing content goes, YouTube’s new TV interface is just as powerful as its PC counterpart. Searching for videos was a snap, and all of the standard tools—including favourites, playlists, and subscriptions—were just a couple of clicks away. Plus, you can set video playback to auto-play, which starts up a new video the moment the current video stops playing, simulating to a degree the experience of watching one program after another on television.
However, there are a few missing features for which some avid YouTubers might pine, such as user comments and the ability to upload videos. It seems Google’s goal in developing the TV interface was to facilitate a better viewing experience, even if it came at the expense of community and contribution.
On the topic of viewing experience, the videos don’t appear to be of any higher resolution than what you’d find on your PC, which means when they’re blown up on a TV several times the size of a computer monitor they look grainy and splotchy. I was sitting about two metres back from my 42-inch set and I found many of the videos difficult to watch. The image quality was a bit more palatable when I moved back an additional metre, but I’m not about to move my couch just so I can better appreciate YouTube videos.
And that’s the crux of the streaming-web-video-on-television issue. It doesn’t matter how smart or simple the interface; until YouTube video resolution gets bumped up a few notches I won’t want to watch the site’s clips on my high-definition set.
Still, I’m happy I took the time to check out YouTube for Television, if for no other reason than that I stumbled across the video below—a machinima dance-off between a group of Halo Spartans and characters from Unreal Tournament. Bless nerds with time on their hands.
Nearly 10.17 million Americans bought a Wii in 2008, according to The NPD Group, and there are more than 15 million Wii consoles in U.S. homes. Also in 2008, another 9.95 million bought the Nintendo DS portable system.
This looks amazing… All we need now is a Back To The Future video game. Check it out:
Check it out courtesy of 1up.com:
Teaser trailer…Booya:
PLAY
