Dante’s Inferno Animated Feature Trailer

Check out this wicked trailer of the animated feature being made to flesh out the world of EA’s Dante’s Inferno. It’s pretty slick. Here’s the official description from EA:

Witness a different take on Dante’s descent into the underworld! From the creative teams behind some of the boldest animated films of all time, including Ghost in the Shell, Samurai Champloo, Blood the Last Vampire and others, experience Dante’s Inferno in an all-new form. In this new trailer, Dante descends into the depths of Hell and encounters many gruesome forms of evil while pursuing the soul of his beloved lost love, Beatrice. This animated feature will release in February 2010, the same month Visceral Games’ Dante’s Inferno is unleashed upon the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the Sony PSP.

Let me know what you think of it when you get a chance.

How Weapons Level Up in Final Fantasy XIII

Final Fantasy XIII

The excellent Anoop Gantayat at Andriasang has translated a recent Shonen Jump article detailing Final Fantasy XIII’s weapon system. Apparently weapons can be leveled up by using the random crap you find while adventuring.

FFXIII lets you make modifications to your weapons. You do this by combining materials that enemies leave behind and that you find in treasure boxes. You’ll find over 100 such materials in the game. Depending on your combinations, your weapons will rise in experience and become stronger.

Normally, I would think that this method of improving weapons through leftovers is silly and nonsensical, but compared to the completely ridiculous gestalt mode it sounds totally reasonable. Still…this is the 2010 release I want the most. I’m not going to lie about that.

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GameStop to Install DLC Kiosks in Stores

GameStop logo

In an effort to maintain its important position as the premiere American specialty retailer of videogames, GameStop COO Paul Raines has said that the company will be introducing downloadable-content (DLC) kiosks in its stores. Variety’s Chris Morris reported:

GameStop COO Paul Raines, speaking at the BMO Capital Markets entertainment conference today, detailed plans for the company to install kiosks in its stores next year, letting people buy digital add-ons for titles as they buy the retail game.

While I understand that some customers, like younger gamers without credit card access, will have to trek to a brick-and-mortar store to buy a points card, a DLC kiosk sounds completely stupid to me. I should probably reserve judgement until a demo of the kiosk is shown, so for now I’ll just say the idea is mostly stupid.

Of course, I could be wrong. Do you like the idea of DLC kiosks at GameStop? Would you purchase content from one of these machines?

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Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime Calls Out Rivals’ Motion Controls

Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aime dismissed the motion controllers coming from rivals Microsoft and Sony at BMO Capital Markets’ Digital Entertainment conference in New York. According to Gamasutra, the Reginator said:

All of this talk around new motion controllers does make me think about the people who initially said that the Wii Remote was just a fad. I wonder what happened to those people?

Yes, it could be that our current 100 percent marketshare in motion control could lose a couple of points, but…with a head-start of over 51 million controllers, I still like our chances.

Reggie Fils-Aime 2

I still find it amusing that people consider the Wii a fad. Merriam Webster defines a fad as “a practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal”. Whether you love it or hate it, there’s no denying that Nintendo has been outselling the competition for years. The Wii has consistently outsold the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. People are still buying more of these consoles today than any of the others. Explain to Reggie and me (mostly to me, because Reggie will zap you with his eye beams) how this is a fad.

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Are You Ready for Final Fantasy Friday the 13th?!?

FFXIII Lightning 2

Square Enix has some big plans for Final Fantasy XIII tomorrow. Its silly anagram teaser revealed that there will be a (hopefully) big announcement on Friday. Adding to the mix, Sony’s PlayStation Home will be showing a brand new FFXIII trailer in virtual theaters tomorrow. In a world full of mysterious teasers and ridiculous countdown clocks — mostly from Japanese publishers — I expect Square Enix to deliver something substantive tomorrow. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking….

What are you expecting from Final Fantasy Friday the 13th? North American release date info? Exclusive NA features revealed? An amazing act of kindness in which the company sends me one of those awesome white and pink limited edition FFXIII PS3s?!? Leave a comment and let me know (please)!

Oddworld’s Lorne Lanning on Reaching a New Audience on PSN

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus hitting Sony’s PlayStation Network. These are two fantastic games from one of the most creative and imaginative developers in the business: Oddworld Inhabitants. I recently asked company co-founder Lorne Lanning what it was like reaching a whole new generation of gamers through PSN. He told me:

It’s a joy to see the fan mail from new players that have just discovered these games. A bit time machine’ish I should say. The feedback is fresh, it’s new to them, so there’s something that feels very much like it did when the games first came out. A lot of people got passionate about Abe. Now we’re seeing it again, and it’s the same vibe and reaction of newness, but a different generation. A bit Déjà to the last millenium.

When I see them write, “I remember my father used to play, but I was too young” it’s a serious testament to just how quickly time flies and how quickly the times change. We’re thrilled that the Abe games are finding a new audience, especially considering that we didn’t even foresee the future of digital distribution back when we originally built these games. I mean, most people still didn’t know what www.com meant back in ’94 when we started building Abe. Strange how different a world it already is today.

Oddworld Abe 2

Strange? How about odd?!? Bwahahahahaha!!! Seriously though, this is just a snippet from my conversation with Lorne. He went over a wide variety of topics with me and his answers were most interesting (some of them even juicy!). Stay tuned for my full interview with Oddworld Inhabitants’ Lorne Lanning!

For now, I wanted to see if any of you have downloaded these Abe re-releases or if you’re planning to. Anyone digging the Oddworld universe more than a decade after it was revealed? Are you excited by the possibilities of more Oddworld games in the future?

Coffee Talk #24: Hilarious Happenings When Gaming Until 4AM

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Verizon possibly getting a CDMA iPhone, how Filipinos around the world are preparing for Saturday’s Manny Pacquiao fight, or the odd things happening at Oddworld (hint, hint), Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

Today’s Coffee Talk is probably going to be a little weird. I’m going to chalk it up to spending most of my nights playing Dragon Age: Origins until I’m passed out on my sofa. Maybe it’s because some of my game time has been logged while I’m loopy, but there are several things in DA that I find unintentionally hilarious.

Dragon Age Loghain

Let’s start with Teryn Loghain. Whenever I hear his name, I think of how many Asian people reverse their L’s and R’s. Lots of Asian peeps — including a lot of my friends and family — would call him Teryn Rogaine. If that were really his name, Ferelden would be safe from male pattern baldness.

Then there are the dwarven cities that are call “ortans”, as in Ortan Thaig. As a WWE fan, I can’t help but think of Randy Orton whenever these towns pop up. So yeah, I was totally adventuring in Randy Ortan Thaig.

I actually had a third one to mention, but then I realized that none of these things are that funny. They might be hilarious at 4AM when you can barely keep your eyes open or hold your controller, but Dragon Age already has all the humor you need. After all, it has a bisexual elf assassin in it — pretty hard to top that.

Can you remember any instances when a game railed you with unintentional comedy? How about a time when you found something in a game hilarious, but realized it wasn’t the next day?

Verizon Getting a CDMA iPhone by Summer 2010?

iPhone 3GS

Rumors of the iPhone heading to Verizon have been swirling for months, but most of them pointed to the carrier getting an LTE version of Apple’s hardware. According to Northeast Securities, that’s not the case. GigaOm has reported:

According to Northeast Securities, the device may finally arrive next year. Citing its supply-chain checks, the financial services firm said in a research note issued today that Apple will launch a WCDMA/CDMA2000-enabled version of the device — not an LTE version — through Verizon by the summer of 2010.

Whether it’s CDMA or LTE, getting the iPhone would be huge for Verizon. I’d jump at the chance to get an LTE iPhone, but a CDMA iPhone is a serious contender. Of course I’m still waiting for T-Mobile to release an Android phone with a beefy processor, an OLED screen, UMA functionality, and a great keyboard…but something tells me that I’ll be waiting for a long, long time.

Any Verizon customers out there excited by this news? Would any of you switch to Verizon to get an iPhone on its excellent network?

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