Aaaaand no more bets...

Plenty of new details out of this year’s Tokyo Games Show concerning the next installment of Dead Rising.

First of all a whole batch of new screenshots have been released showing off protagonist Chuck Greene’s zombie maiming skills. Everyone’s got them, but let’s point you in Kotaku’s direction if you want to check them out.

Blue Castle Games have also released a new trailer for Dead Rising 2‘s multiplayer mode. Multiplayer is set around a reality TV show called “Terror Is Reality”, where contestants have to slaughter more zombies than their opponents … all while not being eaten alive. The trailer (for argument’s sake, let’s send you over Village Gamer’s way to check this one out) shows off the many, many new ways to dispose of the zombie horde.

Speaking of the many ways to clean up the streets of Fortune City, Destructoid has attempted to chronicle as many of the weapons they could find in the Terror Is Reality demo and post them up for your perusal. While the original Dead Rising was well known for it’s “use anything” approach to undead slaying, DR2 appears to take that idea to even dizzier heights with the use of two little words. Duct tape.

Lastly, just to show that I can link The Big 3 all in one post, Joystiq has posted up a hands on with with Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. Why do we care? It’s because star of the original Dead Rising, Frank West, is a playable character. And apparently he’s capable of doing over two billion damage to people. That’s like over 9000 multiplied by over 9000. Always knew he had it in him.

Like our box art?

It’s been a magical mid-year, hasn’t it?  Xbox Live’s savvy Winter/Summer of Arcade has had us downloading some top class titles direct to our consoles, and we’ve been happily surprised by each offering.  Games like Shadow Complex and ‘Splosion Man showed us that simply because a game doesn’t make a full retail release, doesn’t mean it isn’t well worth our time.

Well it was fun while it lasted, but prepare to go flocking back to the original stigma of distrust we all held for XBLA.  Morbid curiosity had me spend the points to buy Arcade’s latest offering, The Warriors: Street Brawl, and sheer bloody-minded-ness was all that allowed me to finish it.

Now before anyone gets confused, no, this is not a re-release of Rockstar Games’ The Warriors, which was actually a rather well constructed and respectful tribute to the film.  No, this is a side-scrolling co-op beat-em-up that somehow manages to be devoid of anything resembling the original movie’s charm or style.  What’s even more bizarre is that it’s licenced by Paramount.  Maybe they just saw their chance to wring a few more dollars out of the franchise and went for it.  Street Brawl was developed by CTXM, a no-name studio who, if this is the best of what they can offer, hopefully remain as little known as they are.

So what in particular raises my ire so high about this game?  Let us count the ways.

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Mirroring reports from other countries, it seems The Beatles: Rock Band has been outsold in Australia by Guitar Hero 5.

In it’s opening week TB:RB came in at second place in the AU Xbox sales charts, beaten only by Batman: Arkham Asylum, but has fallen to 10th place overall as of last week, when GH5 hit shelves.

I’d base my statistics on the overall AU sales charts, but it would be considerably less interesting considering new AAA titles just seem to slot around the perpetual battle for first between Wii Fit and Wii Sports Resort.

Stats are based from the GfK charts.

Do you enjoy the crack-esqe addiction of Popcap Games’ Plants Vs Zombies?

Well, apparently not as much as these guys!

While the rest of us were busy drinking and watching football, or just being plain old stuck at work, they spent their Sunday making a live-action version of the official Plants Vs Zombies music video.  The video is a product of my friends Wild Particle and Lizbt, who dug deep with their costuming knowledge and lip-syncing to make Britney Spears jealous.

The product is, like the original video, annoyingly memorable.  Enjoy!  If you’d like to know more, you can check out all the details here.

Twitter, the great micro-blogging tool of our age, is an interesting project. For all the “what I had for breakfast” tweets, and any other from the plethora of topics, it hasnt been monitised.

Monitised? What the hell is that, I hear you ask…

Making dollar-dollar bills. No ads, no subscription model, no selling-harvested-information (that we know of). But dammit, I’ve monitised Twitter.

I just walked into my local EB Games, bought a copy of Halo 3: ODST (which launched today, and expect a review shortly). As soon as the transaction was paid (which cost me $98), I left, walked around the corner, and my phone went off.

A message from Matt: “BigW have it for $68″. Why not a few minutes beforehand?! He heard this off the #ACDiplomat twitter!

Alas, I figure I’ll return it, and then get a discount.

Back in I go, only moments from being there previously.

$30 bucks in my pocket, and I declare Twitter to be a success story. Thank you, Twitter.

"We only doubled up on two bands!"

Ever since my brother gifted me the Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock bundle for Christmas a couple of years back, I’ve been a great fan of the series and the music genre in general.  I’m not a naturally talented musician (despite six years practicing the trombone), so a game that gave you the chance to play along with all your favourite rock songs appealed to me.  Even more so because the game is constantly challenging and great fun to drag out when your party is getting to the boozy end of proceedings.

Because I loved GH3, I went out and bought Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero: Rocks The 80′s and Guitar Hero for PS2, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the Guitar Hero: World Tour bundle, Guitar Hero: Metallica and Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits. I have a grand total of four plastic guitars stashed around my house and one faulty, neglected set of electronic drums perched above my wardrobe.  And maybe with the exception of Greatest Hits, I’ve never been so disappointed in a Guitar Hero title until now.

Part of this may be because I picked up both GH5 and The Beatles: Rock Band in the same week, and stood next to one another it’s clear which game was made with care and attention.  But it seems to me, if you’re going to try and push a new title in the series out year after year, then you better be rethinking your gameplay, improving your features and adding something new for players to enjoy.  It’s the last point where I think GH5 falls down, and it’s the point that also has me feeling like such a pathetic shill at the fact I paid money for Activision to continue this cycle.

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EB Games - We release aHEAD of the competition!

Looks like we’re the country to live in if you like to buy your games pre-release.

Reports from Vooks, only collaborated by the online store itself, have shown us that Dead Space: Extraction is already on sale at EB Games here in Australia.

With just a quick phone around, I managed to find myself a copy at the Melbourne Central outlet here in Victoria.  The salesman was happy to reserve me a copy off the shelves.  Now if I only had a Wii to play it on.

The sales assistant couldn’t really explain why it was on sale before it’s official date, only that it had arrived early and was therefor on shelves.  So at this point we’re not exactly sure who’s behind the early release, but the game being out today puts it a whopping week and a half in front of the North American release of the title.  That’s to say nothing of being apparently two and a half months ahead of the official Australian release date of December 1st.

So all we can say is if you’re interested, do the ring around and be quick about it, before someone realises the monumental cock-up they’ve made.

Thanks Vooks for the heads up!

Now with twice the consoles!

What Matt’s Been Playing:

It’s been a week of plastic rock and fanboy betrayal for me.  I’m loving The Beatles: Rock Band and loathing Guitar Hero 5.  The two games kind of enhance each other by demonstrating a music game done well and a music game rehashed.  I’ve already finished my review of Beatles: RB, my Guitar Hero 5 one will be finished this week and probably won’t be complimentary.

So far I’ve made Kurt Cobain sing as Flava Flav, and Johnny Cash scissor-kick on stage.  Just so, so wrong.

Meanwhile, my hands have been attempting to reshape themselves as I try out my new PlayStation 3.  I’ve been playing Resistance 2, which is fun but kinda feels like Gears Of War Lite.  I’m looking forward to trying out inFamous and a couple of other titles come next payday.

What Mark’s Been Playing:

What a week of gaming!

Well, not really. Very busy with the nine-till-whenever, so not a huge amount of free time slash energy left at the ed of the day.

Started working my way through Halo 3 again, in anticipation of eventually splurging of ODST. Damn, the TV trailer for that game looks freaking sweet.

Played a touch of Homeworld 2 (with a mod making the game infinitely more complex), and going to work my way through my free copy of Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal…

Fun-ness!

Another installment into our collection of Nintendo Wii controller patent applications.

It’s frustrating, isn’t it, the way not only does Nintendo seem to feel the need to package every game with a new piece of plastic, but that sometimes they can even make those pieces of plastic obsolete?

Well luckily we only research and develop the most sensible controller ideas, and we’re sure you’re going to love this week’s submission. It caters to the potential green-thumb in all of us. Care to take a look?

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Even in conjunction with the "Don't Operate Heavy Machinery Under The Influence" sign, this game still got shipped

Apparently release dates are getting more flexible these days.  Multiple reports have come in, starting on the Xbox Live forums, of Australian gamers having their pre-ordered copies of Halo 3: ODST shipped early.

I suppose it’s kind of nice, when you think that most of the time we have to wait several days after the rest of the world to get new releases.

The release date break has been tracked back to Australian game retailer GAME.  People who had pre-ordered their copies online were the lucky early-birds, as apparently their warehouse has messed up the shipment.  The gaff is even more hilarious, as you can see a nice big yellow sticker on the front of the box (that got sent out with the order, no less) that says:

STOP!

Do Not Put On Shelf or Sell before Tuesday, 22 September, 2009. It cannot be sold before this date.  Selling it before this date will violate your agreement.

So it would appear GAME is in deep trouble, considering the pre-orders arrived for gamers on Friday the 18th.  There may be a few warehouse layoffs in progress over the next week.  Anyhow, as reinforced by the release break in France, Xbox Live won’t be punishing any gamer who has a legitimate copy of the game arrive early, so all we can say is “lucky you” to the early recipients.

In the end, it’s not really that big a deal for anyone outside  of GAME’s corporate office.  The recipients have only been given the game four days in advance, which isn’t long enough to give them any significant gameplay advantage.  Meanwhile hundreds of reviewers get early releases of these games to try out, so it’s not like another couple of hundred is going to ruin all of Bungie’s plans for world domination.

Further confirmation of delivery here and here.  Thanks OXCGN for the heads up on this one!